Hunt for faculty and kicked my ass when it deserved kicking and to the mentor since before they joined the corps and to the marines i served with in the community of the veterans writers who are essential to the end of the non veteran writers that were equally essential pointing out the blind spots that i do know did as though i had and to my wife jessica who offered a tremendous love and support and the rest of the crew that told the folks at penguin especially to one of my earliest supporters the earliest supporters in the publishing world and to my family, to my grandfather and my grandparents and all of you here tonight thank you so much. [applause] redeployment, thats amazing. Thank you for your service in the country and youre welcome to the National Book award. [laughter] congratulations in fact to all of the winners and to all of the judges and i would just say to the finalists and anyone else out there associated with any book here that doesnt take home a prize i know it is difficult not to think of yourself at least somewhat as losers think outside of the literary world all of us are considered losers. [laughter] i have determined this time this evening and i would like to thank the National Book award for inviting me. In fact im feeling so happy i would like to buy all of you a drink on the balcony. Okay. They can buy you a drink but i will get the next. The official after party is upstairs and the Unofficial Party is me and Gerald Brooks with a bottle of wild turkey. Thank you everybody. Ive been told the winners should go over there. The winners should go over there next on booktv afterwards with guest host Washington PostNational Reporter nia henderson. This week stonewalled by fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation and harassment in obama washington. And if the in it the former cbs news Investigative Reporter presents her account of the opposition that she says she encountered while trying to report on the administrations at least policies. The program is about one hour. Host welcome. So great to have you here today and tell us about your book stonewalled. The title is my fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation and paragraphs meant in obamas washington. Why did he want to write this book lacks guest some people approached me with it and its something id been thinking about the state of journalism and the things happening in the industry. Some of it because of my experience at cbs to decide that not all specific to cbs. I attended investigative reporting conferences and notes with other Investigative Reporters, friends, local News Reporters and it seemed as though there were some common themes that signaled trouble as far as i was concerned and i thought that it would be interesting if not insightful. What is the trouble . You talk about the journalists themselves maybe not wanting to deal with the stress again on the corporations and government. Guest there is a great deal on the part of the producers to turn up great investigative stories. Thats what we do. But i notice in the past couple of years other reporters have observed may be less of a desire on the part of the gatekeepers and managers to take on those tough issues whether they precede them to be political issues were even topics that go after certain special interests that are protected for one reason or another or corporate interest in some cases. So all of that i argue in the book is resulted in what they see as the narrowing slice of what they want to put on the news at night and then you have peace newscasts on a given night with much the same not only because they are ten stories going on in the whole planet on any given night, but i argue that that the similar decisionmaking processes are used at each of the networks to decide what should be in the news and may be importantly what doesnt get on the news. I imagine the decisionmaking process that the executive is making has to do with the viewer, right and how do they play into that, what theyd rather see a story you talked about for instance how they bumped it for a different story. And i think you said they used the word weather porn. Is that the network for executive . Guest its certainly the type of story i was doing for most of the 20 years i was encouraged such as the government watchdog reporting has proven to be by longstanding polls the only thing the public likes about the news media that is one thing they see as contributing something of the value. So the idea that they didnt seem to want the the stories at least not for the last couple of years signaled to me and my producer there was something other than just viewer interest at play. Also when i discussed in the book that there were some of these hot button issues we were investigating at first Certain Network managers liked the stories and the delights which would go off and they wouldnt want them they were widely popular among the viewers. They were told they would dominate the website and attract all kind of traffic. So i do not think that the decisions were made exclusively or holy in regards to what they wanted to see. There were other factors at play host is there a difference between what you have seen on the point outlets approaching the investigative reports . Guest there are similarities but again ive compared notes with some of my colleagues at the investigative report conferences and my acquaintances and friends and they describe similar pressures and trends. So ive concluded that there is something happening in the industry by think most reporters will tell you these stories are harder fought to get on television and many of them dont read one line that i used in the book as people think that a lot of effort goes into putting Great Stories on television and they would be surprised to know how much effort goes into keeping some of them off. That is the story that i am trying to tell. Host that is a special breed of journalists that want to do this kind of work. Guest i think it begins as everybody doing the beach report i always had as many reporters do that extra step of curiosity a always have another question or two and people in the thread youve often find a more interesting story and wanted other one that other people do not have, so i was never really assigned to be an Investigative Reporter it was just an outgrowth of the reporting that i did i think i fell into it. Host and this book is largely about what you have done under obamas tenure with the controversy under the over the Bush Administration and clinton as well. Guest and i contrast the reception that the story got and even the republican targeted stories got as recently as last year i want it investigated wanted investigated in the reward for doing a story of the fundraising into hypocrisy and the promise that they wouldnt operate and yet we caught them down in key largo with the bigmoney donors and undercover cameras. Those stories when i do them are well received. No one calls me a liberal mouthpiece when i do those stories or accuses me of being a tool of nancy pelosi or whoever i would be a tool of that i noticed that when in the same breath i do a story that is in precinct after the other side or leads to the Obama Administration all the forces come out to claim that i am therefore a conservative and all of a sudden ive got these ideological things going on, and i think that to me reveals the bias of those making the judgment and there is a record that shows that covers both Political Parties and often no Political Party at all but the idea that they have to put a label would dig deeply says something about how they feel inside. Host and your angling and youve certainly been embraced by conservatives but youve also this book has done very well. Its on the New York Times best seller list, congratulations on that. What is it like now to be sort of the conservative star if you will. Guest if it helps people put a label on me it doesnt bother me. It doesnt bother me that its true people if thats what they want to do it doesnt matter to me so i dont mind at all. Ive point out that ive been on cnn, msnbc and only they ask in my looking for a job at fox. Nobody asks whether i deny being a conservative within are you looking for a job on msnbc and again i think that reveals the bias of people asking the question they assume if you do reporting in this administration you have to be a conservative because who would do such a thing. Host you think that there is a liberal leaning strain among the folks that are reporters. What do you think that has been for the coverage over the last six years . Guest i wouldnt argue the point that exists but over the course of my 20 years i didnt have a big problem with that. I had bosses i knew to be liberal leaning and conservative leaning but agreed to bosses that were able to keep their personal life opinion out of their story judgment which is what we have had to do and most did that quite well. I think the problem is when you have a few gatekeepers and we had about for a couple of years at cbs news. They cant keep their ideologies out of the decision and they if they can get the whole look of the newscast even when the groundlevel reporters are trying very hard to put the stories on television that are fair. Host it is sort of rooting for the establishment or the corporate interest. Guest i think so. All i can tell you is i detected less of a desire than i have ever seen to after the powers that be because when we sensed they didnt want certain stories going after certain political interests we offered to stories that had nothing to do with politics and investigations that have to do with taxpayer issues, charities that were accused of wrongdoing, Consumer Fraud stories, business fraud stories at the end they didnt want any of them from us so we felt like we were at a loggerhead with the broadcast longer had the broadcast that didnt take almost anything that we offered unless it was a controversy that was kind of being covered by everybody else. You probably know what im talking about. The emails say can you match it and the Huffington Post says this. I cant tell you how many times, not that those are not a very legitimate reports to look at. But every good reporter that i look at and there are many want to do their own reporting and the reason they are hired as they have their own sources and expertise and they can turn up the story is as good as the ones in the New York Times if not a better but they are telling them copy the paper and we hate that. We all hate that. Host and youve are being paid to uncover things that are not being reported elsewhere. Hopefully there will be a change when bush comes in and things will be better and more transparent. And bush came in and i dont think things are more transparent. In fact probably a little worse. So obama comes in and we say, he promised things would be better. He put out an edict that said freedom of information requests are supposed to be appeared erring on the side of giving information. There was a great hope for maybe the ability to have more tools to do our jobs better, and then to find, i think thats general agreement because reporters said 0 so from the New York Times so, thats the foundation for what im about to say, but i would just tell you there was the pushback which has always existed. Every administration has its own form of trying to stop negative stories, of course. Particularly aggressive and perhaps aggressively directed at me, and i know other reporters who do this reporting because ive spoken to them. It was a daily thing. Believe they must have meetings because of the way, probably twice a day meetings, contacts made by people at the white house which surprised people in the public. Theyll email me, email my boss, email colleagues, they will call my boss, they will get their surrogates involved, such as media matters on the web to prison their talking opinions do social media campaigns. Before you know it theres a movement trying to controversialize any story they dont like, the reporters who are covering it, the whistle blowers telling the truth from inside the government. Even if they were once loyal Obama Administration employees theyre now discredit and its a very Aggressive Campaign that i think more so than whan i experienced under the other two administrations. As you laid out, clinton came in promising a certain amount of transparency, bush did, too, obama, and the fact there isnt obviously sets up a sort of pattern for whoever comes nebraska. Guest i think, and i heard other reporters say the same thing. Were all in the same mindset. Be interested to hear what you think. Eave administration is going to be tighter than the last. The federal bureaucracy and politics who are whatever reason seek to get more powerful to covet information, they somehow think they open the publics information and forget thats our information and act like youre asking to see some sort of corporate proprietary secrets, and i think its our job as the press to provide the tension that doesnt let that get out of balance. Were supposed to say, no, that is our information. That belongs to the public. Heres our freedom of information request. Heres awe lawsuit bus you didnt answer it. You dont get to choose which reporters cover your stories, which they do. And i dope think we provided as good a balance we should have and the more we give us as the press, the harder it is for us to get those rights back. Those are hardfought, and once lost, i dont know how you go back and no matter who is in charge next. Host is the public on our side in terms of like you said there have been letters that we submitted in 2013, complaints about photo sprays and when the white house has events in the oval office and dont let reporters in or just release still photos. Is it too in the weeds for the average joe to have sympathy with reporters who dont hold in very high regard . Guest i think a lot of people pay no attention but i do think people car. People consider themselves apolitical or obama supporters, they overall do believe the press has role to play in providing that natural tension with government or whoever the powers that be are, that were supposed to question authority and instead the dynamic i argue has been turned into question those who question authority. In other words, if a reporter reports something you dont like, discredit the reporter. If a who iser blower blows a whistle in the government, discredit the whistleblower and all the attention and skepticism is turned on the wrong side and thats a wellorb straighted effort that has been somewhat successful. Host in this book you lay out a number of controversies and incidents that you covered the first being fast furious. Self times in the book when you talk about this, a. , you make the argument that perhaps reporters didnt want to engage as much because of whatever reasons or in the network didnt. Talk about how you came to the fast furious scandal, what it was and what the reaction was from the white house and from cbs. Guest fast furious came as a tip, an anonymous letter sent to my producer, a copy of a letter, actually, that senator grassley, who deals with whistle blowerssent to the department of justice, asking whether thats crazy sounding program whereby federal agents were facilitate delivery of assault weapons into the hands of mexican drug cartels. Grassley was asking if this was true and i could tell from the tone of his letter, he had whistleblowers telling him this. I piqued ours interest. Grassley wouldnt return my calls so i was stuck with a letter and no context. But my producer and i began finding sources and contacts. One thing led to another. We were able to talk to enough people that we believed this to be true. We hat excellent source. The first story had nobody on camera by name making the allegations but we had plenty of reliable offcamera sources. After the first story, which is in quite an important story and the evening news producer at the time, executive producer, led the show with it, which is unusual, and let it go what is a really long time in television news, Something Like five minute. He said write the store the way it needs to be made. Host usually you have two and a half minutes. Guest that cooperate be done that way. After the story, it was an incredible reaction, a pushback from the administration saying all these people were liars, which we now know they were telling at the truth and my report was wrong but we know its correct. I knew my sources were good. They were internal memos somebody leaked to me with government officials from atf emailing eye Public Relations government officials in atf saying thank goodness nobody else is picking up the story and lets bring out positive press to drown out the story, which told me were on to something. So we were on a roll. I finally got a very brave sitting atf federal agent, john doddson to blow the whistle on camera by name, so became undeniable after that. But after a couple of weeks, when it looked like the story i never thought it was the story that would lead to the attorney general of the white house. Seemed like a phoenix, arizona, gun story of some kind. As it looked as though it was going higher, and as the allegations that the department of justice had cleared wire tapps in the case and knew about and it perhaps it was white house knowledge, interest in the story at cbs stopped, at least among the key people that decide what to put on television. Now, the story kept going, and we kept digging up a lot of information. Long before the story it had way more to be uncovered but the interest fell off and that was a pattern i describe in a number of stories whereby initially the stories were very welcomed, and applauded internally, and then, as i say, the light switch goes off. Host is the light switch in your systems does it have to 0 do with so its just an investigative report of some point hat fast furious and then at some point it becomes you have darryl issa bringing the attorney general behalf congress and there are hearings, and at some point he is held in contempt. Is that part of the reason or what is your sense . Guest i would argue it didnt become partisan because the attorney general is called into a hearing. How would you not call the attorney general in for a hearing. The doesnt answer a subpoena, how do you not consider contempt . Host