Mo is the the founding executive editor of georgetown universitys institute of politics and Public Service. The former to medications former Communications Director of the Democratic National committee, he is a veteran of four president ial campaigns, including serving as senior spokesman in 2008 for Hillary Clinton. Olivier knox is the chief washington correspondent for yahoo news, covering the white house, politics, and Foreign Policy since 2012. Before that, he was on the front press for 20 years. As Senior Advisor for external affairs, Kevin Sullivan leads communications and marketing across all areas of the bush center. He was appointed by president george w. Bush as assistant to the president for communications in 2006. And oversaw Message Development and communications planning. Since 2002, Kathleen Carroll has been the Senior Vice President of the associated press, the Worlds Largest independent news agency. Ap journalists have won numerous awards during her tenure, including this years pulitzer for Public Service, and polk awards. Kathleen, we should note, is a texas native. We like to point that out when we are here. Our moderator for the discussion is marty baron, executive editor of the Washington Post since 2013. Marty has been part of 10 Pulitzer Prizes at the post, the boston globe, the New York Times, the l. A. Times, and the miami herald. But he may be best known for his uncanny impersonation of the actor liev schreiber. [laughter] hope you enjoy the panel. [applause] marty thank you, michael. I will try to continue with the impersonation here. And thank you all for coming, thank you to the panel for participating. So, the title of this panel is the presidency coverage in the digital age. What i want to do is start with a question about what really is fundamentally different about covering the president in the digital age . So why dont we start with that, and maybe olivier, kick it off. Olivier when i was covering the white house in december of 2000, everything was on paper. We would get statements on paper. We would get announcements on paper. It was the Wire Services had to move quickly, but everybody else had a more leisurely pace. Over time as the white house embraced the digital age and email, and especially under this president embraced social media, announcements have come from a variety via a variety of sources. Everyone is a Wire Service Reporter now. We are all constantly on deadline. That is one of the biggest changes for the last 15 years or so. Marty does it change qualitatively the kind of work we are doing . Olivier a little bit. One of the changes is that we are now trying to reach audiences that are consuming the information from a variety of sources and platforms. We are all competing for these guys, in a way that we were not when i started the job. Now, for Wire Services, this has not changed all that much. We were constantly on deadline. But now everyone is. One thing we have learned in the digital age is that the peoples expectations of new s products are different. In an oldschool video, you could build suspense and introduce characters and the rest of it. But with the digital age, if the headline of your video is bear falls out of tree on the trampoline, you need to show that bear on the trampoline within the first 15 seconds, or people tune it out. That is the difference how we package the news. Everyone is looking for the magic, the magic wand that would turn everything, every file, every story, into gold. We experiment with shorter and longer stories, more graphics and fewer graphics, but i dont know if we settled yet on a way of a solution, a formula for making this work. Marty kathleen, if we are becoming more like Wire Services, has nothing changed for the Wire Services themselves . Kathleen no, things have changed for us, too. In the way olivier described, but everything is faster, particularly more for president ial campaigns but white house announcements, the need to get balance and context and some other way to think about the story out, at the same time you are reporting on what is happening, is greater than ever. That really taxes an organization, unless you make it a group effort. You dont just stick the white house person on the assignment by themselves. They need backup, so the story the expectation is a story will be more complete within a few minutes of the event occurring, instead of having hours to do it, even a couple of hours for the ap. But i think the biggest change is the one we have all talked about a lot, that this white house covers itself. Marty what do you mean . Kathleen we have a competitor in the white house. They use social media effectively to release pictures shot by the official photographer, talk about things theyre doing, completely skip over the press, which sounds whiny and i dont mean for it to marty why is it not whiny . Maybe it is. I dont know. Why should we be concerned . Kathleen because more and more, this particular president withdraws the acts of his presidency behind closed doors. I dont think any of us are whining about we are not in the residence watching him put his socks on in the morning, but we do want to watch him signed bills, ask him questions on behalf of the public, right . You do not get to do that. Were in a privileged position. Instead we get is a very shiny, polished, adept view of an administration that is filtered only by the people whose job it is to promote that administration. I think it is dangerous for the republic. Marty mo and sully, you have seen this from the other end. Does that sound like whining . Does that concern you at all . Is that just what a president does and what a president should do . Mo i would say empowerment is the biggest change, whether it be our teenage kids, can be like an International Journalist because the power of what is in your hand on your smartphone. In terms of, you know, working communication to the white house your job is to get the message out in the most persuasive and memorable way you can to extend the reach as far as you can. Now, our attitude with the team at the white house working for president bush was, it was sort of like going to the restaurant and ordering from each column. There would be an event, maybe a speech, a meeting with local or committee leaders, and we would community leaders. We would ask the president to allow one reporter to sit in the meeting. If it was on energy and john at was wall street journal writing about energy during that cycle, let us allow john to sit in. Even though we did not have twitter yet, we had a major web operation even then. You didnt get the right audience. You do not get the whole picture if you only did it yourself. I think that is still today, even as technology has advanced, it is a speech, maybe an interview, maybe a quick thing, maybe it is a sitdown, a quick thing, letting the reporters in the room. It is certainly letting the photographers in. We saw one of people when the white house was issuing so many images, keeping reporters out. It is all of the above. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Use the empowerment you have as the institution, but also work with the news media. We are the only country where the media that covers the president is right down the hall. And you have to have president bush called it a symbiotic relationship. There is a transaction. He said you needed me, i needed you. That is important today, even in the face of all of this great new technology that empowers all of us to put out our own content. I think technology is fundamentally changing. I want to take a step back and remember what this is all about. The relationship and the role of the press in a democracy is so important, it was cemented in the First Amendment to the United States constitution. That is important. In the very First Amendment in the u. S. Constitution. Having said that, there is no more sacred relationship in our democracy than between elected official and voter. That is what it is really about. For generations, you all were the conduit. You are the ones that connected them. You are not needed as much in that relationship these days. And im not saying you are not needed, right . But what im saying is because of technology, both sides of that relationship can actually circumvent, to some extent, so when you see a white house or Political Campaign on either side of the aisle do that sort of thing, i think right now were still kind of trying to experiment and figure out what is the appropriate use . I do not think cutting the press out is appropriate. But there is a way to directly engage, directly take a message i understand why people pursue that. Now, having said that, i will also say that there are challenges on the other side of this equation. The reporter who said, as a few that i have heard say, the notion you have to go to the white house to actually cover the white house is no longer true. And necessary. That bothers me a little bit. The notion that because of the internet and because peoples views are so the digital age is actually making us less connected, and it is creating a whole new perspective, whole new reality for so many people. Because anybody is a journalist, anyone with an opinion can set up their own corner, and we are gravitating to people who have like minds. So they are now conservative Media Outlets where voters can grow and that frames the reference. There are now progressive digital Media Outlets that do the same. What is happening in the middle, the true objective truth seekers, are struggling, because people are sort of retreating to their corners in this digital universe. And, you know, what do you do . How do you discern what is true, what is real, what is not . Kathleen i take your point on all of this. But the thing that is missing in this discussion of messaging and how effective messaging is, that is oneway communication. President of the United States, whatever party, is answerable to the public who elected him, or whom he or she serves. What is missing is the opportunity for anybody to ask a question. Journalists have the opportunity to ask questions. The messaging is not being replaced by town halls or forums, where anybody can ask a question. It is a very select, friendly audience, the questions are screened in advance, still part of the oneway communication. I think it is not good for any administration to not be questioned by people, and not just questions by people who are shouting on the internet, but to be able to answer questions. That is a door that is slamming. Mo i dont know if i would agree it is slamming. I think people are trying to figure out the equilibrium, right . I dont think this is a white house i hear the particular criticisms of this white house, shutting the press out, but it is not entirely shut out. The president still does media interviews. He still does news conferences and his staff still does the daily briefing. They are just trying other tools as well. And i think you are right, i do not think it is ok to exclude the press. But what is the right equilibrium in the digital age . I dont know if anybody has figured out. Olivier when you say trying out other tools, it sounds very antiseptic. But we talking about a white house that excludes news photographers from a newsworthy event, excludes us, and then releases its own i will call it propaganda. The job of the photographer, whose material is being released, is to make the president look good. Im not particularly a paranoid person, but i cannot vouch for the accuracy of the photo, in that i dont know if it was posed, the postelection handshake between romney and obama, dont know how many tries it did to get right. [laughter] olivier and what was fascinating about that particular photo, the white house editorialized it in the caption. It was Something Like neither man wanted to be there, but they felt they need to be. It was amazing moment in the caption. When i pointed this out in one of my pieces, they went back and deleted that. So they had this incredible control over the images and words. And no one is saying they cannot use twitter or facebook or reddit or whatever. Our objection is we have many, obviously but it is that they exclude us. They say it was a private meeting. And then there is 10 minutes of it shot by the white house videographer that goes on. That is not a private meeting. Cannot useaying they these tools. That would be crazy. What is really annoying is that the first draft of history is increasingly not a skeptical reporter, you know, kicking the tires or looking under the hood. Whether it is video or photo, that really bothers us. Marty the state department had a whole question excised, the video released by the state department, ultimately pointed out that this question was somehow missing from the video. And they acknowledged that somebody had deliberately we hadt know who deliberately removed that portion. They had to put it back in again. Kevin people have a sense, they know the difference, consumers of news know the difference between something that they can the numbers even the media popularity has declined, you are still above congress. Marty hanging on, barely. [laughter] marty i dont like being compared to congress. [laughter] kevin pew was out last week with a report that said 62 of u. S. Adults get news from social media. And we are predominantly talking about facebook. Adweek a couple of weeks ago at a fascinating story that if facebook were a tv show, it would have been 27th in that weeks nielsen viewership numbers. Youtube i think was 49th. Instagram was 156th or something. This is what i mean by all of the above. You have got to reach people. You have to hit them in multiple places. But as much as people 80 of people using facebook, i think the number was 12 have high confidence in the news. We know that they like things sent to them from one of their friends. What if but if they do not have confidence in the material that is there, are you really getting to breaking through with a message for your client or the president or whoever . That is why i kind of like the all of the above approach. Well, is interesting, you are saying it is not that the Mainstream Media is not needed. But yeah, i mean, we have for example political candidates, the presidency but people who aspire to be president , who are appealing to their own Media Outlets, Media Outlets there that very much favor them. Donald trump, obviously breitbart. Com. For bernie sanders, the young turks. The conservatives will say they are promoting a liberal agenda in many instances. The far left will say they are promoting a corporate agenda. We are actually getting the real reality from these outlets, and the media is actually part of the conspiracy. Mo i think that is right. If you look at a media outlet like fox news, right, whose slogan is fair and balanced. If you talk to the average viewer, they are saying no, we dont think the coverage has to be fair and balanced on fox news. We think fox news is the balance to a progressive media culture out there. So, they recognize that they are going here because it provides a different and more conservative perspective, and that is what attracts those viewers. I think that is amplified 100 times in the digital space. People are going to the corners that reinforce their perspective. And our phones, the digital age is designed to perpetuate that. Right . I read three stories on my phone from various Media Outlets. Every single one of those algorithms will then show stories that are just like it, with that perspective, in front of me. Why . Because that is how it knows i will click. And we are living in an age where the click is king. And so it is hard it is easy to understand how peoples perspectives of the same event suddenly become warped and segmented into different perspectives. The wall street journal just did a tremendous graphic the last couple of weeks with a look where they looked at two facebook feeds sidebyside, a progressive viewer and a conservative viewer, the same exact events but how they are consuming the event is remarkable. You look at the same exact event, a progressive and conservative reading about them, and the headlines, you would think theyre living on two different planets. That is what worries me a bit about the digital age, is that journalism is becoming more commentary. It is not if not in how it is presented, then at least in how it is being consumed. Kathleen if you look back in history, the age that marty and i lived in, newspapers being middleoftheroad and nonpartisan is an unusual period in newspapering. There were lots of them because they appealed to different groups, they had specific audiences. So, you know, the fact that people like to be associating with people who think like them is not new in the country. What is new in the country is that, you know, the president in the 19th century did not have their own outlet to give to get directly to the voters. I hate to keep harping on the same thing. But again, it is whether media is segmented or not, the problem that were trying to deal with is elected officials closing themselves off with the people from the people they were elected to serve. And using the mechanisms of their administration, not just in the white house but throughout the government they run, to close off access to people. Marty kathleen, they are closing themselves off, but they are not necessarily closing themselves off from the people who support them. What about that . What are the implications of that . Kathleen the obvious question to ask about that is, are they serving them, only the people who support them, or do they serve the wider responsibility that i think most of us believe they have, to serve the entire country . Kevin yeah, as a president needs to serve everybody who voted, everybody who participated in the process, he represents all people. You try to do that. The key though, he has to put out good, to the extent you control your own channe