School Student Media program. No one is more qualified to speak on the topic then the men man on stage, Marlin Fitzwater, one of the longestserving press secretaries in history and one of three who served under two president s. Marlin got his start in journalism like some of you, as an eighth grade Sports Reporter in abilene, kansas. He went on a study journalism at kansas state. After graduation, marlin went to washington dc with dreams of landing a job at the washington post. Instead, he took a number of government positions including jobs in the department of transportation, the environment of protection agency, and the department of the treasury. In 1981, the white house beckoned and marlin was named a special assistant to president reagan and Deputy Press Secretary for domestic affairs. In 1985, he was tapped as the press secretary for george bush and two years later, he was named president ial spokesman. Subsequently, martin remained in the west wing as press secretary to president george h. W. Bush, a position he held until bill clinton moved into the oval office in 1993. Less than a decade later the Marlin Fitzwater center for communication was dedicated on this campus. With our guest of honor making one request marlin said, if all communication depends on our ability to transmit ideas from one person to another, let this center spark the intellectual curiosity, the enthusiasm, and the personal integrity to make every person who passes through these halls a beacon unto the world. We are very proud that are on stage today is alumnus trent spiner. Executive editor of the this paper that has shaped local and National Politics since its founding in 1863. Trent quickly found his place and his voice up and appear in the newsroom in the fitzwater center. As participants in the presidency and press program, you will work in the newsroom to satisfy your curiosity and find your voice in the Public Discourse of the 2016 president ial election. Trent has fulfilled marlins hope, and we have no doubt that you will as well be beacons unto the world. Please join me in welcoming Marlin Fitzwater and trent spiner. [applause] mr. Spiner i want to jump right into it. Part of our mission is to talk about the political discourse. And what an important country talking about that in the middle of a historic election no matter which side of the aisle you are on. Lets talk about lets jump off from their there. What do you about the state of our political discourse right now . Sec. Fitzwater it has changed a lot since i was an active political player. And i know some of you are a couple years younger than me so i would just summarize by saying president reagan was in office from 1981 until 1989 and president bush from 19891992 and i was with him during the period. The political theme today is so much faster, so much sharper, so much more difficult, i think, for a lot of reasons, that i can hardly equate the two. I remember when we started the campaign of 1992 with former president bush and he said to me, i dont want to hear you ever say a critical word about Hillary Clinton or bill clinton. He said well you can about bill clinton, but nothing about hillary and this is after we had gotten through monica. Doesnt that sound a little quaint today . Now that everybody calls each other names like crazy and he it gets pretty ugly. I think i was probably there at the right time. I got out of the right time. Even people in their own parties which is crazy to me. Had theeagan always rule of say no evil. Opposite you or anybody else really. You just never did it. That is in an area where it is very strange to me. Mr. Spiner the idea of the political center. The moderates, he was what i mean by that. Here in new hampshire, where we have the first the nation primary, you had a democratic socialist beat Hillary Clinton by 22 points. You will demo a political outsider, win or more than 100,000 votes when there is still Something Like a dozen candidates in the field. So, do you think do you think that is a sign of how divided this country is or do you see Something Else happening here . Sec. Fitzwater i think it is a sign of the division and parties in the country generally it is also a sign of the technology and communications that we have so many messages coming from so many sources that it generates support and opposition to all the candidates. You have the 17 candidates that is a contributing factor. But, the question is, how do you deal with it . I think that is really a quandary for all of the candidates and it shows in this campaign. The republican side started out with 17 candidates on the stage and i must say that i picked the president from that group and he was the first one thrown out, so, it is pretty hard to tell exactly how fastpaced it is going. Mr. Spiner what do you think that does . But you think that does to our politics . Sec. Fitzwater first of all of the to greater onus on concentration and really, considering all the angles. That reflects on what you read and how you get your information and through television, newspapers, and all the social media. And you have to do a serious analyzation of candidates. Much more so than it used to be. When you have two candidates really have now who are personalityoriented, making it even more difficult to really make judgments. Mr. Spiner what do you think if you were a High School Student, or giving advice for a High School Student about someone who was interested in either getting into politics or covering politics given all the changes, both in the media and political side, what would be your advice to them . Sec. Fitzwater my first piece of advice is go for it, it is great fun can you imagine . I keep thinking of the students from Franklin Pierce who are at the republican and democratic conventions. Where can you have more fun than those kids had to have had . With all of the candidates and all the crazy things that are going on. So, if you step back, and you dont get too involved so your heart is broken everyday, it is the most exciting thing you can do. So, and i advise people that time, go get on a campaign, go spend the six months or a year with a candidate at any level. Because it is really, really exciting today, because of all of this. The saint in and makes it exciting and who want to work for candidates also makes it frustrating for old folks who just want to pick the candidate and move on with other things. So, there is two sides to it, but, i think it is a great opportunity for young people. Mr. Spiner what about your time in the white house. You spent 10 years at the White House Press secretary under two president s, 10 years of being grilled by helen thomas in the front row. Which, by the way, i dont maybe the audience dont know about helen thomas if you want to give them a quick sec. Fitzwater sure, sure, she not alive, she died a couple of years ago in her 90s. She would love to hear that i have been asked to describe her and she cannot be here to respond. [laughter] sec. Fitzwater but she was the dean of the press corps. And she really integrated washington journalism for women in the last 40 years, starting with eisenhower, when eisenhower didnt want to give her a seat in one of his press conferences. And she spoke up and said, no, i want to be sitting with the boys. And then she really integrated Mens National press club and started her on woMens National press club. She was president of all of them. And she always sat in the front row, she worked for United Press International which fed stories to all the rest of the media and it quickly became that she was the dean of the press corps. She made the rules, really, for how a president and his press secretary relate to the press. And i miss those rules they really disappeared about 15 years ago for a lot of reasons. That we can go into, but she made rules about telling the press what you are doing about openness, about transparency, about honesty, about what is fair and what is not fair about newspaper rules and how to play the game. And so, i have a great regard and respect for helen, but every morning at 7 00, there she would be, sitting on my credenza. And helen and i do really know how to describe helen physically accept she wore red plastic boots up to about her knees and a black dress, often with black toreador pants, so she was a sight to behold at 7 00 in the morning. And she would start off well, what are you doing in latvia last night . I said, latvia . I wasnt in latvia last night, and we would go from there. Mr. Spiner there is a segment where you talk about how she would be waiting outside of your office at 7 00 a. M. And you had to get passage of the safety of your office before you can prepare for your morning briefing. Sec. Fitzwater thats right, she always had a question. I would say, helen, just give me in it to have a cup of coffee and she, ok, fine, one minute she would sit there and time it. She was a pistol, there is no doubt about that. Mr. Spiner and i bring that up and you brought up the point of the rules between the press and the people that they cover and it certainly seems like the rules have changed. We have seen even in this election the democratic side, Hillary Clinton has not really held many press conferences. On the republican side, donald trump has vilified the press at some of his events. And it really seems like that level used to be a cordial relationship while he were press secretary and that has changed. Do you think that is true and you think that is good or bad or . Sec. Fitzwater i think that the relationship has changed between the press and the press secretary. On a gradual basis, really, over a period of time, but it tracks the growth of social media and the internet and the satellites and all of the changes that it has made in communications. I would just say that the biggest single factor, i think, was when president clinton was impeached. Because his presidency was threatened and he was threatened, personally, and he told people told his press secretary, told others privately, too, all bets are off with the press i would do anything it takes to survive this. And the old rules that helen thomas made up about not putting out stories in the middle of night, not putting out stories late on friday night when the press couldnt handle them or not playing for weekend audiences those all went out the window. I remember asking mike mccurry, the press secretary about a subpoena from a federal grand jury for president clinton and the lawyer said, dont tell the press, dont tell anybody about it. And they held it secret for over a week and a half in the white house. That sort of thing would not have happened before. It happens now that people kind of overlook it because clinton was in serious trouble. But, since then, the rules have been basically ignored by been basically ignored by everybody. George w. Bush came in with not as much respect for the press as he might have because he was resentful of the way his father was treated with the way he perceived he was treated. It just got worse from there. Today, the press corps has really got to fight for their lives to get through a day and to get the information they want. Mr. Spiner you brought up social media. A lot of campaigns now focus on skipping that entirely and not only be able to reach out to their supporters but to target those supporters so that they know they can spend money on reaching undecided voters and maybe not spend as much money on people who have already decided to vote one way or another. What you think about the growth of social media and what do you think it does to our politics . Sec. Fitzwater first of all, let me say a word in defense of hillary. In this campaign she has not talked to the press, but in previous campaigns come even back to reagan and bush when i was there, the rule was always do not hold a press conference once you start the official campaign, which is basically september through november. The reason is simple when you have a press conference, the agenda goes to the press. They get to as the questions in ask the questions, and what they decide is important is what you have to talk about. But candidates have a message and have a position they want to present to the american people. So, it is much easier and more efficient to do it by other means speeches, or Television Ads or so forth and that is why they do not hold press conferences. It is not because they do not like the press or do not talk to the press, but they do not want to give them the right to set the agenda. That is really all hillary is doing. So anyway, to get to the Technology Side of it, it is so fast today that we have talked about how to feed the cable News Services because they are 24 hour operations. Fox news, cnn news, bbcs, those kinds of places. But they were nothing really compared to the demand from the bloggers, which makes journalists out of 300 million people. Theyre are always after information, they create stories, blogger stories feed to the regular news and so forth. The satellite, for example, now makes it possible to get pictures from every place in the world all the time with no correspondents around, no one to tell you what is going on. But those pictures are there and therefore we see war, conflict, we see governments fall and rise. Often a correspondent is 1000 miles away in london or some other place. So, there is just no limit to the pressure on the white house to provide answers to questions about that. And i think that really is a major problem. Now we have the development of social media twitter accounts and youtube, social media, facebook and those things which are a clear advancement. Low and behold, donald trump shows up, who is an inveterate twitter person, and the whole country is seeing a whole new level of twitter users. Of the role of that technology in campaigns. Almost every day twitter is used , to establish the issue we are doing with, the timetable, the agenda, and there is no rule there is an old rule in politics of the person who sets the agenda wins. It is a real factor. Hillary has had to keep up with that, but it clearly has changed the way candidates campaign. Mr. Spiner in your book, one of my favorite lines is at the beginning when you call the press a pack of wolves, and i do not think you were joking about that. Sec. Fitzwater lets say i was. [laughter] mr. Spiner you know, obviously that is the relationship the press is supposed to question the administration. There have been polls that have showed recently that American Trust in the immediate is at the trust in the media is at the lowest point it has ever been. Which, i think as the editor of a newspaper, is a dangerous thing. Later in the book you go on to say that the press are good people and they have jobs to do. What do you think about that stat, that the American Public does not trust the media anymore . At some point, even being vilified. Sec. Fitzwater i tend to think it goes back to the issue you started this discussion with on divisiveness in the country. The political opposition, the two parties and so forth. The divisiveness is so tough that basically on any issue you raise, you have half the country for its and half the country against it. The problem is if you are in half of the country that is against the issue or against the issue or the prevalent position, you think that everything you read that is negative is wrong. Immediately, and both think the press does not know what theyre talking about. These are all lies. These are all wrong, because you do not agree with it. On the other hand, the other half thinks you are pretty honest. What they read is consistent with their point of view. It goes back and forth. The end result is the press is always on the end of getting beat up by at least half the country at any given time. The divisiveness is, i think, dangerous in that sense in what it does to the media and how people perceive the media. If you watch fox all the time, for example, you do not believe anything you here on cnn because you know that has the liberal point of view and fox as the conservative point of view. One of the problems is fox has been so successful, made a lot of money and they are the highest in ratings. Now the print media is doing the same thing because that is the road to getting the money, and you have to follow that. So it has caused people to have to think differently about what they are hearing, about their sources of information. Some do a better job of that than others. But i am pretty forgiving of the press, themselves, although they have become advocates on both sides just like everybody else. But it is intellectually a tougher game for everybody involved. And i do not really know he do that, i think it has to be worked out. The media, for good reasons i think rather than bad, is kind of a selfcorrecting profession. If you look at the media growth historically and the change in the last 200 years if you want to go back that far, you see kind of a 50 year changes in the way they operate over that period of time. We are going through a really tumultuous period in time. I think it will work itself out. Mr. Spiner heres a followup question. You have the media, less trusted than ever before both sides are more disliked than any other candidate running for president in the past. What do you think we do to fix it, or does it not need to be fixed . Sec. Fitzwater well, i do not think there is any quick fix. I do not think there is any magic button you can push. Basically, i think it is first of all, you need to get candidates who understand there is a problem there and read and then to exploit it, they tried to be responsible and more straightforward in the information they put out, from that point of view. I think the press is trying to fix it. The president is going through this incredible change now between print media and social media and a number of the Boston Herald editor said yesterday, i am told, that his paper reaches more people through the social media that it does in print. Print becomes a backup and so forth. I know he has had a lot of success moving towards a social media. But i think there is a role for and i think that will be worked out in terms of how much time and money you put on the print side, how much time and money do you put on instagram or youtube or whatever you are using. It just takes ti