Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On The Press And The Presi

CSPAN3 Discussion On The Press And The Presidency June 22, 2024

Yet, some totally destroyed. Youll see some trailers in front of the homes where people are working on them, but youre not going to see the vibrant community it once was. More from the tenth anniversary programming on hurricane katrina, including this entire hearing, and more from people on the ground about the storm. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern time on cspan. A group of reporters discuss their jobs covering the white house and the changing relationship between president ial administrations and the press corps. Correspondents peter baker of the New York Times, jim avila of abc news, ap Reporter Josh Lederman and Scott Horsley of npr, participate in this National Journal event. Everyone else is going back to work. I hope that doesnt make your competitive anxiety set in. This is a great group. Thank you all for coming and taking time out of your news day to be part of this conversation. This is, of course, our annual scholarship panel. We have our 17 scholarship winners sitting in the front. Theyll get a chance to ask a few questions as we go along here. I hope this will be valuable for everybody. The practicing journalists in the room, too. Even if youve been covering the white house for 10 years, 20 years, theres always something to learn from your colleagues who do it well. Thats who is on the panel today. These are the four White House Correspondents among the winners of our whca excellence in performance of journalism awards this year. Ill introduce them to you by name. And then were going to theyre going to tell some stories for us and give us some of the tricks of the trade. Im cohosting this with carol lee, the Vice President of whca. She is the White House Correspondent for the wall street journal. She breaks a lot of news at the white house. She does domestic, she does foreign. We chase her all the time. Its great to have her perspective on the panel, too. Immediately to my left is Josh Lederman of the associated press. He works at the white house booth of the ap jim avila works for abc news. My old colleague from chicago. He now covers the white house for abc. Scott horsley is White House Correspondent for npr and a member of the whca board. Peter baker is correspondent for the New York Times. And, of course, carol lee. So, yeah, lets give them a hand. [ applause ] thank you. I really love the range of winners we have this year because when you put this group of four people together and look at the way theyve covered the beat, they really show a diverse approach to covering the white house. Each has excelled in sort of a distinct way of doing their job. I want to start with Josh Lederman, who did some classic beat reporting on the secret service. Has everybody heard of the fence jumper . You know what a fence jumper is . Okay. Thats a person who climbs over the fence of the white house and typically gets tackled before they make it across the north lawn. But one night, that was not the case. And Josh Lederman was standing his post at the ap booth. Why dont you pick it up from there. I think it was around 8 00 p. M. Or so. Most of the correspondents at the white house had already left for the evening. The news day was basically over. There were a handful of us from the wires and from a few of the Television Networks who were still in the building. Started to hear a commotion outside the doors of the press briefing room. A few of us ran outside to see what was going on. It seemed from the flurry of activity of the secret service, there was something going on. Now, those of us that are spending a decent amount of time at the white house, know that lockdowns at the white house are relatively routine. Even fencejumpers happen, you know, three, four times a year. You know, its an event but not particularly a remarkable one. But there seemed to be something a level of alarm that the secret service was displaying that suggested that this may have been a little bit something out of the ordinary. I headed into the press area of the white house, which is sort of at the entrance to the west wing, for those of you who havent spent a lot of time there. To try and figure out if i could figure out what was going on. Nobody had any they said, no, everything is fine. We would have gotten an email if something had happened. Nobody had gotten an email. Right about that moment, secret Service Agents came stormed in from the west wing with these really large, semiautomatic weapons. Youve seen the secret Service Carry them around. Theyre the counter you know, their tactical teams sort of on the grounds of the white house, but it was the first time id ever seen one of those out and sort of in shooting position inside the actual west wing. They immediately pulled us all, those of us in the press offices, down into the west wing and into the basement. So, it ended up that i was down in the basement with most of the white house officials, you know, obamas Senior Adviser and his Communications Director, who were also being evacuated first into the basement and shortly thereafter outside into this middle ground between the entrance to the west wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office building. This is another one of the indications that something was happening that might have been a little bit different than the usual fencejumper who hops over, you know, the dogs nab him and its kind of end of story, you know, game over. The fact that they had evacuated most of the white house. In my 2 1 2 years at the white house, i could not remember at any time when there had really been an evacuation of the white house. You could tell from the way that they were the secret service was first trying to make sure that any foreign nationals that had been in the building were out and escorted out to the street, and just from their general behavior, that there was something more to this story than a usual fencejumper. How were you able you put something on the wire before midnight that night. How were you able to confirm something enough to start the wire reporting . The first report i came came from a Uniformed Secret Service agent who was not really supposed to be talking to the press but was in this fray of people running around and basically told us there was somebody that hopped the fence and thats what were dealing with. So from my phone i filed a quick story that hit the wire around 8 00, 8 30 about that situation. But the secret Service Really went on lockdown. They wouldnt talk to anyone. They told us they were scramb scrambling people to come down to their headquarters to start dealing with this. But they were getting their ducks in a row before they started talking to anyone. Around 10 00 p. M. Or so they kicked us out of the white house, as they do in the evenings. I relocated to my apartment and we continued to just really try and hammer all of our sources to try to figure out what exactly had gone on. And right around midnight we found out that, yes, had been a fencejumper, but not only that, but he had actually made it inside the white house. Which was an unprecedented Security Breach that raised all kinds of confess about whether the security protocols that they have to respond to fencejumpers is really adequate. Ed we knew this was going to be a big story. So we popped out an alert around midnight and from there started building a breaking story, trying to wrap in both the details of what had happened in this one incident and sort of the broader implications for the secret service. You did some reporting by twitter that night, is that right . One of the problems was this a friday evening, very late, and there was no one around. And the kind of flurry of reaction you would start getting unsolicited on a thursday afternoon or something from members of congress and 30 Interest Groups that want quotes in your stories, you know, were all asleep or drunk or at their parties or doing Something Else. I happened to notice a tweet from congressman Jason Chaffetz of utah, who at that point was going to be the incoming chairman of the house Insight Panel with jurisdictions over the secret service, saying something about how alarming it was. I made contact with him through twitter only to find out he was on a plane flying home to his district and was not going to be landing until, you know, Something Like 3 00 a. M. Or 4 00 a. M. D. C. Time. But was able to get him to agree to do an email interview over his using his inflight wireless while he was on the flight. So, through that process we were able to learn that there had been another a series of other Security Breaches that he had been investigating for more than a year, and to be able to get that context and his reaction into the story as well. That is shoe leather reporting in the digital age. I want to pause on that story right now. I just want to make this comment for the young journalists in the room. This is to me, this speaks volumes about the importance of beat reporting at the white house. Because if the reporters hadnt been there, the statement from the secret service would have been, nothing to see here. Dont worry about it. And also if josh hadnt been there on such a regular basis and sort of understood the rhythm of the white house and realized that something really important was happening and sort of being able to pinpoint where it was happening, thats all thats all part of one of the part of the beat reporters tool kit. Lets pause there and go to a beat reporter who did something totally different when the story started to break about the warming of relations between the u. S. And cuba. He reported at the white house but then he got on a plane. Tell us that story. This is about the release of allen gross, who was a hostage in prison in cuba for five years. How it started is its really a combination of sources at the white house, sources in cuba. Ive been covering cuba since the pope went there back in 96 intermittent intermittently, so i had sources there. Was there during the elian crisis, too. So, i had sources there and worked them as well as working the white house sources and also some sources in town who represented allen gross as well. I first started getting interested in the story because i wanted to interview allen gross. That was sort of the impetus of it. He was in prison and i thought, i wanted to go back to cuba. I thought that would be a good way to do it, to try to get an interview with him. As i started making inquiries about that to the cuban government, they said, well, you know, we dont think thats going to happen. Allen says hes going to die at the end of the year by starving himself to death. Were not really going to give him any interviews. So that was sort of the start. Then i went to his we found out who his attorney was. We started working him about, you know, can we get in there . Can we get some video of him . Can we do something . And we started getting hints from sources that something was in the works. That perhaps he would that the United States neither cuba nor the United States wanted this man to die in prison. Neither side did. But there was the issue was that there were five cubans who were in the United States in prison, and three of them were still in prison, two of them had been released, and the cubans wanted a Prisoner Exchange. The United States didnt want to do a Prisoner Exchange. They were debating about it, they were talking about it. And so i started working the white house my white house sources. And trying to find out what stage they were in. And at first it was just sort of, well, something the word i remember clearly was, a very highup source in the National Security counsel telling me that something was percolating. And that was about two months before the release, i think it was. And its interesting where this happened, too. I will say that one of the things that we are getting away from, the networks especially, and i think some magazines and newspapers as well, trying to get away from is traveling with the president all the time. But one of the and we keep pushing back to our bosses about, at least at the network level, is that, yes, there may not be huge stories were going to break on these trips with the president when he goes places, but we have unusual access during my colleagues know that. We have unusual access to the people who normally dont may not return your call when youre in washington. But when youre in china or youre in burma or youre in hawaii for two weeks with the president , theres a lot of time to talk informally with people who are your sources. And it was on one of these trips where a very highup person told me, before the end of the year. So we had we sort of knew we worked it, we focused on that. All this time we werent doing any stories about it. This was all groundwork. We didnt do we did an occasional piece how allen gross was and what his physical condition was. In general we werent doing stories every day on it. I was going about my other work. And then we actually nailed down the week it was going to happen. When i nailed down the week it was going to happen from a source not at the white house, i went to the white house. And i said, look, im about to report this. Is that going to this was an interesting question for you guys to talk about, as students, about how and my colleagues as well. We went to the white house and i said, this is what i have. I know its going to happen this week before he goes on his vacation. If i report this, is that going to jeopardy allen grosss life because he had threatened to kill himself if he didnt get released. The white house said, well, let me get back to you. And they did. To their credit, they did get back to me. They said, okay, you have it. It is going to happen on that day. Heres the deal. If you dont if you wait, and well you can report it first, and then well verify it with everybody else afterwards, immediately afterwards. As soon as he wheels up and out of cuban air space and, therefore, hes safe. And so my producer and i, who is here, flew to miami and waited for a call from josh earnest. And i was in front of a live camera, i got a call from josh earnest, we went with the story and broke it on good morning america. And part of the deal was that our anchor, david muir, would get an interview with president obama about the this was not just about Prisoner Exchange but was in fact the beginning of a new era of relations between our two countries and david muir was able to sit down with president obama and talk with him about that. I went on from miami to cuba and reported that evening on the evening news about the reaction in cuba. I guess i would highlight one point that he made in all of that, which is an incredible story. And that is that he did not get his very solid information from inside the white house. That is most often the case, the best stuff comes not from them. And, you know, you so often you have something from somewhere else and then you go to them. Right. If they want to play ball, which they clearly did with you, then they will. If not, then you have a choice to make to do your own story either way. I guess the question for you is, if you did they make his life as threatened case to you, or did they say, no, but if you wait, well do this . The case they made was if we were to what they were concerned about, i have to be careful a little bit because some of it is offtherecord conversations. In general what the white house was concerned about was inflaming miami before it happened. And in some way, that would cause some kind of incident that would stop the negotiations. And, therefore, indirectly put allen grosss life in jeopardy because he had threatened his own life at the end of the year. This was december 17th, so this was getting close to the end of the year. So they made that they didnt have to make that case that strongly. They said, you know, this could foul up the negotiations. There wasnt any and they made it clear to me there was nobody right now who is anywhere near as close to the story as you are. Its not going to break somewhere else. If youre patient, youll have a much better story. We wont jeopardize the mans life. We decided that we would we had a good clean kill, we might as well just stay with that. How do you develop a source like that whom you who will tell you at a critical moment its percolating and have enough knowledge of that persons workings to know that you would trust them and read them correctly . Well, part of it is, you know, who they are. This person was involved in the negotiations. So if you know that, if you know that somebody has that kind of direct this was not a third party. This was not someone in the press office. This was not a secretary or Something Like that. This was an individual who was directly involved. So, im and how do we get to know them . We get to know them by being there and going on these trips. And, you know, you have to say, too, and each one of us works for on this panel works for distinguished organizations. Its not necessarily the reporter in general. Theyre not its also because of our audience and our readership. You know, we have you work for an organization that has some influence, and that does help. I mean, ip i dont have to tell everybody what everybody does here, but certainly everyone on this panel have influential viewers. We have massive viewers as opposed to maybe less influential than the New York Times or npr. We have 10 million, 12 Million Viewers that evening. And so when they want to talk, they want to talk to us. So thats one of the ways. I want to go now to Scott Horsley. Everybody listens to npr here, right . I love scotts reports bec

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