Hitler. N adolf also taking part, Kellyanne Conway and journalists who cover the white house. This is four hours. Good morning. Ceo the president and the of this museum. Tois a pleasure to welcome the first 100 days. We are the preeminent National Organization that explains, promotes and defends the five freedoms of the First Amendment and the right of free expression. We welcome over 800,000 visitors a year to our building with we all know that there will inevitably be friction between an administration and journalists. However, perhaps at no point in living memory has there been more concern about freedom of the press in good part because of real or perceived conflict between the Trump Administration and the media. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 83 of americans believe that current tensions have made the relationship between the administration and the news media unhealthy. And about three in four u. S. Adult say that these tensions are getting in the way of access to Important National political news and information. Staying true to our role as a Nonpartisan Forum committed to fostering opinion and substantive discussion, we are so pleased to present this set of conversations as we approach the 100 day mark of the Trump Administration to explore these challenges, and maybe to even find some solution and common ground. We have gathered a diverse array of present and former Administration Officials and journalists to discuss how we got to this point and how, still early in the administration we might act to achieve our common goal of an informed citizenry that is the bedrock of our democracy. We will employ several different formats, including standalone talks and panels in order to investigate these complex issues. We are pleased that this symposium is being broadcast by several different networks, and were also life casting it at newseum. Org live, and on several social media platforms, hashtag trump and the press. Important support for this symposium was provided by the Knight Foundation for which were extremely grateful. Additional funding has been provided by the kohler fond of the Community Foundation for the National Capital region. I would also like to express my thanks to our friends at especially tammy, Betsy Fischer more and Robin Goldman for all their help in putting together this ambitious program. The newseum will continue to export issues that are vital to our democracy. This symposium will launch a yearlong set of discussions entitled the First Amendment and the Trump Administration. I hope that you will attend future events in this series and other newseum programs that explore consequential issues. Tonight, for instance, in this room we are showing the First Episode of a new Program Inside the fbi, new york. After the episode, i will be interviewing fbi director james comey and executive producer mark levin. Ripped from the headlines indeed. We want to start this morning with a brief presentation from one of the breakout stars of the 2016 campaign and as of monday, Pulitzer Prize winner for 2016 David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. From his crowd source coverage of Donald Trumps foundation and charitable contributions to the net infamous axis on a date, his work dominate the political conversation last fall. And he hasnt let up. Hes graciously agreed to share his forward thinking approach to Investigative Journalism and his insights into what the future holds for this tour of the vital reporting. And now, David Fahrenthold. [applause] show less text thank you. Thanks everybody for coming. Im so glad to be at the start of what should be a really, really interesting morning. First i should say for those of you who have not been followed the Washington Post is a new pretty gothic dives into darkness. According to the new company policy, we have set the mood, will turn down the lights, turn on the fog machine and i brought a cd of Haunted House sound effects. Two minutes of organ music and screams to get everybody ready. I guess thats not possible. Thank you. We will just imagine. I want to say this at the beginning. This is a time of extraordinary power for the media in washington. I mean that, power, although there are number of people, some of whom they come on the stage later today who have called us fake news or the enemy of the people. The truth is we live in a time when the folks in power, the folks with power in washington often lack the cohesion, the ability, the organization to shape the narrative about themselves. Usually one of the dynamics we deal with in washington is a president ial administration sort of acting as a unit to shape the way the public sees them. We dont have that now for better or for worse. The public more than ever depends on us on the news media to make sense of whats going on in washington. Weve seen times with the people who have power depend on a static sense of what just happened to them. Remember why did mike pence added mike pence learned the National Security advisor mike flint had misled him about his contacts with Russian Ambassador . He read about in the Washington Post. How did House Republicans find out a couple of weeks ago that this health care bill, as obamacare bill they been talking about for months had been pulled without a vote . They read about it from the Washington Post and the New York Times. The president himself had called this news. One of the dynamics we dealt with last year in the transition. Before President Donald Trump took over was the power of his twitter feed, his ability to use twitter to get around us or two more often command us to cover whatever he wanted. But we now have seen even a few weeks President Donald Trump has diluted the power of that weapon, diluted the power of that account by repeatedly using it to hit that he would do things that he would not do or to make claims that he had no evidence to back up your so just a big one example, in chicago doesnt fix the horrible carnage i will send in the fence. He did not send in the fed. 3 Million People didnt vote illegally. He wasnt wiretapped at trump tower as far as we can tell. Those things, those actions, those tweets have taken away what was his ability to act as Americas National news assignment editor from his bathroom or from his bed, from his kitchen table. That ability that no president has ever had to sort of command the media that we saw in january doesnt exist anymore. So we come back to the idea people not rely on us more than ever to make sense of whats going on. Whats our responsibility now as a news media at this moment of unaccustomed influence . Beyond the ageold requirement that we do right in with the fair and fast, i would say theres a quite enough to be more transparent than ever. We have all these people who normally tuned into washington political coverage in the last month of the president ial election and to doubt again. Those people are now engaged. They are reading, excited or encouraged or theyre terrified, whatever it is, theyre reading the details of House Intelligence Committee meetings and investigation and Court Decisions in maryland and how why come all the things that used to be things we covered for washington audience and some audience beyond now is his enormous national audience. So for those people coming to us for the first time or acting as a sustained audience for the first time, we must show them why we were better. We have to show them if they dont know it from our name, we have to show it to them in our work here so last year in the course of reporting stories about Donald Trumps chervil giving a promise to give to charity, i tried to use social media as a means of economic transparency. I use it to show readers what i knew, what im trying to learn, but i still didnt know and how i knew what i had known. I knew. This began not by any plan but by necessity. Last year, in may, i had this reporting problem that i never had to do with before. I had been writing about the promise is donald trump to give money to children charity. Hisuding 1 million out of pocket and said he would give it to veterans. Both of the money i could not account for especially the 1 million that came out of his pocket. His Campaign Manager called and the donald trump had given 1 million away, this was in may after the original promise. He gave it away to two Veterans Groups but he could not tell me when or how are any amounts. He will not share that information, he said. Said, take his word for it. I do not want to take his word for it. This is a hugely important promise. Made that a huge selling point. If he gives his own money i want proof but how do you get it . Be able to prove a negative, you could not prove that he gave no money away. I tried to prove a positive, to find some evidence. I tried to find one dollar of this 1 million and i did it on twitter. Here is one example. I tweeted at veterans organizations, journalists who cover veterans, anyone who is active in the world of veterans on twitter and i asked them, have you gotten even one dollar of this money trump giveaway, it is a Million Dollars, do you know anyone who did and i included trump handles. So he himself would see. Either a Veterans Group would see i was looking for it and they would say i got money and heres the truth. Or trump himself might see it. I spent a day searching this way and i did not find a dollar. That was because the money did not exist. I was told he had given the money way he had not. Ofwas not until the night may 23 after i had done this long public search that trump gave the Million Dollars way, he a group called the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation whose leaders he knew. There we go. Trump called me the next day to say he had given the money away. I asked him, did you just give this away because i was asking about it . And then he called me a nasty name. That is the last time we talked. Nasty guy. If donald trump had been willing to wiggle out of a promise to veterans under the brightest journalism, have an what would he try to do when no one was looking when he was just a private citizen . We found evidence he had promised to give away millions of dollars over the years in set out to prove him right. I started calling charities and i asked to help identify charities he had given money to. He did not respond. Charities that were likely to get money. He would have given money to them. I made a list and took pictures of it and posted it on twitter. 0 fifth charities. 450 charities. Charities that he had given money to from his foundation, that was not his money, anybody i thought, if he had given a dollar of his money they would have gotten a. It. I thought he might call again and to me the truth but he did not call. My search turned out between 2008 and 2015, a time when trump said he was giving millions away, i turned up one gift that was for less than 10,000. In this process, i used social media to ask supporters, anyone who might know where he had given his money to come forward and make a suggestion and added to the list. At the same time i was using social media to try to solve another problem, which was the donald j. Trump foundation, was it really his money, he had been using it to buy things you should not use your money to buy if you are running a charity, like giant portraits of yourself. In one case, trump had bought with money from his charity paid 10,000 to high alert portrait of himself. I need to know where that was. He bought it with the charities money, it has to be used for charitable purposes. Whatever he had done with this giant portrait it had to be a charitable purpose. I needed to know where it was. This is one of the numbers of times that i asked my readers and twitter followers. They find found things i would never thought to find on my own. In this example there is a reader of mine, allison angular, atlanta. Tory writer in she had the idea to look on the trip advisor page of his golf course, where people have pictured posted pictures and 350 photos in she finds at the bottom a picture of donald trump. A portrait i had been searching for, the missing portrait was shown on the trip advisor page hanging on the wall of a sports bar at his golf resort in durell. Dated 12 february 2016 dated february 2016. Nationales the spanishlanguage broadcast. Doral was fourt blocks away and used his points and made a reservation. Andoes over to the doral checks and, it is late, 12 30 a. M. At night and he asked the cleaning crew to let him in the sports bar and there it is. In the flash. In 14 hours we went from not knowing where this portrait was a may could happen anywhere to having it on the wall in the flash, in this case apparently breaking the wall. One of the funniest parts of the story is the excellent nation for how this portrait from the Trump Campaign of how this came to be hanging on the wall of this sports bar. He said yes they said it may appear that the charity, did the buyingbar a favor by art. The sports bar is doing charity a favor by storing their charitable portrait on the wall of the sports bar. It has to be one of my favorite quotes of the whole story. A legal expert said it is hard to make an irs auditor laugh but this will do it. [laughter] so since President Trumps inauguration, i have seen a number of other news outlets using, embracing transparency beyond social media. The great things the New York Times had done where they post the full transcript. They want to give people everywhere to so people can dig through things they find interesting, to see how trump responded to questions. You see it in an incredible ,tory from us at the post times where they talk about they are writing about west wing infighting and they tell you how many people meet with them from the west wing. Isyou are someone like me it more people than you thought worked at the west wing who are being quoted. There is a story i admire where they talked about a rebranding effort where 20 people had been gathered together to talk about the messaging of trumps first 100 days and six of those 20 rate. , an incredible i talked earlier about how we want to show people by what we do is better. If you read that story you see the six out of the 20, you have a confidence that story is right. Being transparent haps helps readers understand. It forces us to focus on what we know and be in more explicit in our writing and if you want think it is better to have 20 leakers, the 19th person might tell you something you do not know. Or that the first 19 people were wrong. The story gets better and being more explicit about how we know what we now, exactly who we talked to, makes are reporting better and makes increases that trust. In closing, for the news media, our new power should come with a profound sense of humility, and openness to criticism about what we ignore and what we do not think is worthy of of an explanation. We have to listen to what comes back in as we become transparency from people who think we are not doing it right. I hope there was greater transparency, we can show readers why we deserve their time and trust. I hope the it makes us more likely to explain ourselves. I look forward to hearing from a lot of people. Thank you for letting me start it off. [applause] quest thank you and congratulations again on the pulitzer. Next up, communicating for president. Some say it is one of the toughest jobs in washington. Familiar faces who have represented president s from each party on our next panel. And to do introduce them here to introduce them in moderate the session is the cofounder and executive editor of axios. It is a special pleasure to welcome mike allen. [applause] you andank congratulations for an amazing turn out. Light up and congratulations to david and his wife elizabeth. Whose work isue inspiring. The vicechairman is over here, Betsy Fischer and all the people who have worked so hard to bring this session to us. Talking about communicating for and with a president. We have two of the great practitioners, gentle mary jen palmeri. Position in same secretary clintons president ial campaign. When the New York Times did a story about her joining the campaign they pointed out she tended to work with the president instead of against the press. She is a was a Deputy Press Secretary for president clinton and the john edwards 2004 campaign. Presse kateri for president bush. The podium and the 2000 campaign he was working for the enemy, a lisbeth dole before joining george w. Bush and started to medications as a hill rat. But they have known each other since 1991. He worked fore, leon panetta. Were friendly and our paisans and work i will together. It was relatively uncommon in those days but more now. It is a era long gone. How long were you with president bush . Is the biggest mistake you made at the podium . Jen i cant think of one. To watching what happened poor sean yesterday. I tw