Day, the host of cnns reliable sources, Brian Stelter. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. A little bit of a live edition of reliable sources even if reaction what Kellyanne Conway was saying a few minutes ago. We have carrie dudoll brown. David kurt patrick, author of the facebook effect and well talk about facebooks role in the news and cecelia vega, correspondent for abc. Covered Clinton Campaign and covering the trump administration. Ses sell yaw, the Kellyanne Conway said the press is presumptively negative about the man you cover every day. Are you presumptively negative . Im presumptively cynical. That is my job. Not just skeptical but cynical . Skeptical and cynical, we have to be both given this administrations relationship with the truth and how tough it is for us to get at that right now. Do we start our day and i can speak for all of us, in a negative manner . Absolutely not. That is not our tone in perspective of our coverage. My sense this perception there is this adversarial relationship much more comes from the white house than it does from our end of the Briefing Room. They want an adversarial relationship or they perceive this to be the case. We just are doing our jobs. I dont think that the complaints that they have are any different than the Obama Administration has had about coverage or negativity, than the Bush Administration or any administration before that. That is is the nature of this beast. Youre saying same complaints but maybe theyre louder about it . I think so, yeah. I think so. I think Ari Fleischer would have told you the exact same thing. He was unhappy with coverage then too. Carrie, what about the issue of policy coverage, substance versus style and palace intrigue . Kellyanne saying Jeff Sessions at border, that was ignored by a lot of news outlets. Obviously politico and others covered that yesterday. Im not sure why she said it wasnt covered. What is your impression of lake of lack of policy . I covered the Obama White House. I started covering him in 2007 and 8 when he was six years and heard exact same thing that the politico cared way too much about palace intrigue. Didnt cover policy. I was a policy reporter covering health care back then in a way, i would go to them basically hear the same thing and sean spicer said that this morning, that they want us to cover policy and not the palace intrigue. The challenge is that the white house itself is very, very, very focused on palace intrigue, who is up and who is down. Not just the press that is engaged in this. Like cecelia said this is longstanding complaint. We cover policy at politico itself. We have 125 reporters and editors that cover policy alone, all the agencies and departments that is a Huge Investment what is going on in this town. We do that, give it play. I would give them a point that the palace intrigue stories typically do pretty darn well. People are really interested knowing what is going on in the white house as they were in the Obama White House. The difference this white house really engages with our reporters to talk about what is going on in the white house. That is why, when spicer and some others really pushed back and try to internal say dont talk to reporters when they themselves are talking to reporters. Engaging is euphemism for backstabbing each other, leaking . Yeah. Theyre saying dont talk to reporters. They say it privately and yeah, dont leak. But, we had a story two days ago where we quoted six people inside of a meeting of 30, talking about the strategy at 100 days. That is a remarkable level of people leaking and talking to us. Do you know who all the sources were yourself. I do typically ask all the sources were, yeah. Youre confident of that. Cecelia, Jonathan Karl and my colleague at white house talk about this a lot. Happening more and more, every story, number of sources being reported gets bigger and bigger. The Washington Post we spoke to 18 sources, six sources. Its a sign how much people are talking. You ask about policy versus palace intrigue, i would say until syria last week, throw a percentage out there, 80 , 70 of the content that gets asked about and discussed in these White House Briefings is the press corps asking about whos doing what to whom inside of the white house and or can you clarify something the president tweeted about . A lot of this is selfgenerated, the fact were not talking about policy. One more question about this before we talk about the future of news more broadly, the president s antimedia attacks came up a bit earlier but want to ask from you alls perspectives, what has the impact been, carrie, on this venom, this poison we heard from this white house . Has it hurt us with our audiences, or has it not . I think it is created, created a more challenging environment. Youre talking about all the pages youre getting, right . Yeah. Are people trusting what youre reporting . I dont have data on that. I certainly feel the pressure of the divided environment and my response to that is how i set the tone for a newsroom and how we report and reminding our reporters and editors that the rules, basic rules of journalism still apply even in an environment where it doesnt feel normal. It is absolutely imperative we conduct ourselves as journalists would in any era. Verify information. Try to get as many sources as possible. Be transparent how we got the information. Doing that and adhering to what the basic rules of journalism are, giving people a chance to respond, engaging with them, that does not change. If we do our jobs as we always were supposed to do, i believe that is our best insurance for the long term. Its a longterm play. Were in a weird environment right now. It may not be like this five or 10 years. All i know what i can do at this point, make sure my newsroom is living up to all the standards of journalism i learned 20 years ago, 25 years ago. I think getting as many sources as possible, i think that where were getting 18 sources, six sources. You really want a preponderance of evidence and feel completely confident what youre putting out. I think that is good for journalism. Were under a lot of scrutiny that requires us to respond and be as airtight as possible. Divided world but also connected world. That is the title of this session. Were wrapping up the morning about the future of news. David, i wonder how you view facebook and other social media impact the first 100 days . I could make a case the president s tweets dont matter. But only matter when cnn and politico report them. On twitter theyre not reaching that many people. As kellyanne says allow him to go around the media on a daily basis. How do you see it . The landscape created by the twitter and Facebook Changes everything. This wellprogrammed morning started exactly right, not only with a pull silter is prize winner but somebody who won a pulitzerer prize by using social media, include his sources, inconclude his audience as his source. Create a collective process because the fundamental difference of a connected world in my opinion is that it is a participative age. Everybody wants to participate and everybody is going to participate whether you like it or not. I mean every Single Person in this room probably has one of these. When theyre on it, theyre not just receiving, theyre also broadcasting, that changes the landscape. I think trumps tweets matter a lot. I would comment on this thing that was said in the Journalists Panel about, you know, how trumps tweets cant be responded to or you cant follow up like you could in a press conference. Thats a legitimate complaint in a sense but on the other hand, if you listen to what happened with farenthold, when he used trumps handle in a tweet about his philanthropy and trump called him or immediately, that is, because you can actually direct a comment to the president in a way that you never could before. I might argue that it is a counterbalancing factor. But, regarding facebook versus twitter, you and i talked about this a little bit before, i think it is easy in washington in particular, given that we have a president who is so twitter sent trick, to forget that the primary way most people get their information is through facebook and oddly not just in the united states. Increasingly pretty much definitely now on a global level, primary source of information for people is facebook in all but like three or four countries, right . And that is a big, big change that is going to continue to change the landscape. There is a lot more we could say to follow that up. Youre saying facebook is the internet and fast book is the news to a degree we may not appreciate in our twitter bubble . Its a place where people receive the news and because its a twoway medium it create as context fundamentally new, im a baby boomer. In my lifetime it is fundamentally new to basically have the ability to react as a, in a position where you formerly were just a passive recipient. Right. Cecelia, Kellyanne Conway said some reporters tweets are a hot mess. Not mine. Some were printed out. She would show examples. Do you worry, do you think, do you double think before you tweet . Yes, without a doubt. But it goes back to how we started this conversation. I mean the pressure is on all of us now more than ever to not screw up. To get everything right. And twitter, as a medium for me is no different than going on the air on world news or nightline or gma. I mean you can screw up on twitter. You cant screw up on air, i cant screw up on my reporting online. There is no differentiation anymore between the outlet any of us are on. But i just wanted to go back to what you were talking about right now and in terms of how this social media impacts us in real time. Just yesterday in the press briefing, when im sure all of us aware in here when sean spicer made the comment about the holocaust and syria, with which has blown up rightfully so. He made it. It landed in the press briefing. None of us really knew what to do with it. It took about five minutes or so, a few minutes. Were sometimes and looking on my phone. Suddenly were seeing on twitter. Were seeing from our newsdesk. This thing is blowing up. So we came back around and said, hey, sean, do you want to respond to this . It was in real time in that press briefing that comment was gaining traction. We gave him the opportunity to clarify. We know how that ended. It didnt kind of go very well from him. Ended up doing apology tour all night into this morning. So they, this white house i think even struggling with how to deal with this. Certainly impacts our reporting on a second by second basis. Thats a fascinating example. I did not know that was how that happened. We heard quite a few times this morning, particularly from fleischer and palmieri, that the press is biased, and Ari Fleischer particular. That i actually found that a very anachronistic point of view i think, in fact, you know, fox news is the number one cable channel, right . Breitbart we couldnt have the session we had this morning without breitbart being represented. Were in a new landscape where there is much broader range of voices on, you know in the media generally and it is because of the internet that made that possible in general. Fox notwithstanding. But, so, that anecdote shows the tale is wagging the dog a little bit as i said. The world is much bigger than the press and i do think that the internet has broadened the range of voices dramatically and included literally everybody. Just one final point, there is a professor at harvard who did a study of the media landscape on the internet and actually the landscape of the right is bigger than the landscape in the center and on the left. One of the other scary things in the analysis he did was that basically there is almost no communication across the divides. Just doing a mathematical analysis of traffic on the internet which is very disturbing. Isnt that the biggest story of all up here . The biggest story about the future of news those two alternative realities. Breitbart versus the New York Times or cnn up on this stage earlier. Is there anything facebook or other companies can do, because that is a profound wound, a gaping wound. That is question theyre asking at twitter and facebook now. Anybody that has read or hadnt read, Mark Zuckerbergs 5800 word essay about a month ago, five weeks ago very contritely acknowledged that fake news was a problem. Before we go there, can you remind us about november . You had him on stage a couple days of at election. Two days after the election where he said his i was interviewing him, he said its a crazy idea that fake news affected the election which he now essentially retracted. So you have seen them evolve in the span after few months . Evolved. I have a lot of respect for Mark Zuckerberg which is why i wrote a book about him. The guy is extraordinary. He is racking his brain about this. There are a lot of extremely conscientious people at facebook asking what does it mean that we are the fundamental landscape of information dissemination and what is our responsibility. I think it is healthy them asking that question. It is scary for society and in respect of my company, a commercial enterprise is in the position of making many of the decisions they have to make how toe prioritize public dialogue and truly a global issue. Just to throw in one data point on that, there was a great story in the guardian a week 1 2 ago how this make news problem is almost in every country. In germany alone there are 500 people working for facebook in berlin just combating fake news in german. Required to by certain mall. Taiwan, taiwanese government, facebook is doing theyre in all these countries. It is hard for a company to do it and im not sure a company should do it. That is the position were in. We invited them to be here today but facebook declined. Youre articulating a rapidlyevolving position. Last summer folks there said we dont have the responsibility to pop your filter bubble. Now looks like theyre starting to think they do have a responsibility. Theyre very responsible people very responsible people . David, they let me post lies and innuendo and spam, let me post whatever i want on facebook. They didnt have to do that 13 years ago. Users, not that easy for them to police all 2 billion people in real time. You have to keep that in mind. Now yeah. The existence of these platforms should be put on us, because were making them big by using them. Whose fault is anything . But i do think facebook takes their role very seriously. I dont think they have the answers yet for many of these problems. Carrie, does an outlet like politico think about writing stories reaching folks who prefer alternative reality where pizza gate is real or where the pope did endorse donald trump . Do you feel a need to pop those bubble. The pope did not endorse . Too soon. We feel the need to report on what is the facts and you know, on pizza gate or fit is donald trump claiming he created 600,000 jobs on his watch, writing story for context of that. That is what we attempt to do. So, yeah, we try, that is not sort of our sole mission these days to write when were presented with sort of glaring factual inaccuracies, i do think that we have an obligation to make that clear in the course of our writing and reporting on something. I think it has been interesting to watch the evolution of this over the course of the campaign into day, i dont know what were on now, 89 or something of Donald Trumps candidacy and presidency how we the media struggled to correct the record. Have we struggled . Do you think it has been i think it has been because, you know, lets just take the tweet on wiretapping, for example. Do we have to . Do we have to . Too soon also . At what point do we say in our stories, print or broadcast, digital or otherwise, this is just not true . Outright this is just not true. And i think we are now at that point where were doing that. I think it took us a while to get there because there was this sense of, is that our job as a media toe be factchicks every single thing, can we fact check every single thing we are writing on . I dont know that we can but doing much more than we were. Go from Fact Checking to narrative checking when he says he has 600,000 jobs created what is he really saying . Or is he going to build a wall. Right. You could make the case, carrie this white house has been pretty conventional. We heard that word couple times, conventional use of media has not been using daily Facebook Live shows with president. Has not been creating new form of media through social networks not all that disruptive. Would you ascribe to that idea . Weve seen some experimentation but the world has not been flipped on its head in the last 12 i dont weeks . I agree that there is a lot of tools that the white house could be using that Obama Administration used to great effect. Reaching out to folks through different platforms. Using the white house media apparatus to do videos and to do, their own, sort of news focused, you know, projects. I havent seen that yet. It is only three months in. We saw that early going. We saw a more nimble media team out of the Obama White House in terms of using all the possible tools at their disposal. We see the typical twitter, im still, in fact sean spicer does do media briefings every day i think that is a good thing. I support that. But that was something he threatened not to do at the beginning and he is doing it as i thought at the time when they were threatening not to do it, you get in there realize the power of being able to command an audience for 45 minutes, an hour, and he, as he does. He is changing the way that he reads off a lot of prepared remarks at the beginning of his briefing to get out a message and theyre using that. When the president decides toe bomb syria last week, the value of the press pool was clear t was 10 30, 11 at night he had a press pool to broadcast what he did. That is what we were saying beforehand, he will realize the power of having this White House Press corps there to broadcast what he does. Speaking of syria, cecelia, was there anything to learn of live coverage, special reports from the networks . Some shoddy audio when he did speak but the cameras were ready. Which night was this . The night of the syria strikes. Did you see anything about media tactics or techniques from this white house that stood out to you . Nothing that comes to mind. I was disappointed for example, with the Audio Quality was troubling. Camera wasnt there were issues with the rush to nature of it. I dont know. I guess i will, ill give them a little bit of slack on that one, right . It is the first time anything like this happened. He was at maralago. Right. Theyre, look, yeah they have to get the technology together. That is not the biggest offense in the world. Yeah. I think, just in terms of coverage, you know this white houses policy, when it comes to military action we will tell you about it after the fact essentially. I think that will be a struggle Going Forward in terms of our reporting. In our last few minutes, the future of news at large with the white house and beyond, david, what sort of predictions do you share, at your conference and what core predictions would you share with this audience about what well see happen between now and say 2020 when were all talking about reelection . For one thing, i think any politician with a head on their shoulders should emulate trump as much as they can in terms of his twitter presence because it serves him very well. It is major different tate tore from anybody that came before him that he tweets so much. It is a good thing as Kellyanne Conway said, a direct pipeline to a channel in his audience. Frankly good leaders should probably do that from now on. One of the ironies that the Obama Administration many of us in the tech world were critical of he got elected with social media. Once he got in office there was none in evidence to speak of. He didnt use it to govern or marshall a community of support for his policies once he was in office. Trump is definitely doing that. Whatever you say about the briefing, totally not my world which has been discuss ad lot up here today, what happens in the White House Briefing room. It is a little bit beside the fact at this point because there is another set of channels that exist and ultimately media is going to have to operate more in those channels than in the old one. I really do think that there has been, especially when i heard fleischer and palmieri talk, theyre just like sentimental for something that is no longer the land scale. Cecelia, do you agree . Youre in that Briefing Room . Yes and no. I think from a reporter from the journalistic perspective we need that Briefing Room. I think there is a huge value for both sides of this. The president needs that to get his message out. Sure he can circumvent the media as much as he wants to via twitter. You cant get a message out in 140 characters. Maybe he tweet out now and prove me wrong but it happened before. In terms of me the mission in terms of reporting in this administration and beyond is no different than when what it was when i started my career and all my colleagues came before me, it is the truth and matters now more than ever. We just cant screw up trying to get there. It is stay in your lane and do your job. It is no different now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. You say it is no different. That implies you think that is enough, reporting the truth and being clear on air is enough. As opposed to what . What is the alternative . Could i say so . I think, the alternative, it is not an alternative but it is an addition celebrating and including diversity of voices that now exist that were not available before. Truth is you all fine and good, i believe in it, believe me but its a new landscape. If you dont recognize that and operate accordingly which farenthold is ultimate proof point for you will not do as well. Carrie, what about politico views the future of news . How does the Company Change and adapt to what were describing up here . As i said earlier, it is a, an intensive process of examination of all the stories we put out or stories that have a lot of impact and a more scrutiny. Were looking for ways to reach new audience and new forms of story telling. New platforms to get that message out, thinking about the diversity of my newsroom, not only racial and gender diversity but geographic diversity, political diversity. That is an important as well. I think, there is, it is also a time where you know, ive spent a lot of time talking to reporters how theyre doing. There is, our newsroom folks have gotten threats and things mailed to their homes. And theyre in very, you know, difficult time doing their jobs. And that can wear on a newsroom and i have to be very conscious of that. And make sure that i, as much as an editor im almost a psychologist for some folks monitoring the room to make sure how people are doing. It is a different environment than the white house i covered. Theyre doing very important work. And it can be adversarial, but unhidden stories that the white house is also very, very, you know, accessible in a lot of ways, to my reporters and a lot of other reporters, there is a lot of access. That is a good thing. I think maintaining that sense of like doing a good job. We have to be airtight. We have to stick to the principles. We got to be aboveboard. We have to, you know, our business is were a nonpartisan newsroom. Youre describing evolution, not revolution. Doesnt sound like youre seeing revolutionary changes happening now . I have been asked that question a lot. Sort of with cecelia, there are cores we have to stick to but im trying to rack my brain to see having those conversations and buttress the journalism we do in this environment and it is challenging and im not getting behind in some way and, i think were all grappling with that. Cecelia, i wanted to wrap up going back to the title of this entire event this morning because, of course the First Amendment is a right in the title. The First Amendment and the first 100 days. I think we could make the case there has not been the illegal and other kind of threats against press freedom some may have feared before inauguration day. Right. Not yet. There is a giant asterisk to that. I wont say they will come or wont come. There were threats before. He made them. He was very clear funny you raised this, tweeted, put on my facebook today, i wish President Trump would carry out with his threats to improve the libel laws in this country and kick you out of the white house. You dont reply to that person do you . No. Reminding me why i dont check my facebook. I was just going to say. It could happen. It may. I dont know that it will. I know that part of my job is to hold the president accountable for things that he has said early on in this campaign that got him into office. I think the breitbart reporter was on this stage earlier raises one of the most important points of covering this presidency. There is a huge swath of this country that elected donald trump because they want libel laws to be strengthened. They want a border wall to be built. They want, pick your controversial issue he campaigned on. We have to hold him accountable and ask him about those promises and ones he is making and not following good on. Well see i guess is the answer. I have given up he predicting. Carrie, make you as floyd abrams as well as First Amendment lawyer, im sure lawyers thought through some of these issues before inauguration day. Maybe were alittle more on alert than they have in the past. Is there anything to say so far how things have gone . I think there is a lot of, there is a lot of alot of awareness of leak investigations. We hear that, there is a lot of education going on in terms of me and my other top editors about the possibility of more leak investigations and then preparing now for how we can protect ourselves. You talk to sources, right . How you talk to sources. What you agree to do. A lot of offensive discussions about how we can protect ourselves now with, assumption that well see more leak investigations, out of this white house than the last white house, even though the last white house, that was pretty aggressive about this so that is what were hearing. Of course, david, there is Technological Solutions to some of the problems that are posed by, for example, leak investigations. What are you referring to because new apps, new messaging Software People are using that are perhaps safer. Right, so of these very secretive, highlyencrypted message systems, yeah. Tools that can be used to evade a lot of things these days. David, are we more divided or more connected in this world . I think were more connected. Political division is some degree a function of connectedness. A function of proliferation of voices allowed to come to the surface that were suppressed before. That is part of what trump is saying and the breitbart people are saying. In the long run that is healthy although i dont agree personally with the a lot of those voice. Press and president reckoning with ability to hear from everybody at all times. To the panel, thank you very much for being here. And thank you all. [applause] that was great. Thank you, brian. Thank you the panel. To close out this great morning we turn to one of the wise men of washington journalism. Just as he closed out face the nation for many years with thoughtful commentary that made sense of it all, bob schiefer is here with us to share closing thoughts where we go from here and how we might do better. Its a special treat to welcome him back to the newseum. Of course he is a cbs news contributor around has spoken to the nation for decades about what is happening and how to make sense of it. He has been thinking a lot recently about the future of news, and that is the topic of his fifth book entitled, overload. Finding the truth in the deluge of news. That will be published this fall by roman and littlefield. A pleasure to welcome bob back. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you all so much for being here and, i want to congratulate you on your bladder control. [laughter]. I understand a lot of you have been here since 8 30 this morning. Im greatly honored if there is still somebody there. Good advice is like news. Its where you happen to find it, and i want to start this talk with some of the best advice i ever got. I did not get in my 60 years as a reporter on the job. I did not get it at a journalism school. I got it at an art school. Second only to my love of journal system my love of art. Back in the day when i was struggling to find my artistic style, an art instructor gave me some best advice i got on anything. He said look, stop worrying about your style. Just find an artist that you really like and copy him. Copy everything he does. And he says, as you do that, you will understand how he resolved the problems in your own style will evolve out of that. So i want to tell you this morning, if there are any aspiring reporters, if there are News Executives who are wondering what is it that a reporter is supposed to do, what is the role of the role of a journalist . I say this. Get the story that David Farenthold wrote how he covered the campaign and copy every single thing that he did. If you do that, you will be just fine. And that is the best advice i can give you this morning. I, i really enjoyed the discussion. I thought the Previous Panel was one of the most pertinent of the morning, and i thoroughly enjoyed hearing Brian Stelter and his crew there. It was quite good. I want to try, ive actually been asked to try to put all of this in some context. This was my 14th president ial campaign, and i will say this, it was not like the others. [laughter]. Normally a campaign has some slogan or something that always comes to mind when you think of a campaign or that reminds you of a campaign. I like ike, nixons the one, all the way with lbj. But the question i was asked most often and the thing that always comes to my mind that will make me remember this campaign was, have you ever . And i want to tell you the answer to that is no. I have never seen anything like this campaign. I said that so often on television during the campaign it became a drinking game among my younger colleagues at cbs. Every time, old bob said he aint never seen anything like that, they had to take another drink. Luckily we had, we had a lot of designated drivers so it all came out fine. This was truly a Campaign Like no other. It was a campaign where for the first time in a long time money didnt seem to matter. Just ask jeb bush about that. A campaign for the first time in modern history the two parties nominated candidate that a majority of people neither liked nor trusted. Where body parts got more attention than Foreign Policy at times. And where attitude often counted more than facts with voters. Was a campaign that provoked the former speaker of the house john bain are to brand candidate ted cruz as louisiana sy lucifer in the flesh. The devil worshipers society challenged that, not true. He is not one of us. It is true. You can look that up. [laughter] strong letter to follow but this was in my opinion the Worst Campaign i ever covered than the first of my life. Donald trump won the presidency but the biggest winner was this massive Cottage Industry thats growing up around our political campaigns. Once again, this year, a lot of people made a whole lot of money. I dont know what the voters got out of it but they did very well. Some of us were pleased with the outcome. Some of us were cast in despair. But i think the overall emotion felt by most people on Election Night was one of surprise. Even among the trump people, who i am told on Good Authority that their own pollsters gave them a 20 chance of winning. They were surprised too. We were the pointy headed intellectuals who couldnt park our bicycles straight when George Wallace ran and this year we were given some nasty names. Its all part of the job. Its something we all know about and expect. It is not that part is not to be taken seriously. But lets talk about this years criticism. First, the press was accused of electing trump because we gave him so much exposure. Then we were accused of knitting the story because missing the story because we did not take him seriously. Fortunately, we were said to not really make much difference because trump used social media to go around us. As my boss, david rose, says, you can pick your ownedded adventure because not all of them can be true. I believe trump won because he played by new rules, broke all the old rules and his opponent played by the old rules. He understand this is sort of obvious in retropick, but Sherlock Holmes says most things are own yaws in resident to expect. The said if he offered himself to enough Television Programs he would be invited to be on some of them and thats precisely what happened. I disagree with those who say the hosts didnt push back. They pushed back many times, but he was going on so many programs, so often, that the exposure overwhelmed the pushback. While people were pushing back on something he said yesterday, he was already on another program laying out new allegations. Whether the knew it or not he was practicing the political strategy that was first identified by an australian political consult consultand cae dead cat theory. The we way that works is, no matter the conversation in a dinner party, if you throw a dead cat in the middle of the table the conversation immediately turns to the dead cat. Donald trump threw dead cats on the table, dead or alive, and then the attention was back on him. I think in contrast the campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, did it the old way, concentrating on fundraise michigan and controlling the narrative. In other words, never leave your candidate in the position having to answer a question that does not fit the theme of the day, limit live interviews, respond to old questions with wellrehearsed focus group tested answers. After trump had been on morning joe a number of tomb is called them up and said why dont you have Hillary Clinton on . She said getting an interview with Hillary Clinton is like getting an interview with Mother Teresa and that sums occupy the whole cam sums up the whole campaign and by the time the other candidates understood what was happening, it was too late. People were disgust evidence with gridlock, politics as usual. And the number of people who identified themselves at democrats and republicans is at an alltime low. People didnt like the choice but they wanted change. Maybe it was no more complicated than what former First Lady Barbara Bush had mused in 2015 when she was urging her son, jeb, not run. Maybe it is that people are just tied of kennedys and clintons and bushes. She may may have been right. Found many people last year who either really liked or really disliked both of these candidates put i found no one who said they needed more information before deciding which one to vote for or to vote against. In that sense, and i believe that is some evidence that perhaps those of news the press did or jobs. Even so, there are some really serious lessons to be learned here. I think too much information made its way on to the national conversation, and once it got there, it was difficult to remove. We have to be quicker from now on and more vigorous, in challenging what we all came to know as fake news. Only now are we beginning to understand the danger that it poses. And only now are the big Distribution Companies we heard the discussion about facebook only now theyre recognizing, that they simply have to take some responsibility to what the information is that they are distributing. They are news media companies. Just like cbs news, and the Washington Post, and the New York Times. We take responsibility for what we distribute. They are going to have to find a better way to do that, too. In an effort to show balance, i think too many socalled surrogates and strategists made their way on to television, and were given far more credibility than they deserved. I kept wondering, id see somebody on television say, republican strategists or democratic strategists. What did that mean . They put out yard signs Previous Campaign . Clearly didnt take long to listen to them to understand they had no understanding and really no contact with either of the campaigns but there they were. I think for whatever reason, perhaps to add drama to increase the horse race tension, we tended to make, i think, too much of slight changes in the polls. We talked about one candidate or another leading by a single point. When in fact the shifts in those polls were well within the margin of error. Theres no such thing as a onepoint lead in any poll. I think we also placed too much faith in general in polling. The truth is, polling is simply not as good as it once was. Where respondents were once honored to be part of polls now people want nothing to do with pollsters. Fewer than 20 i beg your pardon fewer than 10 of the people polled now are willing to actually talk to a pollster on a phone. That raises really serious questions. I dont care how you weight these polls, what did the 90 of people, who refueled to talk to a pollster how do you determine what they had to say. A harvard historian told me something that i found fascinating. She said we are tending to look on polling data as some sort of higher truth, and she brought up an interesting point with the closing of so many newspapers and shrinking staff, she says that too many times we are replacing a lot of deep reporting and man on the street interviewing simply because those organizations dont have the people to do it anymore. With polling data were replacing it with what many News Organizations used to do. Theyd go to the local pta meet organize local bar, just talk to people and say how do you feel about this . What do you think about it . Surprisingly they deemed poll the dean of polling in america, peter hart the wall street journal abc poll, i guess it is peter said that he agrees with what joe lapore said. He told me that we have started thinking in statistics and taxes and an analytics and that doesnt work. They will tell where people shop or what people watch for movies but they dont tell you what is in peoples heart. We need to take that to heart. Need to get back to knocking on doors and asking people how they feel. Yes, we want polling to back it up but we need facetoface participation, and checking with people in these various communities. What really complicated this whole situation was that all of this is being played out, this campaign, which was the most unusual i can recall in the midst of a technological resolution that is having a profound effect not only on how we get news, but on our entire culture. The web gives us access to more information that any people who have ever lived on this earth at any one time have ever had access to. But are we just overwhelmed with information so much we cant process it, or are we wiser . I think a at then it we probably just overwhelmed. So much information we cant deal with it. The web gives us this unbelievable access, but there are some downside. The nuts can all find each other now. I dont care how bizarre your attitude or your feeling is about something, you can find somebody out there that adegrees with you, what your thinking. False news, some of this news by false false by design can good around the world in a millisecond, and it is simply going to have to be dealt with. The coming of digital has also thrown local newspapers into a downward economic spiral from which many are not going to recover. We lost 126 newspapers in this country over the last ten years. Other newspapers are down so thin that your water bill is probably thicker than the local newspaper some people get in their communities now. This has had a huge impact on politics, how Politics Campaign politicians campaign, how people find out what is running. Think, unless we find entity that can do what we have always expected of local newspapers, we are going to have corruption in this country, not just in politics but just corruption in general, at a level we have never seen in this country. This is the great crisis in journalism right now. The good news is, some of the bigger News Organizations, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, are finding ways to exist in this new and very Different Communications landscape. They are no longer just newspapers publishing a paper newspaper every day. They have become 24 7 multiplatform News Organizations. Companies that provide breaking news, video coverage, running commentary, web sites, newsletters, podcasts. Theyre looking for more and more ways to reach people, and the good news is this is working. While circulation of the paper newspapers is down, during november of last year, they beth the times and the post in one month, were reaching as many as 70 million viewers. 70 Million People were reading or finding some contact with those News Organizations. The News Organizations executives will tell you that while this technology is giving them this great reach, their viability will still depend on whether they are giving news that people need to improve their lives. If you can do that, if you can make your News Organization relevant by providing information that people have to have, then they will survive, and there must be new concentration on that by all News Organizations as we go forward, but the local level, many of the things these big newspapers have figured out how to do, they can be a pattern for News Organizations the local level. At cbs news, for example, we now have inaugurated a 24hour, allnews, streaming network, that you get on your ten or your laptop or your computer you depth get it on your Television Set unless you go through hulu or one of those organizations like that. During both political conventions last summer, we would sometimes have more people looking at that than were watching cbs news on the television network. So, there are ways, and we will fine a way to accommodate but this is just like were in a place here now wherety world was after the invention of the Printing Press. Martin luther said was god residents extreme u. S. Extreme u. S. , greatest get but there were religious wars after the invention of the Printing Press and eventually equilibrium was reachedded and we have not quite reached that but we have to recognize where we are. I want to close by talking about in this new and very different world, what is the role of the individual journalist, and quite simply, it is what it has always been, we are not the Opposition Party as some would have you belief. Nor do we believe we are, nor is is our place to sit down and shut up and let the world pass by as some have wished that we would do. The politicians, government officials, and journalists all have very different roles. The politicians are there to run the campaigns. Government officials there are to run the government. They are there to deliver a message. Our job is simply to check out the message, determine if its true, and if so, what will be its impact on the governed. In a Totalitarian Society there is only one source of news, and that is the government. And in our form of government, an independent press gathers Accurate Information and provides it to the citizens, and they can take that information, compare it to the governments version of events, and then decide what to do about it. Those who would underline our role are quite honestly i mean this correctly undermining the foundations of this country and what it was founded on. We must always remember, and never hold ourselves out to be the exclusive source of wisdom or morality. Were not. Our job is simply to ask questions, and to keep asking until we get an answer. That will not always be easy,