Pearlstine, van gordons van gos daughter. Welcome my name is doug brent, i have written fiction about the media and i wish i knew these four giants when i was doing my research because we cannot have a better panel for the topic today. I think most of you are familiar but i would like to begin with each of you giving a brief introduction of yourself starting with you dan. Dan abrams, abc news chief Legal Correspondent and for this purpose i cal have media heightm which covers medium politics and my latest book is on theater roosevelt and the big trial. I am rick single, my book is called information and how we lost the global battle against this information and what to do about it. That is the smallest part by the way. I was the editor of Time Magazine for many years and went into the Obama Administration where was undersecretary of state for Public Affairs and this book is about combating this information from the state department. My name is Van Gordon Sauter i used to work in newspapers and then did television and other things and i think my greatest distinction is i was the least successful anchorman in the history of commercial television. [laughter] and was fired. I am norman pearlstine, the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times and prior lives was a journalist working at bloomberg, forbes, time inc. In the wall street journal. You are my boss out time inc. Thank you. For the first question id love to hear from all of you, norman if i could start with you, and 2019, august the 2019 the New York Times read a headline that said trump urges unity versus racism. The headline was immediate controversy in the executive editor of the paper called internal staff meeting which there seems to be to factions, on the one hand journalist who felt that in this era the journals needed to take a more oppositional stance to the administration, be more resistant oriented. The other hand the journalist felt the paper needed to be careful not to do that and they needed to continue to practice the big j journalism. What do you feel is a role in this era of journalism and specific to the times, the only time you see a similar division and your staff . I think there are several components to that august 19 episode in the New York Times, one of which was the word racism, whether that was a fair label for the president or whether as a thing in older generation of editors felt that went to questions of intent and given that the president s elections, you are never sure whether it was racism or sexism or gender issues and so that was one part, the second, is the question of how much opinion editorial voice is appropriate in the news sections of various enterprises. I think with the growth of the 24 7 newsroom and with the speed with which news is disseminated, the longer followup pieces via newspapers are more akin to what magazines have traditionally done with a much more room for voice than the traditional newspaper. I think its a trend that will continue, its a difficult one to address and especially the side of that which is when the journalist who disagree with the phaseposition of a particular publication going twitter to voice the disagreements which in terms of free speech seems totally appropriate but in terms of understanding what the voice of a publication us can make it confusing. Rick can you, on that . I know you have thought. Its a good question. In the macro 30000, a real Inflection Point with journalism. We have been dealing with the fact that the economic model for journalism has basically gone away. But to your point about the president who i call this information isnt chief in my book. Ive been in government and journalism, there was always for a very long time, a kind of compact between people in government and journalist. The people in government tried to tell as much of the truth as possible and people in journalism tried to discover as much as the truth as possible. But you never had a chief executive who does not try to adhere to reality or facts or truth at all, we know how to deal with the president who tell some fiction, bill clinton for example. He even had a deal with the president Richard Nixon who committed a crime that involves deception. We dont really know how to deal with the president is constantly a font of disinformation where theres very little resemblance to any aspect of the trip read i dont know how to deal with that. One thing that i say in my book a little bit controversy, cnn had a whole lot more to do with the election of donald trump in russia today. Why do i say that, they put him on four hours every night getting free advertising, free material without it being corrected. One of the most substantial things that has to change and norm is dealing with this everyday, how do you rebut falsehood in realtime as quickly as possible, i think that is necessary and a requirement thats very hard to do. Problepart of the problem, and traditional journalism we have to repeat the falsehood to corrected but all of social science shows belief echoes, when you repeat a falsehood to corrected, the falsehood gets embedded in your mind and thats partially why hes been successful. The other thing i talk about in my book, the idea that the bad guys, putin in this case uses her furnace and objectivity against us. The book starts with russias invasion of ukraine and with crimea where putin said over and over there are no Russian Troops in crimea. That was a baldfaced lie over and over but over and over we reported that, we felt compelled to report it because theres a newsmaker making a statement. The question in the new era, is that something we should still do. I dont know the answer to that. You and i were talking about stage about changes in your nihilism that your scene, can you weigh in . I have not been involved in journalism for 25 years. But in the reagan. When i was running and News Organization, there was a general sense that the three networks in the major newspapers which obviously the Los Angeles Times was one drifted a little bit to the left and there eventually became an attitude that that was acceptable and had something to do with the dynamics of the earth twirling about. In the journalist hated reaga ad his policies. He viewed them as a form of a locust which would appear periodically and cause havoc. But it works. In reagan one and ended up to be one of the most admired and appreciated president s. That relationship, the little tilt to the left continued for years until we ended up with trump. Who correctly said represented all sorts of new challenges, most repundit. But he was the president and i think you can find many examples of our major newspapers and the Television Networks covering the president , his actions or lack of them with great objectivity. But there is another tear where i think a liberal biased is increasingly embedded in the journalism as a result of the trump experience and its accelerating and deepening the wedge in our society between the left and the right let me just finish. My concern is, when trump goes away in one or four years, that may not be corrected, that the journalist may be so comfortable with opinionated reportage in pieces and analysis that that may just become a condition in communications and or society and i think its going to be very detrimental. Im sorry go ahead. Would you see that as part of trumps strategy because the more News Organizations skew to be more resistant oriented, they are taken debate and playing it by seeding the ground of journalism and becoming of what theyve accused him of being. Sure. I think the first thing that would help from the media perspective is to admit exactly what he is saying, that the media and the people in the media are left of center, how far left are they, that a subject for debate, just a little bit to the left, far left, there is no question in my mind that if you were to pull the mainstream 80 organization in the people that work at them, there would be more people on the left then on the right. And i think you have to own that, to start in on honest conversation about where we go from here. And when she will not and say the media tends to be to the left of center, lets call it there for now, then when you Start Talking about what donald trump has done, then you can talk, i accept that, but lets also accept the fact that when you hold the media to the standard the media is held to which is any sort of hint of bias, rudeness on social media or atone that might be viewed as inappropriate, a story that they get wrong, it is huge news for the right, this is what you get from the left. And the answer is, the president lies much more than the media does. There are many more errors and mistakes coming from the president then from the media. And the problem is, many on the right dont trust the media. So the challenge becomes trying to convey the sense and ability to evaluate on a casebycase basis the facts, who is right on this. The medias challenges, we have got to try to get people to trust us. When so many people on the right do not trust the media, it is a real challenge, thats why im saying you have to start by admitting that the media tends to skew left. There is nothing new with this idea that people in the media are liberal and are democrats. If you started doing media poles 25 years ago in the media has gotten progressively more liberal but from 75 to 80 . They do the same poles with higher education. Academics and professors, same percentage, 75 80. 85 are liberal. But the thing that i found that people in government did not get and all of us as journalist yet and i look at the people in government, journalists are bias. They are biased at getting the story on the front page, biased of getting her face on the evening news broadcast. Ive never in my life saw a journalist not to his story because it may have violated his or her politics if they thought it was a good story. The reporter for the Los Angeles Times suddenly discovered that donald trump has solved the bullet crisis, they will go even if that person thinks that donald trump is awful. That is ignoring the subtleties of bias. I dont know how you can talk left right, when clapper, bolton, and matus are the enemies of the white house, you get into all types of troubles by going left right when really youre trying to assess what to do with ramp it dishonesty of the level weve never experienced before. And i think rick, you are absolutely right, repeating the misdirection that come out of the white house is an extraordinary challenge for us. At one point i played with the idea that whenever there would be a trump a eruption like that we would have a paragraph box online or in. Called pending verification and what we would do is. The assertion and not interpret it and not explain and not tried to figure out how it would go back and support. I think in the end our responsibility really went beyond the wish of mind but that seemed to be the only way to deal with the failures that come when you repeat the lies. My concern is that people will not trust your boxes. And you still need people who are going to say i track enter trust their boxes. And the stuff needs to be checked in realtime. But the bigger problem is that there are probably no to very few, you can say its not about right left, conservatives who will leo the Los Angeles Times think that their main place of news. The conservative. I am saying conservatives and im saying people who identify themselves right of center are probably almost none or very few who would consider the Los Angeles Times to be their primary source of news, not an attack on the Los Angeles Times, its a reality. There was a poll the other day and im trying to remember about news sources trusted by left and right. And one thing amused me, among Republican Voters who are often trump voters apparently that the new source they trusted overwhelmingly was fox news. So we can say that has its own bias. But the number to place a trusted was the bbc, having been in government and journalism, there is nothing more liberal and left than the bbc, even in america theres nothing as left as the bbc. Part of the flaw of looking at what people read, the idea that journalists have that somehow i will change peoples mind by what i do. The number of times that journalism has changed somebodys mind in Human History is three or four times, people dont change your mind about things, the idea that if it were objective, people on the left or the right are going to appeal, that idea has been destroyed. Again go to social science, confirmation bias that we seek out information that we already agree with, thats the reason there is this divide because people on the right seek out information they think confirms what they believe and people on the left do the same thing. I dont know that the train will ever meet or should. On a related point, this week don lemon is getting a lot of low back because hes a declared journalist and had a segment that revealed bias against trump and trump supporters. In a more general sense, how comfortable should we be with the separation we have accepted that there is a straight news side and an opinion site and cable or in the newspapers, is that a distinction that we should be living with . I dont think don lemon would say he doesnt give opinion on his show,. He seems to declare himself as a journalist. With that said, convincing the public of separation between the editorial page in the news page is very difficult to do, when fox says our opinion people at night and are straight news people during the day and you evaluate and say there seems to be a lot of bleeding over, same thing with msnbc, and some degree of cnn as well. It is something that i think is a great separation, i think people like norm, take really seriously and i dont think the public appreciates how fiercely the divide is taken and how much work goes into separating those with the walls that exist. It is really hard to convince people of that. Look, i think it still exist, i think im not willing to throughout my arms and say theyre all the same because i know how much effort goes into both newspapers, online publication and on the cable side of having some level of a separation. Do you see bias bleed into the new side in. Or elsewhere . I think the liberal versus conservative is one and its certainly true that most journalist was self identify as liberal rather than conservative. But thats not what were dealing with here unless you want to say that climate denial is solely the province of the right and not the left an Antivax Movement is a product of the right rather than the left. These are the issues that if you will have become much more important than saying supply economics versus keynesian economics. And what i find so difficult and trying to cover this administration is if you will the ways in which anyone who disagrees has demonized as being to the left of mainstream opinion. So if you take an example like environment, if you get someone like Jonathan Nadler from case western, a very conservative environmentalist professor, if you. A piece from him you get all kinds of criticism from accusing him as a liberal voice. Far from it. But if you will if you focus on the left versus right has always been important in journalism but thats not what were dealing with. Can you weigh in on this . I am a conservative. I must say i read your paper and i find most of the stories about trump that are real news stories are in my opinion acceptable. I might juggle that or juggle this and throw in a paragraph or sentence. But i cannot sit there as a news consumer and say its norman and the wretched commies. I think the paper does a good job. But once you leave the story, there are all sorts of pieces that are done, theoretically analysis pieces where its so clear what the orientation of the writer may be and then later in the paper in the entertainment section, and the book review section, there are all of these objected and ten trump observations. So i look at it and say whoever edits the news in that paper is doing a hell of a good job. But somehow in those things on the side, there is a different form, in the mid 60s mid 80s i had lunch with jean compactor who was reagans chief Foreign Affairs advisor in the first woman ambassador to united nation. And as was her want she began to throw bread at me about all the liberals in the News Business. And i said jean we are trying to hire people that dont have any obvious orientation. And she said something to the effect, they all do. In the truth of the matter is and i think you have absolutely right, our colleges which are dominated by liberals, liberal professors are turning out the students who never hear another opinion unless on their grandfather and they cannot get out of my way. And i think the journalistic population which is made up of really well motivated, delightful, articulate engaging people, they never got the message. We tried at cbs to the degree that we tried because the feeling, 35 years ago was just below the surface. And we need a journalist, which is so clear and conscientious of the left and the right can find a credible place to believe they were getting the straight story. If you dont have that, its over. They make my mom will say are you watching cable, the ideas are a business model. The last time i checked it is a very profitable operation. Cnn is the hugely Profitable Organization and a lot of that comes from its International Person in a small amount of it comes every time you walk into an airport just rote task locations on the bus should be subjected to. But the ultimate indignity is you sit there and start raising fearful of everything going on around you. It is just unnerving. Cnn is on every airport in america. Why is it that cnn, which no rational person watches on a regular basis, why is it that cnn oki getting you are here to hear my opinion, not argue about theres only one cable channel via lax and i would love your organization to say cnn is the mostwatched Cable Organization in america. Its the only thing to see on the tv station. They are straight news and then theres opinions. Theres also news thathere is aa point of