Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal Alicia Shepard Discusses The Current Media Environment 20170630

2 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Working with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Alicia shep todays media and ethics expert. Thank you for being here to talk about the relationship between this white house and the media. Let me begin by how you would define it right now. Guest i would define it as nothing weve ever seen before and as not productive in the least. I mean, theres always been tension, always, always, with the white house and the press. In fact, i did write a book about watergate and back then, the press were like hand servants to the white house, and watergate changed all that. It was contentious then. Its always going to be. This is like nothing ive ever seen. Its just so counterproductive to the American People for the president to misunderstand, to confuse people that the role of the media is to be a surrogate for the people under the constitution. And theyre not the enemy. They are there to do their jobs. Its just very, very frustrating, discouraging. Host who is responsible for this the condition of the relationship . Guest wow. I guess that depends on who you ask. Im sure if you ask President Trump he would be very clear that it is the media. You know, i think that the white house is showing such great signs of disrespect towards the press that i would say that its become an adversarial relationship in the way it shouldnt be and maybe the press gets really frustrated and responds at the lack of respect towards the media. I mean, i dont think the media does the job for respect, but i think theyre used to we are used to be treating with a certain modicum of respect. Host what about what gets covered . Going back to yesterday and the conversation we had with our viewers this morning, the msnbc morning joe hosts talk about the mental state of the president. The president reacts in twitter what he had to say about that comment and it dominates all day long and then our conversation with our viewers this morning who some of them are supporters say hes just firing back. Guest hes just the president of the united states. Just ignore it and move on. Do you think bill clinton wasnt attacked in the same way . Do you think obama wasnt attacked . All president s are made fun of. Look at what jon stewart on the daily show made a career out of making fun of president s. Just move on. Host and what about what gets covered . I want to listen to Sarah Huckabee sanders at the white house laying out the argument with numbers about how much attention is paid to what this administration is trying to do, their policy agenda versus other news. [video clip] sarah i think all of us would like to focus on the legislative agenda over you look at the coverage over the last month of the extended period between may and june, all of the major networks, if you look at their coverage and what theyre talking about, they spent one minute in the evening newscast talking about tax reform. Three minutes on infrastructure. Five minutes on the economy and jobs. 17 minutes on health care. 353 minutes s, attacking the president and pushing a false narrative on russia. I mean, look at that in comparison. If you guys want to talk about legislative agenda and focus on policy and priorities, you guys get to help set that table. D 353 minutes of attacks against the president and driving a false narrative and one minute on tax reform, thats over the course of the month. The numbers guys, the numbers dont lie. The medias focused on priorities. They dont line up with the rest of america. Host alicia shepard. Guest wow. Driving a false narrative means that the media is covering something that the white house isnt comfortable with. And i find it just so frustrating to just the sort of confusing of the issue. There are legitimate reasons, legitimate investigations right now into whether or not there was collusion. I agree that so far they havent come up with anything, but its definitely a legitimate news story, but i would also say to Sarah Huckabee sanders that when the president tweets Something Like did yesterday about psychojoe and low i. Q. Mika hes distracting from the issues. Yesterday wasnt about health care reform. The front page of the post today, Washington Post is a story about the president s tweets and the criticism by both republicans and democrats. So it goes both ways in terms of who is being responsible here. Host how do you define fake news . Because that is something that the president tweets a lot about, and designating outlets and publications as fake news. Guest right. Lets start with the fact that news by definition is not fake. So i would say, quote, for fake has but the white house totally coopted that phrase. We have news thats 100 false, created for financial gain. And thats a lot of what we saw the pope endorses president the candidate trump during the election, Hillary Clinton sold guns to isis, those are stories completely made up. And you have misleading stories where theres some element of truth and its distorted. And then you have just pure, flatout propaganda. So i think that really forget what is the definition, what it really speaks to is that we as consumers of news need to be very critical in how we approach news that News Literacy is the solution and s going to be take a long time. If you think back to yellow journalism when things were sensational and how we know now when we get to the checkout line theres the National Enquirer, theres world weekly news. Weve been educated to know that Hillary Clinton didnt have an alien baby. Right now there is a move to have more News Literacy. Theres a News Literacy project, which i would encourage all visitors to cspan go on the web, donate. News literacy classes and learning the Critical Thinking skills are really what we need to do. Host well, the president has tweeted out this morning. Just 20 minutes ago saying that he watched lowrated morning joe this morning for the first time in a long time. Fake news he calls them. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no. Bad show. What hes referring to what mik and Joe Scarborough write in todays column. The president s unhealthy obsession of our show has been in the Public Record for ponts and during the campaign the epublican campaign called mika neurotic. This year Top White House Staff Members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. Guest that show is such a disregard for how the media works. I just cant first of all, the National Enquirer doesnt have the kind of respectability in terms of being a credible news outfit that they would ear whatever story appeared in the National Enquirer. I do give them credit. They did come up with the story about john edwards having an affair and they were right on that. Thats one out of 100,000 stories theyve done. This is such a waste of time. We should be talking about health care. We should be talking about jobs, about immigration reform. The president should be tweeting about what hes doing and how hes trying to create a coalition. Host he also said apparently last night in a fundraiser, it would be fun to sue cnn. The president joked it would be fun to sue cnn, a favorite media target of his that he frequently drives as fake news. Boy, did cnn get killed over the last few days, he said, according to an audio recording obtained. These are really dishonest people. Should i sue them . I mean, theyre phonies. Cnn did have an Investigative Team resign over a story they ran. Guest yes. Cnn responded quickly. They ran a story that was i hope viewers are familiar with but just in general a trump ally being loosely connected to a russian investment fund. The story went up on the web. It didnt even get on tv. It was taken down. There was an apology. The three very senior, very experienced veteran journalists all offered their resignations and they were accepted which that raises a lot of questions to me why they were accepted, whats the story behind that but im hoping that cnn will be a little more transparent about what happened. I think that transparency is the new objectivity, that the medias reputation is so low but, you know, i cant really think of a time where the medias reputation has been high. So these polls they talk about distrust in the media dont really mean anything. Host lets hear what our viewers have to say about this. Steven in hyde park, new york. Democrat. Caller good morning. Thanks for cspan. This st amazed that administration seems to try to crush press freedoms. They prevent the briefings or close the tv briefings at the its important that a free press pass on information and continue a dialogue so we as americans can decide how we feel and how to respond because frankly it just seems like were steering towards an oligarch russian farce of trying to control the news and trying to put a spin on the news and thats not what were about in this country. Guest i totally agree. I mean, i dont think this is a matter of democrat, republican, conservative, liberal. I think this is a matter of both institutions, the media and the executive branch, the white house, treating each knowing h respect, they each have a job and letting them do it. I wont disagree with you on that. I will say we talk about the media and i shouldnt really because theres no the media. There are thousands of different outlets and who really is the media . Its really, do you trust cnn . Do you trust bright bart . Do you trust fox . Those are the issues is who do you trust because otherwise we have a to z in terms of the media and they are not all credible. Host tennessee, independent. Caller yeah. So my comment is, you know, we had need Everybody Needs to calm down, both the president and the media. The president in some of his tweets have been very derogatory. And the media has already had to retract several false eports, press releases and everything. We have some major problems in this country and if the president , who was elected, and the media cannot focus on these problems that we have, our country is going to continue to go down. And i just wish that everybody ould do their respective jobs. President trump, work with the ongress, pass or get something started on tax reform, infrastructure, health care. The media, focus on the actual facts and quit bringing up all these sources and everything. If theyre sources cannot be named and factually documented, then dont bring anything up. Thats what got President Trump all right up. Host lets bring a couple points there. Guest well, in storms of Anonymous Sources, i agree they are a problem in terms of Anonymous Sources, i agree they are a problem. Its difficult to do the job of reporter without relying on Anonymous Sources or people who have a reason to they want to get something across but theyre worried about their job. So i think that there should be fewer of them, but i will also say, you read the New York Times and you see that the white house says things anonymously. So it works, again, both ways. If the white house wants the news media to be more specific about who the sources, then the white house should be equally specific. I think the real danger now you brought up the fact of mistakes and retractions and journalists work really, really hard to get things accurately. And i think its and they make mistakes. I mean, the pressure. Theres a lot of news thats being made today in a minutetominute news cycle. They make mistakes. And the public seem to be much a little more forgiving in the past when they would make the mistake, they would correct the mistake, acknowledge it, talk about what changes depending if it happened in a News Organization depending on the seriousness of their mistake and move on. And now i think theres an article today, do the press have the right to be wrong, and i say yes, they should, but they dont. And making mistakes seems to be red meat for the white house to then attack the media rather than accepting. You know, cnn was very gracious about the mistake. The person who was the target of the mistake was very classy in accepting it. Host lets go to minneapolis. Patricia on our line for republicans. Caller yeah. This is absolutely ridiculous. The media is so clear they are just an arm of the d. N. C. Cnn is absolutely incredible. They quote unnamed sources, unnamed departments, unnamed official. They make things up out of thin air. The New York Times is being sued by sarah palin because of their piece about connecting her directly with the Gabby Giffords shooting. I have if i see something from the Washington Post, the New York Times, cnn, msnbc, nbc, i dont believe it. They are always wrong. All they talk about is attacks on trump. You have plays with him being stabbed. You have leftwing comedians holding up his chopped off bloody head. The media is out of control. Host lets take that point, alicia shepard. Guest well, i like to ask, who do you believe . Who do you think is credible . Host i apologize, shes not on the line anymore. Guest first, i dont think the New York Times is always wrong. I think now were dealing with perception and what is known as confirmation bias which is that you seek out information that you believe and that confirms your belief. And i think we are so polarized now that if i am more liberal, possibly i will go to the New York Times. If i am more conservative i will go to fox, and i think we just need to be more open to opinions that dont confirm our beliefs, that we need to listen to other people and not use the words always wrong or host what do you think is the solution for the media given the animosity that some people have toward the media . And also the poll numbers that reflect that. What is it that the media can do . Should the media be fighting back . Should they enter the fray . Guest well, i think that what News Organizations, responsible, credible News Organizations need to do is continue doing their job as best as they can, as accurately as they can. I know that just sounds like a stomp speech, but i think thats important. But i also think having a public editor, having an ombudsman like the National Public radio is really important to explain how the news media works. All the public sees are the final product, and i just think if any viewer sat inside a newsroom meeting and saw how much hand wringing this is, should we use this Illegal Immigrants name, if we do, are we putting that person in jeopardy, i think they would have greater respect. I sometimes despair but i cant about the future of the country when we are so polarized that we dismiss anything that doesnt confirm or conform to what we believe. Host darrell in rochester, new york, independent. Caller hi. I just have a brief comment. Ive been watching all morning. Our president , you know, the selfserving guy, you know, its just funny that everyone i heard and everyone thats talking, nobodys coming to the point that we are america first. Were not republican, democrat, independent. I voted for George Herbert walker bush. I voted for clinton. I voted for george w. Bush. I voted for obama. I voted for ms. Clinton. But, listen, its all it seems the whole thing is just a farce. We cannot survive in our democracy without the media. Regardless of what everybody wants to think, this whole fake news thing, i mean, thats something that people pay attention. We have only been using that term for almost maybe two years, maybe. Host pick up on that. Guest well, theres always been fake news. It goes back to George Washington publishing letters hat turned out to not be true. So i agree, we are all americans, and we do need to work together. Thats nt think that really the issue. I think the issue is more the polarization and what can we do to be more open to people who disagree with us, and i do think, again, i will harp on this, News Literacy. We all need to understand how were being manipulated so that when you have you see some story or some headline that gets your blood boiling and youre outraged, thats when you should step back and be skeptical and think, wait, am i being tricked here . Because thats a tweet, a facebook posting, something that you see that gets you really agered is often not true. I wont say its always not true, but it is often and people need to step back. They need to take a minute before they press send or repost or share or comment. We react way, way too fast. We react because the news pushes our button. Host fredericksburg, virginia, vivian is watching, democrat. Caller thank you, greta. Hello, cspan. I will say this. They always talk about the liberal media. I dont just think the media is liberal. If it was we wouldnt have went into iraq. Hey are theyre liberal, trump, he lies every day. The media has to question him out. And these men that said trump is a man, i hope they we are going to leave the last few minutes of this, you can find it online, cspan. Org, and take you live to the center for strategic and International Studies in washington, d. C. Live coverage of a speech by south korean president moon jaein. Hell be speaking shortly. We gather here today for a present the , csis Global Leaders Forum Presenting the president of the korean republic. There are a few logistics notes, some preparatory things. President moon and they will be entering the room shortly, it would be nice if we gave them a warm welcome. The speech will be in korean, thats why you all have headsets for simultaneous interpretation and his speech will be followed by a short q a that will be done president moon finishes his speech and answers questions, we ask that you all remain your in in your seats until he and his security detail have exited the hall. We take our security very seriously. We have exits to the back and to the front, if there are problems. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could all rise for the president of the republic of korea, moon jaein. [applause]