From an unforgettable 2017. We seen journalism at its best with papers and networks with incredible reporting but seen journalism at its worst with embarrassing mistakes and errors. From Media Company consolidation to newsrooms. On the business front, we seen exciting new startups promising to improve the business but tough times for buzz feed and vice. The face babook and google is soaking up revenue they are squeezing competitors in digital in print due to business problems but subscriptions are on the rise at the New York Times and washington post. People are hungry to understand what is happening in the world, especially in d. C. President trump as media attacks went on all year long. Calling real news fake and fake news real. But think about all the turnover we witnessed, sean spicer mocked by melissa mccarthy. There are days with Sarah Sanders taking over in the Briefing Room and transitions in the media room, as well, more than average. Bill ocreilly at fox and megyn kelly moving to nbc and head of the News Division there. Editors at places like huff post, vanity fair, news week charlie rose all out for Different Reasons and just this month, espn president john skipper, one of the post powerful men in sports and media resigned siting substance abuse. So many changes at so many newsrooms and Media Companies and tomorrow, january 1st a new publisher at the New York Times handing the paper over to his son a. G. Well break it down for you in this special Program Starting with our panel of top editors, sal sally b usb ee and editor in chief of the daily beast and usa today ned work and editor of usa today. This is a year, john, where the push alert on your phone made you recoil in horror or shut with joy. So many stories surprised and shocked us. What were the highlights and low lights . Insane is the new normal. So much packed into every weak. The media and politics and industry. For me, one of the hay ligighli was reporting done at the same time by the new yorker and the New York Times about hard rvey wine ste wine stein. It really broke down intimidation. Not only in the Entertainment Industry but across all industries rippling down today. I remember jody cantor and her writing partner at the New York Times, jody saying i didnt know how seriously people would take this story. You look at the post viewed stories of the year at the top of the list. Youre about to leave usa today and have a book coming out and you decided to devote energy to that. William, the publisher of the book loved up the publication date because there is an absolute extraordinary flood of interest in this topic, completely changed. The fact women come up and talk abo about ish shasues and ive been working on this for years. The point is how do we close the gender gap by bringing men into the conversation. When i started reporting, there was skepticism saying men will never want to be part of this. All of that has changed to the positive. Well have more later in the hour. Rebecca is here, back to hay lights and low lights perhaps to washingt washington. I wonder if you think there is successes or screwups covering the President Trump administration and changes in washington. The drum whebeat of reportin there is skepticism at the beginning of the year, if there was anything there and what the scope of the investigation was going to be and the sort of everything from the scoops about Michael Flynn being caught on surveillance tape and his firing and just sort of the step by step of the story to the point where i think, you know, its a very important story. It is important to the future of the president s tenure in office and those things and just that kind of focus on what i think of as very nitty gridgritty deep reporting. Even people that support the president have paid attention to that reporting and what you really want with impact with the story is to have the reporting so strong, even people who have ingrained opinions have to pay attention. Thats exciting to me. There is errors in the coverage, mistakes used to tarnish the press this year . And thats totally true and i think each one of the errors has been very difficult and dangerous for journalism. Dangerous. There is no room for sloppy reporting, no room in this world . Its important to say none of what weve seen to date was malicious in nature from major News Organizations. Despite what president s supporters claim, not lies made up to hurt him. They are mistakes because this is a human business. The best available version of the truth sometimes facts are wrong and the critical thing is incredible. They are corrected. Accountability occurs. Sometimes its in layoffs, suspects suspensions. There is a larger environment viewing bless with a sense of conflict gunning for reporters from partisan and for me, weve almost taken for granted the ugliness of hyper partisan media. Yes said hate news, ou said that . They have a forthright philosophy. These are places vauiiewing political debate as war. They are ugly and will unleash critics. I remember News Executives saying steve bannon at the time the president chef strategist wants the world to never trust the media because he would benefit from that. This is part of a business model. Its the ugliest extension of the flragmentation and keep the addicted and the Program Environment and the way social media works were able to property up numbers and get real profits for a type from creating an echo system aided by donors. Its dangerous. Talking about the ups and downs of the year, one of the downs is when a competing outlet beats you to a story. Whats it like when someone breaks that first . Whats that feeling for you in your newsroom . Thats what journalists try to do, break the news first. If youre not the first, break news on some big trending story, you fight your way into it, right . I mean, there is a lot going on in our world and there is a ton of interest in particular in the washington story. The competition in washington both for people and for scoops has been extraordinary this year. Some of it is competition for people probably not the greatest thing for our industry i have in the sense it can cause distractions. The competition for news ask scoops makes every News Organization better and absolutely makes people do their best work, work their hardest and resulted in some fabulous journalism. I actually think the competition has helped every News Organization up its game this year. Absolutely. Weve seen extraordinary journalism across the board among the competition, really, really tremendous efforts throughout the year. I hope flow is this, quality matters. Journalism and reporting matters because conventional wisdom is for scale and click bait and thats the future of journalism. If we all follow and become content farms and engage in commodity news, you kill what is unique and remove the value. Thats what we need to remember, quality matters, influence matters, originality matters. Some of that is heartening. Much of this year has been bad. The aftermath of the Islamic State and the people there and the lack of help for them to rebuild and how many people were actually killed and that sort of reporting that actually says what is going on in this world is astonishing to me how much the stories, how much attention they get, right . Not just in america but globally and how people are hungry to figure out the shape of the world. I think the problem this year has been we must keep our attention on the trump administration, which is fabulous but make sure youre doing that other type of reporting. Dont neglect the rest of the world and america i fund mental mentally believe. Think about your new years resolutions. Well come to that. Up next, the mueller investigation, the fight for the truth and the fight to discredit it all. S each. Plus, netflix for the whole family. On us. So, they get their shows. Lets go, girl youre gonna love this bit and you get yours. Watch however you want. On your phone, tablet, or tv. For just forty bucks per line. With no extra charges. Lets rock this joint all on americas best unlimited network, tmobile. Im alive, im alive im alive, im alive im alive, im alive alive gives you more vitamins and minerals than leading brands. Because when you start with more, you own the morning. Alive looking for a hotel that fits. Whoooo. Your budget . Tripadvisor now searches over. 200 sites to find you the. Hotel you want at the lowest price. Grazi, gino find a price that fits. Tripadvisor. But when we brought our daughter home, that was it. Now i have nicoderm cq. The nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release Technology Helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. Its the best thing that ever happened to me. Every great why needs a great how. Where we can find common ground. Big enough to dance on. For a better us, donate to your local y today. So we know how to cover almost almoanything. Hing even a swing set standoff. And we covered it, july first, twentyfifteen. Talk to farmers. We know a thing or two because weve seen a thing or two. We are farmers. Bumpadum, bumbumbumbum steyer the president S National Security adviser guilty. His Campaign Chairman under indictment. His soninlaw secret talks with russians. The director of the fbi fired. Special counsel Robert Muellers criminal investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. You can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach. Com and demand they finally take a stand. This president is not above the law. Welcome back to reliable sources. The investigation is the defining story of 2018. Was there coordination between anyone on Trumps Campaign and russians . Did he try to obstruct justice . We have more questions than answers but with each drip, drip, drip there is clearly a concerted effort to discredit the investigation. Trump and his allies in the protrump media have intensified their attacks on mueller and the fbi recently. Just take a look. The russia story is a total fabrication. There is no collusion. I dont speak to russians. This russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. The entire thing is a witch hunt. Look, there is no obstruction, there is no collusion. There is a feedback loop, trump says it and allies repeat it and give him new talking points and he repeats those and it goes on and on. Lets put this investigation into perspective and talk about what we do know and dont know with cnns chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and a staff writer for the new yorker and working on a book for the mueller probe. How is that going . This is not something we know the answer to, really. There have been two guilty pleas and two indictments but this is an unusually leak free environment. I noticed it was recently said, mueller has not uttered a single word in public since appointed in may. Its an intentional strategy meant to convey the credibility and seriousness, that hes doing this on purpose, staying silent. I have spoken to enough representatives of mueller and his office to know it is very much a strategy. They are not talking to the press, period. How long that will last, i dont know. They have a trial coming up in may of 2018. Manafort and gates will be tried in that case. There may be more indictments and guilty pleas and ultimately might be a report in the way that can a star file the report . But even that is not known how mueller will signify that his investigation is at an end. Youre saying they are not talking to the press but there is a lot of criticism in conservative media mueller and teammates have been leaking to the press. Is that true . Ist its completely false. The leaks might come from congressionalinvestigators. There are two serious leaks. One is congressional investigations. Both the Staff Members and certainly the members of congress have nowhere near the same obligation that a grand jury investigation does. The other source is Defense Attorneys and people who have been contacted by muellers office, if you represent a witness who has been interviewed by muellers office, you have some knowledge about what they are doing and the kind of questions they are asking. You are not under an obligation to secrecy. So congressional investigators have been talking to the press on occasion but you cant count either of those as leaks for mueller. When youre covering this for cnn and working on a book about this. Yeah. I assume the book cant come out. The book is is not happening any time soon, yes. How do you find out what is ng . Going on when muellers team is so private . A lot of it involves waiting until there is some thaw in their media coverage. But viewers dont want to hear that. We want to know the answers. Thats true. I think sometimes, not at cnn pleased to say, but that leads to speculation. You hear what is mueller doing . Is mueller thinking . I want to be very judicious in answering those questions because sometimes you have to say the three words that are never allowed on cable news and those are, i dont know. And sometimes i just say i dont know. What are the biggest unknowns heading into 2018 . You mentioned the possibility of more indictments. What are other Big Questions . They break into three areas. The first is financial and, you know, is there some sort of financial im pmpropriety and lobbying activity. In that case for ukraine. The broad question of was there any sort of financial im p improprie impropriety. The second question is about the possible collusion between russia and the Trump Campaign, the president is fond of saying there was no collusion. We know, in fact, there was at least some collusion. There was a relationship between donald trump junior and Jared Kushner and people who were proffering material about Hillary Clintons supposed misdeeds. That is not illegal, as far as i know. Collusion is one of those words that gets thrown around and i wrote a piece about whether collusion can be a crime. Yeah. But that whole subject of the relationship between russia and the Trump Campaign is the secondary. The third area is obstruction of justice. All the events relating to the firing of james comey, was there an attempt by the president or people around him to shut down this investigation in a way that violates the law . So finances, collusion and obstruction of justice. You might utter those three words and then i ask this but do you think well get answers to those questions in 2018 or could this take longer . I think well get some answers and, you know, remember we will get Robert Muellers answers. That doesnt mean they are the answers everyone will find satisfactory. Or accept. Were arguing about what really happened in watergate in the 1970s. Were arguing about what did it mean . Were arguing a lot about clinton and lewinsky and what was in the star investigation. So i dont think there is ever going to be a moment when all these questions are answered to the satisfaction of everyone but certainly, we will know a lot more next new years eve than we do this new years eve. Does that bring up the right wing echo chamber, we saw this intensified attack . Its a magic trick. Some of these commentators are saying dont look over there, look here. They are trying to completely change the subject and make everything about Hillary Clinton and alleged misdeeds in the past to district from the russia question. And to attack muellers staff. You know, the key talking point that has been about in the republican echo chamber, mostly on fox news is that, you know, one or more of his investigators, particularly in the fbi were bias in someway based on some Text Messages that were sent long before anyone was even working on a mueller investigation. By the way, its never been done before that the private political views of an fbi agent, much less a prosecutor or the lead prosecutor has been used to discredit the organization. Its a completely frivolous argument. Agent struck was not making any decisions who will be indicted. That is all on mueller and mueller, by the way, got rid of struck when he saw them, which is frankly arguable whether he should have done that, but the idea of any improper activity on the part of mueller is just frivolous, as far as i can tell. Were in mid investigation now. You know, obviously the question of whether Robert Mueller will be fired is not one fully resolved, not with standing what you hear from the white house today. The mueller story is one that the only grade you can give it is incomplete. Incomplete. Jeffrey, great to see you. Were doing a pod cast together in january. We should plug the pod cast. What is it about . Cnn is broadcasting a sixhour documentary about the kidnapping of patty hurst and aftermath in the mid 1970s. Going straight to cam. Im not messing around here. I wrote a book about this cal ed american heiress. We have a pod cast about the show. It is a good companion piece, just like we did to the o. J. Simpson mini series on fx, were doing with the cnn documentary that starts in february. There we go. The pod cast is called patty has a gun. You can subscribe. Were like a team, the two of us. Up next after a quick break, the Sexual MisconductTipping Point, the story of 2017 and will continue in the new year but what will real change look like . Mvo youre not doing work to help somebody, youre gaining something from meeting mr. Adderley. Its a calling to not only everybody in this neighborhood in miami, but to the nation how great we are. And how great we can be. Ill stand by you. Ill stand by you. And ill never desert you. Ill stand by you. When Time Magazine recognized the me, too, movement by naming silence