Why are we not also taking to the streets is the question. And i want us to. You wrote if youre not outraged, youre not paying attention. So are we not paying attention . We are paying attention to the wrong things. We are paying attention to infotainment, which is being spoonfed to us and sadly, frankly, we are enabling because we love the stuff. The infotainment narrative of life in america, you call. Yes. The tragedy of journalism now is that it is demand driven. And when you ask people what they want, were like one of those rats that have a lever to push and cocaine comes out. And once that happens one time, theyll stay there till they die, until more of the drug appears. We cant help loving lurid stories and suspense and the kind of sex and violence which the news is now made up of. But you go on beyond the infotainment story. You say, our spirits have been sickened by the toxins baked into our political system. Powerful sentence. Our spirits have been sickened by the toxins baked into our political system. The control of our democracy by money is shocking and deserves the same kind of response to corruption that it got in brazil. And instead, we have become used to it. We dont see a way around it. There are voices, there are people like larry lessig that are trying to change the Campaign Finance system, the way media plays into that. But they are voices in the wilderness. And we, the public, have wised up and decided either not to Pay Attention at all, or the media have decided not to force us to Pay Attention. And if we do Pay Attention, you cant live with the knowledge that our democracy is now so corrupt that it is unchangeable. So, if it is true as you say, that, our tax code is the least progressive in the industrial world, that weve witnessed the most massive transfer of wealth in history, which is destroying our middle class, that tuition is increasingly unaffordable, and retirement increasingly unavailable, that the banks that sold trillions of dollars of americans worth have not only gone unpunished. Theyre still at it. Why are we not at the barricades . I suspect among your viewers, there were people who are outraged and want to be at the barricades. The problem is that we have been taught to be helpless and jaded rather than to feel that we are empowered and can make a difference. Taught by whom . By those of us who report the news of bad things happening . Well, the stuff that is being reported on the news tends not to be the kind of stuff that we need to know about in order to be outraged. Climate change is one of the great tests of journalism. There was the New York Times headline about the first time that Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, which the times said that Carbon Dioxide had reached a level not seen in millions of years. Yeah. My jaw fell. You would think that that would cause a worldwide stir. And instead, it was a oneday story, on to the next thing. As you know, president obama recently made a major speech in which he announced a new plan to tackle Climate Change. All three Cable Networks turned to the president s speech, but then they cut away from it well before it was intended to end. Fox news cut away saying the remarks could be streamed online, and then they turned to a guest critical of the president. The planet is warming, and human activity is contributing to it. But that is not the full story. Were going to stream the remainder of the president s remarks live on foxnews. Com and in the meantime, well be were joined now with some reaction. Chris horner is the senior fellow at the center for energy and environment at the competitive enterprise institute, and the author of the book, red hot lies. Foxs host, megyn kelly wondered aloud about whether the country even needed to tackle the problem. And Cnns Wolf Blitzer cut in soon after all right, so the president making a major, major address on Climate Change. I want to bring in jim acosta, and the president has got some Important News hes about to release and then wolf continued to talk over the president s remarks. What do you make of that . The meta message is more interesting to journalism than the message itself. People meta message . The meta message is, heres grist for combat between different factions. How is it going to play out . Rather than the message, which is, heres whats happening to our climate, heres what we have to do to prevent it. That stuff risks being boring. But combat is never boring. What they dont know how to do is to talk about, well, what are our options here, america . How do we mitigate the effects of Climate Change . Instead, theyre refighting all these old battles. And that kind of combat is what they can do. The sunday talk shows did something else, which is to completely ignore it. I mean, they probably had john mccain and Lindsey Graham on for the 27th time each, instead of dealing with what was the most important speech about Climate Change ever given by a sitting president. And thinkprogress, the progressive website published an infographic, which pointed out that, as you say, sundays news shows ignored obamas climate plan, latenight comedy shows picked up the slack. The daily show gave three minutes and 29 seconds to the president , the late show gave one minute, 33 seconds, the tonight show gave one minute and two seconds. Meet the press . Zero seconds. Fox news . Zero seconds. Abc this week . Zero seconds. Face the nation . Zero seconds. State of the union on cnn, zero seconds. Yeah, but i bet they kept us informed about the phony irs scandal. They have stuff which they think pushes the buttons that makes people emotional and angry. And they just find Climate Change a snooze. They find guns a snooze. Look at what happened with sandy hook. Look at what happened with Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change. We are capable of turning away because we get bored with one thing and need the next. At the time of the sandy hook shootings, you wrote about the learned helplessness that seemed to permeate that situation. Talk about that a moment. We have had the unfortunate experience of being outraged, being brazilians, trying to get something done, and watching as the dysfunctional system that we are forced to live under destroys momentum and creates stasis, or adds power to the already powerful, rather than enabling reform. We have, for example, on capitol hill, a system which is built on the need to create ads, narratives, phony reality about members who are running for office. And they need to finance that because our television stations make a killing on that. Especially in the swing states. And so the only way they can finance it is by doing quid pro quo deals with special interests. So when the newtown tragedy happened, my instinct was, yes, i know obamas going to make a great speech and the polls are going to be 99 , but its going to be business as usual. Our hearts will be broken, because the system is simply unresponsive and incapable of reform. You watch that happen enough times, and you decide, why bother . You have to be someone who just fell off the turnip truck to think that popular outrage can make a difference. The truth is that we can make a difference. We can change the way campaigns are financed. We can change the electoral college. You name it, we can do things. But because we have been taught that we will be ineffective and fail, it seems like the gesture of a rube to be hopeful. But this takes us back to the brazilians. Because as you know, the brazilians were protesting millions of them were protesting against the 31, 33 billion theyre going be spending on the world cup and the summer olympics. They were carrying signs about that 21yearold soccer star whos just signed a deal for 74 million. And they were saying, a good teacher is worth more than this soccer star. Now somehow, their learned helplessness was overwhelmed, or overcome, or penetrated by some other consciousness. Well, but i think the key difference is that their democracy is new. They still believe in holding it accountable. They want to have a system that works. And as long as their promise is out there of making a difference, they want to hold the politicians feet to the fire. In our case, we have an old democracy, which has ossified. The narrative should be, the system is broken, lets fix it. The founders were not moses or god and what they put in the constitution, the declaration of independence, was not written in stone. It is meant to deal with things they could never imagine. They could not imagine swing states and the amount of money you have to spend and what you have to do with special interests in order to get elected. There is a pathology in our system that we, as a country, refuse to acknowledge because its a way of saying that were not heavens blessed child. We are humans. What intrigued me was that the brazilians first sparked over an increase in the bus fare in sao paulo, and then it just spread. The bus fare. Yet when recently the metropolitan Transit Authority here in new york raised the transit fare, it was that wasnt even a ripple on the surface. Because the class that produces news has the kind of incomes that can absorb those kinds of changes. The news industry is now part of the privileged elite. They are not the scrappy adversaries that one would hope they would be fighting for the little guy. They are the man. And if Public Transportation costs a little more, the studios going to send a car for them anyway. The problem is that corporate selfinterest plays itself out in the content of news. As you know, theres a debate going on over journalism in america. The Pew Research Center recently wrote bleakly about the future of journalism. The other side of it, marty, is that some people are saying these are the glory days of journalism, because theres so much information out there online, if you have access. And you yourself recently wrote, and im quoting, the best journalism in the world, from plenty of sources, is available online, often for no cents a day, and we can access it in video and audio as well, and from anywhere at any time. So where do you come down . And as long as you are a critical thinker. As long as you could sort the stuff thats reliable from the crud. As long as you understand that people who propagate information have interests. And so you could understand that, you know, this incredibly popular website is also the mouthpiece for this party. To be able to do that requires exposure to enough quality journalism so that you learn to tell the difference between the stuff thats being hawked in the bazaar that is intriguing and probably only partly accurate, between that and stuff which, where the facts are verified. We have had instance after instance in the last several months of stories in which its the pressure to be first, to Say Something before anyone else has completely overridden the pressure to check, is it accurate and valid. And this is happening to the prestige outlets. They are not taking the time, because they have this bizarre notion that being first in the world of journalism, when microseconds count, its like being a micro trader on wall street, that youre going to make or lose zillions by having those bragging rights. And in fact, the next day, they buy fullpage ads in the New York Times saying, we were first to get this. They dont buy an ad when they say, we were first and wrong. Come back to cable for a moment. Because as you know, the three major cable outlets, msnbc, fox news, and cnn have been giving a lot of attention to the Trayvon Martin story yesterday, huge day in the George Zimmerman trial coming up, a crucial day in the George Zimmerman trial George Zimmerman trial is eating up a lot of time on Cable Television the trial that has got america entranced we are watching with great interest the jury is not yet seated. As soon as this trial begins in earnest, we will take you there its a good story, by the way. Would they be doing this if people werent watching . No. They are both creating and responding to demand. But what theyre not doing is exercising journalism. What theyre doing is theyre part of the entertainment industry. Theyre providing content. Journalism, in principle, is set apart because it has a notion of whats important, not just interesting. And in a dream world, journalists would make important stuff interesting. That they would use the same kind of techniques they use in covering the Trayvon Martin case to make stuff like Climate Change just as compelling. Youve been following the debate between Glenn Greenwald who broke the Edward Snowden story and nbcs David Gregory, who asked, well, lets listen to what David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald on meet the press. To the extent that you have aided and abetted snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldnt you, mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime . I think its pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themself a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, david, is completely without evidence, the idea ive aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama Administration is trying to criminalize Investigative Journalism by going through the emails and phone records of a. P. Reporters, accusing a fox news journalist of the theory you just embraced, being a coconspirator with felonies, in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who receives classified information is a criminal. And its precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. Its why the new yorkers jane mayer said investigative reporting has come to a standstill, her word, as a result of the theories that you just referenced. Well, the question of whos a journalist may be up to a debate with regard to what youre doing. And of course, anybody whos watching this understands i was asking a question, that question has been raised by lawmakers as well. Im not embracing anything. But, obviously i take your point. The assumption of the question is that there is some dictionary somewhere that says what journalism is. The truth is that journalism, like a number of other things, is socially constructed. We enter into a contract through history and based on class and evidence of what journalism is or is not. Things get ruled in or ruled out all the time. And the reasons theyre ruled in or out is not because some school of journalism, some professor, says, well, heres the yardstick and it is or it isnt. The way in which things get ruled in or not is practice. What actually happens . So if David Gregory can ask a question and justify it by say, some in congress are asking that question, that rules out nothing. Some in congress are morons. And those people will say anything. And as long as you have the ability to do the some say game and call yourself a journalist and be in a mainstream marquee platform, then you are tugging at what the definition of journalism is. And i think its entirely appropriate for Glenn Greenwald or anyone else to tug right back and say, no. What you have done changes the terms of the debate. Heres where i stand. And lets fight it out. Lets not let the imprimatur of some corporate trademark say that this defines what journalism is. So when Glenn Greenwald says, top officials are lying to our faces about government spying, is that journalism or is it prosecution . Is he a journalist or is he an activist . I think there is a credible case that journalism is activism. That if you as a journalist covered Climate Change by saying, well, some say this and some say that, youre not being a journalist. Youre being a tool of the people who want to intimidate journalism from covering evidence and the truth. So when Glenn Greenwald says that lying is going on, i dont think you can rule that out because of the activist nature of journalism. It either is true or not true. Lets settle it on those merits, not on the question of, does he have the credential to be able to do that . It does seem to me that the First Amendment guarantees us the right to draw a conclusion on the evidence from the evidence that we have gathered. Yeah, and unfortunately, the, especially the right has learned to game the system and to say, no, no, journalism is not that. Journalism is, we report, you decide. The phony slogan of fox news. So giving people alleged evidence and letting them draw alleged conclusions is in the interest of people who want to throw sand in your face and work the ref so that they are softened up and afraid to say, here is the conclusion. So your point about the Trayvon Martin trial, about paula deen, whom we havent even discussed, about what you call the race, crime, and porn axis in tabloid news, cable news, your point is that it distracts us from and drives out attention to the problems that will take us down if we dont tackle them . Watch the birdie over here, not the corruption over there. Thats what