Day, the host of cnns reliable sources, Brian Stelter. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. A little bit of a live edition of reliable sources even if reaction what Kellyanne Conway was saying a few minutes ago. We have carrie dudoll brown. David kurt patrick, author of the facebook effect and well talk about facebooks role in the news and cecelia vega, correspondent for abc. Covered Clinton Campaign and covering the trump administration. Ses sell yaw, the Kellyanne Conway said the press is presumptively negative about the man you cover every day. Are you presumptively negative . Im presumptively cynical. That is my job. Not just skeptical but cynical . Skeptical and cynical, we have to be both given this administrations relationship with the truth and how tough it is for us to get at that right now. Do we start our day and i can speak for all of us, in a negative manner . Absolutely not. That is not our tone in perspective of our coverage. My sense this perception there is this adversarial relationship much more comes from the white house than it does from our end of the Briefing Room. They want an adversarial relationship or they perceive this to be the case. We just are doing our jobs. I dont think that the complaints that they have are any different than the Obama Administration has had about coverage or negativity, than the Bush Administration or any administration before that. That is is the nature of this beast. Youre saying same complaints but maybe theyre louder about it . I think so, yeah. I think so. I think Ari Fleischer would have told you the exact same thing. He was unhappy with coverage then too. Carrie, what about the issue of policy coverage, substance versus style and palace intrigue . Kellyanne saying Jeff Sessions at border, that was ignored by a lot of news outlets. Obviously politico and others covered that yesterday. Im not sure why she said it wasnt covered. What is your impression of lake of lack of policy . I covered the Obama White House. I started covering him in 2007 and 8 when he was six years and heard exact same thing that the politico cared way too much about palace intrigue. Didnt cover policy. I was a policy reporter covering health care back then in a way, i would go to them basically hear the same thing and sean spicer said that this morning, that they want us to cover policy and not the palace intrigue. The challenge is that the white house itself is very, very, very focused on palace intrigue, who is up and who is down. Not just the press that is engaged in this. Like cecelia said this is longstanding complaint. We cover policy at politico itself. We have 125 reporters and editors that cover policy alone, all the agencies and departments that is a Huge Investment what is going on in this town. We do that, give it play. I would give them a point that the palace intrigue stories typically do pretty darn well. People are really interested knowing what is going on in the white house as they were in the Obama White House. The difference this white house really engages with our reporters to talk about what is going on in the white house. That is why, when spicer and some others really pushed back and try to internal say dont talk to reporters when they themselves are talking to reporters. Engaging is euphemism for backstabbing each other, leaking . Yeah. Theyre saying dont talk to reporters. They say it privately and yeah, dont leak. But, we had a story two days ago where we quoted six people inside of a meeting of 30, talking about the strategy at 100 days. That is a remarkable level of people leaking and talking to us. Do you know who all the sources were yourself. I do typically ask all the sources were, yeah. Youre confident of that. Cecelia, Jonathan Karl and my colleague at white house talk about this a lot. Happening more and more, every story, number of sources being reported gets bigger and bigger. The Washington Post we spoke to 18 sources, six sources. Its a sign how much people are talking. You ask about policy versus palace intrigue, i would say until syria last week, throw a percentage out there, 80 , 70 of the content that gets asked about and discussed in these White House Briefings is the press corps asking about whos doing what to whom inside of the white house and or can you clarify something the president tweeted about . A lot of this is selfgenerated, the fact were not talking about policy. One more question about this before we talk about the future of news more broadly, the president s antimedia attacks came up a bit earlier but want to ask from you alls perspectives, what has the impact been, carrie, on this venom, this poison we heard from this white house . Has it hurt us with our audiences, or has it not . I think it is created, created a more challenging environment. Youre talking about all the pages youre getting, right . Yeah. Are people trusting what youre reporting . I dont have data on that. I certainly feel the pressure of the divided environment and my response to that is how i set the tone for a newsroom and how we report and reminding our reporters and editors that the rules, basic rules of journalism still apply even in an environment where it doesnt feel normal. It is absolutely imperative we conduct ourselves as journalists would in any era. Verify information. Try to get as many sources as possible. Be transparent how we got the information. Doing that and adhering to what the basic rules of journalism are, giving people a chance to respond, engaging with them, that does not change. If we do our jobs as we always were supposed to do, i believe that is our best insurance for the long term. Its a longterm play. Were in a weird environment right now. It may not be like this five or 10 years. All i know what i can do at this point, make sure my newsroom is living up to all the standards of journalism i learned 20 years ago, 25 years ago. I think getting as many sources as possible, i think that where were getting 18 sources, six sources. You really want a preponderance of evidence and feel completely confident what youre putting out. I think that is good for journalism. Were under a lot of scrutiny that requires us to respond and be as airtight as possible. Divided world but also connected world. That is the title of this session. Were wrapping up the morning about the future of news. David, i wonder how you view facebook and other social media impact the first 100 days . I could make a case the president s tweets dont matter. But only matter when cnn and politico report them. On twitter theyre not reaching that many people. As kellyanne says allow him to go around the media on a daily basis. How do you see it . The landscape created by the twitter and Facebook Changes everything. This wellprogrammed morning started exactly right, not only with a pull silter is prize winner but somebody who won a pulitzerer prize by using social media, include his sources, inconclude his audience as his source. Create a collective process because the fundamental difference of a connected world in my opinion is that it is a participative age. Everybody wants to participate and everybody is going to participate whether you like it or not. I mean every Single Person in this room probably has one of these. When theyre on it, theyre not just receiving, theyre also broadcasting, that changes the landscape. I think trumps tweets matter a lot. I would comment on this thing that was said in the Journalists Panel about, you know, how trumps tweets cant be responded to or you cant follow up like you could in a press conference. Thats a legitimate complaint in a sense but on the other hand, if you listen to what happened with farenthold, when he used trumps handle in a tweet about his philanthropy and trump called him or immediately, that is, because you can actually direct a comment to the president in a way that you never could before. I might argue that it is a counterbalancing factor. But, regarding facebook versus twitter, you and i talked about this a little bit before, i think it is easy in washington in particular, given that we have a president who is so twitter sent trick, to forget that the primary way most people get their information is through facebook and oddly not just in the united states. Increasingly pretty much definitely now on a global level, primary source of information for people is facebook in all but like three or four countries, right . And that is a big, big change that is going to continue to change the landscape. There is a lot more we could say to follow that up. Youre saying facebook is the internet and fast book is the news to a degree we may not appreciate in our twitter bubble . Its a place where people receive the news and because its a twoway medium it create as context fundamentally new, im a baby boomer. In my lifetime it is fundamentally new to basically have the ability to react as a, in a position where you formerly were just a passive recipient. Right. Cecelia, Kellyanne Conway said some reporters tweets are a hot mess. Not mine. Some were printed out. She would show examples. Do you worry, do you think, do you double think before you tweet . Yes, without a doubt. But it goes back to how we started this conversation. I mean the pressure is on all of us now more than ever to not screw up. To get everything right. And twitter, as a medium for me is no different than going on the air on world news or nightline or gma. I mean you can screw up on twitter. You cant screw up on air, i cant screw up on my reporting online. There is no differentiation anymore between the outlet any of us are on. But i just wanted to go back to what you were talking about right now and in terms of how this social media impacts us in real time. Just yesterday in the press briefing, when im sure all of us aware in here when sean spicer made the comment about the holocaust and syria, with which has blown up rightfully so. He made it. It landed in the press briefing. None of us really knew what to do with it. It took about five minutes or so, a few minutes. Were sometimes and looking on my phone. Suddenly were seeing on twitter. Were seeing from our newsdesk. This thing is blowing up. So we came back around and said, hey, sean, do you want to respond to this . It was in real time in that press briefing that comment was gaining traction. We gave him the opportunity to clarify. We know how that ended. It didnt kind of go very well from him. Ended up doing apology tour all night into this morning. So they, this white house i think even struggling with how to deal with this. Certainly impacts our reporting on a second by second basis. Thats a fascinating example. I did not know that was how that happened. We heard quite a few times this morning, particularly from fleischer and palmieri, that the press is biased, and Ari Fleischer particular. That i actually found that a very anachronistic point of view i think, in fact, you know, fox news is the number one cable channel, right . Breitbart we couldnt have the session we had this morning without breitbart being represented. Were in a new landscape where there is much broader range of voices on, you know in the media generally and it is because of the internet that made that possible in general. Fox notwithstanding. But, so, that anecdote shows the tale is wagging the dog a little bit as i said. The world is much bigger than the press and i do think that the internet has broadened the range of voices dramatically and included literally everybody. Just one final point, there is a professor at harvard who did a study of the media landscape on the internet and actually the landscape of the right is bigger than the landscape in the center and on the left. One of the other scary things in the analysis he did was that basically there is almost no communication across the divides. Just doing a mathematical analysis of traffic on the internet which is very disturbing. Isnt that the biggest story of all up here . The biggest story about the future of news those two alternative realities. Breitbart versus the New York Times or cnn up on this stage earlier. Is there anything facebook or other companies can do, because that is a profound wound, a gaping wound. That is question theyre asking at twitter and facebook now. Anybody that has read or hadnt read, Mark Zuckerbergs 5800 word essay about a month ago, five weeks ago very contritely acknowledged that fake news was a problem. Before we go there, can you remind us about november . You had him on stage a couple days of at election. Two days after the election where he said his i was interviewing him, he said its a crazy idea that fake news affected the election which he now essentially retracted. So you have seen them evolve in the span after few months . Evolved. I have a lot of respect for Mark Zuckerberg which is why i wrote a book about him. The guy is extraordinary. He is racking his brain about this. There are a lot of extremely conscientious people at facebook asking what does it mean that we are the fundamental landscape of information dissemination and what is our responsibility. I think it is healthy them asking that question. It is scary for society and in respect of my company, a commercial enterprise is in the position of making many of the decisions they have to make how toe prioritize public dialogue and truly a global issue. Just to throw in one data point on that, there was a great story in the guardian a week 1 2 ago how this make news problem is almost in every country. In germany alone there are 500 people working for facebook in berlin just combating fake news in german. Required to by certain mall. Taiwan, taiwanese government, facebook is doing theyre in all these countries. It is hard for a company to do it and im not sure a company should do it. That is the position were in. We invited them to be here today but facebook declined. Youre articulating a rapidlyevolving position. Last summer folks there said we dont have the responsibility to pop your filter bubble. Now looks like theyre starting to think they do have a responsibility. Theyre very responsible people very responsible people . David, they let me post lies and innuendo and spam, let me post whatever i want on facebook. They didnt have to do that 13 years ago. Users, not that easy for them to police all 2 billion people in real time. You have to keep that in mind. Now yeah. The existence of these platforms should be put on us, because were making them big by using them. Whose fault is anything . But i do think facebook takes their role very seriously. I dont think they have the answers yet for many of these problems. Carrie, does an outlet like politico think about writing stories reaching folks who prefer alternative reality where pizza gate is real or where the pope did endorse donald trump . Do you feel a need to pop those bubble. The pope did not endorse . Too soon. We feel the need to report on what is the facts and you know, on pizza gate or fit is donald trump claiming he created 600,000 jobs on his watch, writing story for context of that. That is what we attempt to do. So, yeah, we try, that is not sort of our sole mission these days to write when were presented with sort of glaring factual inaccuracies, i do think that we have an obligation to make that clear in the course of our writing and reporting on something. I think it has been interesting to watch the evolution of this over the course of the campaign into day, i dont know what were on now, 89 or something of Donald Trumps candidacy and presidency how we the media struggled to correct the record. Have we struggled . Do you think it has been i think it has been because, you know, lets just take the tweet on wiretapping, for example. Do we have to . Do we have to . Too soon also . At what point do we say in our stories, print or broadcast, digital or otherwise, this is just not true . Outright this is just not true. And i think we are now at that point where were doing that. I think it took us a while to get there because there was this sense of, is that our job as a media toe be factchicks every single thing, can we fact check every single thing we are writing on . I dont know that we can but doing much more than we were. Go from Fact Checking to narrative checking when he says he has 600,000 jobs created what is he really saying . Or is he going to build a wall. Right. You could make the case, carrie this white house has been pretty conventional. We heard that word couple times, conventional use of media has not been using daily Facebook Live shows with president. Has not been creating new form of media through social networks not all that disruptive. Would you ascribe to that idea . Weve seen some experimentation but the world has not been flipped on its head in the last 12 i dont weeks . I agree that there is a lot of tools that the white house could be using that Obama Administration used to great effect. Reaching out to folks through different platforms. Using the white house media apparatus to do videos and to do, their own, sort of news focused, you know, projects. I havent seen that yet. It is only three months in. We saw that early going. We saw a more nimble media team out of the Obama White House in terms of using all the possible tools at their disposal. We see the typical twitter, im still, in fact sean spicer does do media briefings every day i think that is a good thing. I support that. But that was something he threatened not to do at the beginning and he is doing it as i thought at the time when they were threatening not to do it, you get in there realize the power of being able to command an audience for 45 minutes, an hour, and he, as he does. He is changing the way that he reads off a lot of prepared remarks at the beginning of his briefing to get out a message and theyre using that. When the president decides toe bomb syria last week, the value of the press pool was clear t was 10 30, 11 at night he had a press pool to broadcast what he did. That is what we were saying beforehand, he will realize the power of having this White House Press corps there to broadcast what he does. Speaking of syria, cecelia, was there anything to learn of live coverage, special reports f