Are you . Am i . Just halfway through his first 100 days in office, something has changed. Is the president becoming press shy. Lets look at numbers. Its been 25 days since his last press conference. Its been 13 days since his last tv interview and three days since he used twitter to take a swipe at the press. Its actually been longer than that. When you look at his tweets in terms of his tone and tenor attacking news outlets, shes changed his tune. This week the white house seemed to be limiting his availability to the press. Allowing photo ops but not questions. Take a look at this. She w he was trying to shout at the president. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, press. Thank you, press. Thank you. You see what happens there. No response from President Trump. These photo ops are designed to show the president but not hear from him. Its important to know what the president is not talking about. What hes not doing. Right now thats taking questions. Lets discuss all of this with a super panel who we have assembled in washington with us. Thanks everybody for being here. Thanks for having us. Lynn, youre on this beat every day covering the white house every day. Covering all things washington. Have you noticed this sudden change in the president s accessibility . Yes, it has both on his morning twitter. The tweets he sent out last saturday were enough news to last us through this weekend. Maybe he did want that to seep in and saturate the news cycles all the time. In the white house theres a difference when you dont have regular briefings. Theres a difference when you dont have regular background briefings. Its a big budget coming out. He had the department of Homeland Security briefing with the secretaries who didnt take the attorney general, the dhs secretary and the secretary of state without taking questions. Its about getting information out to the public who have a right to know about government policies. I wonder if some think the journalists are being rude trying to shout at the president. How do you interpret these exchanges . When i saw that, i thought its the Ronald Reagan playbook hes going through. One of the things that surprises me about the coverage so far of trump, is its a constant friction. Its supposed to be that way. A push and pull and back and forth between the presidency and the white house. Thats what makes the saturday night live skit with the podium that moves because thats really them literally butting heads and pushing back with one another. With trump, the thing is is that people have taken it to this extreme thing and gotten hysterical about it every time they push back. If i was him and looked at this say and say every time we engage the press, we are attacked. Were shredded. Lets let the press go on its own for a while. Why engage at that level if were going to get pounded . Thats a reasonable thing for him to say. When we say hes the worst war on the press ever. I wrote on that last week. Its not the worst war. He hasnt done what obama done. Youre talking about actions not words. We have not had a living president call the media the enemy of the people. Actions are what matter. When somebody names a reporter an aider and abetter and co c conspirator has president obama, thats a lot worse. When they threatened james risen from the New York Times with jail, thats a lot worse than calling him enemy of the people. It is bad. Its awful. I wouldnt defend that or anything trump does but words are not angctions like that. Yoheres my worry about word. Let me show you a clip from the briefings. This is shaen spicer getting the facts wrong. He was referring to the situation where rosins phone records were obtained. Here is how spicer portrayed that incident . Weve had your own Network James rosen had multiple phones tapped. Was that appropriate back then. I think theres a lot of concern out there about alleged leaks. He said the phones were tapped. They were not tapped. Rosen has confirmed the records were obtain but they were not tapped. Thats the casual mistakes that frustrates a lot of journalists. David is that something that bothers you also . Absolutely. You cant do journalism without p precision of language. We all learn that when our editors drag us into the office and humiliate us. Its important. Trump, sets the tone of careless loose language. It is particularly infuriating to us and dangerous really in many ways to democracy to not be careful with language especially for the president. Theres no execute for what spicer did. Thats mentally careless. Its verbally careless. She noushould know those facts. He should know the history if hes going to be a press secretary. Since rosen was very explicit in what happened that a wiretap was not put on his phone or his parents tone. Thats quite a public statement. Lets see if sean spicer corrects the record. Give him that. A little time to reflect. I think sometimes in the heat of the moment maybe he made a mistake. I think theres too many mistakes coming out and falsehoods out of multiple people in the Trump White House that creates the troublesome situation that were in now. Theres too much. Everybody can make a mistake once or twice but were in a difficult period because of the number of misstatements that come out from multiple people. Right the pattern. Let me ask steve this, one of the biggest news rooms on the planet, how are you encouraging your staffers to stay knew trilli neutral. I know thats a concern you have. Neutrality is not false equivalency. Youre trying to get at the facts. Youre trying to put them in context. If theres evidence behind allegation and youre pursuing it hard, thats very different from an allegation where theres no evidence behind it. You dont have to treat them the same. Each time something happens were trying to ask the question, is this important. Or is it just a stray sort of distraction that you really dont want to spend a lot of time on. One of the big problems now is that the media is getting caught up with distractions. Are we . How so . Sometimes distractions are intentionally set or unintentionally by the white house. If theres a tweet that isnt really relevant to policy or something thats really important and everybody goes chases it, then they are losing concentration on stories that are important stories. What i encourage people to do, focus on news value. Focus on what matters to our customers and readers and try not to get distracted by intramural battles by things that dont matter a whole lot. Things that six months from now youre not going to care about. Maybe its good news the president is not tweeting so much. One of the interesting things is were seeing the effect of technology. Whats going to happen . The administration going to decide that Mainstream Media is a very important way to communicate to the world and in fact, does carry some trust with it. Does carry some validity or is it going to decide that we can control the message by tweeting, by putting things out on our own radio broadcast and our own website. I think were seeing this all over the world. Theres real question. Its true in the Business World too. Its a real question of whether executives are going to communicate largely through their own controlled means which Technology Allows them to or whether theyre going to think theres some validity to be gained by working through Mainstream Media. As they do, as they go direct to the public, doesnt it create more pressure more journalists like you and i to fact check, to verify, to debunk what theyre saying . Thats always been our responsibility. We have to do solid, professional journalism. You look for facts. You check the facts. You go back to the sources and ask for fair comment. You correct mistakes. I think ultimately the president of the administration will decide whats in their best interest and i think thats going to go back and forth a bit. I do think mainstream journalism meet just a couple of billion people around the world and people continue to consume it. They continue to watch it in great numbers and theyre watching it because they do care what comes out on it. I think the administration and most administrations come around to understanding its a sybiosis and they want to participate with media organizations. Great point about the audience levels. How do you tell viewers around the world about those sorts of comments . Whats been the reaction from your viewers around the world . I think its always important to what steve was saying is focus on facts and go back to the fact checking, the factual expose about what the story is and to remember whether, whatever organization you work for and i write also for Foreign Policy magazine. Ive worked for other organizations in the middle east, in the u. S. And i think its always important to make sure that the call for access, the call for access to officials is put in the context of serving the public and servserving. Otherwise we risk making this about us. We dont have great, positive raltin ratings with the public. You look at confidence and its low overall in the u. S. Even though subscriptions are up at the New York Times. Theres a real eagerness to get access to good news. I think its important to go back to the basics and the facts and try to put into officials that when were asking for access, were not just asking for the sake of access but because we have a service to render. I think there is an add justment period as well under this administration. They are finding their footing. Period as well under this administration. They are finding their footing. Period as well under this administration. They are finding their footing. It doesnt necessarily serve their interest or narrative to give access to traditional media outlets. They can sell their message to their constituents via other means. Theyre not the first ones to come to that conclusion. Hillary clinton came to the conclusion that it wasnt going to serve her interest to engage with the media. I love your point about access. Its important to keep in mind that access is important. We need for which ever organization we work for we need access because it helps us tell the story, explain it to a broader audience. Get into the details. Theres different ways of telling the story that dont involve sitting in the White House Briefing room. You can go outside of washington and now here in washington we see that even without access theres great investigative reporting thats being done by the newspapers. Stand by. Were just Getting Started here. Later this hour my look at how sean hannity disdain for reporters hurts his viewers. Youre smart. You already knew that. But its also great for finding the perfect used car. Youll see what a fair price is, and you can connect with a truecar certified dealer. Now youre even smarter. This is truecar. Imy moderate to severeng crohns disease. I didnt think there was anything else to talk about. But then i realized there was. So, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. He said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohns disease. In clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. And many achieved remission. 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Spring time. Badda book. Badda boom. Or. Badda bloom. Seriously . Book now at choicehotels. Com welcome back. Earlier this week a dozen of the nations top news outlets cosigned a letter asking the state department to allow the press to travel with secretary of state Rex Tillerson on his Upcoming Trip to asia. This has been normal for decades. Journalists sit on the plane and fly all around the world with secretary of state. Tillerson is changing that plan. On friday when asked about it, here is what sean spicer said about the reasons. Take a look. Press has been invited. Theres a press logistics component to make sure they are getting everyone. An element of cost savings at this point that the secretary is trying to achieve. At the end of the day theres been a press component to every stop of the secretarys trip. Cost savings. Both my next guests say thats kind of bogus. Joining me to explain why. Journalists who covered three secretaries of state both democrat and republican for the bbc. Shes also the author of the secretary about Hillary Clintons time as secretary of state. You worked in the state department. You took to twitter over the weekend disagreeing with spicer. Tell me why the answer doesnt add up. The most important thing we have to realize is as kim was saying in the last segment, this isnt about secretary tillerson made to feel important. Its because it is important. The traveling press corps is an important part of our diplomatic tool chest and making sure the secretarys message gets out to the world is a critical component of power projection for the United States. How is it part of the tool kit . As our press travel especially to place like china, we havent run into a challenge with communicating the American Perspective and the american message. You have journalists like kim, like others who have gotten to know the secretary of state who often travel and get to know other members of the u. S. Diplomatic corps and come to understand their perspective. If we leave that to state owned media like china, the United States perspective isnt projected in the way it could be. Thats going to really impact how foreign publics look at what were trying to say and what were trying to do and can hinder u. S. Foreign policy. Hinderson said he is taking a smaller plane. Journalists can fly commercial and will fly commercial. Is that good enough . It gets very complicated to try to catch up with a secretary of state who is flying on his own plane. When youre trying to catch up commercially, the timings dont always work. Its not like trying to criss Cross America where you can cover the Campaign Trial without necessarily being on the plane of the candidate. Its important to remember that we pay for those seats. Its not cheap. Perhaps taking a smaller plane does effect some cost saving but when were on a big plane and there is room for all of us in the past secretaries of state have taken up to 20, 23 journalists with them on these planes. We all pay for those seats. Again, theres an adjustment period here. I think that perhaps for someone like Rex Tillerson who comes from the corporate world, the oil business, where you really only talk to the media when theres a disaster at hand, when theres an oil spill or something. The idea you should be accompanied by the media where ever you go is probably a very foreign concept. It does help u. S. Messaging. Were not an i used to cover the state department before, i dont anymore, but were not on the plane to help the u. S. Sell its message. We are there to try to understand it and give american officials a fair shake in our comprehensive coverage of the story that helps our audiences understand what american officials are doing. What american Foreign Policy is about. I want to make a point about the Daily Press Briefings. I think that a lot of people in washington when it comes to that press briefing dont understand the importance of it. Thats Daily Press Briefing at the state department. These briefings are watched around the world. As a correspondent in washington you ask a question about south korea or about lebanon, you will see that sound bite pop up that same evening, most of the times, in that countrys evening news broadcast and the anchor will say today in washington the state Department Spokesperson said that they supported lebanons new government or they were pleased with developments in south korea. That is part of the messaging as well and thats a way for the United States to continue with its Public Diplomacy issuing support and warnings. Thats what i think people in washington miss. Its not just about access for access because it pleases us as journalists, its because it helps people everywhere understand the story better. I love the way you describe that. Its one of dozen examples of secretary of state being invisible. He hasnt given an interview since taking on the job. Theres not been daily briefings since this past week. Theres a lot of talk abou