but my sense is that one of them involves this long general election. is the public losing interest in the way we cover the presidential campaign? the justice department is investigating national security leaks to "the new york times" and critics blame the obama team for spilling some of the secrets that put the administration in a favorable light. >> a firestorm today as republicans claim the white house has been leaking national security secrets to the press, to make president obama look good. >> david sanger, the author of one of those stories, will be here. plus walter cronkite was the most trusted man in america. >> and that's the way it is, friday, march 6th, 1981. >> but sometimes he did things that were rather untrustworthy. would that have gotten him fired today? we'll ask his biographer, doug brinkley. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." remember when the republican primaries were going strong and we all bounced from bachmann to trump to perry to cain and the hottest story around was who would win iowa. >> and what an extraordinary night here in des moines. welcome to abc news's special coverage of the iowa caucuses which basically ended in a dead heat. >> iowa gop chairman matt strong making the announcement that governor mitt romney, former governor romney, won the iowa caucuses by eight votes. >> but the tone was a bit more subdued by the time mitt romney officially clinched the gop nomination. >> he goes over the top with 1,144 plus delegates he needs to get the nomination in tampa. texas did it for him. >> this is not a surprise. once everybody else was effectively out of the race, and frankly before everybody else was out of the race, you could do the math pretty easily. >> now we're in the dog days of the campaign and coincidentally or not, cable news ratings are down. fox news down nearly 250,000 viewers in primetime since january, but from a much higher base of almost two million viewers. msnbc down 130,000 in primetime and cnn has been hardest hit down 450,000 viewers during those primetime hours. how much of this has to do with an increasingly dull political season? joining us is christina bellantoni, paul farhi, media reporter for the "washington post" and terrance smith. terry, cable news still immersed in this presidential campaign, 34% of the time according to a recent report, but many viewers may not be. >> obsessed, i would say is the word. i'd like to put the decline in ratings down to viewers' taste and discrimination, but i doubt that's the real cause. in this case -- i mean we're in a lull in the political campaign right now, between the freak show that we had in the early primaries where you literally couldn't believe that this was the cast of characters and this was going to -- okay, that's over. you have romney, you have obama. i don't think the public will pay much attention again until the conventions or the debates. but the cable news channels don't seem to know that and haven't noticed. >> as you know, christina bellantoni, cable loves drama. once romney wrapped things up, we get this long drawn-out six month general election. >> there's far less tension. particularly after rick santorum said he wasn't running anymore. when you talk to voters and ask them what they want to see as far as news coverage, they frequently say they want to know the facts, they want to evaluate someone's record. at this point a lot of news organizations held off until romney was officially the nominee. so now maybe is the time to evaluate how he would actually implement these policies he says he would do in awful his television ads and increasingly more networks are showing punditry and what people think about what the people said not evaluating the president's record and mitt romney's record. >> cable also has more competition from the web, from twitter, from people getting information on their phones. i wonder in a broader sense whether that's affecting the numbers. >> yes. all television is declining. all ratings for most shows starting with "american idol" are in decline. the cable networks are in the middle of a trend that has been going down not just this year and not just last year, last year was flat, but since 2007, 2008 when there was a big spike with obama and clinton and the election that year. >> there were two races that year for the nomination. >> and much more exciting. but the trend since then for four years has been downward generally. >> let's go back to terry. could viewers be turned off by the way television covers politics. the flap of the day, the back and forth, the embarrassing sound bites? >> i really think they are. you know, it's repetitious, it's predictable. the opinions of those on fox and msnbc particularly are pretty predictable. you know what position they're going to take. and, therefore, there's not much drama in it. and i think christina has a good point. let's actually try some substance and see if people are interested in what mitt romney thinks about taxes or the economy or what obama might do in a second term, something he has not told us so far. >> and increasingly you're seeing, because of technology, people are turning to shut out those filters of whether it's a newspaper or a cable news network or any network really. they want to go to the original documents. they want to watch a speech that the candidate is giving and increasingly watching it from wall to wall, so you're seeing the campaigns were able to pick on this very quickly and take their message to the voters and bypass the press, which is something that has been a continual theme since 2008. >> we do tend to get wrapped up in bill clinton makes some remarks that are off message from the obama campaign message and he walks it back and we all get very energized by that but i think voters are more interested in what are either of these gentlemen going to do for the economy. you were talking about longer trends for television and increased competition. does that put cable news in an increasingly difficult position or maybe cable news audiences have peaked because most of the country has cable, which wasn't the case 15 years ago. >> most of the country had cable and at least the cable news networks four or five years ago as well. but yes, cable news networks are basically in the same position as newspapers. their revenue is still staying very high, because they get fees from cable operators, but increasingly the way people get news is digitally, online, not necessarily from television and this puts the cable networks in the position of having to say what do we do in terms of the long term. and the long term might be invest more in your digital side because your television side is perpetually going to be in decline. >> but the test is if the audience comes back in a big news story. the killing of osama bin laden, something like that, that is an absolutely riveting thing. and in the past every time, the audience has come back and i will say they come often to cnn first. >> but that brings up the role of cnn. it's no secret cnn's ratings have suffered the most action even though all three are down. cnn has -- i respect cnn for trying to be a straight news channel at a time when it is certainly easier or cheaper to go the partisan or opinionated route that msnbc has done following the lead of fox news. what cnn executives say this is a seasonal blip. the numbers have bounced up and down for 15 years and competitive season of the primaries, but before the general election really under way with the conventions and the fall campaign and that cnn admittedly is most tied to the news cycle. in other words, cnn does the best when there's a big breaking story either internationally or here at home. >> but the cable networks have figured out that you can't rely on the news cycle, you've got to get appointment television, you've got to get regular viewers and partisanship by msnbc and fox has been the strategy. cnn's strategy has been to play it down the middle more. if it changes, if it went more partisan, it would be dividing a market that is already occupied by a player as well. so it's not necessarily a good strategy to go partisan. they have got their market niche. the problem is if the news doesn't cooperate, you won't get the viewers. >> and you don't always view cnn. people don't portray it as i'm going to turn to it for politics, although it does excellent political coverage. >> it has more viewers around the world than the other two. >> and when something happens, whether it's in conflict or even a big crime or some big breaking news conference on something else, you're probably going to turn to cnn first because you're thinking more in those terms and less in the political both sides terms. >> but you know we saw it in the coverage of the wisconsin recall election earlier this past week where the two, fox and msnbc, gave you a lot of opinion. i would say even advocacy of their respective positions. >> it was like watching two parallel universes. ed schultz is a big union guy on msnbc. he was openly depressed. he said it's going to be a difficult night for me. and meanwhile fox news saying this was the death blow to the power of labor unions because of the recall and lawrence o'donnell came on and said president obama is the big winner, even though most people would say it wasn't a good night for the democrats. >> here's the scary part. the scary part was last year was a great news year. you had the arab spring, the killing of osama bin laden, all these very big stories. and what happened to the ratings for the cable networks? up 1%. just 1%. >> but not necessarily at that particular time when those big stories were breaking and people do tend to -- >> right, but if you are running a network, you need not just big spikes for one day or another, you need general rising ratings over a long haul. and you're not getting that, even with the news. >> but it's important when you talk about the ratings not to lose sight of the whole point of journalism is to actually inform people and teach them different things. so when you think about what msnbc or fox are offering with saying they're on one side of the issue or another, how about really taking a look at what it actually means. that's what people continually say that they are looking for. i asked this question on twitter before we came on. why don't you watch cable news? everyone says i'm looking to learn something, not necessarily hear my own views reinforced. >> and cable news audiences have never been huge. we're generally talking about a combined three million or so. but i think the coverage is important, even though it has the flaws that you have all described, because it drives a lot of media chatter elsewhere and eventually becomes fodder for the op-ed pages for newspapers and online. >> but i do think now if you hear of a big story, you understand that something is breaking, whereas before you might have gone to a television set and turned on cnn or whomever, whichever, now you go to your tablet or your phone. >> well, christina is always on twitter. i think that's where she goes. >> exactly. >> before i take a break here, in the "washington post" this morning, the first point by-line looking back at nixon and watergate nearly 40 years ago. the anniversary of that breaking here coming up. when we come back, the press piles on after president obama's rather clumsy comment about the economy. this country was built by working people. the economy needs manufacturing. machines, tools, people making stuff. companies have to invest in making things. infrastructure, construction, production. we need it now more than ever. chevron's putting more than $8 billion dollars back in the u.s. economy this year. in pipes, cement, steel, jobs, energy. we need to get the wheels turning. i'm proud of that. making real things... for real. ...that make a real difference. ♪ president obama had a news conference at the white house on friday to address concerns about the economy, but he ended up making news in a way he didn't intend. let's take a look at the one sentence the president uttered that has gotten a lot of scrutiny, shall we say, from the media, and then we'll give you the fuller context of what obama said. >> the private sector is doing fine. the private sector is doing fine. the private sector is doing fine. the truth of the matter is that as i said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last two -- 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. the private sector is doing fine. where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy had to do with state and local government. >> christina, politically it was a dumb thing to say. he walked it back a few hours later. of course mitt romney would attack it. but there wasn't a journalist who didn't know what obama meant, he was comparing the private sector's performance as compared to public sector and layoffs in state government. >> and this is cue up the umbrage meter. when campaigns respond, the republicans pounced on this by using twitter and other social media to be able to get many, many people to join in. and then i think that a lot of news networks and news organizations feel compelled, oh, well something is blowing up on twitter, we need to cover this in a way and really overdo it. >> we can prove that. let's roll a little montage of sound bites from the networks. >> start this evening with what you might call president obama stepping in it today. >> this is not fine by any measure. it is shocking and it's unacceptable. >> you can't tell us that the economy is okay. we all know the truth, you might as welcome clean on it. >> of course, terry, we should cover politicians making gaffes, but is there a gaffe obsession, do use your earlier word, that turns viewers off? >> oh, i think it is. i think it's a reflection of what we were talking about earlier. in other words, it's a slow news season, it's a slow news period. obama makes a statement that is romneyesque in its clumsiness and yet, you know, everybody jumps on it, takes it literally. he knows it's not fine. >> and romney responds by saying we need more firemen, policemen, more teachers, did he not get the message in wisconsin. >> attach it to all the larger issues in the campaign themes, that's the idea. both sides will play this game. i think most people will forget about this and the republicans' challenge is to make them not forget about this. they'll run the ads. >> what's the media's challenge? >> the media is going to move on and wait for the next conflict. >> how about put knit context too? >> that was actually done in many of the story that say i saw that it was placed in dcontext. >> and the sheer reputation of a sound bite, that's why i played it three times, tends to undermine context. thanks very much for joining us. after the break a question of bias. are journalists far more interested in mitt romney's personal 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[ flo speaking japanese ] [ shouting in japanese ] we work wherever you work. now, that's progressive. call or click today. mitt romney has faced plenty of stories this year about his flaws and his foibles, his wealth and his past. for instance that report of cutting the hair of a gay student back in prep school. that prompted conservative commentators to declare a double standard. >> this was also on page one today of "the new york times," not just the "washington post." if the media is interested in what mitt romney did when he was 17 years old in high school, how come it wasn't interested in what barack obama did when he was at columbia university and what kind of papers he wrote? were they anti-american? >> the president in his own words admitting that he rarely went to school, that he drank a lot and used drugs enthusiastically, that he even did cocaine and he said drugs, plural. where are the media questions about this? >> liberal pundits for their part are always on the lookout for new fodder about this long ago tale. >> when mitt romney wasn't gay bashing kids whose hair he didn't like, mitt romney's other favorite sick thing to do was to impersonate a police officer. >> politico has waded into the debate saying republican complaints of bias often ring true. joining us to examine this question in providence, rhode island, david shuster, host of we act radio's tax action now. and here in washington, jennifer rubin, cnbc contributor and author of the right turn blog for the "washington post." i'm sure you saw this in the home section about neighbors being upset about mitt romney's mega house in la jolla, california. the argument isn't whether the media are fixated on romney's wealth, his houses and what he did in high school. your take. >> yeah, i think so. i have a whole series and award a prize on thursdays for the shiny object story of the week. the nonsensical, the irrelevant, the highly partisan story that really has no information for the average voter in which to make up their minds. it's not a question of this being different than the reporting that was done for barack obama when he was a new candidate in 2008 is that we're not covering the current race. we're not covering barack obama's performance. we're not going back to see whether his economic policies actually worked. there's a dearth of actual analysis of what's going on at the white house and instead they substitute this. >> i don't necessarily agree but i want to bring in david shuster. politico says the political bias in this race often rings true. do you disagree with that? >> it's interesting politico would say that without any sources. then they never mention the pew nonpartisan study which found president obama has never received more favorable coverage than mitt romney, only because politico says so because they say somehow the "washington post" and "new york times" are biased does that somehow make it true to the right. the "washington post" and "new york times" have done plenty of stories about whether president obama's policies worked. they are vetting mitt romney now. this argument about bias is just the usual bs from republicans who are trying to political purposes to gin up their base. i give them credit, it's smart politics, but it's bunk. >> one example cited in that political piece, a new biography is about obama growing up, a terrific book. he reveals basically how much dope obama consumed in college. the "washington post" ran that inside the paper whereas the front page of the story about the incident with prep school and cutting the kid's hair. that is a strong example? who cares what pages something runs on in the digital age? >> first of all, it