University. Each of these writes about recent times, politics and journalism and too is in a newsroom right along them. For the past five years, i was editor in chief of usa today and before that, editor of the arizona republic. So, first of all, i want to thank all three of you for writing these. It is so detailed and so thought provoking and its so important to preserve the history that we all just lived through. So thank you so much. And i really hope you all read the books. So im going to introduce each of and to give them just a quick synopsis of the book. The point of your book, you wrote the book maybe two or three or 4 minutes, and then were going to jump right into questions. So were going to start with marty baron. Marty became editor of the Washington Post 2013, where he oversaw the post, print and digital news operations. A staff of about a thousand journalist, he retired 2021. His book of power, trump, bezos and the Washington Post, published in october 23 by macmillan, details. These years before the post, marty was a top editor at both the boston globe and the miami herald. He also held a key jobs at the New York Times and the life Angeles Times newsrooms. His leadership have won 18 pulitzer prizes, including 11 at the Washington Post. And this is the fact that i love you started your career like so many more as a as a local journalism reporter at the miami herald, covering both the state and business. So, marty, tell us about your book. Sure. Well, thank you all for coming. Its really great. As someone who refuses to stand on the line, i admire all of everybody here and in new york, wherever little apartment, people always stand in line a line. Good. Ill go there, stand a rare event. When i tell people that ive written a book and they and they are not familiar with, they say, well, what is it . I say well, the title is collision of power. Trump, bezos and the Washington Post. And then some people say, well, whats it about. So ive done my best to explain it as concisely as i can. And the title. But let me talk a little bit about why i wrote this book. So i wrote this book. I was living through an incredible period in history, incredible period for. The Washington Post for the press overall and for the country and i felt that, you know, here was a legendary that had helped bring down a previous Richard Nixon, of course. And i was working there and and then six months, six months or so after i got there, it was that it would be sold to one of the richest people in the world. And then in 2000 and i started at the beginning of 2013 and bezos, jeff bezos acquired it in october, the acquisition through in october of 2013. And, and then, you know, donald trump arrived on the political scene, a president ial candidate unlike any would ever seen before president , unlike any wed ever seen before. And and i and bezos trying to engineer this transformation to digital era. And we were confronting donald trump. And he was definitely confronting us. And i somebody should tell that story from within the paper how it was dealing one of the richest people in the world as our as our owner and dealing with donald trump as a president. From the perspective of an editor of, a newspaper like the Washington Post was number one. Number two was that i feel that the public really suffers from misconceptions and stereotypes about how we go about making within News Organizations. And i wanted people live through in a vivid and, accurate way the kinds of decisions and really decisions that that editors of News Organizations to make. And so i run those decisions, those very difficult decisions, and asked essentially asked readers to come along with me and and see how decisions were made. They can agree or disagree with the judgments that i made, but i think that people should have an understanding of of how judgments were made. And then the final reason was that particularly during my final my last few years there and i retired in february of 2021, there were many issues that arose within field of journalism that had me greatly concerned about the direction of our field. A lot of that focused on peoples what i would view as advocacy or activism within within the field expressions on on social media. I felt that, look, theres a long history of advocacy journalism in this country, and thats fine. But thats who we at the Washington Post intended to be. And so i thought that it having a corrosive influence effect, an impact on our on our News Organization and on a reputation that had been built up over decades. And i wanted to discuss those issues and i did not want to discuss them twitter. So i thought maybe there could be a more comprehensive and, nuanced way of discussing them and out my point of view and provoke a lively discussion, which i assume well get into here about, those issues and why i think they are so important. So thats my synopsis of the book. Excellent. Thanks so much. Okay, franklin. Franklin four has been a staff writer and national correspond and at the atlantic since 2016. Previously he was editor of the new republic, a former new america. He has also written for slate in new york. So frank is here to discuss the politician inside the Biden White House and the struggle for americas future. Published in 2023 by penguin random. It covers the first two years of bidens presidency, and i asked you going to do the next two . And you said, no. Yep, no. Okay. So then his previous book, the World Without mind the existential threat of big tech, was named one of the best books of 2017 by the New York Times and the los Angeles Times. Frank, please tell us about your book so for a time it was thought only political books were bankrolling the Publishing Industry because people couldnt read enough donald trump even the stories were the same stories over and over about a guy acting like a lunatic. And i decided my publisher had the idea that we should zig while everybody else zagged. Joe biden is somebody who i think most of the world has come to regard as boring hes been around for so long he becomes a piece of furniture and you start to forget about him and all the ways in which he is a unique character and an interesting and i actually had never really cottoned to biden when i was 24 years old, as a cub reporter, i had him on the phone and i thought, oh boy, this is exciting. I get to talk. Joe biden, senator joe biden in 5 minutes into the phone call, i was like, oh, my god, im never getting this guy off the phone. And my book, i got to spend two years sitting almost like a fly on the wall in the white house, which was something that didnt happen instantly. It happened over time because. I just kept showing up. I kept asking. I tried to earnestly try to understand. I wanted write a book about government writing, about the biden administration, for me was a kind of a tonic after trump years, i wanted to write about people who wellmeaning, earnest people were going to make a lot of mistakes, who were dealing with incredibly complicated problems like a once in a generation pandemic, an economy hanging off of a cliff, withdrawing from afghanistan, russia invading ukraine. And i was chronically doing all of these things from the inside. And so i was in a way, this was my to try to pivot myself from all the ways in which trump had unnerved me and kind of to go back reporting about the things that i think actually truly matter. So i would say just a couple meta things that i up uncovering in the course of doing this book. The first is that over time my opinion of joe biden actually changed, even though i couldnt, i still dont connect with him as a character. I found him incredibly interesting in ways that i never expected, that hes a guy whos been around so, so long, and yet he still thinks of himself as an outsider in washington. He likes to talk all the time. How hes the one guy who attended a State University that hes working a working class who considers his values blue, who just doesnt connect. Barack obama used to turn joe biden into the punchline of in the white house. He would roll his eyes. Biden would start to tell the and that just kind of played on biden sense of insecurity. But what i saw over time was that there was this different kind of wisdom he possessed that i didnt fully appreciate coming in, which is that that theres he respects being a politician is just so fundamental to who is that in the politician is kind of cultural punchline for a lot of the first joke i learned when i was a kid was a guy walks into a used shop and the most expensive belongs to a politician. And he says, why is that . And he said, well, because it was hardly ever used. And we think of the politician as this kind of artificial theatrical character, whos always trying to pull one over on us and what i saw with joe biden was he was trying to save democracy by proving that politics by deal making, horse trading, persuasion in was still the best way to get things done. Sorry, i just got on a roll. I know im aways brian. Well keep going. Well keep going. Well, keep going. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it did. Hes exactly all right. So, brian stelter, brian is the author of network of lies the epic saga of fox news, donald trump and the battle for american democracy, published in november 2023 by simon and schuster his book explores how the conspiracy theories and lies grew around the 2020 election and the role fox news in spreading them. Brian had a front row seat to politics and media politics and media as the host of cnns reliable sources for eight years before that he was a media reporter for the New York Times. And so this is for all the College Students out there. He planted the seeds of his career as a freshman at Townsend University in maryland when he created tvnewser blog about covering Television News six months after its launch, he sold the site to media bistro and to run it until may 2007. The other thing i love brian is hes over here on his phone right . Dont know what hes doing, but he he is so he can do three things at once. Like nobody ever met before. Ive been his show before and in between takes, you see him being all professional. Hes over there typing and probably getting the scoop. So super to have you here. Brian, tell us about your book. I was taking notes because these presentations were so great. I wanted to deliver the third and final introduction. So heres what i wrote down. I think its vital to have a vibrant about the media about institutions that inform us. And sometimes misinform us about the world around us. So at cnn, in my years at cnn, it clear to me that the biggest story on my beat, the biggest story on the media beat was that fox was having this corrosive impact on the country. The fox news beating heart of the gop was stoking fear, misinforming millions of people and propping up donald trump. I felt like it wasnt being fully appreciated. It wasnt being fully documented, wasnt being sufficiently covered. Fox was the dominant force on the right wing media and helping trump and fox fans deserved better. They deserved a reliable source, wink, wink. So in 2020, i wrote a book called hoax, which was full of anonymously sourced quotes from hosts and producers and anchors executives all throughout fox, who all said things like, quote, we dont believe this stuff. We just the viewers to believe it. I had all of these sources, hundreds of them inside, basically fessing up to what the machine really was and machine to elect republican ads. I thought i was done in 2020. Right. I released book in august of 2020, but then launched the big lie, told donald trump that he had won election he had lost, filled him with false hope, filled up millions people with false hope, some of whom bought plane tickets and flew to dc and attacked our capitol. So the most important thing in, my timeline here comes two months after the attack when dominion Voting Machines sues fox news, when dominion Voting System sues fox after smartmatic sued fox suddenly through the legal system, lawyers were able to obtain. I was never able to obtain as a reporter on the record documentation. It was this fascinating experience year as the Public Record became clear from this lawsuit. You know, as you all probably know, dominion settled with fox for almost 100 million. But before settling, it was important to the dominion lawyers that they be able to release a lot of these on the record emails and texts. So they have all of this on the record confirmation of what my Anonymous Sources had said. Three years ago. I called up editor. I said, ive got to write another book about fox and trump. So so thats why . I wrote network of lies. I wrote it. There were these quotes from, for example, ceo of fox news media, Suzanne Scott saying Fact Checking trump is bad for business. Obviously, that should be good business. Its only because of the broken nature of the party and of the court like following of trump that it would be bad for business. You have these quotes from executives saying we need to you know, its doing a disservice to the to the audience by insulting the viewers with the truth. Those those quotes. And i know a few of them public and they were National News for a few. But there were thousands of these texts and emails. And so thats why i decided to write the book, to put them all in one place. What fox, when it thinks its serving the audience is actually a disservice. When they say its bad for business. No, its actually bad for democracy to cover up the truth from viewers to pretend like something is true when its not. But its important to recognize how effective it is, how influential these these right wing media machines are. Were going to talk about President Biden and hes been covered. Well, the idea of a crime family that was planted by sean hannity before biden, even took office. Right. The idea that bidens dictator but also has dementia which is okay, that was planted the minds of the viewing population ago. So when we hear stories, we have this ongoing discussion age and about his capabilities. And i always just try to point out that that conversation might be relatively new, most americans, but that conversation been screaming about it on the far for years. And so thats why i find to document whats happening places like fox. And thats why i wrote the book book. Okay, brian, were going to stay with you because in tucson, i want us to have any more notes when we you know, you got this. Youve got this. I was so interested in your book that, you know, it ends with fox paying dominion about 800 million to settle the defamation lawsuit. But you chronicle. How so much of what happened started here in arizona with the 2020 election result. And i didnt know that connection. Can you talk about that isnt that isnt that the fascinating and scary thing about the 2020 attempt to the 2022 to excuse me the 22 i coupla the fascinating thing is that much of it is happening in plain view. But we didnt know how to put all the pieces together at the time. So only years later have we learned about the all the different elements of this plot. In fact, just a week or two ago, new Text Messages out from one of these trump aligned lawyers saying, heres our plan. Our plan is to create a cloud of confusion. Thats my new favorite phrase, a cloud of confusion because thats what trumps doing again in 2024. And not just trump other politicians are guilty of this as well. Its not about true or false, right or wrong for them. Its about just creating enough confusion, chaos that they can get away with whatever trying to get away with. And and these messages are still just coming out now. And thats with fox as well. Smartmatic is still its case against fox. Theyve deposed Rupert Murdoch and other witnesses. Theyve even more messages that dominion didnt. So there will likely be even more disclosures on that fox side in terms of what was being broadcast. And its true as well through the january six federal case, the case in georgia, were still learning more about this attempt to overthrow, but it is critical. Look at, you know, what happened in states like this where you had these seemingly random individuals who were able to get the ear. The president. Right. And look at the ear of the trump family. That is what i find so interesting about the weekend that trump the election in november 2020. Remember major cities saturday morning. You know, there are streets celebrating guns. You know, it was all declared saturday morning and then by sunday morning, literally 24 hours later, Maria Bartiromo on the air reading this Conspiracy Theory laden email from some random woman who admits shes whack a doodle, whos claiming that dominion actually stole the election. Then nancy pelosi it all. So the idea that theres always to be the alternative reality that Conspiracy Theory that people are going to be able to to absorb and live in instead. I think thats still a clear and present danger today. So in particular in particular, you talked about how that fox called arizona for biden early in the night rightly so and it set off just complete chaos at fox news and that somewhat led to them trying to regain that trust of that audience. Thats right. By by tamping down the truth. By whispering the truth and shouting the lie. And that to me is the technique i see at play a lot of times with misinformation in campaigns. They might still mention what true, but then theyre shouting the lie. Rest of the times that you forget what the truth was. And thats what happened during election week in 2020. Fox accurately called arizona for biden first before the other networks, using a different data set that only fox and the ap had access to. And because of the fox audiences outrage about accurate call. They then of course, tried to cov