Mo is the the founding executive editor of georgetown universitys institute of politics and Public Service. The former to medications former Communications Director of the Democratic National committee, he is a veteran of four president ial campaigns, including serving as senior spokesman in 2008 for Hillary Clinton. Olivier knox is the chief washington correspondent for yahoo news, covering the white house, politics, and Foreign Policy since 2012. Before that, he was on the front press for 20 years. As Senior Advisor for external affairs, Kevin Sullivan leads communications and marketing across all areas of the bush center. He was appointed by president george w. Bush as assistant to the president for communications in 2006. And oversaw Message Development and communications planning. Since 2002, Kathleen Carroll has been the Senior Vice President of the associated press, the Worlds Largest independent news agency. Ap journalists have won numerous awards during her tenure, including this years pulitzer for Public Service, and polk awards. Kathleen, we should note, is a texas native. We like to point that out when we are here. Our moderator for the discussion is marty baron, executive editor of the Washington Post since 2013. Marty has been part of 10 Pulitzer Prizes at the post, the boston globe, the New York Times, the l. A. Times, and the miami herald. But he may be best known for his uncanny impersonation of the actor liev schreiber. [laughter] hope you enjoy the panel. [applause] marty thank you, michael. I will try to continue with the impersonation here. And thank you all for coming, thank you to the panel for participating. So, the title of this panel is the presidency coverage in the digital age. What i want to do is start with a question about what really is fundamentally different about covering the president in the digital age . So why dont we start with that, and maybe olivier, kick it off. Olivier when i was covering the white house in december of 2000, everything was on paper. We would get statements on paper. We would get announcements on paper. It was the Wire Services had to move quickly, but everybody else had a more leisurely pace. Over time as the white house embraced the digital age and email, and especially under this president embraced social media, announcements have come from a variety via a variety of sources. Everyone is a Wire Service Reporter now. We are all constantly on deadline. That is one of the biggest changes for the last 15 years or so. Marty does it change qualitatively the kind of work we are doing . Olivier a little bit. One of the changes is that we are now trying to reach audiences that are consuming the information from a variety of sources and platforms. We are all competing for these guys, in a way that we were not when i started the job. Now, for Wire Services, this has not changed all that much. We were constantly on deadline. But now everyone is. One thing we have learned in the digital age is that the peoples expectations of new s products are different. In an oldschool video, you could build suspense and introduce characters and the rest of it. But with the digital age, if the headline of your video is bear falls out of tree on the trampoline, you need to show that bear on the trampoline within the first 15 seconds, or people tune it out. That is the difference how we package the news. Everyone is looking for the magic, the magic wand that would turn everything, every file, every story, into gold. We experiment with shorter and longer stories, more graphics and fewer graphics, but i dont know if we settled yet on a way of a solution, a formula for making this work. Marty kathleen, if we are becoming more like Wire Services, has nothing changed for the Wire Services themselves . Kathleen no, things have changed for us, too. In the way olivier described, but everything is faster, particularly more for president ial campaigns but white house announcements, the need to get balance and context and some other way to think about the story out, at the same time you are reporting on what is happening, is greater than ever. That really taxes an organization, unless you make it a group effort. You dont just stick the white house person on the assignment by themselves. They need backup, so the story the expectation is a story will be more complete within a few minutes of the event occurring, instead of having hours to do it, even a couple of hours for the ap. But i think the biggest change is the one we have all talked about a lot, that this white house covers itself. Marty what do you mean . Kathleen we have a competitor in the white house. They use social media effectively to release pictures shot by the official photographer, talk about things theyre doing, completely skip over the press, which sounds whiny and i dont mean for it to marty why is it not whiny . Maybe it is. I dont know. Why should we be concerned . Kathleen because more and more, this particular president withdraws the acts of his presidency behind closed doors. I dont think any of us are whining about we are not in the residence watching him put his socks on in the morning, but we do want to watch him signed bills, ask him questions on behalf of the public, right . You do not get to do that. Were in a privileged position. Instead we get is a very shiny, polished, adept view of an administration that is filtered only by the people whose job it is to promote that administration. I think it is dangerous for the republic. Marty mo and sully, you have seen this from the other end. Does that sound like whining . Does that concern you at all . Is that just what a president does and what a president should do . Mo i would say empowerment is the biggest change, whether it be our teenage kids, can be like an International Journalist because the power of what is in your hand on your smartphone. In terms of, you know, working communication to the white house your job is to get the message out in the most persuasive and memorable way you can to extend the reach as far as you can. Now, our attitude with the team at the white house working for president bush was, it was sort of like going to the restaurant and ordering from each column. There would be an event, maybe a speech, a meeting with local or committee leaders, and we would community leaders. We would ask the president to allow one reporter to sit in the meeting. If it was on energy and john at was wall street journal writing about energy during that cycle, let us allow john to sit in. Even though we did not have twitter yet, we had a major web operation even then. You didnt get the right audience. You do not get the whole picture if you only did it yourself. I think that is still today, even as technology has advanced, it is a speech, maybe an interview, maybe a quick thing, maybe it is a sitdown, a quick thing, letting the reporters in the room. It is certainly letting the photographers in. We saw one of people when the white house was issuing so many images, keeping reporters out. It is all of the above. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Use the empowerment you have as the institution, but also work with the news media. We are the only country where the media that covers the president is right down the hall. And you have to have president bush called it a symbiotic relationship. There is a transaction. He said you needed me, i needed you. That is important today, even in the face of all of this great new technology that empowers all of us to put out our own content. I think technology is fundamentally changing. I want to take a step back and remember what this is all about. The relationship and the role of the press in a democracy is so important, it was cemented in the First Amendment to the United States constitution. That is important. In the very First Amendment in the u. S. Constitution. Having said that, there is no more sacred relationship in our democracy than between elected official and voter. That is what it is really about. For generations, you all were the conduit. You are the ones that connected them. You are not needed as much in that relationship these days. And im not saying you are not needed, right . But what im saying is because of technology, both sides of that relationship can actually circumvent, to some extent, so when you see a white house or Political Campaign on either side of the aisle do that sort of thing, i think right now were still kind of trying to experiment and figure out what is the appropriate use . I do not think cutting the press out is appropriate. But there is a way to directly engage, directly take a message i understand why people pursue that. Now, having said that, i will also say that there are challenges on the other side of this equation. The reporter who said, as a few that i have heard say, the notion you have to go to the white house to actually cover the white house is no longer true. And necessary. That bothers me a little bit. The notion that because of the internet and because peoples views are so the digital age is actually making us less connected, and it is creating a whole new perspective, whole new reality for so many people. Because anybody is a journalist, anyone with an opinion can set up their own corner, and we are gravitating to people who have like minds. So they are now conservative Media Outlets where voters can grow and that frames the reference. There are now progressive digital Media Outlets that do the same. What is happening in the middle, the true objective truth seekers, are struggling, because people are sort of retreating to their corners in this digital universe. And, you know, what do you do . How do you discern what is true, what is real, what is not . Kathleen i take your point on all of this. But the thing that is missing in this discussion of messaging and how effective messaging is, that is oneway communication. President of the United States, whatever party, is answerable to the public who elected him, or whom he or she serves. What is missing is the opportunity for anybody to ask a question. Journalists have the opportunity to ask questions. The messaging is not being replaced by town halls or forums, where anybody can ask a question. It is a very select, friendly audience, the questions are screened in advance, still part of the oneway communication. I think it is not good for any administration to not be questioned by people, and not just questions by people who are shouting on the internet, but to be able to answer questions. That is a door that is slamming. Mo i dont know if i would agree it is slamming. I think people are trying to figure out the equilibrium, right . I dont think this is a white house i hear the particular criticisms of this white house, shutting the press out, but it is not entirely shut out. The president still does media interviews. He still does news conferences and his staff still does the daily briefing. They are just trying other tools as well. And i think you are right, i do not think it is ok to exclude the press. But what is the right equilibrium in the digital age . I dont know if anybody has figured out. Olivier when you say trying out other tools, it sounds very antiseptic. But we talking about a white house that excludes news photographers from a newsworthy event, excludes us, and then releases its own i will call it propaganda. The job of the photographer, whose material is being released, is to make the president look good. Im not particularly a paranoid person, but i cannot vouch for the accuracy of the photo, in that i dont know if it was posed, the postelection handshake between romney and obama, dont know how many tries it did to get right. [laughter] olivier and what was fascinating about that particular photo, the white house editorialized it in the caption. It was Something Like neither man wanted to be there, but they felt they need to be. It was amazing moment in the caption. When i pointed this out in one of my pieces, they went back and deleted that. So they had this incredible control over the images and words. And no one is saying they cannot use twitter or facebook or reddit or whatever. Our objection is we have many, obviously but it is that they exclude us. They say it was a private meeting. And then there is 10 minutes of it shot by the white house videographer that goes on. That is not a private meeting. Cannot useaying they these tools. That would be crazy. What is really annoying is that the first draft of history is increasingly not a skeptical reporter, you know, kicking the tires or looking under the hood. Whether it is video or photo, that really bothers us. Marty the state department had a whole question excised, the video released by the state department, ultimately pointed out that this question was somehow missing from the video. And they acknowledged that somebody had deliberately we hadt know who deliberately removed that portion. They had to put it back in again. Kevin people have a sense, they know the difference, consumers of news know the difference between something that they can the numbers even the media popularity has declined, you are still above congress. Marty hanging on, barely. [laughter] marty i dont like being compared to congress. [laughter] kevin pew was out last week with a report that said 62 of u. S. Adults get news from social media. And we are predominantly talking about facebook. Adweek a couple of weeks ago at a fascinating story that if facebook were a tv show, it would have been 27th in that weeks nielsen viewership numbers. Youtube i think was 49th. Instagram was 156th or something. This is what i mean by all of the above. You have got to reach people. You have to hit them in multiple places. But as much as people 80 of people using facebook, i think the number was 12 have high confidence in the news. We know that they like things sent to them from one of their friends. What if but if they do not have confidence in the material that is there, are you really getting to breaking through with a message for your client or the president or whoever . That is why i kind of like the all of the above approach. Well, is interesting, you are saying it is not that the Mainstream Media is not needed. But yeah, i mean, we have for example political candidates, the presidency but people who aspire to be president , who are appealing to their own Media Outlets, Media Outlets there that very much favor them. Donald trump, obviously breitbart. Com. For bernie sanders, the young turks. The conservatives will say they are promoting a liberal agenda in many instances. The far left will say they are promoting a corporate agenda. We are actually getting the real reality from these outlets, and the media is actually part of the conspiracy. Mo i think that is right. If you look at a media outlet like fox news, right, whose slogan is fair and balanced. If you talk to the average viewer, they are saying no, we dont think the coverage has to be fair and balanced on fox news. We think fox news is the balance to a progressive media culture out there. So, they recognize that they are going here because it provides a different and more conservative perspective, and that is what attracts those viewers. I think that is amplified 100 times in the digital space. People are going to the corners that reinforce their perspective. And our phones, the digital age is designed to perpetuate that. Right . I read three stories on my phone from various Media Outlets. Every single one of those algorithms will then show stories that are just like it, with that perspective, in front of me. Why . Because that is how it knows i will click. And we are living in an age where the click is king. And so it is hard it is easy to understand how peoples perspectives of the same event suddenly become warped and segmented into different perspectives. The wall street journal just did a tremendous graphic the last couple of weeks with a look where they looked at two facebook feeds sidebyside, a progressive viewer and a conservative viewer, the same exact events but how they are consuming the event is remarkable. You look at the same exact event, a progressive and conservative reading about them, and the headlines, you would think theyre living on two different planets. That is what worries me a bit about the digital age, is that journalism is becoming more commentary. It is not if not in how it is presented, then at least in how it is being consumed. Kathleen if you look back in history, the age that marty and i lived in, newspapers being middleoftheroad and nonpartisan is an unusual period in newspapering. There were lots of them because they appealed to different groups, they had specific audiences. So, you know, the fact that people like to be associating with people who think like them is not new in the country. What is new in the country is that, you know, the president in the 19th century did not have their own outlet to give to get directly to the voters. I hate to keep harping on the same thing. But again, it is whether media is segmented or not, the problem that were trying to deal with is elected officials closing themselves off with the people from the people they were elected to serve. And using the mechanisms of their administration, not just in the white house but throughout the government they run, to close off access to people. Marty kathleen, they are closing themselves off, but they are not necessarily closing themselves off from the people who support them. What about that . What are the implications of that . Kathleen the obvious question to ask about that is, are they serving them, only the people who support them, or do they serve the wider responsibility that i think most of us believe they have, to serve the entire country . Kevin yeah, as a president needs to serve everybody who voted, everybody who participated in the process, he represents all people. You try to do that. The key though, he has to put out good, to the extent you control your own channel, and it has to be good content or it will not get shared. And here at the bush center, a couple of years ago president bush hired bill mckenzie, a Pulitzer Prize winner, to be the editorial director because he was credible. We had a catalyst in january, a journal of ideas, a quarterly publication. You can sign up at bushcenter. Org. [laughter] kevin it is free. In the first issue, we had joe lieberman, mark cuban, enormously effective the way we shared. And today in politico there was a reference to the cuban story that was in that issue six months ago. Because it was good, compelling, a little bit of a surprise. Surprise people with the content. Make it good, make it compelling. You know, a good white house example people forget that president bush had the first alldigital presidency. Every photograph was digital. The first livestream, starting in 2001. Virtually all events were livestreamed. All digital. He did a blog on his trip to the middle east with air force one. The first interview for yahoo mike allen did the interview. After 9 11, white house tourists had been cut off. The public could not come in. So the way to show the public, the declaration to tell the story of the holiday season, was through the lens of barney, the president s scottish terrier. Came up with this idea working with jeannie and others, and barney zipped through the white house showing the decoration. It was a massive hit. Mrs. Bush did it at the Childrens Hospital every year. And, you know, Prime Minister tony blair and dolly parton appeared in it over the years. But it was good content. It was interesting. It was little bit offbeat. In terms of serving your audience, you have to have the good stuff. And credible voice. Barneycamreat point, is more important than every other breakthrough you listed in the digital bush demonstration. [laughter] olivier for me, it is a pivotal point. What happened to the barneycam . Every single morning show, right . For me, it was the first time the more traditional news media, to the extent we can call morning shows news media, they took content produced by the white house and used it without really modifying it. And oohing and ahing. And for me, that was the moment in which the white house realized, sure, we are going to get these you mentioned the people with the phones can be journalists and report the news, but there is a barrier to entry, to me was a lot more important for powerful institutions that have builtin constituencies. And the barneycam moment, taking that moment and showing it entirely, that is more important than the blogs. That is what fed into this presidency. Kathleen said it precisely ight. They love to cover themselves. And they expect on some level, and unfortunately we reward them, that if they release a particularly good video or photograph, that we are going to take their content. And that it is going to displace what would have been ours. Mo that is partly true. I think the bigger calculation internally, not speaking for the white house, the bigger calculation is not that you are going to take it and use it as your own, they can just go around you. They can just through their own channels, looking at how many followers barack obama has on twitter. That they can just go straight to the people. The filter is less necessary. That is a calculation when a white house or Political Campaign does Something Like that. Olivier that would be true if they were not excluding us from the event. Mo and i am not disagreeing. Im not defending the exclusion of the press, im just saying that now there are other avenues. Kathleen let me ask you a question as an academic about history. This museum has a very famous picture, and it were many of them of president bushs expression on his face as andy card leaned over and whispered in his ear. That is a piece of history that is important. Important that they want to share it here. I doubt that a picture like that would be taken in this particular administration, by an independent news photographer, and probably not recorded possibly by a white house photographer. Event, if something important was happening, it would be taken offsite, i am almost certain. What does that mean for the history of a presidency, when events like that occur on stage . Off stage . Olivier i think your point is a mo no, i think the point is a good one, and olivier said it well. The first draft of history is being increasingly written by the administration. I think it is true across the board. I think everybody is trying to control that a little bit more. Marty if the Mainstream Press being pushed out of the picture, and it sounds like it is to some degree, the question will be how much do you push it out of the picture . Does the public care . Olivier no. Marty why not . Olivier theyre getting information from a multiple sources, and i dont know when they should trust the video feed like that. You know, i was struck when the president went to the toner journalism prize dinner, he really lectured us. And one of the things he lectured us about was that we should be producing Quality Content we shouldnt be chasing the audience. Which was interesting, because that was actually the perfect distillation of his communication strategy. The president sits down with a woman who is chiefly known because she ate froot loops in a milkfilled bathtub, he is not looking for good questions about the islamic state. I guarantee you. He is looking for that audience marty he is not a good messenger for that. Olivier super effective. When the president sat down with between two ferns, with the white house called an interview [laughter] olivier that is like saying dana carvey gave an interview. Complete nonsense. It became the number one driver of enrollment in obamacare. This stuff works. People consume it. And they are not necessarily aware of how they being steered. You talk about the algorithms. Was actually at the george w. Bush library doing the panel, like this one, and the q a guy said, you yahoo yahoo , i go to yahoo to get my news. It is all Kim Kardashian. Sit down. Go away. You are not a real newsperson. The moderator said you did not have to answer that. I said i want to. You see a lot of Kim Kardashian . Heres the thing. What youre seeing on that page, that is chiefly algorithmdriven. If you are seeing a lot of Kim Kardashian news, sir, because it is all you click on. [laughter] kevin one thing about the youtube interviews yahoo. Such a kevin so after the state of the union last year, 2015, president obama did three youtube interviews. Three two others that have a big following on youtube. He did them one after another. I think it has been viewed almost 4 million times, if im not mistaken. One of the questions was, if youre a superhero, what would your power be . So you are right. They were not being grilled. There were a couple legitimate questions in there. But i applaud them for doing that. They should not exclude the media. But they should do both. It reminded me of the state of the union experience we had with president bush in 2007, i guess it was, the day after you fanout across the country to do events about the policies that were in the state of the union, and we went to kansas city this particular year to talk about health care. And we did an interview, a few things, get back on air force one, the president comes in the Conference Room and says, how is it playing out there . Weve got the cable news on the tv in the Conference Room, i said, sir, what is playing out there today is that the dna on anna nicoles baby came back. He said, you mean we could have stayed at home . [laughter] kevin i am pretty sure he knew who anna nicole was. [laughter] kevin there were a couple of points there. The people in kansas city and wichita, the regional matters, getting outside the beltway, the so of course there was value of going there, you can never control is happening in the news, but in that particular instance, because if we had the ability National Security and Security Apparatus would not let us upload to youtube from the white house in those days. We did not have a channel available to us. But we wouldve done the same thing i think, had we had that echanism in addition to mo i mean, gone are the days when the nightly news was a national convening. People dont sit around and watch them anymore. The sunday shows, the relevance they used to have for driving the debate in the coming week, all but disappearing. And so, i think people are just experimenting still. Between twoe ferns, one of the single greatest Communications Moments of the white house. Put aside what it means for journalists. A president communicating with an audience he desperately needed to communicate with. It was important. It had national significance. I agree with you. It should not be done at these exclusion of the hard interview. Marty olivier mentioned the speech president obama made at the toner prize, which is a prize for journalism covering politics. Let me read you what he said. It, in todays unprecedented change in your industry, the job has gotten tougher, even as the appetite for information and data flowing into the internet is voracious, we have seen newsrooms close. The bottom line has shrunk and the new cycle has as well. Too often there is enormous pressure to fill the void and feed the beast with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and softer stories. And then we fail to understand our world, and one another, as well as we should. That has consequences for our lives and for the life of the country. He added that Media Companies have an obligation to maintain certain standards and not dumb down the news. I want to get your reaction to all that. Because i want to know whether you think we are in an environment where News Organizations are dumbing down the news . And whether all we are doing is just chasing clicks with fluff. Kathleen no. Marty no . Kathleen i mean, the whole trope it assumes that the news , organizations that are here are the same as the ones that are producing cat videos. I think there is a lot of room between cat videos and serious, boring stories. There is aions lot of room in the middle, that Important Information compelling that people should , read and consume. That is what a lot of News Organizations are trying to do, make information interesting so that people will read it. Because we are competing with cat videos. Kevin peter baker of the New York Times last summer had an interesting comment on this. People were asking about media bias, being biased against him, more sensationalistic or whatever, he said yeah, but we are also biased against the simplistic. Because we know the last number i saw, 39 of the top news sites get the majority of the traffic from mobile devices. So people are skimming. If you do not get them in the first paragraph, first couple of sentences, theyre not going to read the whole story. I dont think the media dumbs it down. I think the media has tried to make things more accessible, recognizing we are an organization that is consuming ip than a greater clic ever, but we are skimming. Kathleen skimming is ok. Skimming pieces of information that is broken up to be accessible is a lot more effective then seeing some big long piece of type, thank you, we are trying to get to them. Olivier there are a couple of ideas in the president s remarks that need to be unpacked. The 24 7e idea that cycle that has this effect, but i disagree that it is speed that is the problem. If that was a problem, than the then newswires would be dead, dumb, what have you. They are not. They are thriving. Im always the vice, because im a former you are never a former, i am still a wire hack, but i dont think is that. It is the volume that bothers me. Got to fill the air. How will we do it . You know what, we will speculate about where the plane is for days on end. Not to knock that particular outlet, but it is the volume, not the speed. When i got on board the ap, 20 years ago, my god, writing about the United States for the rest of the world. That has changed in the digital yahoo ecause afp runs on now. But when i started out you were not allowed to say in the lede House Speaker newt gingrich. You had to say president bill clintons top opponent in the United States congress. You had to address your audience knowing that your audience was not necessarily conversant with certain ideas, individuals, things like that. I would argue that was not dumbing it down. It was just knowing the audience. I think right now, when i write stuff at yahoo , some of the stuff that does the best is stuff on drones, syria policy. Part of that is partisanship. People want to hammer this president for what has happened in the middle east. Some of it is that it is a headline grabbing story with tremendous visuals and drama. But we do not really dumb that down. And to your point about skimming and mobile devices, it is true. But what we discovered is that one of the best times to put up a feature story is friday morning. Because on friday, some of you will notice, americans go to their work, there in front of their computer, and they are not working. [laughter] olivier one of my most successful, in terms of clicks , most successful stories online, what happens when the president stays in a hotel . All of the dynamics of how it is arranged, how does he handle room service, all of these other issues. With about four days we had about 5. 5 million readers. It was a long story. So, what i said at the outset about how we have not figured out the magic formula, it is really true. You can see stories that you think are going to do great but just dont catch on fire. And you know, we get our traffic from two places. Search i heard something happened in syria. Social media. And we do have a lot of people come back to yahoo who have us bookmarked on the homepage. Kevin that story got 5 million views because they havent seen that before. I heard a scientist once that say brains cannot resist something that is new. So, the skimming, you sucked us all in with this cool story we had not seen before. Olivier i think there is a lot i think there is a lot of remarkable, tremendous journalism out there. I think it plays a lo an incredibly Important Role in not just providing the facts, but the contexts. Right . Raphink there is a lot of c journalism out there. Calling himself journalists because in our platform. I dont think the problem is speed. And i not sure the problem is volume. I think it is the combination of the two. The fact that everyone is a wire reporter now, and they live on twitter, and too often now, retweeting is replacing reporting. And people are putting it out there, and you will see reporters retweet, without checking it out, with a disclaimer. Whoa, if true. [laughter] mo and im sorry marty that doesnt cover . Mo if it is, it is a doozy. That doesnt work. By the time you do figure it out, the narrative is already set, story has already been told. It is hard to walk it back. Now that everyone is a wire reporter everyone is in the breaking news god, i hate that term the breaking news business, and we are doing it at lightning speed that everybody has access to, that concerns me. Marty the broader question here, the president talked about diminished Resources Available to the news media these days. And clearly, we have far fewer resources than we had before. Is that leading to less reporting . Is that leading to less digging . Are we really doing our jobs in terms of digging beneath the surface . Mo some of you are. s i think some of you are doing it well. I think a lot of people are not. Marty less than there used to be . Kathleen i think less than there used to be. The stuff we used to do in the early part of my career, covering a lot of institutions that really touch peoples lives from there has been a lot of lamenting over the last 15 years the buildings and the agencies, the stuff that is not getting covered. But if you look back at that stuff, a lot of it was perfectly dreadful. [laughter] kathleen it was. My name is on some of those perfectly dreadful stories. I think it is good to have gotten rid of that, because that turned off audiences and it was not a good use of time and energy. But i think there are a fair number of very inventive News Organizations, including the one based year, providing the information that people need to have harder than going to a building and writing down what the men standing in front of microphones have to say. That was too much of our coverage for a long time. I would also like to turn this conversation more towards the business of government. We tend to talk about politics, it is a political year. That is an ephemeral thing. But it is much more important to talk about what an administration, mayor, governor, president is doing in terms of governing. What are the policies . In this administration, all of them get worse than the one before, so we have a lot to look forward to january marty you have a low opinion of some of the policy coverage, really boring and dreadful, but even at the national level, are we not covering policy the way we used to . Kathleen i do think it gets short shrift. And i think this particular administration makes it harder. If you want to find something going on, you have to go through a Public Information officer. You cannot go directly to the scientist who knows, or you cant go try and get something from the health and Human Services administration, you get routed right back to the White House Political Office and press office. Olivier the white house has minders. If i win powerball, and i will turn around and interview the minder. Was north korea not an offer . [laughter] olivier but it is amazing. You sit there, and they will stop the question and the answer, unless you of course maybe are slightly confrontational. Maybe. Kathleen you have to work for it, you have to fight for it. This administration goes after people. People in government are scared to talk to reporters, or anybody who just wants to ask a question. They can get prosecuted. They are prosecuted. You know, their careers are punished. Doesnt that bother anybody . Marty they would at least be subject to an investigation. Kathleen dont you want to know what the people whose salaries you pay are doing. Olivier for the first time in my life i had a source tracked me down in my office and tell me they left their cell phone in the car so we could have a conversation without worrying about being tracked. And im not a National Security reporter. This story happen to be about the relationship between the cia and the white house. But even by your standards, name redacted, is not a little paranoid . Absolutely not. The level of control freakishness is absolutely off the charts. Kathleen there is a guy in our office, standing and talking to the father at a soccer game, i have to walk away. If we talk anymore, i have to report to my boss. I am not making this up. That is a scary thing. Olivier we can talk about another example, mentioning twitter, how the white house uses it. Marty we are going to open up for questions momentarily. But go ahead. Olivier after this im giving you homework. Go look up when the white house hates your tweet. A piece i wrote looking at twitter as a kind of Early Warning mechanism, to watch how different reporters who are influential on different topics shape the whole perception, how they share it up the chain in the white house, how it has replaced traditional news clippings, a realtime Early Warning system for them. Mo that goes both ways. Twitter is becoming a National Assignment editor, in a lot of ways. It is what is setting the narrative, what every reporter is plugged into the figure out what the narratives are. Voters not paying attention. But the echo chamber is. Olivier and it is a wonderful way to get an answer to a question that you cant answered in a briefing. What the heck is the president doing about x . I cannot believe it. You got a phone call or email saying whoa marty i was going to ask you what can be done to improve things, but sounds like you dont have an answer for that. [laughter] marty why dont we open it up to questions . There are microphones. Welcome any and all questions. Put these guys on the spot, not me, but put them on the spot. Good morning. Management comes from the top, but how much of it is being driven by president obama or how the infrastructure of the white house is changing . With that, could you consider what a Hillary Clinton administration might look like with her relationships with the media . I will not even go to donald trump but if you want to address that as well. Kathleen let me talk about it generationally. If direction does come from the top, and olivier knows this well, every time there is a new administration, there are young people who come in and most of them are full of the idea that a have just been elected to the Biggest Office in the world and there is a lot of hubris. A lot of the policy gets set at a time when people are feeling woof, woof, you know . George stephanopoulos, now for abc, who gets a lot of attention for grilling donald trump or something, when he started in the Clinton Administration he , started closing the door and telling reporters they cannot come in. There is an attitude thing that crosses party lines and it is absolutely common in every single white house. Everything trickles down from there. The line gets set that somewhere slightly better than what we do here is none of your damn business, and we will tell you what we need to know. That becomes something that is implemented into the agencies. And it doesnt matter what the party is. In isr gets inaugurated january going to be tighter about this than this administration, which was tighter than the bush and ministers in, which was tighter than the Clinton Administration. Marty what about Hillary Clinton . What is your sense of them . I think very private. You . Marty i will point out that she hasnt given the Washington Post an interview in 18 months. Not one. On the other hand, we get donald trump on the phone all the time. And he says he hates us. We are lowlifes, sleaze, whatever, but he is happy to speak with us. He must like hanging out with people like that. He cant resist us. I can talk about Hillary Clinton in the context of the last campaign. In 2008, the press office made a decision early on to be very controlling of the interactions. That did not work so well for her. I was her traveling press secretary after new hampshire. We started putting her with the press a little bit more. We started bringing her to the back of the plane or the hotel bar where the reporters were hanging out at night. Sometimes it was on the record, sometimes it was off. Sometimes it was just to connect on a human level. It was dramatic to me it was too late in the Campaign Cycle but it was dramatic to me how much the coverage shifted. Not saying that she got puff ces, but it was much less we were starting everything with less hostility between both sides. This is a problem in the social media era generally, both at the principal reporter level and the staff level. We are losing that Human Interaction too much and those relationships that are so important. When we arrived here yesterday, i watched the two of you greet each other. You can tell these are two people who spend a lot of time together. Their relationship is important. Too often, we are losing that relationship because there are reporters i dont with the dnc whoealt with at the i might never have met. I know who they are from twitter, but we are moving to a place where relationships that is the one thing i would urge my friends who are with the secretary now, if she is successful moving forward. She is very good when she develops a relationship with someone. They dont need to hide her from the press, because she can actually hold her own very well. She is very likable when you get to know her. And so let the press get to know her a little bit better. Again, notmight change the scrutiny, but just change the starting point of the discussion just a little bit. Olivier so the answer to martys question evidently is more alcohol . [laughter] mo more alcohol, more socializing, but that is true in every aspect of life. Marty that was not the answer i expected but it is a good one, actually. We have another question here. How do you balance competition how do you balance competition versus manipulation when donald trump can call into a morning show and by phone say whatever he wants . At what point does a News Organization say, we are not going to do that . There are analogs in all of your various segments. Donald trump is the elephant in the press room right now. What do you do about unfiltered competition . Kathleen that is a great question. Marty one thing i wish people would do is actually know their subjects and ask followup questions so that when he makes claims such as, i opposed the iraq war right from the beginning, and it turns out that is not true, that somebody can call him on that and they quote the facts. An point that out to him and have him contend with that. Olivier but you put your finger on it. Covering donald trump isnt handing him a microphone. Re supposed to leave our we are supposed to put things into context. To the extent that we have done a bad job of covering him, it is that people define coverage as we are going to show an empty podium in the hopes that he arrives soon for an hour. We had an interesting new cycle in which people covered donald trump without him. That was the stuff of the veterans donations. The post and the ap dug into that stuff, and they didnt need him. Finally, that Trump Campaign approach of not answering any questions burnt them. And not having a relationship with the press burned them. And it clearly drove him nuts. He handled it with that crazy press conference. It was a very interesting new s cycle because for me it was, no, this is actually coverage. Did he actually raise money . I dont need him to call me, he has already made these claims. We are going to assess them now. I think you are seeing a little bit more of that now. There was a cnn chyron yesterday where he said he opposed the iraq war and the chyron was Something Like trump says he did not oppose the iraq war he did . [laughter] olivier oh, im sorry donald trump says he never said japan did . Get nukes he kevin people have asked me before, nobody ever calls meet the press is the media complicit in putting him on . Should the Clinton Campaign dial in. Olivier she did on cnn. I think he is changing the rules of the game quite a bit, and the media is complicit. There is an inherent tension. Inherent tension within the media side of the equation between responsible journalism and Good Business practices. Sometimes they are incompatible. Marty a problem sometimes having him on the phone. We did this whole story about acting as his own spokesman, pretending to be his own press spokesman. The reporter finally said, did you ever employ a spokesman by the name of john miller . And the line went dead. So we called back and said, we must have gotten disconnected. I dont know how that happened. He is not available right now. This is a problem when you are doing a telephone interview. But we need to make sure that the candidates are in a position where people can ask questions, and where the candidate is forced to answer the question. I think first over here. My question is similar. We are seeing aroundtheclock coverage by the cables on the campaigns. I wonder if a lot of times, as olivier says, looking at the empty podium, waiting for trump to appear, or when you get one side versus the other side giving talking points of the day. I am wondering if a whole lot more coverage, if you can call it coverage, but are the cables dumbing down the coverage in this Election Campaign . We are seeing more than we have ever seen before but is there do you think going into the general election, is there going to be a shift where we are going to get more serious journalism from cable . And also, your impression of their coverage so far . Curious to hear about that. Kathleen that is a fantastic political order in her own right asking 13 questions in one. [laughter] marty going to answer that one. Kathleen look, i think cable news operations are successful because audiences watch them. So they are serving and need. I think the mistake might be for us to assume that all media is alike and all coverage must be like. It is back to the point we were making earlier in this conversation. There has to be a menu for people to choose from. Certainly a lot of the work that the post and the ap and the times are doing to put serious material before readers and viewers in an interesting way doesnt mean that there cannot be other stuff that appeals to different kinds of readers. I cant watch many hours of it because it is fairly repetitive but that seems to be a system that works for them. Another think im a minute i dont think i and in a position of saying they shouldnt marty are the networks constitutionally incapable of changing their ways . Kathleen a few of us up here because a few of us up here think that they should . [laughter] this is what i was talking about earlier with the tension between the desire to do smart journalism as a Public Service and getting the ratings or clips. Let me go to this question here. I would like to ask a question. You asked whether the public cares and, yes, i do. I think about the people on the team that i lead. I find it thoughtful and political and there is historical analysis. I remember reading it gives context. We have talked about the nature of the relationship between the presidency and the press as a dialectic and i think that is a necessary dialectic. I do worry that it is moving towards antagonism. I would like to ask going forward, does that hurt your feelings . How do you see that evolving . What you mean by antagonism . The way in which Mainstream Media is now the punchline, that you are inherently biased because you are the press. I find that troublesome. I would like to find person who convinced the public that biased means i did not like that story. It is hard because a couple years ago i did a series on big donors being nominated for ambassadorships from which they were unqualified. My reporting ended up killing one of the nominations. In one Pivotal Moment in this series i did, the story got a lot of comments. Yahoo generates a lot of traffic, but even by our standards, it was more than i thought i would see. Do not ever read the comments. No one has ever been to the Comment Section to say that was a perfectly adequate story. The comment that most people had liked had moved up the chain, the number one comment was, this is crap. We have one last question and we will have to be quick about it. A lot of politicians and reporters take a speech course in college. I hear a lot of that in bill oreilly, president all right president obama. Trump sounds like a Football Player being interviewed. [laughter] i knew i should have cut it off. [laughter] i apologize. In any event, we are done . Thank you very much. [applause] alright. Thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] takingers of congress bar today in fourth of july parades across the country. Tweetinghire senator happy independence day, beautiful morning for the embers parade. The texas congressman tweeted out his view from his parade. The florida congressman gets ready for a parade in his district and california congressman rides in a car in a fourth of july parade in his Sacramento County district. Congress returns to capitol hill tomorrow to debate Gun Legislation, the rules Committee Considers debate parameters on the counterterrorism of Gun Legislation formal debate on guncontrol bills could begin on the house floor as early as wednesday. We have live coverage here on cspan, and in the senate, legislative business resumes wednesday with a vote on a judicial nomination set for midafternoon. Lives in a coverage on cspan two. Today on cspan, a look at first ladies influencing public policy. Former chief of staff to Hillary Clinton describes Nancy Reagans behindthescenes influence on her administration dealing with the soviet union. Here is a preview. There are many who wanted him to take a hard line against gorbachev against what was happening. I had some friends who were advising at the time, and they said one day, nancy reagan in exasperation said why does everyone assume my husband is a warmonger . They really wanted to seize that moment, as did others in that administration, because theres huge tension in the George Scholz was on one side, others were on another side. Sensitivity, her knowing where has been wanted to go in history on the issue i think was extremely dispositive. Credit, fory little what she did to help him navigate all of this . Repeatedays, she was to have been able to call a spade a spade in terms of people than she was. And i got her into some hot water. But she played a really Important Role in history. Currentlle obamas chief of staff and to former chief of staffs for laura bush and Hillary Clinton. 7 00he entire event at eastern. Jimmy carter in conversation with ugandan war refugee. The event of the Carter Library focuses on civil rights and individual freedoms. And at 9 00 eastern, discussion on the latest Technology Trends with former google Ceo Eric Schmidt who now serves as executive chairman of googles parent company, alphabet inc. The event takes place of the Economic Club of new york, this evening here on cspan. Collects the hardfought 2016 primary season is over, with historic conventions to follow the summer. Colorado, florida, texas, ohio. Watch cspan is the delegates consider the nomination of the first woman to ever had a Major Political party, and the first nonpolitician in several decades. Cspan, and give videoondemand that cspan. Org. You have a front row seat to every minute of both conventions on cspan, beginning monday, july 18. Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta is the first living person since the vietnam war to receive the u. S. Military medal of honor. He served in afghanistan from 20032011. Rockieshis story at the retreat in february. This is just under one hour. [applause] this is a very interesting place for me to stand. I can honestly say im a product of my environment. I grew up in cedar rapids, iowa, s city of about 120,000 folks. Secondlargest city in iowa. My folks were very supportive. They kicked me in the behind when i needed to and they grabbed the reins when i need to slow down and they scolded me when i did the wrong things. I was a pretty excited young man. I cannot say i was the most excited about school but i was very excited about life. Growing up, life was really good. I had every freedom that every american enjoyed at my fingertips and the got to enjoy