Transcripts For CSPAN Forum Examines Relations Between Lawma

Barbara cochran, who is the president of the National Press Club Journalism institute will say a few welcoming remarks, and thank you, all, for coming. Ms. Cochran good morning, and thank you so much for being here today. I think the size of this crowd is a pretty good indication of the interest there is in finding ways for journalists and government officials to Work Together constructively to make sure that the public gets the information that we all need in a democracy. As kathy said, i am barbara cochran. Im professor of journalism and the director of the Washington Program of the Missouri School of journalism. And also the president of the National Press Club Journalism institute, which is the charitable and educational arm of the National Press club. This session is one of a series we have been doing this year to address the problems that have arisen, very dramatically, in washington for reporters this year and the threats facing a free press. This spring we discussed the challenges facing white house and other Government Agency reporters and also reporters who were covering local issues at the local level. We have spoken out along with other journalism organizations about efforts to block reporting about government, and we are preparing a curriculum for the fall that will give journalists the tools they need to report on money and politics, freedom of information procedures, disappearing databases, and much more. And in a few minutes you will hear about another initiative that we are announcing today. Our hope is that todays dialogue between journalists and government spokespeople will foster efforts to solve problems together. So that journalists can do their job of independently informing the American Public, and journalists and officials and work in an atmosphere of civility and security. Todays session we hope is a prelude to a broader summit this fall that will bring together government communicators and journalism people to make sure information keeps flowing to citizens of our country. Let me underscore that point. This is not about journalists, and it is not about the communicators. This is about the public. When it comes to democracy, journalists are the canaries in the coal mine. Havingubles they are getting access to information is the a precursor to those public will have. They are an early indicator of what the public is alarmed about. This is not a fight for a media access to information. It is a fight for Public Access. We welcome your interest and support. Our programs are produced without direct corporate support, and our funding comes from individuals, foundations, and a portion of National Press club member dues. You can make a difference by supporting this important work. I would like to introduce our moderator, kathy kiely. She serves as our first press freedom fellow for the Journalism Institute. With her deep experience and passion, she has been the perfect person to highlight the Critical Issues facing journalists and to work on solutions in a constructive way. Please welcome kathy and her distinguished panel. [applause] ms. Kiely thanks, barbara. I have a really great panel to introduce and we have a really big audience here. A few housekeeping matters. We do have wifi. It is eflclassroom, and the password is journalism, although we have cleverly put a 0 where the o in journalism is. Please write your questions down as you think about them and pass them toward barbara. We have people in the room who can help collect them. If you need to do that, we will get as many of them as possible today. Before we start, i want to say a few words about why we organized todays event. It might surprise some of you to know that we at the National Press club and its Journalism Institute are sick and tired of being, to borrow a memorable phrase, nattering nabobs of negativism. It seems almost every week since the beginning of this year we have had the issue of statement that runs along the lines of no, you cannot do that, no, you cannot just dismiss news that you do not like as fake, no, you cannot throw a reporter out of a public building, no, you cannot throw a reporter. [laughter] ms. Kiely i could go on and on but what good would that do for us or the country we all care about . On the other hand, we cannot do nothing. One thing you will hear about today is a new survey developed by the National Press Club Journalism institute and the media law resource center. It will enable journalists to report data and sources that are being taken offline. The information we gather will help support a press Freedom Tracker launched this week by a Broad Coalition of journalism organizations, many of them represented here today. Incredibly, the United States of america has now become one of the countries where we have to start toting up physical assaults on journalists. We are worried. We know the hostility we are experiencing in washington is having an impact well beyond the beltway. We know that because it is making it harder for journalists at the state and local level to get information and we know that because this is the third in a series of panels that the National Press Club Journalism institute has sponsored this year on problems of press access. It is the first, however, where we have included panelists who are not journalists. We are widening the circle because we think it is important for all of us engaged in this participatory sport we call democracy to Start Talking with each other rather than at each other. And what better place than the National Press club . For more than a century, it has been a Gathering Spot for people who make the news and people who cover the news. Our members include journalists and communicators. And i defy anyone has ever been to our bar, festooned with newspaper cartoons and an old shutdown notice from the prohibition, to call us a den of elitists. So briefly, in alphabetical order, i will introduce our panelists. Please hold applause or other emotional outbursts until i have gotten through the list, and i will ask all of them to wave when i say their name. So brendan buck. Counselor to House Speaker paul ryan. John donnelly. A reporter for cq rollcall. John heads the military reporters and Editors Association and the National Press clubs press freedom team. Jeff hermes. Deputy director of the media law resource center. Billy house, reporter for bloomberg who chairs the Standing Committee of congressional correspondence. Carolyn lukensmeyer. Executive director of the National Institute of the civil discourse. Mike mccurry, press secretary for bill clinton. He got to know all about jousting with reporters. Senate historian don ritchie, whose many books include three on the history of the Washington Press corps. And last but not least, jennifer talhelm, who can see things from both sides because she was a reporter before she became a Congressional Communications director. Jennifer now works for senator tom udall of new mexico. I would also like to acknowledge our capacity crowd here, because it is also full of noteworthies. We have representatives of press organizations here, including the committee to protect journalists, reporters without borders, the Reporters Committee for freedom of the press. We also have people who work on capitol hill and in a number of embassies. There are two classes of journalism students, one from American University in washington, and another led by former National Press Club President rick dunham, from beijing. Your presence says something important. How we treat each other in Washington Matters far outside of washington. Im going to start with billy house. Billy was elected by the many print reporters who cover capitol hill to head the Standing Committee of correspondents. A lot of people do not know that reporters have a Standing Committee on capitol hill. The press is embedded in the institution in a way that i think is pretty healthy, so maybe you can talk about what the role of the committee is and how your constituents see things on the hill. The hill has always been open. Is it still that way . Mr. House we are the Credential Committee for the print press at the capital. This is an interesting time. There is a lot of frustration in the capital from the two wings, one party that controls both wings of the capital. Their better way agenda has sputtered a little in the First Six Months of this session. Health care has sputtered and things have not gone their way. Against this backdrop of the frustration the capitol is too crowded. There are too many reporters, they are in the hallways, blocking things. We have to do something about this. This may not come from the speaker or the majority leader himself on the floor, but this comes through their system, their people. It is against this backdrop there has been tension about where reporters can go in the capital, the access they should have to members of congress, many of whom do not do town halls anymore and apparently do not want to be asked questions after they leave votes or go to votes either, in the u. S. Capitol. Against this backdrop there are real spatial and fiscal plan problems. There are certain chokepoints in the Capitol Building that create crowding and transportation and Movement Problems for lawmakers. It is those two things were wrestling with, as the credentialing committee, a, freer access, and, b, making sure that access continues despite real problems in the building itself. Ms. Kiely why should people care if reporters are able to go up to a member of congress and ask a question . Mr. House first of all, as i said, many of these members are not talking at home. Theyre not doing town halls. They are doing teletown halls where they can control the audience. So when they come here, it is one point of contact for reporters that can ask them some tough questions. Beyond that, despite all the talk about regular process in committee, this particular congress has been adept at holding a lot of closeddoor meetings, trotting out legislation from those closeddoor meetings without public discussion about what is in it. Even going to the floor and voting on items in which members of the public and the press have not been able to convey any details about. To ask why members of the press are not outside those closed doors so they can tell somebody what is going to be voted on, is a very fair question. We need to be doing that stuff. Ms. Kiely brendan, want to rebut . Mr. Buck yeah, i do. Those are disappointing comments. I would challenge anybody to find anywhere in washington where there is as much access to people doing things with power than the capitol. The speaker of the house holds two press conferences every week. There was a lobby on the house floor where reporters are allowed and members come to talk. There is unprecedented access to basically anybody. And i find that frustrating that you would suggest that there is an effort to crack down on press. In fact, we work very closely with the galleries. And i can speak from the time since Speaker Boehner took over. We have done nothing but liberalize access in the capitol. There is more access today than there ever has been. There is more information flow than there ever has been. The capitol is one of the places where it works very well. Most members of congress get along very well with the press on capitol hill. Most good reporters do not find it hard to get information on capitol hill. Very little is a secret, and we like it that way. We think that is an important part of what we do, an important part of the culture. There are reporters everywhere, and we would not want it any other way. It is part of the lifeblood of what we do. We in the Speakers Office do everything to accommodate that. I am sorry if some reporters are not able to get what they want all the time, but it is hardly for lack of access. In one of my old jobs i worked for Speaker Boehner and my job was to deal with the White House Press, reporters who covered president obama. And to a person, anybody who has covered the white house, even in the obama years, would tell you covering capitol hill is far superior to the white house. You have far more access. The white house keeps a tight lid on information flow. I ran into a wellknown reporter just this week who was coming to cover the hill for a week, was sent over to cover something they do not usually cover. She was ecstatic to come back to the hill, because you can interact with people, ask senators or members of Congress Questions at any time. Not everybody is going to answer every time, but they are there. They are accessible. There is nowhere else like it in washington that that is the case. Ms. Kiely before i let billy rebut the rebuttal, i want to turn to jennifer because you are from the senate side, and you have been a reporter, you have done the job that billy has done, done the job that brendan is doing. What do you think is happening . There were incidents on the senate side where people were asked not to tape interviews with people. Can you talk about what you think is happening there, and are you comfortable with the level of access among politicians and reporters . Ms. Talhelm i see it from both sides here. I have worked as a reporter, so i understand the frustrations. Journalismf herd way you are relegated to a few locations in the building where the offices are where you have the ability to stop a member ms. Kiely can you turn your mic up a little bit . Ms. Talhelm in response to questions about pretty important and the issues, especially when you are talking about big pieces of legislation that affect most of the country, health care being a good example, where the details have mostly been hidden from the public. And the public has a lot to gain or lose from the decisions that get made. I see it from that perspective. You are talking about a lot of people on very tight schedules. When you are running past a phalanx of three dozen reporters on your way to a vote, it is very difficult to get from point a to point b. There have been some incidents. This is coming in a backdrop of pretty unprecedented hostility toward the media. That raises hackles on both sides. That is definitely part of the conversation. We maybe will get to that at a different time in this conversation. But i think if you are in journalism, hearing that kind of hostility, experiencing almost physical hostility when somebody is blocking your access, i think you are bound to get at least suspicious, probably with reason about why you are being blocked from that information. And i think that is the reason we are here, isnt it . To talk about whether something can actually be done to prevent bad feelings on both sides. Ms. Kiely don, can you put this in historic perspective for us . You have written books about the relationship of Capitol Hill Press Corps to the politicians. How does this Current Situation fit into that history, or is this really unprecedented . Mr. Ritchie i have been asked when did the relations between the press and politicians become problematic . I have definitively traced it back to the First Congress and the washington administration. [laughter] mr. Ritchie washington was frustrated with the press and met with many members who declared them to be the single most misrepresented member of congress right from the start. What has happened is reporters need wellplaced sources. Politicians need the press to get their word out. But they are often angry about the way the press reports it because they do not control that. There have been efforts throughout time to find some way for some kinds of rules of behavior that both sides can live with. There are patterns in which these rules are established, and some new form of technology disrupts it. In the 1840s, the telegraph came and sped up news. In the 1890s, it was mass magazines. They brought in muckrakers. In the 1920s, radio. In the 1950s, it was television. In the 1980s, it was cable television. In the 1990s, it was the internet, and the 21st century, it is cell phones where people can record video, anyplace. So senators have felt themselves ambushed in the halls of congress, whereas once there were rules as to where the cameras could be. And usually what has happened when there has been this disruption is the reporters sit down with politicians to work out a new set of rules. In 1980 one of the rules was to treat the Standing Committee of correspondents. Were the only government who decides who gets a press pass to cover the National Legislature and who still run the press galleries. But that was a response to problems that they were having. And so i suppose the reassuring thing i can say at this point is that it is periodically disruptive, but there usually is a counter response i