Coming up, a look back at the president s debates followed by president obama giving his final National Security speech. Donald trump holds victory rally in north carolina. Pence outlines the priorities of the incoming administration. The cochairs of the commission on president ial debates set down with two of the debate moderators. They discussed the election and the possible changes to how future debates are structured. This is one hour and 15 minutes. From the National Press club in washington, d. C. , this is the kalb report with marvin kalb. [applause] marvin hello and welcome to the National Press club and to another edition of the kalb report. Im marvin kalb and our topic tonight, democracy in action, the president ial debates of 2016. With a few exceptions during the height of the vietnam war, we have had these televised president ial debates since 1960 and they have always added to our understanding of the candidates and their policies. Perhaps not as much as we would have liked, but enough to be put on a mustsee list during any president of campaign. This last one of 2016 was special in many ways and we shall discuss the president ial debates of 2016 with two of the moderators and the two cochairs of the commission on president ial debates. First, the moderators. Martha raddatz comoderated the who is chief Global Affairs correspondent for abc news, where shes been for 20 years. She worked for n. P. R. This year she comoderated the second president ial debate. Four years ago, she moderated the vicepresident ial ddebates. The other moderator, Chris Wallace of fox news, where he has been for the last 13 years. After long stints with abc news and nbc news. In fact, chris has been a broadcaster for 50 years, following a distinguished family tradition. The two cochairs of the commission are frank fahrenkopf. Who helped set up the Debate Commission in 1986 working then with the democrat paul kirk. He is a washington lawyer who was president of the gaming association. The other cochair is mike mccurry, a Communication Specialist and professor of public theology at wesley seminary here in washington, d. C. He was also the spokesman at the white house and the state department under president bill clinton. Martha, well start with you. The two candidates of the 2016 debate, donald trump and Hillary Clinton, were not your runofthemill candidates. They were in their way very special, so im asking you, how did that martha yeah. Marvin how did that specialness affect the way in which you prepared for the debate . Martha whatever you prepare for a debate, i approached it in the same way i approached the vicepresident ial debate. It is the super bowl of debates. Without question. All the networks had done primary debates, but when you go into a general Election Debate and the candidates as you said are special, think you have to think about i do that. You have to think about how you ask the question. But thats the same thing i would have done no matter who the candidates were. Marvin nothing special in the preparation . Martha the special part of the preparation is that you prepare for that candidate. You prepare you look at that candidate over the campaign. You look at both candidates over the campaign. You want to ask questions in a way you think will get answers. It was a town hall debate so we look at the questions that the people were presenting to them and decided amongst ourselves with Anderson Cooper which ones would be best for the candidates. And i dont mean, oh, im going to trip you up with this or im going to trip you up with that. There were questions that the town hall members had for particular candidates and we would follow up. I am sure chris does the same thing. When you follow up and you think you might get a certain kind of question, you follow up in a way you hope you get even more of an answer. Or an answer, period. Marvin chris, you seemed, at least in my judgment, very surprised by Donald Trumps response to your question about respecting the end result of the election. That was a very special moment. And im wondering what your feelings were at that time, were you prepared for his answer . Chris i did not know what his answer was going to be. I thought it was going to be a great question because whatever he answered i knew it was going to make news. It was very much out there. His Vice President said, of course hell respect the results and his daughter that day had said he was going to respect the results, but as weve learned until donald trump says it, it does not matter what anybody else says. When i asked the question and he and martha is exactly right. There are a lot of debates but the general Election Debates are different and they are level of seriousness, a level of attention. Audience you say, what was different about these debates . Donald trump was different about these debates and because of donald trump, i think, the audiences were enormous. The first debate was the mostwatched first debate ever. Ours was the mostwatched third debate ever. I knew that whatever he said, it would be a big deal. When he said it, even though i was prepared for it, i was still shocked in the moment. Here was less than three weeks, 20 days before the election, here is a president ial candidate saying, i will have to think about it. About accepting the results of the election. And then purely ad lib, i just thought, i want to put this in an Historical Perspective. There is a long tradition in the peaceful transfer of power. We knew what nixon did in the 1960 race or what gore did in 2000 after the recount of the Supreme Court ruling that that was a big deal and i wanted to put it in Historical Perspective and then of course he said, ill keep you in suspense. Marvin well, he did. Frank, you have been cochair of the commission since had was started in the late 1980s. In your judgment, what makes a good moderator . Frank the hardest job we have on the commission is determining who the moderators are going to be. In my experience, and we have done 30 president ial and vicepresident ial debates since the commission was created and the hardest thing is to who you are going to pick for moderator. You must think about diversity. We examine the work product of the wouldbe moderators to see whether or not this is a person who has not gone far left or right with regard to any particular candidate. So they cant be a fair moderator in asking of questions. And we spent a lot of time on it. It has to be something and there was a great deal of debate as to what the job of martha and chris and anderson were going to be with regard to , quote, Fact Checking. There were people who wanted us to have a trailer along the bottom of the television tube saying what they said was wrong or right. That is not the job of the moderator. Moderators facilitate the discussion and get out of the way. If one of the candidates says something that is wrong, it is a debate. The other candidate is supposed to be the one to correct them. Marvin did you set ground rules . Frank no. Were just indicating when people ask us what you just asked me, what were looking at in the debate, thats what were looking at, someone that can take that role and do the job. Marvin mike, in selecting moderators, do you have to clear your selections with the president ial candidates . Mike no. Marvin has there ever been a time when a candidate has said, i do not particularly like that reporter . Mike in the past, maybe yes, and frank can tell you about the history, but not in the last two or three cycles. Frank in 1986, i think it was, before the commission started, the league of women voters gave both campaigns the veto right. I believe it was over 90 reporters were either nicked or zeroed out. There was a moderator along with a panel of reporters. Marvin what were the marching orders, this is for both of you, what were the marching orders . You gave to these two moderators . Mike ask good questions. We do not know what the yourself. Questions are going to be. We trust their journalistic integrity and they rewarded us. Particularly these two. Frank the two that we picked there are examples of why we do the work the way we do it. We pick qualified, intelligent journalists who will ask good questions. We do get lobbied by a lot of different people. Marvin lobbied by whom . Frank mostly the networks because we work in collaboration. Marvin and they push their anchors mike there were five networks we collaborate with and they are always very aggressive in pushing for their favorite correspondence and we sometimes have examples of where we chris i just want to give you a sense of how little marching orders there are. The executive director calls me up and it is a little bit like becoming a made man in the mafia. What chris meant to say was chris and its like, do you accept and its quite formal and quite moving, actually, when you get that phone call. And she said, you are going to get to ask all the questions. We do not want you to share them with us, the commission or share them with either campaign. She said about a week before the debate, you will have to come up with six topics, six topics that we will tell the campaigns, these are the six topics six segments immigration or foreign policy, whatever. I said, who decides those . She said, you do. I went, well marvin you didnt decide the six . Chris i did. She said, a week ahead of time, you tell the campaign what are the six topics that will be in the debate. Mine were Supreme Court, economy, immigration. On and on. When i said, who decides what my six topics will be and she said you do, and it is completely left up to you. Those are publicly announced. Martha there is a purity to the process. When you get the call, you are on your own, you hit the books. The on your own, you hit the books. Marvin what happened to your relationship with the network . Mike was talking before about network big shots wanting to push certain anchors. What kind of relationship did you have . Martha i am not involved in that. My network could not have been better at backing me every step of the way. Not only that but, hey, i need time to do this. And i think the message to me was always, at some point when you want off Good Morning America and you are coming up against the debates, just tell us. They gave me time to prepare. They helped me prepare. Marvin you did not have to do your regular assignments . Martha my biggest assignment became this. Marvin did you have people helping you with the research . Martha you bet. You bet. The Research Team remember, were the town hall again. Did they know the followups . If we got this question i would follow up, we worked on that for weeks. Marvin tell me, both of you now, whats the most gratifying part of being was the selected to this job . And the most challenging . Chris . Chris it is an enormous statement of trust on the part of the commission and i hope we talk about the commission because it is a national treasure. I remember in 1980 and 1984, when i was covering reagan, and the debates were decided by the campaign and jim baker for the Reagan Campaign and jim johnson for the mondale campaign, they would get together and they would negotiate everything. By this time, and frank and mike would say this, the power of commission has grown over the years so they now dictate, we will have a debate in las vegas on this day and it will be this kind of a debate and soandso will be the moderator. Because of that its taken out of politics and an independent body not concerned about either of them as president. The most challenging thing for me, the good news, im getting a debate. The bad news, and i love the way frank said it, he said, you are batting cleanup. Youre doing the last event. That sounds good but this was about september 3, and the last debate was october 19, which meant i had a month and a half to stew about this. My wife is sitting in the front row and she will tell you. You want to immediately get to work and prepare. You cant prepare. I had to wait until their debate was over. I wanted to see what had been asked, what the issues were, what the scandals were. It was only those last 10 days that i prepared. Marvin martha, the most challenging moment for you . Martha the most challenging moment for me was friday evening after the access hollywood tapes were released and we had already prepared for the debate, which was sunday, and we had to reconfigure everything. And think about what our responsibility was because of that, how we would deal with that. Between our teams, yet it was a town hall, we didnt know whether people would be asking about that or whether they would want to ask about that in the national debate. I would state most gratifying is you are the moment you get that call, you are part of history. You are part of president ial history and it is a profound moment. You know you have a huge responsibility and part of that responsibility is what we talked about here, too, its not about you. That you facilitate that conversation. You want answers and i know chris and i tried very hard to get answers and i think we did a good job of that, but it is a profound sense of responsibility and an honor. I do not say that lightly at all. It is an honor. Marvin have you ever interviewed a president of candidate like donald trump . Martha nope. And i think everybody in the press would answer that the same way. Marvin as you are approaching your moment that sunday and you hadnt ever interviewed anybody like him, you couldnt really anticipate what his response was going to be. Martha absolutely could not. I had done a primary debate with him and we were down to seven republican candidates. I have the advantage of watching the debate with lester holt. You had a little clue of how he might handle it. Lester had the most challenging being the very first and not knowing how the debate would proceed. You look at that. I have done an interview with donald trump before. I knew in that sense. Again its whatever you think or how unusual a candidate he was, you do it the same way. You study, you figure out how they will answer. It might just be a little bit more difficult with him. Marvin we talked about this a moment ago, chris you mentioned it. The first debate attracted 84 Million People and probably 100 million if you were to throw in cspan that got you up to about 99. That did not count people on their computers and streaming on their ipads. Marvin that sounds absolutely, ooh, aah, wow. What i am trying to get out is, we have heard from the moderators what an awesome responsibility it is. No question about that. The idea of interviewing somebody who could be president is a big deal. You have all of these people out there and it strikes me that it could be seen as mass entertainment as opposed to a very large classroom of civics. Mass entertainment. When you have that many people and that many televisions, thises and thats, you are in entertainment. You guys are putting together the best show that you could. If you guys did it as well as we do [laughter] marvin how do you prepare for a show . That is what you did. That is not true. Our job is to take the leading candidates for president of the United States who have got a chance to be elected president. And we have a measure of that and theres some catastrophe about that, if you want to get into that. And give them a place where they can present their best argument about why they ought to be president of the United States. What more do you want us to do than to present good moderators who ask good questions and let the candidates do whatever they want to do . Request i say that was the most substantive, serious, sober discussion about the country that i have ever heard . No. That is what the candidates gave us. I felt one of the difficulties we had, and i do not remember martha having to deal with it, but chris had to deal with it and lester did, we had audience participation. In the past, we tell the audience, this is not the primary debates where i felt watching the primary debates that the networks were holding up applause signs. Frank it got wild. Our debates have always been, we have a white house feed, no interruptions, no commercials. The networks take what we put out and we go from 90 minutes and we hopefully think the candidates will answer Smart Questions asked by moderators. Its not only the answers. One of the things and i have done 30 of them someone said to me once, you have done 30 of these things, whats the thing that gets you . It was a challenge in this series of debates. I have learned that the American People do not necessarily vote for the smartest person. They want to like their president. That was a challenge when you have both candidates with negative Approval Ratings by the American People. That is what made this a little bit more dynamic than it has been in the past. Mike and i both said, you should the other members of the Commission Said you should have had a button where you press you or the other moderators could shut off the microphone of the other person. You learn a lot about a human being when they are on the stage if they are interrupting or being courteous. You are learning a lot about character. It is not just about the answer, or the question from the educational standpoint. You are seeing a person. Making judgment on that person. Marvin absolutely. To the moderators, jim lehrer says the best approach is just ask your questions, do not fact check, let the candidates say what he or she wants to say, and move on. Do you buy that . Chris i have lunch with jim before my debate and talk to him two or three days before the debate. Forgot, some 12 debates, he has to have pretty good advice. Not entirely to i agree with that. I dont think he necessarily would agree with that, either, even if he said it. I will give you an example. One of the hardest things, the way the debates were structured, each segment, im doing the segment on immigration, im going to ask a single question to both candidates, and the questions whoevers turn to go first is going to get two minutes to answer uninterrupted. Sometimes that meant, mr. Trump, your two minutes. Hes going to get two minutes to answer. Then 10 minutes for free flow conversation. You are necessarily going to interrupt because you are not going to let one person go for 10 minutes. One of the more difficult judgment calls you have to make as a moderator, i was asking about the controversies they both faced. Emails and women making allegations and i wanted to ask about the clinton foundation. I asked secretary clinton if mr. Trump says you blurred the lines between public and private and that this is a paytoplay. She says, thanks so much. It has not been proven, but i would love to talk about the clinton foundation. I thought, here she goes. She will talk about the good work they do all over the world. Which is interesting but not really the question that i asked. It is not the easiest thing in the world to say to the secretary of state, i do not want to hear about what you are doing for the poor children in africa. I want you to talk about the scandal, but thats what you have to do as a moderator. Sometimes you cant just let them go on. Marvin that is different from saying what they are saying is wrong. If you know that the candidate is saying something that is inaccurate, that is a lie, is it your responsibility as a moderator to tell the American People, what you just heard is wrong . Martha i do not think that is my responsibility. To say what you just heard is wrong. One of the ways i approach it is, here are your words it is what frank said. Mr. Trump, do you have anything to say about what secretary clinton just said . I think at one point on the iraq, the public pronouncements of being against the iraq war, that had been litigated in the news media. At one point, when he said that again, i said, i know critics say otherwise. Period. It is the responsibility do i think i should just sit back . If they say to me, a nofly zone is really easy to do. I might say, actually, what soandso says about a nofly zone is it would take 10,000 troops. It is not me debating trump or clinton. It is me trying to get answers from the candidates. And let the others debate. Again, am i prepared with things to come back at them and say, but you said on july 19 this . Its the same thing you do on sunday shows. You want to have a followup that is tough. But it is not my job to say, you are wrong about that. It is my job to find evidence where they said something else. Or to let the other marvin but there was something very distinctive about these debates and about the entire campaign. Chris said before, the central element in it was donald trump. If it were not for donald trump, you would not have had these astronomical ratings. It simply wouldnt have been there. Chris i agree. Marvin what i am trying to get into here, the whole idea of a candidate saying something that is undeniably a lie, if you do not feel it is your responsibility to challenge martha i am not saying, dont challenge. Im saying the way you worded that, marvin, you are wrong about that, i dont think thats the way to do it. You have followups, you have material. You have stuff you can talk about with that candidate and bring it up to the other candidate. They are debating. You can make that conversation chris can i also add a point . That doesnt seem to be given as much relevance as it should. The other person on that stage told untruths as well. It was not just donald trump who told whoppers. So did Hillary Clinton. It is a slippery slope. If you start to say im going to fact check and say what donald trump said here is wrong, do you have an obligation to do Hillary Clinton . If youre going to do it on this level what you consider an outrageous whopper, how about that medium whopper . I do not want to sound like burger king. You run into at what level do i intervene or not intervene . At some point, it stops being a debate between the two president ial candidates. Marvin i want to take a moment to remind our radio, television, and web audiences that this is the kalb report. Im marvin kalb and im discussing the 2016 president ial debates with Martha Raddatz of abc, Chris Wallace of fox news, and mike mccurry and frank, the cocommissioners of the president ial debates. I am picking up the point which has been working in the underbrush to discuss a relatively new phenomenon in our public discourse. I am picking up the point which has been working in the underbrush to discuss a relatively new phenomenon in our public discourse. It is called posttruth. Oxford dictionary defines it as, here im quoting, relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in changing Public Opinion that appeals to emotion and personal belief. Unquote. Journalists are supposed to be in we tell the truth as best we know. How did we start to get into this posttruth business . Chris i dont know that we are suddenly in it. There have always been appeals to emotion. As frank said, an awful lot of, particularly in politics, is a visceral reaction. Ronald reagan won the debate i saying, there you go again. It wasnt an untruth actually, it kind of was. My point is, it was an appeal to emotion. It was an appeal to im a reasonable guy, you can trust me to be president. That made it different. He was cracking a joke. Martha wheres the truth in that . There are different views of this. Marvin what aim trying to get at something a little more serious than that. The post truth phenomenon is a very important thing that does affect our politics. I think it does affect our journalism. It does suggest that if you play with things in a skillful way, you can win over a public without even laying your cards on the table. You dont have to do that because you are somehow or another gone beyond the responsibility of just laying out the truth as best you know it. Do you feel that maybe you dont at all but do you feel that there is any danger that would make the approaching a post truth world . Frank this is the first time i ever heard of post truth. Im glad you educated me tonight. I look at this differently. What is the responsibility of chris or martha doing their sunday shows where they are interviewing candidates . And its oneonone and chris is asking the question or martha is, and they give an answer that is post truth or is working with the facts in such a way. Then i view their job as moderators, oneonone, to correct and go after them. You said this last week, thats really not true. The debates are different in my view. A debate is a debate. You want to try the reason that we changed the format four years ago and got away from this ask a question to candidate a and two minutes to answer, and candidate b has one minute to respond, candidate a gets 30 seconds and move on. We divided it into six segments where we can get down and drill down and get facts. Its not the job in our view of the moderator to do what they would do on their sunday shows oneonone. That is a vast difference. Thats the point im trying to make which is a little different martha the questions are different, too. We often say this is not an interview, this is a debate. The questions are going to be a different way you approach those. Marvin so among the four of you here, the concept of post truth is in no way an aggravating a disturbing phenomenon . Frank i think politicians have been doing that for years. I dont think there is anything new. If youre talking about a politician taking a set of facts and trying to come out with an approach of those facts that you dont agree with or that other people do agree with, that is as part of politics. Maybe i dont understand. I think your question is about the crisis that exists in journalism, the fact that there is no economically viable model to support the kind of excellent journalism that we have been accustomed to for a long time. I think the challenge to journalists i am not a journalist, i thought about being one earlier in my career, is how do you take truth, post truth is just a silly comment, a silly phrase. There is truth that journalists have to uncover and report and aggressively go after, and they have to do it with creativity and inspiration, and they have to work hard to make it compelling for the audiences that need to get the truth. The failure of journalists to do that is why we are in this quandary, and why we have allowed content to go off to fake news and social media and other places. It is the responsibility of our established, respectable, verifiable, accurate news organizations that we depend on as americans to do a better job. Marvin based totally on what mike just said, how do you guys both feel about the quality of journalism, not individually, but the industry itself at this point . How well do you think it did in the coverage of the 2016 campaign . Martha chris . [laughter] chris i dont think that the Fact Checking was the big problem. I think we did a lot of that. I think to the degree that people cared that the record was set straight on things that all the candidates said, but our focus was particularly on Hillary Clinton and donald trump. Generally speaking, people knew the truth or falsity of what they were saying. The thing that bothered me the most, particularly during the primaries, was the over coverage of Donald Trumps rallies. That was i think a business decision and im talking particularly now about cable news that if donald trump was giving a rally and you did not have him on and your competitor did have him on, you were going to lose eyeballs to your competitor. It was not only that they would carry the rally, but we all know they would show the podium for the rally for 45 minutes as they were waiting for the longterm rally for the donald trump rally. That drove the other campaigns in the primaries nuts. That was a terrible mistake and we should not have done it. With 17 candidates, youre not going to cover everybody the same. There were candidates that were more viable than other candidates, and we always do that kind of winnowing process. I think the overcoverage of trump because he was good for business money, bottom line, was a mistake. But having said that, people say i think they get it wrong. They say we were trying to push trump. No, we werent leading Public Opinion, we were following Public Opinion. He was driving ratings, we came to it. Marvin martha, do you agree with that . Martha i think we as journalists have to take a hard look at 2016. We want to move on and cover the administration, but i do think we have to be self reflective of things exactly like chris is talking about, and how we covered it. How we are fair. I think when you are in the moment and youre in a campaign that is one of the most unusual in history, i think there is some very, very Good Journalism, and people sort of caught up with what was happening. Marvin forgive me. Where was the Good Journalism . Chris how about the New York Times breaking the fact that Hillary Clinton had a private email system . Martha people forget about. That was a huge breaking story. That drove campaign coverage. Chris or the Washington Post and david on trump and the charities. There was a lot of Good Journalism. Marvin another point the polls. Frank i think you really have to give donald trump a tremendous amount of credit for changing maybe journalism in the future. What i mean is when has that there been a candidate who would get up in the morning and call morning joe, cbs, morning news marvin is that a good thing for journalists . Frank youre a journalist. Im not a journalist. Marvin i made the point frank im saying what did he to you was this. It had maybe to do with the profit margin youre talking about. If you are a morning show and you dont have to go through what you normally do with the candidates, you know you have to go through the secretaries and so forth. You get that call and say, yeah, ill go on, interview. Incredible. Marvin let us say he made that call to fox or abc, and had he absolutely nothing to say. It was just a repeat of what he had said before, except he was outrageous and what he said. Frank but they put him on. Chris modesty prevents me from marvin mike, do you buy that analysis of the media and our relationship with trump . Mike my role at the white house was to be a human pinata for the press corps who gets beat up. That is skin cancer from california growing up. I like the fact that donald trump made himself accessible and called in to shows, but i also think that the scrutiny and accountability that he needed to have from journalists who would have that opportunity to talk to him should have been a little more aggressive, more akin to what i was familiar with at the white house. Martha i think they were pretty aggressive. Chris when trump said frank did anyone ask him, oh, are you going to try to upset everything we have done in asia in the last 25 years . Chris i was asking Kellyanne Conway about it. My competitors asking Reince Priebus about it. He got hammered for his Opening Statements about the immigrants crossing the border and mexicans being rapists and criminals, or saying that john mccain it was not for lack of coverage. Marvin thank you for raising that. In the past week, his spokesman, including ms. Conway, was trying to explain the way in which he used words, and the way he would present ideas. But she was saying was that he was saying these things, but the American People should not have really taken that seriously. It is just the mood he was striking. You cant go with the facts, she said. You got to go with the mood. Chris she can say anything she wants. That is her spin on it, but we did not take it that way. We cant say well he said that, but thats just donald. Frank Hillary Clinton didnt hold a press conference for how long . It was months. Chris 250 days. Marvin heres a guy saying hes available. Martha marvin, difficult to ask questions to donald trump. It is also difficult to ask questions to someone who is just giving you talking points. You have to have a different approach with that as well. Secretary clinton is very good at those talking points. Marvin i totally agree. If the commission in its wisdom were to ask you to come back in four years and be moderators again, what would you have learned from the 2016 experience that could be profitably put into a 2020 debate environment . Chris i would ask to do the first debate so i didnt have to stew over it. Frank do you really think that or do you think you benefited . Chris i actually do think i benefited. It took about eight inches of colon out of me. Lester holt, he was the first moderator the first pick your. Martha when we would sit and talk about topics, if there was one we didnt like, chris would do it. Chris i had some topics. Near the end of the debate, i was hoping there be some clear of for me. Frank not to shortchange marvin here, one thing i have been asked a lot is, why did we not have a substantive discussion about Global Climate change or some of the issues that were sort of left off the table . Mike which actually came to you then because you had the chance at the last debate to add more substance in. I have gotten that question a lot. Im asking both of you. Martha chris was going to ask about it. We just assumed. Mike it didnt come up in the 2012 debate or the 2016 debate. It is arguably one of the most important things we have to think about. Frank when you asked Public Opinion polling, it mike so what . It matters. Frank of course it matters. Martha obviously it is a really important topic. I will tell you about our debates. We probably lost a lot of time. Mike another one is poverty and hunger and homelessness in this country. No questions about that. Martha absolutely things like that we thought would come up in that town hall debate or you can guide the conversation in that way. Mike were you waiting for the candidates to raise that . Or did you think you had the responsibility to put those questions martha again, i had a town hall debate. Mike so youre relying on people. Martha i can go back to 2012. You have topics that you read about that you have covered every day, you have people talk about, people send you things and you see on social media. We did try to vet topics and what was important. If they are talking about on social media, is there somebody behind that generating more social media so well talk about it. I think you have to be very careful in choosing those topics. Mike my point is the candidates will talk about the issues that they think the broad swath of the middle income average taxpayer cares about. Those who are marginalized in our country need to have someone who will voice their concerns in these debates. I think that is a role that the moderators can play. Marvin what is the point of what you just asked . Mike that we have questions that come from the moderators that data marvin these are smart moderators. Mike we do try to get beyond those points. I know. Frank these are really important issues and we never get into them. By the time i got to my debate, the Supreme Court had never been asked. Immigration had never been asked. You have to do those i thought, because they had never been asked. You had to do something on the economy. You have to something on foreign policy. I happened to have one which was my National Enquirer segment which was about stuff. [laughter] but i did but it 45 minutes into the debate. Frank its good evidence that we do not dictate the comment. We on the commission leave it to the moderators best judgment for what they need to ask. Then it is incumbent upon the candidates to engage in the subject of they think are most important. Mike they will follow whatever their political people tell them or whos the persuadable voter. What message do you need to convey . Im just trying to think about ways in which in these debates we can elevate the subjects that are truly important. Frank truly is subjective, mike. Mike no it isnt. Global Climate Change is not subjective and neither is poverty, homelessness, or hunger. [applause] frank i agree. They are. The question of whether it is number one or number three or number five. You have a limited amount of time 90 minutes and a hell of a lot of subjects. Mike if you just follow what the pollsters say, we wont get to any of this other stuff. Frank these people have the toughest job in the world to go out on that stage in front of 100 Million People for 90 minutes and try not to screw up. Frank and i really disagree in anything. Frank you only have so much time. Marvin we have covered that point. Thank you. Very well done. Mike whatever. Marvin i want to talk about where journalism is today, and so im directing it at the two of you. There are a lot of people who feel that journalists are having a very difficult time. There are economic reasons for that, but it is not just that. We brushed aside the posttruth idea a moment ago. Let that sit as one of the subjects along with Climate Change that we should have discussed. What im interested in is this idea that if journalism has reached a point in our society where a lot of people for whatever reason dont believe what the journalists are saying, they believe that the journalists are using facts that they dont recognize as facts, whatever the explanation might be, its reached a point where the language of journalism is inadequate to meet the responsibilities of journalism in a society under phenomenal change and where the tweets the modern means of communications seems to have overwhelmed so many of us. Were living with too much information perhaps. Im wondering whether both of you think about questions of journalisms role these days, where it is, where could be better . Is it being overwhelmed by this general suspicion . I remember in my time granted that is a couple years ago an most of, not all of it by any means, but an awful lot of what we said was accepted if not as truth, then as an effort on the part of the reporters to get at the truth. I dont sense that now. If i am wrong, correct me. If im right, help me understand where we go . Martha first of all, i think you have to divide what journalism is and what online hits are, or what rumors of the internet are, thats a real problem. You have fake news and social media that is throwing stuff up there that is not true, that is a real challenge. Its a challenge for our public. As far as journalism goes, there are people in journalism today who have not changed from the time you were journalists. There are people who are fighting to get the truth, who will continue to do that every day. One of them is sitting right here next to me. I certainly pride myself on trying to do that as well. An objective way as possible. The thing that was heartening here for me tonight is people meeting all these young journalists. The social media elements of this and a public that does not know the difference between a journalist and someone who just write something or make something up online is a real issue. Frank you remember walter cronkite. On that show ill have to ask you to cool it. Marvin i will come back to you in a second. I want to stick with this idea with the role of journalism. Frank thats where im going. Marvin im going to give you your chance. The role has always been it is a special role in a vibrant democracy. Were supposed to serve as a watchdog. Government officials, policy, all of that. We are always delighted to quote our founding fathers. We say that they placed the concept of freedom of the press right up there in the First Amendment of the bill of rights of the u. S. Constitution. It was not an afterthought when they did that. It was fundamental. Thomas jefferson once said famously if he had a choice between government without government or newspapers without government, would he take the newspapers. When i hear many colleagues maybe not the two of you, but many i know fear that a Trump Administration may in one way or another cut back on freedom of the press. They also feel that Many Americans are so distrustful of the media that they would raise no meaningful objections if the government attempted to crack down. Do you share these concerns . Im asking all of you. I appeal to you to give me no more than 30 seconds. I want to start with mike. Do you share those concerns . Mike about the future im not sure your soliloquy there what the question was. About the role of the press . Marvin i said, if you were listening, i said there were a lot of people who are concerned that journalists may be losing their way, or the people are not trusting them any longer. Mike i think competition in journalism based on speed and how fast you break the news is one of the real dangers, and we have to develop a new economic model for the journalistic economic enterprise that is based on substance, debt and depth, thoroughness. That will develop a hold of a type of journalism where people are not scrambling to try to report facts which sometimes they get wrong, which jeopardizes the integrity of the journalistic enterprise. It goes back to substance. Marvin 30 seconds. Frank . Frank when i was talking about walter cronkite, i think it was twice a week, a gentleman, beautifully dressed, would come out. On cbs, it said commentary. You knew it was his commentary and his opinion. It was not necessarily the news. Thats where the big change has been. Too many times now reporters are reporting a story, then they have a tag line at the end, determine what its going to be. I was a republican state chairman before i was a national chairman. My candidates were always complaining that the press is biased. Assumed that the press will not be with you. I think it is more so after this last campaign. Marvin 30 seconds. Martha i certainly want the press to continue to have access, the traditional media as well, in a Trump Administration. I think we will fight to make that happen and try to be tough and fair. Chris certainly more noise now that there has ever been. People seem to find their way to the truth. The numbers, the audiences are astronomical. They have never been bigger. People are drinking the news hard news not the opinion of fox news out of a fire hose. My job is as it has always been be the cop on the beat. Keep them honest. Check the facts. Tell the truth. There may be a fascination right now with certain phenomenon, but people will find their way back to core values. Marvin the clock tells me that we are quickly running out of time. My thanks to the wonderfully attentive audience here at the National Press club and all over the world. Super thanks to our two terrific moderators and the cochairs of the commission of president ial debates. I leave you with a thought from Winston Churchill democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others. That is it for now. Good night, and good luck. [applause] marvin what happens now is we have about 15 minutes, and we are very happy to take your questions. There are microphones on either side. Stand up, go to the microphone, ask a question, and please identify yourself and ask a question, because if you do not, i will cut you off. Over there in the darkness. Hello . Hi, im from central florida. My question is i read an article about how a failure of this last round of election season is that we did not focus enough on policy and focused on personality. When i go back and look at the debates, i think there are a lot of solid questions about policy, but the candidates answer questions the way they want to answer them. And they realize a lot of people dont want to have a detailed discussion of tax policy. What is your reaction to that . Marvin did you address that to any one of the four panelists . Raddatz and wallace. Chris an anchor team for the 21st century. Martha yes, we definitely wants to talk about policy. You definitely want to guide it back to the policy questions when youre in the middle of a debate, and it does not always work. Exactly what you said happens. They are going to answer and take it in any direction they want to do it. You try to steer them back. I do think this was a pretty personality driven campaign without question. We tried to move to the issues and try to just not just in the debates, but general News Coverage as well, talk about the issues. It doesnt always work. Chris i agree with that completely about the debates. In terms of News Coverage, we do talk about the issues. I will say, and this is nothing new, this has been true as long as i have been in journalism, which is the horserace is always fascinating. It is especially enlightening, but you cant ignore it. If a candidate is either soaring or sputtering, that is part of the story too. We do try our best to get to the issues, particularly in the debate. As martha says, they answer and sometimes they dont. We dont have power to to a limited degree we do. When i was asking Hillary Clinton about pay to play as an issue. But to a certain extent, they will do what they want to do. Marvin thank you very much. Over here to the right, please. Hello, i entered into the United States back when it used to be legal in 1980. My understanding of journalism is embedded in me by movies like all the president s men, which is why i appreciate being here tonight, and appreciate being in the presence of two great journalists. My question is to you, chris, and to you, martha. We all have regrets as humans, as 50 of our country does today. If you could rewind a tape and go back to the last debate, what question would you have asked the candidate that you wish you had asked . Martha Climate Change. [laughter] [applause] chris poverty. [laughter] chris heres where i would disagree with you on this. I thought about it and was getting a lot of you get a lot of emails of people suggesting questions. It is not just writing to you, they are also writing to us. I thought that were a lot of big issues that had not been discussed in depth and i wanted to ask. I did think about Climate Change. There are some subjects, and i know a lot of you arent going to like when going to say. Its not the issue isnt important, but im not sure Climate Change is the best 15 minute debate topic. I think it gets technical fast, or gets general fast. As opposed to things like what are you going to do about entitlements . Where are you on deportation or sanctuary cities . Those are clear and obvious topics. I think Climate Change can be a little like grasping at clouds. I thought about it a lot as a topic. It is not easy 15 minute topic. Mike that goes back to what the challenges to you, to kind of figure out how you take a difficult subject like that and draw out of the candidates something that gives us some sense of whats going to happen if they get elected. In retrospect, im not sure that we drew out of either secretary clinton or mr. Trump enough information about what would you really do if youre going to be in office. I fully appreciate getting that substantive is hard to do. We are now in the post campaign, postelection time. Now we have to deal with the reality that one of those elected is governing. We are shocked every day that we are surprised by all the stuff that is being suggested. Maybe if we had used the debates elicit more of that, that would be more helpful to us where we are right now. Marvin next question, please. Im from south florida. I am a journalist student. Chris, you said a journalists role is to follow Public Opinion. And not lead Public Opinion. Journalism is kind of responsible for being the agenda setters. How do you differentiate following the Public Opinion and leading the Public Opinion, and having to consider your viewership and getting views and how leaving Donald Trumps mic on was to get more views how do you balance leading Public Opinion and following Public Opinion . Chris i just want to make it clear to anybody that has any doubts, i was saying that was a bad thing we did. I was speaking also to the issue that some people say we were favoring donald trump or building him up. I think it was just because if you put him on tv, people liked him. Which i thought was an irresponsible decision. We are not supposed to shape Public Opinion one way or the other. We are supposed to report the news and let people decide for themselves what they think. Were not there to shape or to follow anything on Public Opinion. Were there to report the news. People can make up their own minds. Marvin miss, hold on. We have a lot of questions. Got to go to other people. Over here, please. Im a reporter. C. Q. Roll call. This is for the panel, including you marvin. It is not the relevancy of the president ial debates. Im saying that as someone who really, really, wants them to be relevant. We had 100 Million People tuning into the first president ial debate. Myself and many of the other people in their analysis of debate thought that clinton overall won the debates, came off as more president ial, had more control of herself and the policy and her temperament, but then donald trump won the Electoral College marvin what is your question . Given that you have 100 Million People watching and one candidate was seen as doing stronger in the debate, what does that mean that the candidate who is seen as being the weaker debater won the election . What does that mean for the debates ability to influence voters, or are we in a washington bubble as journalists who were watching the debates and saying this person did better and we have fundamentally different takeaways . Frank you are in a bubble. There are three bubbles in this country and they are echo chambers. One starts on the east coast as boston, down through hartford, goes to new york, down through wilmington, philadelphia, baltimore, and washington. Its the New York Times Washington Post bubble. Then he got to seattle and go down through portland and San Francisco and l. A. , that is the l. A. Times and San Francisco chronicle double. They have a small bubble around the great lakes. If you look at the map where the red is and the blue is, youll see thats what happened. What happened was that bubble around the great lakes broke this time. He broke that blue bubble. Your determination as to who won the debate depends on who depends on what you are looking for. The point i made before is the American People arent necessarily looking for the smartest candidate. He was talking to someone totally different than you. And they voted for him. Mike an average, 10 of the American People have a postgraduate degree of some sort. Hillary clinton won all 18 states where people have above that 10 average. All the states in which people have more higher more likely to have a graduate degree and only won three of those below 10 . The smart people voted for clinton. [laughter] [applause] frank the smart people arent always right. Next question . I live in maryland. This doesnt degenerate into a technical global warmingtype question. I do have a question about what was alluded to. That is the 15 exclusion criteria. This is not a nonpartisan group. This is a bipartisan group. Not so. It is nonpartisan. You are both democrats and republicans. Mike not everyone on the commission is. It has always been headed by the former heads or prominent officials of either the democrat or republican party. What is a question . My question is a specific one. I hope i can actually say it. Your criteria is 15 in the major polls. When some people came forward and said lets have another criteria, for example 50 of the American People wanted somebody else to be on, then they should be included as well. The then head of the commission, or actually it was paul kirk and alan simpson, who was on the board, said thats a ridiculous criteria. The only question that matters is who you want to be president. There is a problem here. The problem is that no poll asks the American Public who they want to see. Marvin sir, you asked your question. No, i havent. No poll is asking the American Public who they want to be president. Every poll asks ask your question. Every poll asks who would you vote for . Why arent you abiding by your criteria . Frank we are. We have been sued in every election cycle other than 2008 with the question of what the criteria is and whether or not we are following the standards that the commission was set up. I must be candid with you we constantly look at the criteria between every single series of debates to determine. There are some of the commission who think it should be higher. Some think it should be lower. Others think that everybody who is on the ballots and could conceivably get 270 electoral votes could be concluded that we decided to go with the league of women voters who in 1980 adopted the 15 rule. That was a debate most people forget where the president of the United States refused to participate because someone who was above 15, john anderson, was invited to participate. The question of what the criteria should be, we get input every four years, we look hard, we did it again this time and decided the 15 rule established by the league of women voters was one mike if ever there were an election where we had two major party nominated candidates that were not regarded favorably by a majority of americans, where there was an opportunity for a Third Party Independent candidate to actually inspire people, get support, get above 15 , this was the election. The problem is neither gary johnson or dr. Jill stein could do that. The problem wasnt our problem, it was their problem. Marvin thank you, both. That was very interesting. Next question, please. My name is jonathan, formerly with cnn and msnbc. This question is for ms. Raddatz and mr. Wallace. You spoke about what Great Campaign reporting was done, and i agree with you. However, it was found that the majority of stories that were shared came from these more alternative sources of news that turned to be fake news. Im curious to see your thoughts on what you think led to this growth of acceptance that people have had in these kinds of stories. We saw what it turned out as one pizzerias in d. C. Im curious what your thoughts are. Junk sells, and it always has. Im sure there are times where circulation for the National Enquirer is greater than the New York Times. It is challenging for the democracy, but it does not change our job as journalists, which is to do the best reporting and most honest reporting we can. Theres going to be more noise out there. The world is changing. People were saying to me whether or not we should be reporting Donald Trumps tweets. My reaction is if it is newsworthy, absolutely. I talked about in 1980 when i was covering reagan and he would go to the helicopter. People would shout a question and he would give a quick answer. Some of the times is giving an answer and it was offthecuff, but it was interesting, it was news, and we reported. He might be tweeting all the time come you never know. There is just more social media. It is spreading and spreading and nothing is stopping it. People need to sit back and figure out that this is fake news, a lot of it out there. I dont know how they do that, but i think we have run out of time. I want to thank you guys for much. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org]
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