Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion 20240704

Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. Charter communications supports cspan as a public seice along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Next a conversation about public trust in media and transparency with former journalists and professors. They weighed in on media bias, source clarity and diversity in the industry. From the association for education in journalism, this is one hour and a half. Cover this and points out it would be good to have other microphones. As you know, im going to talk about this, but i wanted to share with you our agenda. Its alarming, as you know, the theme of our conference has been sponsoring freedom and defending democracy. I want to talk a little bit about what we are facing. Then i want to cover about how our homes are media platforms and what it has done and bias in the news media. I try to go very quickly. As you know, for a long time, we knew that we were meeting in washington and our team spon sorg freedom and defending democracy. I actually worked with colleagues to decide on the theme in october. But never did i realize that we will be at a time when we would be going through so many things. If you would allow me, i wanted to start by saying that recent attacks on diversity have chilled fre speech. My legal colleagues would say it has a chilling effect. These attacks have also affected journalism and the role of journalism necessary our democracy. Let me explain. You north korea amid widespread Political Polarization in our society we are legitimately concerned that donors and powerful politicians are usurping roles in journalism. I want to read it from the site, i usually dont, because i want everyone to understand whats going on. I know you may have ideas and solutions. In the spirit of full disclosure im at university of North Carolina chapel hill where we went through a controversy two years ago which should not have even happen. We were trying to hire Nicole Hannah jones. I knew Nicole Hannah jones before she was Nicole Hannah jones. She used to come to our classes, she was a graduate of our school. In one of the zoom sessions we had asked her would you like to come and teach here . She said yes but you wouldnt believe all of these went through approval, the board of trustees, which in olden days were known as a rubber stamp, they said no, we are going to vet everything and they turned it down. Its funny. Im not going to get into that but actually its not funny but you get the idea that texas a m went through the whole thing. I wanted to say these were two big examples but there are so many other things happen that people are facing. And such problems for our field and democracy. Nobody is worrying who the physics chair is on your campus or who your chemistry chair or the Public Health, though Public Health got into trouble in texas a m because the professor was guest speaking somewhere and somebody reported her. Think of that. Youre speaking in class and somebody reports against you. Without much ado i want to just put it out there and then move on to something more exciting. That has has transformd our field. I wanted to take you back to 2007 because as you know, a lot of the people we teach in our classes, a lot of the people we interact in our society have this digital divide. They may not have a car anymore, although they replace their car with this digital device. Look at the transformation we have gone through in our industry. And thats illustrated by this cartoon, the cartoon was done in 2009 and you can see, easily imagine one little update which is tweet, tweet is no longer 140 characters. But you get the idea. It has become a powerful agenda in communication. In 2007 steve jobs introdhiesd iphone. Im not going to play that, you can look at it at your low pressure. He talks about a device that can do everything. Your phone, your music and your communication, everything. And it does. Literally. Think of how many times you have taken pictures using your phone. That has created, i want to skip this, this has created a whole bunch of tools and we have so little time but look at it this way. You and i have used five of these tools but theyre not the same tools. Thats the marvel of our field. And this is all this is while we are living and talking. Tiktok if you look in 2018, wasnt there, and now media entities are doing things on tiktok. Which brings me to the political function of it. Agenda setting works on how agendas are set in media. You have the retail and then you have the blue bar that is literally the gatekeeping function that happens to the media. And then you have all this coverage. So we, we work. So thats the first lesson i wanted to convey that. We mix our news ageneral tas. No more is it you read one media. Also we have the power to weave together the content. Think of media that you observe. You did not only just read one story and just have your opinion. We construct our identity from the information we see. You dont have to go very far. You switch on your mobile phone itll give you information that comes to you. So in many ways how has the media agenda changed . We must be on a more on more media channels. Dont go too far. Look at campus entity, look at the dallas cowboy, look at anybody, look at the white house. They have their own media platform. They have the and its the brands lead the narrative. Its not enough to just having their work. They are doing story telling. Story telling is the root of our written communication. Why . Because powerful stories last forever. I worked on some questions, you would not find the answer to those questions in my presentation because obviously we are hosting a panel so that we could resolve some of those issues. These are some important questions we all can think of which we which media platforms lead narratives. I want to get to one that will illustrate how our field has been transform. This is something we all know. Which is during the watergate, this is 1976, a lot of and the vietnam war. The media had a big role. 2 3 of the media, 2 3 of the people trusted the media. But things became bad in 2004 when 44 of people these are gallup data that i just put labels on it. 32 . That was the lowest point in the 2016 election. And were headed for another election. So 2018 there was what we call a trump bump. People who realized that hey, this is crazy. We must engage with the media. So some of theme people write. But we are back to a bad place now. This is last year. Only 34 of Americans Trust the media. I want to take you to a minute where you can say the question gallup asked is phrased incorrectly because media, your media may not be my media. It is no more the three media entities in 1973. But you know, our idea of the media may be very varied. I want to put that disclaimer out there. Think of 1974. Walter cronkite was the most trusted man in america. Then i want to skip that too. I put in the videos because if anybody wants to see the slides then you can enjoy the videos. People trusted the media. People trusted, so much so that thats Katherine Graham in the middle and you can recognize the other two people. Bob woodward on your right. These are younger versions. Then august 9, 1974. Almost to the month. This happened. This was a golden time of the media. And this became part of american lore. Not only this, here are other examples. Katherine graham. She won a pulitzer in 1997. And then the polls published in 2017. So these were great moments of the media. Now we almost have lost it. Why has americas trust declined . I doubt people are even reading the news. That brings me to another aspect whichcy found i find it fascinating but i just wanted to share with you. There are media entities that no more tell you that hey we want to be independent. They will tell you that we thats the branding. For example, this is the media chart which tracks down media. I got one of them, if you look at the central which is c, which is centrist. They have bbc, forbes, market watch, all of that. But youll see the wall street journal has two locations on that. One is the wall street journal news which is obviously central, but if you look at the right, which is the right, the wall street journal is also located there fox news is the extreme. On the other side msnbc. Npr. And New York Times news. I do want to tell you, none of these people are ashamed of this listing in. Fact, these biases are bragged. Fox news came about to say hey we are going to share the conservative voice and reveled in it. Msnbc is not ashamed to say what they are. So bias must be a very good thing. And it is. So that relates to, people have gotten skeptical. Will Americans Trust in media . What can media leaders do to restore trust . I believe that the answer to the question lies in founders and leaders innovations. Noablg has a big role to play in how people, i shared with you the smartphone. In fact, and the insight we talked about, i have tried to address that. But i just wanted to start with some opening remarks. And that leads us to our featured panelists. So im going to now just get to the featured panelists and i ask the featured panelists to come up with just some ideas where they would react to whatever i shared. And then we will take it from there. If thats ok with you. We havent decided on an order so you can decide on an order. Theres a microphone here so you can pick up one of them. Whoever wants to go first. Ill leave that on so you know the speakers as we are talking. Im honored that these speakers who are they agreed to do this. You know. Braving the washington traffic and the rain and Everything Else to travel. Lets have a round of applause for our speakers. [applause] lets get start. Im jay rosen. Gallup in october, 2022, published this common headline youll certainly recognize. American trust in media remains near record low. That is a headline that one could have seen hundreds of times in the last few years. I think we all know that story and recognize it. I thought i would use my time today to suggest some ways to complicate that story. Of record low trust in American News media. One of my ways of complicating that picture is what i call emily bells warning. Because emily bell, Columbia University, used to pester me with this every time trust as a subject came up. So i think of it as emilys law. She says, when quality and independent Public Service journalism was strong with strong practices, it is trusted by the public. Thats a good thing. But, she says, the existence of trusted news is not itself a good thing. This is what emily bell used to continually tell me. It could be, she would say, but not necessarily. At first, i didnt understand what she was saying about this. And i couldnt figure out why she kept making this point. How could trusted news be a bad thing . There is an answer to this question. And here it is. This is emilys answer. But im paraphrasing it. The existence of trusted news is not itself a good thing because trusted news might be trusted because it confirms a bloodthirsty propaganda claim. In other words, people can trust in the news theyre getting but if the news is prop began dissic, thats not the good thing that it might appear to be. So when there is demand in the audience for confirmation on something thats false, there will be news of that type that will emerge and some people will trust it. And so trusted news is not always a good thing. Depends on the news. Second complication is that with puzzles like that at the center of it, researchers in our profession have changed and instead of asking themselves the agonizing question why are we, the news media, so untrusted, theyre focused on something much more practical and probably useful which is what does trust trustworthy practice look like today in journalism and focusing on whether your trustworthy practices are today then you can use the fall of trust as a energizer of your work. Lots of people are interested in this question now. So the focus on what is trustworthy, whether or not you are trusted is one way researchers in our field have tried to complicate this subject. A third way to complicate the picture of trust is to go to the towns and cities in the u. S. Where the community itself is solved in supporting the news produders producers. In many cases now, it didnt used to be true years ago but it is now, local philanthropy is realizing there wont be local news if the community doesnt organize itself to fund it. Am i right . More and more we see local philanthropy wake up and say hey if we dont make it happen, theres not going to be a good news provider in this community. And thats doing something about trust. A different way a community is involved where the salt lake tribune, metropolitan daily in salt lake city, has actually turned into a nonprofit and it trusts in the support the community will give it as a whole every day that they go to work. Theyre trusting the community to support the newspaper the way cities have always had to support libraries and concert halls and aquariums and stadiums and community colleges. The community itself has to be involved in the preservation of these things which are understood as zivic assets. And thats a better way of using your time and your energy than figuring out how to get republicans to trust you. Which is my fourth complication. The asymmetry of the findings in a typical trust report are fortunate Pay Attention to. In the 2022 report, American Trust in news media remained sharply polarized along partisan line they say. 70 of democrats saying they trust the news media some or a lot of the time. 27 of independents saying that. And only 14 of republicans saying they have a great deal of a fair amount of confidence in the press. If were going to compare numbers like that, and it is a very important number, 70 among democrats versus 14 among republicans, if were going to compare numbers like that we have to add this fact. For the leadership provided by trump himself and his maga movement, lowering trust in the Mainstream Media is both a policy goal and a source of energy, emotion, character, and drive. So when you see 14 of republicans, only 14 of republicans, trust the news media, you have to picture that lowering the trust of the mainstream news media is a political tactic and part of how the republican machine works. They have integrated it into their style of politics and so we should expect that number to be driven down. Thats how they roll. That is what theyre trying to do. So its not just descended from some bad media guys in the sky producing low trust in the Mainstream Media is a political project that has been extremely successful. So i hope youll take my advice and look upon emilys law and some of the other complications i have brought to you today. Youre next. Thank you, dave. Lets move on to james. We go in whatever order . It was somewhat random but now we have an order. Problem solvers. Im going to take it a slightly different way which is to talk about local a little bit. I think when we talk about trust in news, we talk about trust in news as this uber number and the numbers are really different when you look at National News and local news. We did a poll, the gallup poll we did a couple of months ago showed that local has a 17 higher Approval Rating than national does. It was 14 local over National Many 2019. As much as i would love to say thats because locals werent trusted, its just that nationals dropped more. But theres a significant difference between the two. Locals are trusted in the low 40s, high 30s, versus low 20s for National News. I think anybody who has worked in both of those knows how different the two types of news are. Thats why every time we sit dunn and talk about what we want to do and the next thing we do, its always please keep focusing on the localnational divide. Knight Foundation Funds local journalism and i want to continue to say, while thing rnts where they need to be, at least things are better at the will call level. Why is that . When you share physical space with people you share problems that are nonpartisan. Anybody sitting in a traffic jam is pissed off about it regardless of whether youre a republican, democrat or independent. When a hurricane is coming to town nobody check yours political identification, youre all just trying to get the hell out of town and keep your property security. If the local choir is going on americas got talent only a psychopath will root against. The there are a lot of things in your daily life that are not completely partisan at a local level and because youre sharing physical real estate with your neighbors and schoolmates. I do think theres more hope in the short term for will call and national. I also think that why is National News, especially if you look at cable station, why sit the way it is . They make a lot of money dividing people. Thats where the revenue. Is your ratings go up, you get people to scream at each other on television. The more eyeballs you have, the more advertising you can sell. Its a Good Business to be in to create conflict and argues. I think at a local level you dont have the same motivation, especially in world where can youre looking at much smaller population centers. If youre one of the cable stations and you want to write off half the country, you know, you can do that. As long as you can get some decent percentage of the other half to get addicted to the product youre putting out there. If youre looking at a city thats got two Million People in it, its tougher to write off half of it by going too far any direction in terms of coverage. I think you tend to see local newspaper, local television tend to probably be a little bit more of the old model of, are they not old model but the comodel now of im not going to use the word objectivity, thats a word in journalism thats been beaten to the point nobody knows what it means anymore. But in a more not focusing on opinion journalism but focusing on the percentage of the product trying to do news stories. I think it could be interesting to see what happens with lo chasm the other thing i find fascinating is the most trusted form of local media, its not even close and hasnt been far long time is local television. Theyre not in the discussion as much about the future of local news is. I come from a digital world. Ive been in digital so long i was in it when trumpkin was in it. There wont be people never county in america that will start something digitally. Local television with some of the tools coming out like nextgen tv have opportunities to build trust, more trust in the local audience. The reason i find the local tv numbers so surprising is the biggest krit soism local television has been its coverage of black and brown communities and the focus on crime and the focus on if it bleeds, it leads. Yet if you look thairmts the populations that trust local television the most are hispanic and black communities. Its a fascinating kind of data on that is fascinating. Thats that said, local tv knows it needs to change on this particular front in terms of what it covers and what stories it puts up front. I think the local tv thing is a little bit of an under studied part of the local media ecosystem mostly because were focused on nonprofits in the philanthropic world but outside of Public Television theyre all forprofits. But theyll play a big role in terms of why theyre so trusted and digging deep for the that is big. One thing i noticed doing a lot of consulting for local television, those of us who came up in print media who made fun of tv, were on your side, six on your side, 11s got your back. In the newspaper world, we buried the fact that we broke the story in paragraph 11 because we didnt want to be too up front about it. People would be like, youve got my back. Like, you fell for that . But theres value to that. It sticks to people that they have these Consumer Report they put somebody on the air who shows how they saved a local resident 500 by standing up to them with the power company. I think there are lessons in there. I think we just wanted to say that. I feel like local tv gets put to the side but i think there are lessons in there about how to build trust as an audience. Thank you, jim. Im mary mcneill. I want to thank you for inviting me on this panel, im honored to be in this group of journalists. I am here i think because i wrote a book about a biographer, a guy a journalist, not a biographer, his name was wallace carroll. He worked for 45 years beginning in 1929 to 1974. As you can imagine during that time he covered most of the historical events that occurred. He was he covered the league of nations in the 1930s, was u. P. Maniering in london at the blitz in 1939. Covered the blitz, the battle of britain, wrote many, many story, not only during the blitz but prior to that, about the rise of fascism, mussolini, hitler, and all the dictators that were coming up in the 1930s. The failure of the league of nations. Then he went into russia in 1941 when the nazis invaded. He saw, went to the frontlines. He came back and predicted that the soviets would be able to hold back the german army. And then he did a circuitous route through asia home and landed at pearl harbor three days after the bombing there. So this was a guy that saw not only the role of propaganda and the news in the rise of dictatorships but witnessed bombs falling on him, on his wife, saw war, he also went to the spanish civil war, went to the frontlines. He came home in 1942. And he delivered a talk at the waldorf astoria to a conference of engineers. I want to quote what one guy, the first guy to ask a question, he talked about all his experiences on the frontlines during the blitz. And the guy said, now tell me, did the germans really bomb london or was this just newspaper talk . So my point in giving this anecdote is that trust in the media is not a new thing. Im giving the Historical Perspective here. Bias in the media is not a new thing. Theres a new book out called the newspaper access which is about the major newspapers leading up to world war ii that basically supported hitler. Its a great book, i would recommend it to people. I want to point that out because i think that even though were in a new age and trust is very low not everything in world is new. This is something thats been faced in the past. What can we do about it . Im not a working journalist now, im not going to profes to know what the solutions to the problems are, but i do think that wallace carroll, the guy i wrote about, was very good in talking about the basic principles of reporting. I think if we can hold on to that in the light of all these changes that are going on, in terms of digital age and technology, i think thats a very good thing to hold on to. At the end of the day, was said, story telling is what its about. If you tell a good story if you sub stain shait it, you do your hard work and research, at the end of the day you have to trust the readers, that theyre going to trust what you write. Ok . We go through stages. Were now at a stage where theres very low trust in the media. We have a multiplicity of channels. People now can tune in to what they want to hear, confirmation bias is everywhere. So its a tough time. I also think its a tough time because the leadership lacks a moral code. Weve had somebody in the leadership of this country that doesnt believe in basic moral values like telling the truth. Fairness. I think the media has to adjust to that in terms of how it covers it. But i think the message i want to leave people with is that if we can, as journalist, and those commenting and particularly those of you in the audience who are teaching young journalists, if we can hold to these fundamentals and also thawns journalism back in the old day was seen as a Public Service. Fowpt do good in the world if you want to make change in the world if you want to have an interesting life and a fun life, its a great profession to be. In so thats what im going to end with now. One last thing i wanted to say about wall lats carroll, and it has to go with the local news situation that were in now, with the death of local newspaper. Wallace carroll started off as a foreign correspondent. He moved to work for the New York Times. He was the news editor under scottie westin in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times in the 1950s. He left that behind to become the editor and publisher of the winstonsalem journal in North Carolina. In the 1960s. Right when the Surgeon General announced that smoking will kill you. Right when desegregation was under play and heavily contested in North Carolina, he went there because he felt he could change. He could make a difference in the community. How quaint. Journalcism a Public Service. Where do you go to use journal toism change your community . I think if we can instill that in some of our students now, i think it will have an effect. Im not i dont come into contact with many students, but the few students that i do come into contact with, i see it. I see that they really are interested in grabbing on to journalism as a profession and what they can do with it. Thank you. Im chris, jay, jim and mary walk through the the national, the local and the historical. Im going back to the formative. When i see the slide looking at 2007, i was 19yearold undergraduate student. I remember freshman year, two years earlier, walk into my dorm, everyone rushing to get the Chicago Tribune that was delivered to our dorm room every day. I remember people walking to the purple boxes, getting a copy of the daily northwestern. And seeing that i was going to have to embrace this new technology, along with the skills that i was being taught in the classroom, created a point of conflict. The conflict which began with a teaching assistant in the introductory journalism class saying everyone please get off the wireless internet and Pay Attention to whats going on in the lecture. So think about that conflict this new resource. As was mentioned, the tools coming into play, coming into conflict with us having a conversation about how we were going to get three sources at the College Paper before we published the story. So those conflicts now we see here almost 20 years later are really coming into view as students will go from news consumer to practitioner. What we just went through in the pandemic is certainly an issue in terms of trust. As we look to what students are thinking. If im telling somebody to go into the profession right now and they see the report from Columbia University that more than 6,000 people were laid off or left the industry during that yearlong time span, theyre going to wonder, how do i take, as mary was say, my passion for this industry and my mission to go and find the truth and report it, to our consumers of all age, how do i do that . They may look at, you know, i think of the transformation of platforms, right. News organizations like the Chicago Tribune, how theyre printed in 2005, in 2010 we started to see the buzzfeed, huffington post, as platforms that had discussions about news and information but as anybody who has read the most recent book on traffic may knot know that that was a different perspective in terms of how to disseminate that information. I want to share a component of max reids Washington Post review of the book. I suspect that the real problem is that in 2023, not quite a decade removed from the golden age of viral traffic for digital publishers, the, quote, race to go viral seems pathetic. At best, a brief, wacky intreg numb between periods of sustained dominance by big national publishers. At worst a pointless waste of journalistic creativity and resources. Spent pursuing a doomed business strategy. Of the many delusions in the book, the grandest is the idea that digital publishers could build sustainable businesses by chasing immense audiences with free content. So there has to be a way we look at how information is being disseminated. Students now are not even going to the newspaper first or to the platform first like a buzz feed or gawker. Theyre waking up to a text message or theyre seeing something on a social platform shared by their friend. This is where trust really come into play because we have issues. Im reminded of o. N. A. As a great resource on the notion of false balance. Lets take Climate Change as a topic, right. Is Climate Change an occurrence or debate . As a student is learning how to report on a complicated environmental issue thats going on on their campus, flooding, i was a student at carolina when we went through hurricane florence. Are we having a discussion about, you know, rainfall and people who are having to evacuate their homes . Or students entering a debate in terms of the comments theyre receiving in their email when that happens . So teaching the idea of facts versus debate. But im optimistic because im still somehow sitting here after that harrowing day when i had to learn to download the apps on that first iphone. Last lot of good thats gone on right now and it gins with Public Participation and capturing the hearts and minds of people at that formative moment when they get involved with the news regardless of whether they decide to be a professional or not. Some of you might have seen the presentations on the Document Centers do network. What a terrific endeavor. What a terrific opportunity for everyday citizens to head to a local meeting to see their city council in action, see a Community Board in action and figure out where their dollars are are being spent, or what kinds of slshes going on in the street, whether theyre as minor as small things being stolen or as complicated as lack of streetlights. Look whats happening with k12 Media Literacy in new jersey. The idea that we can teach people before they get to college about what their presence is going twob the news, i think anybody here does the New York Times news quiz, i have my binder of the Current Events tests i started getting in middle school. Current events will always be with us. I think throughout education that should be part of an understanding because as somebody who has wrkd worked in opinion journalism we need people of all sorts of professions to contribute. We need outside expert, folks who work in business. Folks who work in education, who work in science. To be contributing their thoughts on the record in a variety of places that are going to be disseminating news. I think the first most of all, of all the harrowing moments i had trying to decide what tools to use, it came down to relationships, right . Its sources. Building trust. I remember how excited i was if i ever saw a local journalist in my community who was outside, whether it was news, as jim was mentioning with trust and local television or a newspaper reporter who may have come to my house. I think journalists have to meet people and people have to meet journalists for trust to be reestablished at higher levels. Thank you, chris. My name is maria, im at the university of nebraska and thanks very much for dev, a longtime colleague for inviting me to be on this panel. Ill pick up precisely where chris left off, and thats with reference to sources. Im going to say that i would suggest sources are powerful. But they all have agendas of their own. Very often we will have very honest sources who are willing to tell the truth or to try to ascertain what the truth is. But sometimes we have source who are not so honest and so perhaps they get their stories aired and disseminated despite the fact that those stories are not true. If we do not trust our sources whom can we trust . A. I. . Even a. I. Is going to be biased. I would say that dev gave us some directives when we were thinking about that panel. The first directive was share your favorite story about truth, bias and the media. And trying to be an aplusplus student, i came up with a couple of different scenarios. One is i talked to the fount of all knowledge and wisdom, my 14yearold nephew, jack, in ireland. And jack is never short of opinions but i asked him to tell me what his thoughts were on the media. And where he gets his media, his news from. He gets it from tiktok. And he gets it not from podcasts so much but from talking with his friends and his dad and so on and so forth. He was born in russia. He was adopted in ireland. So hes very interested in the russiaukraine war. But he said when hes looking at coverage or listening to coverage of the russiaukraine war, he looks at the National Broadcast station in ireland and he looks at cnn and sky news and so on. But cnn is having a much greater bias in coverage than r. T. E. He said r. T. E. Is better at giving the facts. But then he said, their stakes are not as high. After all, cnn is an American Institution and as an American Institution is going to be much more in favor of ukraine than it is in favor of russia. So thats my nephew jack and his take on the news and the significant events in the news right now. I would say obviously we all know stories unfold over time. And not all news is known at once. We get our news in incremental developments as stories unfold. Like all other institutions, like the clergy, law, the media are under assault. They are not trusted. But as i said thats nothing new. And as our historian here said, under national, local and formative speakers said, theres nothing new in that. Its ageold. So to get to some of stories i think were interesting. One comes from britain in 1995. I think this this reference to british fair play could be reinforced with u. S. Fair play, canadian fair play, but in any country you wish. The quotation is, if it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country, with the sickle sword of truth and the trusty shield of british fair play so be it. I am ready for the fight. The fight is against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today. That was a statement made by jonathan akin, a member of the privy council, the council that advises the monarch on various matters. And the minister for defense procurement in the British Government in 1995. The guardian and gra nay da television investigated what had been going on with that thenmin spher defense procurement in terms of his arms deals to the saudis, his procurement of prostitutes in mayfair to accommodate certain gentlemen who would come visit him and so on. And why in fact arms that had been sold to the saudis should have ended up in iran at one point in time he feel came up with what can only be described as a cockandbull story about take his daughters over to switzerland finishing school and never having had time to meet saudis at the ritz in paris and so on. Eventually a microfeesh at one othe airlines disproved his claims. And during the liable case in which he was the liebl case in which he was suing the guardian, when he was going to bring down the sword of truth and the trusty shield of british fair play against the media, he was found to have perjured himself. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, served seven months, and ultimately became a minister of the church of england. Then we move on to 2020 in this country, the george floyd case, may 25, 2020. The initial release said floyd reresisted officers and appeared to be suffering medical distressed after being handcuffed. As phillip noted in the Washington Post that conjunction and between those two neeforts sentence was the longest and in the history of media reporting. It encapsulated nine minutes in which the late george floyd was handcuffed and one minute of which he in fact lost consciousness while chauvin had his foot on his neck. John elder, the Minneapolis Police Department Director of Public Information who wrote the press release, said later that he got his information from sergeants who worked in the area where floyd was kill and the computer log of communications between officers and dispatchers. He said if he had had information that later became visible on video, he obviously would not have disseminated such a press release. And thus as i said, stories do unfold other time but its imperative we get all our sources on the record so to speak. Another story i found fascinating was that of the vrana scandal. Where Elizabeth Holmes said she could take a pinprick of blood and do numerous tests for various diseases from that one drop of blood and got away with this between 2014 and about 2020 when ultimately she was convicted and then sentenced, i think in 2021, or perhaps later, im not too sure of the date in. Any event she sold herself to very influential people in Silicon Valley as this budding genius who dropped out of college. She modeled herself on the late steve jobs. She dressed in black with turtle necks and so on. She deliberately lowered her voice to become more serious, have greater gravitas. She was in her 20s. She was highly ambitious. She was blond. She coeiveed up to serb people. In fact the former u. S. Secretary of state, george schultz, was said to be enamored of her. Every time she sat near him she leaned into him and there were questions as to whether he was in love with her or willfully misguided because he was lacking certain mental acuity in his 90s. But he had invested 10 million with her. Heup ert murdoch invested millions with her. The company at one point was estimated to be worth 9 billion. Her personal net worth was put at 4. 5 billion. John carrier tells the story how he was going home from work, he had had a call from a doctor friend, in houston or maybe phoenix i think it was, the doctor had raised some suspicions about this wonderful blood testing device. He was driving home and started to think about this. He was thinking and thinking. He said he forgot about it overnight and then the next day he started quizzing himself again and wondered if this could be true. So then the investigation started. She refused to talk to him, her colleague refused to talk. She had she had silenced people and so on. Ultimately the story came out. John wrote cold blood, it was a very successful book, or bad blood rather, not cold blood, im getting my Truman Capote mixed up with him. In any event theres another good story about a source who was willfully manipulating the media, obviously with significant ends in place. Now the second directive we got was give reasons why Americans Trust in media is so low. Were in a posttrump era. Weve had President Trump as our commander in chief, our leader. He didnt respect the media. He called them fake news. And assaulted the media. And lying didnt matter. So were in a posttruth era. He had the fake news mantra. Theres no such thing as fake news, the former dean of at the Annenberg School at the university of pennsylvania would argue there. Is only real news or news but not fake news. She said the altentive is viral disinformation. And nobody really wants to catch v. D. They were in the middle of culture wars. Wars all the time but with left versus right, liberals versus conservatives. The native born versus immigrants. Prolifers versus prochoice people and so on. If you think about the language we use, theres some fundamental problems in that. Prolife, prochoice. I mean we really have to think about what were saying and what we as media people may be adopting as our language. Were in a culture of deception. Lying has benefited certain people for years. Its probably not going to cease benefiting them tomorrow. The characteristics of news themselveses are fairly questionable. If news is all about novelty, bizarreness, unusualness, conflict, with perhaps less emphasis on consequence and so on, perhaps we need to reexamine those very characteristics of news. There generally tends to be a negative focus on news. Thomas patterson would argue that its that very negative focus that gives rise to demagogues such as former President Trump. Some people would say that systemic media are problematic. That they rely too much on the powers that be on official sources for their information. And they failed to reach out toward the individuals. David brooks this week has a column, what if were the bad guys here . And he explains that the rise of trumpcism perhaps because one half of the country is not talking to the other theasm elites essentially talk to each other but not ordinary people. He also makes the case that. 8 of american graduates, graduate from the elite Ivy League Institutions but yet 50 of graduates employed at the wall street journal, the New York Times and the agendasetting media are ivy league graduates. I remember years ago in britain, i studied with don about the disparity between middle class and a study was done about the disparity between middle class and upper class people working in the media. When youre a graduate youre probably not likely to come from a real working class background because you cant afford to do the free internships and so on that are put to you. At least that was the case in britain. So that thing had to change. There is of course polarization of news. Theres confirmation bias. Theres the cult of personality. Some sources are powerful, such as trump and others. People are willing to suspend disbelief. Theres a blindedness to the realities, the dangers of the rise of fascism, except for some who call out like the late Madeleine Albright and ann applebom who wrote books about the same topic and talked about the twilight of democracy and the seductive lure of authoritarianism. And perhaps people dont trust the media at large because they see a lot of turnstiling. They see people who are in p. R. , lobbyists on k street one day, then theyre talking heads on tv the next. So how can we help regain trust for the media . That was question number three. Ill wrap it up pretty soon. Subscribe to the media that do the reporting or digging. Seek all sides of a story. Dont accept false equivalents or bothside. I. Provide comments on stories. Reach out to journal uses, editors, publishers. Be skeptical. Seek out stories from all types of media. I think the media themselves should perhaps have some kind of Public Relations entity here in washington, for example. We have media organizations, s. P. J. , a. P. I. , various others but theyre all disparate entities. Theres no cohesive unit such as a group that, say, lob beast on behalf of the media, such as the National Rifle association has or is, or agricultural lobbyists and so on. I think the media are slow. Theyre good at reporting, but theyre not good at representing themselves. Is there anything else to share . I would say its worthwhile to reiterate what senator Daniel Patrick moynihan had to say. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts. Then i would add that not all facts add up to the truth. You can have facts and you can have accuracy but they dont necessarily equate with the truth. One of my favorite writers from years ago, isaac singer, once said, the truth is that there is no truth. Because if there is such a thing as truth, it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers. Its very, very difficult to get at the truth. And i think one great story that exemplifies that is in fact written in the New York Times a couple of years ago by creative writing proftsor at Arizona State university, the title of the story is the accusations were lies but could we prove it . Its a fascinating exercise in exploring how a story unfolded, how this person was actually punished and held to held castigated essentially by her universitys office of institutional rights and so on. Institutional equity. For a lie thats been perpetrated by her. But she actually managed to get to the bottom of who the liar was. And prove it. But she says the accusations were lies but could we prove it . It can be very difficult to prove it. I could actually have saved a former university that employed me about a quarter anywhere between a quarter of a Million Dollars and half a Million Dollars if somebody there had listened to what i had to say but they didnt. And a person who sued for discrimination and actually was allowed to win by a new provost who had been whose search had been chaired by a relatively new dean at the time, then sued the university for nonreappointment. And the university ended up paying out over following two eeoc cases, state lawsuits, federal lawsuit and ultimately an appeal to the sixth Circuit Court of appeals by which time everybody and his uncle literally at the university was named in the lawsuit. But that particular lawsuit did very significant damage to me, i would say. But nonetheless, you know, the story was deserving of retelling here, i think, and again i think if the media that reported the story had actually reached out to me, i could have provided a lot of input. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your perspective. Would anyone like to take a shot at sharing anything you want to share and then well throw it out to questions. I really want to move to the other side of the room with this microphone to see if anybody has a question. So why dont we go one more round and see if you have a question or comment or anything else. That you want to share. And that way i would add one thing about the one of the things we discussed in prep for this is how you get trust back. I want to talk about that real quickly. Theres an obvious answer which is being more engaged with the audience. I think we were much better than that than 10 years ago. I still think were not as engaged with the communities as we cover as we need to be to learn what it is that their daily lives are like. What they care letting them critique the work that News Organizations do. The new Haven Register was experimenting with letting the Public Comment on a daily basis. There is value when citizens say i think the story is missing something, youve missed this other story over here. Engagement is important because News Organizations see themselves as being of the people but did not want to be with them. We have to get engaged with each other again. The other point is in 2019 pew put out a poll and 71 thought the news was doing well economically. I remember the eye rolling when the number came out and i had the unpopular opinion that that was our fault. We are not transparent enough to the people who read or watch our products. When we were laying people off for 15 years stories were couched as we are reducing 20 people, this is all good news, part of remaking ourselves. No, you are cutting 20 people because you cannot support them. Maybe you should say that rather than making layoffs sound like part of a genius master plan. And then the other piece was i think newspapers specifically where i spent a lot of my career, maybe people in the audience can point out the stories, but i defy you to find newspaper stories that explain why the thing you are reading is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and you are being asked to pay more and more and more for it. All we had to do in those cases is say the old economic model has changed. Advertisers use to pay the freight and now you have to and we need you to do that. That is why the prices going up. If you want the paper to get bigger, help us or we will not be here. We did not do that. We never talked about the problem so those 71 of people are not idiots. They could have been reading their newspaper every day and thought we were not in economic trouble because we were not telling them. Transparency about what we do and the state of the businesses, its not just being transparent about journalism, it is your own economic state, Business Models and all the things you have to do to get the loyalty. I would like to pick up on the transparency theme. People in the world do not know how reporters get their stories. There is a discussion about what is called radical transparency and i was listening to a podcast from the Columbia School of journalism. She says maybe journalists should put links in their stories about where they got the story. Not just the source, but to validate in readers minds where this is coming from. I have a real pet peeve with many unnamed sources that are out there. I read a story in the Washington Post the other day that had 42 unnamed sources and i thought what the heck . Im supposed to believe who are these people . It was filled with hyperbole, excuse me. And the way it was written was just to raise alarm bells basically. One of the themes that james, who many of you remember, they hated stories. They did not like the use of that because they recognize the danger if you do that over and over and over again, the reader starts to get a nerd of that and they do not think it is important if you do it over and over again. To pick up on the comment about whether the journalism profession needs a lobbying organization, i think there is a lack of understanding about the hardware journalists do. And where stories come from. And how editors value more in what is published. To add to that with transparency, lets not forget the latest stories in college media, making sure that organizations are supported and not forgetting those publications. First experiences going to the people who will solve Economic Issues not today, but 5, 10, 20 years from now. Im going to add that i think there needs to be a concentration on not being arrogant and not thinking that one knows everything. Sometime if you put to a porters reporters in the room together they can appear to be arrogant because they only want to talk to each other. They may not exercise curiosity about what the outsider is doing. There needs to be mindfulness about arrogance. The other thing is there needs to be diversity of voices. That diversity needs to include social class as well as color and various other variables. And the matter of transparency i think is really needed. I like to believe most reporters whom i have ever met are not deliberately biased and not going out to be biased or to write stories with angles that do not necessarily mesh with traditional news characteristics, news values. I do think if there is a problem with unnamed sources, that is one that needs to be addressed, especially national media. I remember many years ago doing a faculty fellowship at a small newspaper in pennsylvania and there was a very strict policy of not having unnamed sources. I think that would serve major media very well. Thank you. Can we open up to questions from the audience . Thank you first of all, lets have a round of applause. I mention your name because [indiscernible] Richard Watts and i have a project where we document University Led student reporting programs and we are all University Educators here. Some of us are running these types of programs like mario at hofstra. One of the things that is, of a little bit, so i am back to solutions, so these programs are local by definition but there is some thought that there is a higher level of trust because in some cases these universities in some of these communities have high levels of trust. So two examples, missouri i mean louisiana, where the Program Provides stories to Rural Community papers around the state, you know, in places that are very, you know, less blue than where i come from, vermont. And because the university has well known, recognize names, there is some sense that there is a higher level of trust than they might get from another place. Im curious what jim and think. One other example is the university of georgia where they were donated a local community paper. They run that paper out of their classes, theyve doubled the readership. And all reports are that the community is really appreciating its a small Rural Community. They are appreciating what the students are doing. Im wondering if yes all of us are University Educators but there is there something we are doing that can contribute to this . I can answer that one. Thanks. It always interested me that when the Republican Party had both houses of congress and the presidency, they did not get rid of the subsidies to public radio, which they claimed were terrible things that none of them could ever tolerate and how awful it is that taxpayer dollars are going to these liberal broadcasters and on and on and on. And when they had a chance to do that, they did not do that. Why did they not cut funding for npr . Well, the basic reason is that rural conservative republican embers of the congress knew that for example the local public radio station, which might indeed be connected to a university, which many of them were, was one of the few ways that they could talk to their constituents. And so the Republican Coalition rambles about liberal media, but when they actually get a chance to defund liberal media, they do not do it. And i think the lesson we can take from that is yes, trust is a strange thing. You find it where you did not expect to find it and you do not find it where you expected to. And i do not think that the sort of more senior republican figures of greed with the level of media bashing that the rest of the party is exercising. They remember a time when the press did connect them to their constituency. I will give one example of a case where working with communities does help. This is specifically about trust. We supported a project called every voice, every vote, which was its not over yet, the democratic primary happen so its pretty much over. The idea was to get Philadelphia Residents involved in the process and one of the problems they ran into in the beginning is a lot of people did not trust to media in philadelphia. One of the ways they were able to get people involved was to go to Community Organizations that were trusted by the audience that did not trust the media and explain what they wanted to get out of them through this process. To get them to talk about what issues they wanted covered, to attend debates. Because the Community Organization bought into the idea that this was a project worthy of doing they were able to get there folks involved in a way that would not of happened if the press had gone directly and said do you want to be involved with this. Similar with universities if media organizations can work with organizations that are trusted and can essentially take their trust and leverage it to get other folks involved in things, there is a lot in that. There is that charlotte news, exactly what its called. Charlotte, there is a great collaborative in charlotte and one of the partners is the library. Its not just media organizations, its trying to get respected Community Organizations involved in things. That is important. We should work on our own issues in terms of why we are trusted and not trusted but not ignore the fact that there are organizations in every city that are. It does not stop us from writing that stories about those organizations if we have to write those the same way we had to juggle the complexities of advertising for a long time, but i do think there is no reason to work with them if that can help build relationships that have been frayed over the last 34 years. I was just going to say that i think some media are doing a great job obviously. There are some University Media that are allowed to unction and in westgate. However, there are some states in which the state legislators are so down on the universities that they can even encourage or prompt chancellors and president s to retire because they do not like their di initiatives for example. It chancellors and president s do not have power to stand up to state legislatures or boards of trustees, help him Student Media for example possibly afford to do so . Thank you. Other questions . Please raise your hand and i will get to you. Hi, i am charles south. Citizens united resulted in a flow of dark money in the public sphere. To what extent do you think a lack of trust in media has been a direct result of an engineered crisis . Im going to take a stab at that. I wrote about cairo, they had a son named john carroll. There were the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a strong spokesman for media. He passed away in 2015. As early as 2005, he was talking about the problem of money in journalism. And of course the problem of money was Citizens United in politics is huge. My view is that it has tremendously change the landscape, not only in the political sphere, but in the journalism sphere. We have not talked about the Business Model. I know jim knows a lot about it and it has been talked about in other sessions, but i do think money, money is a big problem when you are looking at journalism as something that is for the public good. Now it is viewed as a moneymaking enterprise and it has been that way since the early 2000s. It is a totally different world. And i think we are still grappling with the model of how we get away from that. We used to criticize bosses at other newspapers, family owned newspapers but in an example i know about, the Winston Salem journal, it was owned by william gray who was the heir of the r. J. Reynolds tobacco family. When reports came out from the Surgeon General in 1964 that said smoking will kill you while carroll was the editor and publisher of the paper, he published 15 stories about how smoking was bad, you know . This was in a town run by tobacco and owned by people, an owner who was part of a tobacco family. So that was independence back then and it was rare, but we need to find a way to get back to that. One last thing, graham, former publisher of the Washington Post had been mentored by wallace carroll, so i was speaking to him quite a bit about my book. I said to him at the time this may sound blasphemous but i thought it was a good thing that the paper sold pages because the paper needs money. Jeff bezos kept his hands off the running and editorship of the Washington Post. That is a good thing, i think that is a good thing in the sense of our democracy and what we were doing during the trump years in the media. So that is my response to your question. Ill just give one other practical example. Think about the role of a newspaper endorsement in elections. Some papers are choosing not to give endorsements, some are choosing not to run opinion pages. Its not only affecting trust in media, its affecting the medias presence on these important debates are not just candidates but valid issues and other issues. I would say on the dark money question, there is always something coming at us, whether it is politicians who want to denigrate what it is we do my only point is i do not think thats all it is. I think if we look externally for reasons why we are in the messed we are in trust wise we will not solve problems. We have to own the responsibility for this, if for no other reason, i feel helpless if we just say theres all these forces against us and we just have to keep fighting them from the inside. I mean putting up shields around. We have to fix our own problems and i do think that will solve some of it but it will not solve all of it. There will always be people coming for us and its a good thing. If were doing something that makes people want to come after us we are making a difference. We have to clean our own house a little bit because the trust problem is not an external. Too many years of a 30 margin, where you really did not have to talk to people in the community, because your priorities were to launch more special sections that would make more money and it was not to go out into the community. We need to fix some of that in the new world. Go ahead, ask your question. One thing to our responsibility to examine why trust may be so low. In our profession it was common when i started in 1986, four deans and professors on the first day of school to welcome new students in class and say you know, journalism is special because it is the only profession mentioned in the First Amendment. Anyone remember this . And and professors as well as deans and Department Heads ritualistically repeated this idea that journalism is the one profession mentioned in the First Amendment. Now i have actually read the First Amendment, its not that long. And it does not actually say anything about any occupation, including journalism. What it says is that congress is not allowed to write any laws that interfere with freedom of the press, which everyone has. We are now seeing the results of everyone having a Printing Press with of course the rise of the world wide web. So just the idea that professionalism in journalism has worked its way into this corner where it was teaching its own students something that was not true in order to connect themselves to the First Amendment when in fact the more important read of the first for journalists and Journalism Schools is that it is a right that belongs to everybody and that is why everybody has a stake in the press. But instead, this crazy idea that we are the only profession mentioned in the First Amendment kind of gives you a little sense of what was off, offcenter. I was going to say i did not do a primary degree in journalism. I did a masters and phd in journalism mass, and i have Ohio University as my media law scholar and advisor. He always talked about how the First Amendment was the one industry that the that the media were the one industry protected according to the constitution by the First Amendment, but he did not specifically say journalists were protected. And in media law for example we looked at cases where publishers had the right to deny publication of certain stories, advertisements, whatever. We are ready for the first the next question. Can you mention your name and affiliation . Hello, my name is sadie reed and i am with Arizona State university. I come from a sports journalist background, where someone investigating really anything in sports, particularly local teams , can lead to incredible scrutiny and anger from the fandom, from the community. Going off that, how can someone depended on their focal local committee for their funding, keep that funding while they are erring or publishing something that is critical of that the community . I think we had this problem of course with advertisers in terms of alienating someone putting a lot of money into the publication. In the end, if the story is a good story and show something that the community should be outraged about, more people than not will be outraged. There are people that support the Northwestern Football Team but i think if you are an honest broker you wont be like i cant believe they reported this. There might be stories like they wrote a 40 inch piece about a guy who transferred, a lowlevel story. These were big stories. I just do not think you can worry about that. At a National Level the New York Times deals with this, where they will write something with a huge twitter backlash and thousands of people claim they canceled their subscriptions. I always wonder how many really do. I think you have to keep doing the work and certainly if you end up laying up because you do not want to go for the big story, you will pay a bigger price down the road. That story will eventually come out. You just have to keep going. I know there are consequences. When i started i was a sportswriter for five or six years of my career, so ive been there. I know people do not like it when you write things about lovett local teams. Nefarious behavior is nefarious behavior and honest brokers will give you a pass on that even if it means a couple bad years for northwestern football, but thats most years actually already i think. Sorry any northwestern grads in the place. To that point, again, back to student i am as well, we will talk after. As a former member at northwestern i can share that again that is a tool. In 2008 we were kicked out of practice because we were accused of live blogging plays. And because of the training that we received in our journalism classes, we said if we are kicked out of practice we will not cover the game. That was a threeday standoff between the paper and Athletic Department that resulted in a truce. We were allowed back into practice. Its understanding what is right and teaching journalistic standards that can be applied as professional reporters. One thing that i would add on your question is there is always going to be a strain between a real newsroom and its community. There are things going to happen that test the bonds between a local newspaper and the people who read it habitually. And there is no way to prevent that, there is no magic formula for dealing with that. But if you have a healthy relationship between a truth telling newspaper and a community that appreciates it, then you have bonds between the two that are stronger than the controversy. That is the ideal, is to develop a relationship Strong Enough to withstand the kinds of pressures that come down on Media Companies for telling the truth. And in that sense, a company that houses a real newsroom, what i would call an Editorial Company, is a fundamentally different kind of animal in business then any other type of business because they have to have this close relationship with the community. Sometimes it has to do things that are against its financial interests in order to maintain the trust that gets them through these kinds of crises. Its a unique thing about Editorial Companies and Business People whove made it money come into the ownership of Media Properties they do not understand the difference between an Editorial Company in every other type of business. I wanted to add one thing, sorry. The reason im a big fan of membership programs over subscriptions, which is like five dollars a month, the reason i like membership programs even though there is no access involved, you are dependent on people giving, is there is a lot of research about memberships that shows you get tons of money when you break a big story. People will write a 1000 check because you did a great story. You will lose people but those big stories if you have a model that allows people to give unlimited amounts of money, you will do incredibly well when you break stories. That is one of the many reasons i advocate for membership, it forces you to have a relationship with the reader that is deeper than the subscription, which feels very much like you are putting a coin in the newspaper box to open it. A membership says come on in, we will show you our value and you will write a check to us or give us money online because you believe what we do. When you break a big story, that is when the smart sites that do membership throw promotions everywhere because they know when they break Something Big they can get people to give. Thats another way you deal with that problem is promote the fact that you broke the story and you will probably make more than enough to cover the people who decide not to give because they do not like the fact that you paste off their local team. In research readers will tell you that they need you to show your investigative chops. The highest value journalism to readers as well. So we have five more minutes. You pick the last question. You are already standing up, tell us your name. Tell us your name and your affiliation. I have an observation but i have a question. Jay, you mentioned public radio and we do not hear much about radio in these conferences as a source of information and content and community engagement, but i want to talk about that. My name is mario, im a longtime faculty in journalism radio studies. And im going to try to not sound like a crazy radical but one of the things that i think we are not when we want to be honest and transparent, we need to ask ourselves if the model from 100 years ago that we followed is what is experiencing a crisis. All the literature, you look back when they were debating how to govern and regulate radio, the same things that we are hearing all of you say about community engagement, educational use of radio as an educational tool, how we cant make it a product like deodorant, soap or soda, that it is a Public Service. That we need to have Community Voices heard. Alarm bells were being sounded about putting it into the private sector, putting it into a forprofit system that was going to ultimately result in antidemocratic, counter democratic practices. It was written off and you can look at a long track record of engagement around issues related to making sure our media system does address the needs of communities, of democracy, etc. Always shuttered and pushed back by the Corporate Giants that have run newspapers, television stations etc. Etc. But in the name of the First Amendment principles. Im not making that up, that has sort of been the case. We look at the regulation of the 80s and early 90s, leading to the end of localism in radio throughout the country in many ways. The big networks buying up stations and programming content from washington or austin, texas. No more local stations. So i think it is important and good to hear now we are talking about not for profit. Talking about philanthropy, other ways of finding funding, again arguments that led to the creation of npr and pbs in the 1960s and 70s. I think we have to recognize that as part of the problem, the market model as a system that is in crisis. When we talk about crisis around the world, global warming, Global Politics etc. , it is a crisis in the model. So i think we have to be a little bit honest about that. And i think radio is one good example of that, because if we look at radio, the discourse of donald trump was being heard on local radio, in the 1980s, as a result of the decimation of an already toothless earnest doctrine. When that was decimated, the floodgates were open. Lies, misinformation, hate speech, all sorts of programming that not only on a National Level with the rush limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world, but on a local level where these programs are being heard on a daily basis. And shooting this stuff out. I want to know in the research youve done in terms of radio, because i think that is an important source of information for people, and with the decimation of local radio across the country, and the threats against public radio im glad you pointed that out the way you know, it has not been resolved because a lot of stations are going belly up. What impact does radio have in the current climate when journalists are being shortchanged or not trusted etc. , what role has radio played in that situation . I just wanted to add that we are out of time, so before we answer your question, lets have a round of applause to celebrate everybody. [applause] who wants to answer the question . Go ahead. I know we are toward the end but i think radio has played an important role. Part of the reason it is not discussed is it is doing a little better than your average local newspaper and struggling startups. I think they had the right Business Model i just talked about, the membership model theyve had for a long time and that has allowed them to not be as dependent on large sponsors or advertisers, but the flipside of it when you get beyond the five or six big public radio stations, the number of journalists in those stations is small. It is not an answer. It is a supplemental answer until we reach a point where maybe it is possible in some cities if you see what happened in chicago, with Chicago Public media buying the sun times and turning it into the largest News Organization in chicago. You will see more of those things. I started a site in philadelphia that we ended up selling, one in denver that we sold to colorado public radio. A lot of those acquisitions to bring journalists into public radio newsrooms. Youre starting to see the rise. The reason they are not discussed is they are well trusted and they are not facing the economic headwinds that other sectors are, but they are an important piece to every local media ecosystem. I just have a quick question. From what im seeing, the rise of podcast as well, we have not talked about that. It is not the same as radio but people increasingly are getting their information from podcasts. They sign onto it and listen every week. The other thing is their reading newsletters that come out through the evening. Heather Cox Richardson is one example that pops into my mind. These are trusted people that, you know, its a membership thing, people sign on and thats what they want. So this is another new medium in which we have to think about how the news is getting out and how we can use these mediums to get Good Journalism out. Theres one thing i want to describe that i think is really special about public radio in the way weve done it in the united states. When people are asked to become members of their local npr station, they understand that they are supporting a good public broadcasting for themselves. For their families, but also for lots of people who do not pay. And they are not angry about this, they are not alienated by it, theyre not ready to go and choke these people who are freeloading off their public radio memberships. It is the opposite. They want public radio to exist and they will put up money so that it is therefore themselves and also other people. They want the journalism done there to spread to the community as a whole. And that idea and the fact that they get so many people to sign on to that bargain is always fascinating to me, because it shows how communities can take responsibility for getting journalism to the people who need it. Today i tell my students that you cannot just produce great content and walk away. The second half of your job is getting it to the people who actually need it. And that is something public radio is often very good at. We are out of time. Like all good things, this has come to an end. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. [applause] we will continue this conversation. If you have any credentials or any things, feel free to email me. Thank you. Thursday on cspan, the head of the National Security agency tas about National Security priorities and the governments use of the foreign intelligence survllance act. Watch live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. At 2 00 p. M. Mexican Foreign Affairs council sits down to discuss u. S. Mexico relations, live on cspan, see spun now and cspan. Org. Thursday, a look at ongoing political shifts in the middle east from this years aspen security forming colorado. Topics include reforms instituted in saudi arabia, how irans Younger Generation is challenging its government, and the palestinian conflict. Watch on cspan, cspan now or online at cspan. Org. This yearbook tv celebrates 25 years of presenting nonfiction books and authors. Book tv is live at the library of Congress National book festival. Since 2001 book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided signature uninterrupted coverage of the book festival featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. All day coverage of the National Book festival. Guests include authors. Here are the complete schedule online, the library of Congress National book festival come alive, saturday at 9 00 eastern on cspan two. A healthy democracy does not look like this, it looks like this. Americans can see