Youre going to move record out of the way. Youre going to move music out of the way and let them do what they do. Unless its premised on something entirely different, which is cool, you wouldnt be looking for talent anyway. You let people do what they do, give them rope and let them connect in ways only a truly talented person can connect. John, the greatest commitment you could pay me and you paid me was that i asked you tough questions. I would hate to stand here or sit here in front of our peers and ask you softball questions. But i wouldnt ask any question that i didnt think you can answer, so my compliment back to you as you did a heck of a job answering some tough questions and im very grateful. Thank you john dickey. Thank you. Thursday between 1 00 p. M. And 8 00 p. M. On cspan3, a focus on issues related to aging. Well show you a Senate Hearing on effort to fight alzheimers disease followed by portions of white house conference on aging 67 6789. Next a group of reporters discuss their joshs covering the white house and changing relationship between president ial relations and press core. After that cartoonists discuss the role of satire. Then a look at history of gridiron dinner started in 188 5. The annual Event Features journalist, politicians and government officials. Following that the future of radio and Industry Trends including Digital Technology and the changing landscape of political talk shows. A group of reporters discuss their jobs covering white house and changing relationship between president ial administrations and press corps. Correspondents peter baker, jim avila of abc news, ap reporter josh leaderman and scores hor horseley participate in this national event. Pe t everyone else going back to work. Hae anof your i hope that doesnt make your competitive anxiety come in. Pan. Thank you for taking time out oh your news day to be part of thi conversation. This is scholarship panel, our 17 scholars in the front. They will get a chance to ask aj couple questions as we go along here. I hope this will be valuable for everybody in the room, even if a youve been covering the white e house from 10 yearss or 20 yea, theres always something to learn from your colleagues to da it well. Thats who is on the panel this year. Of the ill introduce them by name and let them tell stories, tricks of the trade. Im cohosting with carol lee, e Vice President of the sba. White house correspondent for wall street journal. Breaks a lot of news at the n. White house. She does domestic, foreign, we t chase her all the time. Its great to have her perspective on this panel, too. E immediately to my left is Josh Lederman. Jim avila works for abc news, my old colleague from chicago. He now covers white house for a abc. Scott horsely White House Correspondent. Peter baker correspondentve for New York Times and, of course, carol lee. Lets give them a hand. I really love the range of winners we have this year, ethe because when you put this group of four people together and looa at the way theyve covered the beat, they really show a diverse approach to covering the white house. Excell and each has excelled in a distinct way of doing their job. I want to start with josh yo lederman who does classic beat reporting on the secret service has everybody heard of the fence jumper. You ever heard of the fence jumperfo . Thats someone who climbs the fence and typically gets tackled before they make it over but one night that was not the case. Som 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. Ite even there were a handful of us from the wires and from a few of the Television Networks who were whw still in the building. We started to hear a commotion outside the doors of the press Briefing Room. A few of us ran outside to kind of see what was going on. It seemed from the flurry of activity with secret service that there was something going on. Now, those of us that are spend a decent amount of time at the white house know that lockdowns at the white house are relatively routine. Even fence jumpers happen, you know, three, four times a year t its an event, but not a not particularly remarkable one. Vel but there seemed to be something a level of alarm that the secret service was displaying that suggested that this may have t been a little bit something out of the ordinary. I headed into the press area ofw 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, you know, figure out if i could figure out what was going on. And nobody had they said, no, everythings fine. We would have gotten an email some something happened. Nothings happened. Right about that Moment Secret Service agents stormed in from the west wing with these reallye large like, semi automatic weapons that, you know, youve seen the secret Service Carry a them around. R the counter tactical teams, sort of on the grounds of the , white house. Of on it was the first time id ever seen one of those out and sort of in shooting position inside the actual west wing. And they immediately pulled us s all, those of us who were in the press offices, down into the ts 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 knowd obama Senior Advisor and his Communications Director who were also being evacuated first into the basement and then shortly thereafter outside into this ler middle ground between the entrance to the west wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office building. This was another one of the indications that something was happening that might have been a little different than the usualv fence jumper who hops over, the dogs nab him and its kind of end of story. Game over. My it was the fact they had e evacuated most of the white ho house. In my two and a half years at the white house i cannot had remember any time when there had been an evacuation of the white house. Ey wer and you could tell from the waye that they were the secret service was first trying to make sure any foreign nationals that had been in the building were out and escorted out to the street. T the just from their general behavior that there was something more to this story than what a usual fence jumper f how were you able you o posted something on the wire before midnight that night, how were you able to confirm something enough to start the wire reporting . The first report that i filed came, actually, from a uniformea secret Service Agent who was not supposed to be talking to the press but was sort of in this fray of people running around. And basically told us there was somebody that hopped the fence and thats what were dealing with. Bodynce so we moved from my phone i ph filed a quick story that hit the wire probably around 8 33 about that situation. Rvice the secret service went on lock down. They wouldnt talk to anyone. They told us they were scrambling people to come down to their headquarters to start dealing with this. They were getting their ducks in a row before they would talk to anyone. Ou around 10 00 p. M. They kicked us out of the white house as they nd do in the evenings. I relocated to my apartment and we continued to just hammer allt our sources to try and figure out what exactly had gone on. Llt and right around midnight we hd found out that yes, there had been a fence jumper, but not only that, but he had actually made it inside the white house e which was an unprecedented Security Breach that raised alli kinds of questions about whethen the security protocols that thea have to respond to fence jumpers is really adequate. We knew this was going to be a t big story. Ory. So we popped out an alert. Fro just around midnight. From there, started b building a breaking story, you d know, trying to wrap in both the details of what had happened and this one incident and sort of the broader implications for the secret service. You did some reporting by twitter that night, is that right. Sodeerid one of the problems was this was a friday evening very late, and there was no one around. Und. And the kind of flurry of reaction you would start getting unsolicited on a thursday et afternoon or something from members of congress and 30 Interest Groups that want quote in your stories were all asleep or drunk or at their parties or doing Something Else. Hing e i happened to notice a tweet from congressman Jason Chaffetz of utah who was going to be the incoming chairman of the house with jurisdictions over the secret service saying something about how alarming it was. Nd 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 oiv 4 00 a. M. D. C. Time. But was able to get him to agree to do an email interview over his using his in flight wireless while he was on the flight. So through that process we were able to learn that there had been another series of other Security Breaches that he had been investigating for more than a year, to be able to get that context and his reaction into al 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 commene for the young journalists in the room. The this, to me, speaks volumes temt about importance of beat reporting at the white house. E e if the reporters hadnt been there the statement from the secret service would have been nothing to see here, dont worry about it. If josh hadnt been there on a regular basis and understood the pinpo of the white house and realized something really in important was happening and sorl of being able to pinpoint where it was happening, thats all part of the beat reporters tool kit. Lets pause there and go to a ho beat reporter who did somethingd totally different when the storr started to break about the warming 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. I have been covering cuba sincee the pope went back there in 1996 intermittently. Ere. I had sources there i was there during the elian crisis, too. I had sources there and worked them as well as working the work white house sources and also some sources in town who n w represented to allen gross as well. Hon i first started getting interested in the story because i wanted to interview allen gross. That was the impetus of it. Us o he was in prison i wanted to goi back to cuba. I thought it would be a good way to do it. Would be 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. To allen says hes going to die atd 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 we found out who his attorney was, we started tn working him about can we get in there, 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 neither cuba nor the united unid states wanted this man to die ie prison. Pr neither side did. Is but there was the issue was tha there were five cubans who werei in the United States in prison and three of them were still in prison, two of them had been hem released and the cubans wanted d Prisoner Exchange. E deba the United States didnt want to do a Prisoner Exchange. They were debating about it,g e they were talking about it. I started working my white house sources. And trying to find out what stage they were in. At first it was just sort of well the word i remember clearly was a very high up source in the National Security council telling me that me that something was percolating. And 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 or the networks especially and i think some magazines and newspapers as well trying to get away from is traveling with thed president all the time. And but one of the we keep pushing back to our bosses pushn about, at least the network rk level, is that yes, there may not be huge stories that were s going to break on these trips with the president when he goese places but we have unusual my access during my colleagues know that. We have unusual access to the people who normally had may not return your call when youre in washington. Youre 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. Hig and it was on one of these trip. Where a very high up person told me before the end of the year. A so we had we sort of knew we worked, focused on that. All this time we werent doing any stories about it. A this was all ground work. Nditio we didnt do any stories about what was happening, an occasional piece on how alan aie gross was, what his physical condition was. G to we didnt do 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. Then we actually nailed down th week it was going to happen. When i nailed down the week it was going to happen from a a source not at the white house, i went to the white house. N youus and i said, look, im about to report this. My is that going to this was an interesting question for you guys to talk about as students about how, you know, 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 let vacation. If i reportack this, is that g to jeopardize alan grosss life because he had threatened to kill himself if he didnt get released. If the white house said, well, let me get back to you. Ou 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. C if you dont if you wait, and well you can report it first, and then well verify it with everybody else afterwards, immediately afterwards. S as soon as he wheels up and out of cuban airspace, and therefore hes safe. Cal and so my producer and i who ist 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 and we went with the story and broke it on good morning america. T part of the deal also 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 oub 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 cuba. I would highlight one point he made in all that. Which is an incredible story. That is 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. If they want to play ball, which they clearly did with you, then they will. If not, then you have a choice e to make to do your own story either way. The question for you is, if you did they make his life is neb threatened case to you, or did they say, no, but if you wait, well do this . Sation the case they made was if wea were to what they were concerned about, i have to be careful a little bit because some of it is off the record conversations. E wa in general what the white house was concerned about was inflaming miami before it happened. Me and in some way, that would cause some kind of incident that would stop the negotiations. And, therefore, indirectly put alan grossed life in jeopardy,ry because he had threatened his own life at the end of the year. This was december 17th. This was getting close to the end of the year. W,foul u so they made that they didn foul up the negotiations. There wasnt any and they sna made it clear, there is nobody i right nows who is anywhere nea as close to the story as you are. It is not going to break somewhere else. If you are patient, youll have a much better story. We wont jeopardize the mans life. So we decided we had a good th t clean kill andha we might as we just stay with that. Source how do you develop a source like that whom who will tell you at the critical moment it is 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 who they r are. In the this person was involved in the negotiations. So if you know that if you tk know that somebody has that kind of direct this was not a third party. This was not someone in the proh office. This was not a secretary or Something Like that. This was an individual who was directly involved. Im so, and how do we get to know them, we get to know them by being there and going on these trips. And you have to say too, and each one of us works for on this panel works for a distinguished organization. It isrily not necessarily the reporter in general, it is alsoh because ofip our audience and o, readership. We have to w h you work for organization that has some infl influence and that does help. I mean a. P. , i dont have to tell everybody what everybody does here. But every one on this panel hav influential viewers and we havee massive viewers as opposed to the New York Times or listening to npr, but we have 10 million or 12 Million Viewers<