Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Press Club Dinner 20130210

A. M. Eastern on cspan. On mary todd lincoln. One son dies in the white house. One after her sons assassination. The kinds of grief this woman was going through is amazing. Folks demonized her for that. Thought she was crazy. We found out she was not crazy. She was a significant person and i hope someday we get a better view of the range of things that influenced her life, not just the tragedy. First ladies, first of its kind project examining the public and private lives of the women that served as first lady. Season one begins just over a week at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific on february 18 on c span, cspan radio and cspan. Org. On wednesday, the Washington Press Club Foundation hosted its annual congressional dinner. Speakers included a speaker from utah and north dakota. Lynn honored with the Lifetime Achievement award. She is a former Senior Editor and the first woman to hold that position at newsweek. Major garret acted as the master of ceremonies. This is 45 minutes. Good evening again. Good evening, and welcome to our honored guests, members of congress, journalism colleagues, and friends. Again, i am ellen shearer, and im president of the Washington Press Club Foundation. This is our 69th press club dinner. [applause] it is a chance to celebrate the hard work of those in the room. Journalists and those they cover, the members of congress and their hardworking staff. It is also an opportunity to remember the great winning journalists who came before us and who set standards of reporting excellence to which we can all aspire. The four we did to our program tonight, i would like to introduce our distinguished table. These hold off your applause until i finish the introductions. I will start at my right. Julie davis of bloomberg, our foundations secretary. Terry gainer. Linda povich, winner of our Lifetime Achievement award. David myers of cq roll call, the Foundation Vice president and one of our dinner co chairs. Senator Heidi Heitkamp of north dakota, one of our speakers. Our master of ceremonies, Major Garrett of cbs. Congressman chaffetz, one of our speakers tonight. Christina valentoni, senate parliamentarian, elizabeth mcdonough, and sheila casey, the treasurer. Lets give our table a round of applause. [applause] before we get to our speaker, i have a few quick thank yous. First, we are all able to enjoy this evening of wonderful food, great conversation, and great speakers thanks to the hard work of our incredible dinner committee, and in particular our dinner co chairs, christina valentoni and david myers. Thank you, guys. [applause] and thank you to our amazing executive director, who once again performed her magic to give us this evening. I also wanted to thank the foundations sponsors and friends. Their support makes the work of our foundation possible and helps us put on tonights event. They are toyota, unitedhealth group, cq roll call, the hill, the us chamber of commerce, ford motor company, the National Beer wholesalers association, the American Petroleum institute, microsoft, and the Newspaper Association of america. Thank you. Thanks also to ted benson of cq roll call for providing the cover art for our program, and of course the Mandarin Oriental hotel and its great staff. We have a terrific program tonight, and when it is over cq roll call will keep the fun going with a fabulous after party. The band suspicious package will keep us going into the night. In six years from now, the Washington Press Club Foundation will celebrate its 100th anniversary. It began life as the Womens National press club. The courageous women who came together in 1919 fox to fought to establish their place as professional reporters in a maildominated business. Tonight we honor their courage and try to live up to their legacy in the 21st century. Our mission is to Carry Forward our founding goal of equality, scholarship, and excellence in journalism. In keeping with that mission, the proceeds of tonights dinner go to the foundations charitable events, including collecting oral histories of leading women in journalism, and are successful Internship Program. This year we have taken on an ambitious digitization process to make our oral histories more accessible and more secure for posterity. Through our Internship Program we have provided full funding for half a dozen College Students to work over the summer at media organizations, learning the traditional excellence that is a hallmark of our foundation. Our Media Partners this year are the new york times, hearst newspapers, the los angeles times, cbs, the huffington post, and bet. Now i am delighted to turn the podium over to our eloquent and gracious and see, Major Garrett. Major is the chief White House Correspondent for cbs news. He is also a correspondent at large for national journal, where he has written a column. He has written several books, most recently the enduring revolution. He is also a former member of the Washington Press Club Foundation. We are most grateful to major for taking time away from his day job. Over to you. Thank you. I am ever mindful of my day job, so i will not confuse my duties with trying to be a comic. I have been here many times, but never in till tonight at the head table. I will move at a smart pace. So lets move along. But i will say one thing i feel like a bit of a scab. I have been done were you are sitting and i have managed to be here. If you have not begun to do so yet, i would suggest you drink heavily. A quick shout out to my colleagues at cbs and national journal. If you are watching as long as i have, you have a lot of colleagues. Everyone, it is great to have you here. What we are going to do is we will do the david lynch award and the Washington Press Club Foundation Lifetime Achievement award. Then we will turn it over to the people you really came to see, not me, senator heitkamp, congressman chaffetz. The david lynch award i knew david lynch really well. Give a round of applause to the recipient. David was one of the few guys who would give me a little bit of the advice. He would say, major, write that down, put that in your story. He was a prince of a man who covered Regional News for many different newspapers and did so with the grace and elegance that i always admired and still do to this day. Without further ado, the winner of this years david lynch award that emphasizes regional reporting is Allison Sherry of the denver post. If you can please come up here. [applause] as alison makes her way up here, i do want to note the honorable mentions matt cannon of the salt lake tribune, and karen of the las vegas sun. Lets give a round of applause. [applause] ellen has familiarize you with the Washington Press Club Foundations mission, how it got hard, all those things i believe and believed in when i was a board member in the early 1990s. I believe in them tonight. We all do. Before we get to the video, lets say bit about who she is, which im sure the video will further eliminate. Illuminate. In 1970, when she was at newsweek, she was one of 46 Women Journalist who filed a complaint against newsweek because they would not allow women to write in the newsroom. That was a real career crisis for her and her colleagues. I want to note something you might find of interest. Among here tonight is among you here tonight is the lawyer who represented her and the 45 members of newsweek, Eleanor Holmes norton, the lawyer who represented them. A round of applause for Eleanor Holmes norton. [applause] very quickly, and i imagine my colleagues here who are women will deeply appreciate this one little part of the lynn povich story. You can imagine it was a career crisis for these 46 women who try to figure out a way to sue the company they work for, dominated by men. They had secret meetings to decide how they would do it and recruit their members where . In the ladies room. That is exactly right. That story is part and parcel of what they did together in this sisterhood to sue newsweek, which was ultimately successful. She became the first Senior Editor of newsweek. She went on to become the editor in chief of womens World Magazine and went on to work at msnbc. That will be in the video youre about to see, sponsored by united healthcare. The video of our award winner, lynn povich. [applause] as the daughter of a journalist, lynn povich may have been destined to become one herself. But probably not. We were raised to get married, have children. Almost half of them got married that year, when they graduated. The rest of us got jobs. She became a secretary in the paris bureau of newsweek. Later she joined as a researcher in new york. Only held higher positions. You did what you were told go somewhere else, women do not write at newsweek. The Womens Movement was underway and the Civil Rights Act was law. We decided to do something. Now this is illegal and it is a moral issue, men doing something that is against the law. So one by one we started secretly organizing. She was among the four organizers to approach aclu attorney Eleanor Holmes norton. It was a figment of the old order, that women were supposed to have genderbased jobs and men were supposed to have the rest. Newsweek local ran a cover story on the Womens Movement on the same day, 50 women announced they were filing suit against the magazine for sex discrimination, the first Women Journalists to do so. These women actively understood what they were. They were in the front lines of professional women suing a major corporation. That was not only not easy, they did not have any predecessors to make them feel empowered, they can feel that this was ok to do. It took two years and another lawsuit, but newsweek started opening their ranks. That opened the door to become a reporter. I am very indebted to the doors they opened for me and for women throughout the profession. It was the first of the dominoes to fall. Women in other news organizations soon followed suit, and lynn became the first senior woman editor at newsweek. Having her in the room, she was at the table to suggest story ideas and we ended up doing all kinds of stories we would not have done if the room were filled only with men. She went on to become editorinchief of working woman magazine. She then signed on to launch msnbc. Com as head of east coast programming. She edited a book about her father, Washington Post sports columnist shirley povich. I understand affirmative action. If the law had not been in place, i would not have the opportunity i would have gotten. A lot of credit for carrying this through, not backing down, and always doing it in a very gentle way. There are not many people who could carry off such a radical action and still be seen as the gracious human being that she is. [applause] before we give a more loud and raucous round of applause, i want to tell it lynn something. There was a quote about how your presence expanded the vision of men around the table. In 1970, i was eight years old living in san diego, my mother was an executive of at t. She was an engineer. That example broadened horizons for me as a young man to think about a working mom, a working woman, and how to view the world in a different way. The reverberations of what you did in that newsroom for newsweek rippled across the country to a small home in san diego. I am indebted to you. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause to our Lifetime Achievement winner. [applause] thank you very much, major, and good evening, everyone. Those of us on the dais and all our distinguished guests. Before i begin, i would like to thank my family, here with me tonight, who has always rooted for me. My brother, david povich, my sisters in law, and my husband, steve sheppard, who makes Everything Possible for me. I would particularly like to thank my best congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes norton, who pushed open the doors for so many of us. [applause] thank you, eleanor, for all that you do. I am honored to accept this award in the name of all the brave Women Journalists who challenged the status quo, who rebelled at great risk against their bosses, who fought for equal opportunities in the newsroom against recrimination, reductions, and worse, and who paved the way for women to assume equal positions and pay in journalism. As the editor of newsweek Osborn Elliott told me, by changing the role of women, we not only made newsweek a better place to work, he made it a better magazine. By bringing in more voices and more points of view, and by giving our leaders readers a more accurate reflection of society. This is true for every institution, including congress. Women not only enrich the culture, they brought in the vision and the mandate. But we are not there yet. In 1993, women comprise 10 of congress. It has taken 20 years to take us to 18 today. In companies, women comprise about 15 of executivelevel positions. That number has not changed in 10 years. Until i wrote about the newsweek lawsuit, our primary place in history was this. Was lost. I am particularly grateful to the Washington Press Club Foundation, not only for this prestigious award, but more importantly for preserving and promoting the contribution Women Journalists have made and continue to make in our country. Speaking to young women about the good girls revolt, i have discovered that they are eager to learn our history, their history, and so we have to keep honoring our foremothers and forefathers who fought for the right we now take for granted. We have to keep telling our story, and we have to keep fighting for equal opportunities for everyone. Thank you. [applause] we often tell ourselves that we wrote the first draft of history. True enough, history has an arc. Lynn povich is a representation of that arc. Thank you very much. I will move this smartly along. I will only say this senator heitkamp, congressman chaffetz, after chuck hagels performance you have a hard road ahead of you. Ladies and gentlemen, Heidi Heitkamp. General garrett major. Really original. Thank you for that long and lengthy and extraordinarily gracious introduction. [laughter] i am so pleased to be here tonight, although i am not quite sure how i ended up being one of your speakers. Other than bad staff work. [laughter] that is probably the 16th lie politicians tell. I did not know what the heck this was when i said yes, so i only have myself to blame for the discomfort i have experienced the last couple hours. Like most politicians, i am no stranger to a microphone and. In fact, we fight over microphones if you are a politician. During my tenure as attorney general i spoke to my daughters second grade class. My daughter did not introduce me as the crimefighting attorney general. She did not introduce me as the protector of senior citizens. She did not introduce me as the job creator that i was. In fact, she ignored all of the talking points i gave her. [laughter] and she simply said, this is my mom, she makes speeches for a living. [laughter] i used to tell people, i am not a real lawyer, i just play one on television. As someone who makes speeches for a living, why am i so stressed about tonight . The truth is, like almost every politician you know, i am not very funny. In fact, i watched the videos of previous presentations that have been given to you by politicians, and im sure you are painfully aware that that is true. I did not fully appreciate how unfunny i was until, panicked about this lack of skill and tonights appearance, its set in 1 00 this afternoon. Most of you know that, like great delusional procrastinators, i thought i have just a few hours to get funny. What would you do if you are a United States senator and you thought you needed to get funny . You would go sit next to al franken, right . Thinking that the funny would rub off and maybe he would take pity as i told him the pain i was going through and would write a joke. Not al. So i am not feeling any funnier for my experience with al franken. I am feeling less funny. So the plan failed and it was on the plan b, or as i call it, the instant internet fix. You know what that is. Those of you who are regular internet users, you know that internet advertisers that would be all of you you know about the google and the system of tubes, i know. Internet advertisers are mainly right. They know how to find your special niche, your special opportunities. For example, you order a couple plus size jackets and did the banner ad that says, lose 20 pounds in two days. I thought, if it works or that it has got to work if you order up a joke books. I will get an instant banner ad telling me how to be an instant stand up comedian in an hour or less. As of speech time, i checked the phone no banner ads. Planned the has failed me. Plan b has failed me. So i thought, i will talk until and tell you