School at tosca university and he previously worked on the National Security council staff. Of a number of articles and has been a military analyst for cbs news. Ouris right is one of panelists. Kimberly is the author of and servedthe fire, as a correspondent for cbs news and the Associated Press and writes for the daily beast. She is the winner of the peabody award. To happy to welcome her dickinson college. She has been named as the chair in the strategic leadership. Tom shanker,is the associate editor of the Washington Bureau for the New York Times. Hes been covering the pentagon since 2001. And he has formally served as a Foreign Editor and correspondent for the chicago tribune. Or ofs the coauthhor o counterstrike, the untold story of our war against al qaeda. Mason. Left is linda she served 47 years with cbs news, ending her career in 2003 as a Senior Vice President for standards and specials. She was a pioneer in the industry, the first demo bs eveningn the c news with Walter Cronkite and broke ground on a number of fronts as a leader in the News Business and the Company Executive during her career. It is a great panel of journalists. I think we will have a terrific discussion. I just want to remind everyone who is following this that you are welcome live tweet it. Lincoln150. We hope we can open this discussion to a wider collection of classes. Thank new America Foundation for being our host and hope that everybody who is here will enjoyed our discussion. It is really a pleasure for me to moderate this very distinct panel. Questionn by taking a that was previously submitted by one of the participants and that is from chris jax in wichita. Chris said, in lincolns public letter in in another 1864 to a journalist, albert the president used the press to write a level of transparency. The rol has the role of press in the white house changed since the civil war . Let me start with you. What was the media like during the civil war . How did lincoln view the media . Did he like reporters. Did he try to influence the con duct of war . The biggest difference is that the media back then was not fair and balanced like it is today. It was partisan. Lincoln had lots of friends in the press because republican newspaper editors and writers, they were partisans for the republican party. As a leader he used partisan Republican Newspapers like the onistork tribune, or uni newspapers in kentucky to transmit his ideas to the public. He was a pioneer among president s. Always president s would use newspapers as official organs. They would designate one paper as a mouthpiece. But lincoln was a pioneer in not designating one mouthpieces by using multiple mouthpieces. In doing that, he created Competition Among journalists. In that sense, manipulated them for a very effective outreach effort. Andrew glic letters, reeley and the one to hodges in 1864, thosef letters were unprecedented attempts by a president to reach aye public using media in a w that established lincoln as a great communicator for his age. Linda, lets start with you. Bring us uptodate. Have you seen evidence of modern president s, president bush and president obama, during this period of war attempting to manipulate the press in trying to get the policies out, particular about the wars in afghanistan and iraq . Definitely. George bush and obama wanted their story told. The press has a kind of dance we do with the administration. We want to do this, they want us to do that. Most times we are very careful not to to give their line consideration and see if theres truth. Margaret sullivan, the ombudsman for the New York Times wrote last week about when the iraq war was building, the times was in the forefront of wmd, weapons of mass destruction. Judith miller had great contacts. The great contact was a man named chalibi. He was very antisaddam. He wanted to be and may be kenexa leader of iraq. He landed a couple of generals or people who said they were generals and they gave him information. He gave the same information to the white house into the pentagon. So when judith checked her sources, they all had the same sotrtory. So she thought she had it right. She didnt. There is a lot of criticism now about there werent doubts raised. Mike wither that a special commendation for raising these doubts. The problem is the New York Times and the Washington Post, they did not spread opinion in a big way. So the president was supported and we ende dup there. For me, when i saw colin powell talk about those bioweapon trucks. He was so trustworthy. They were very skillful. Thatointed out in 2006 the information the cia had, which dealt with a tip from the foreign minister of iraq, somebody close to saddam, there were no weapons of mass discussion. Mass destruction. It is hard for the press to dig inoto that. Have to do it is you listen to all of the other renditions and let the public know there is a debate going on. How do you see examples in your reporting of the administration trying to minute delay the pres trying to manipulate the press . Judy in her situation. We investigated ourselves fully and instituted a number of reforms in the way that we report stories. There is another body of work that i think helps to balance that out and post your point which is that a year before the invasion of iraq, my colleagues eric schmitt and david sanger began reporting a series of stories getting into the details of the initial war planning for the invasion. Even as president bush were saying, we are not going to war. Diplomacy is on the table. The readers of the times were well aware that their president had made the most grim decision but democracy can make which is go to war. The Bush Administration might have been successful in planting but theyhewmw wmd, were unsuccessful in hiding that fact they decided to go to war. Im proud of the work we did to inform our readers of this. The first story invasion was in march. Our for story was in april, saying here are the outlines of the war plant. The troops are ready. It is underway. So america, you had better get ready. What is this relationship like . My metaphor is that the relationship between the government and the media is like a marriage. Its a dysfunctional marriage to be sure. But we Stay Together for the kids. Now, what do i mean by that . The government really needs to get his message out to the American People. From the podium officially but it knows that the best way is by using the American News media to tell its story. We are obligated, kimberly and all of us in the business, to inform the public about the most important and the grimmest decisions a countries make the country makes about going to war. Untry makes about going t we are not partisan like we were in lincoln stein. Lincolns time. One of the most frustrating things will be when you can get the response back from the white house on the story. I will have five or six sources highly placed but not in the administration who are explaining to me, here is what is going on but i need the white houses in put. Increasingly the Obama White House has become so brittle and so controlling of the message that people are afraid to respond to me. Sometimes the most i can get back is a boilerplate one paragraph. Oft does not tell their side the story are how they came to decide on this policy. I end up cutting frustrated because i realized by their choice, ive only told one side of the story. Now, i just wanted to say when war started i was a middle east correspondent based in israel. So i did not get to see the in up in washington, d. C. Decisionmaking process. You could see from the way the inspectors were getting turned away from the sites they were trying to visit, the nuclear inspectors. And the tension in the Iraqi Government that they were bracing for this confrontation but they were also paralyzed. Because one of the things that did not come up many places was Iraqi Government had made a conscious decision to make countries in the area think they had a wmd program. I spoke to Intelligence Officers who raided sites that look from above like a covert Nuclear Facility. They would lift up air vents. And they went to know where. It was if attempting Nuclear Facility as the invasion happened in those first few months as we saw raqi officers getting fired, turned away. In interviewsus if you do not give us back our jobs, we are going to start an insurgency and fight you and kill your troops. Sawaw ll this play out out and saw u. S. Military commanders reacted this thing called this an insurgency. That is where i saw the white house influence. I put, every time we put a u. S. Commander on air saying what he truly felt was going on in front emailsi would get later from those commanders or their staff say, you dont know how much trouble you just got rumsfeld, thenald secretary of defense at the time. That whenever these guys said truly what they can was happening, they saw an insurgency, that thought, the story the white house wanted out there, which is that the war was won, there was no insurgency. People would stop answering phones after i put the story out like that. That was how i saw the president and those who work for him try to influence my reporting in the field. That may underscore two things that tom and can really set from the lincoln perspective. Tom calls the relationship a marriage, a dysfunctional one. This is how it differs the marriage was back then. se chairman of lincolns campaign was the editor of the New York Times. There was no distance at all between the paper and the white house. As far as the Chilling Effect of the administration on military commanders in the field, in some ways it was the opposite problem in the civil war. Most commanders in the field of not one report is bothering them. Some used them for promotion. William sherman was notorious for arresting reporters who were following and criticizing him. When the Lincoln Administration countermanded his arrest and released to reporters. He cannot believe that the it ministration would want embedded journalists hanging around his headquarters reporting negative information about him. But the Lincoln Administration wanted an open communication with the public in away to some of the generals resisted. And i want to ask tom kimberly, as i recall back to the point camberley made about calling it what it is, i leave the first time the word and insurgency was used was march 2004. It was 10 months to a year after quite some time before they could use that work. I thought it was j. D. Thurman who said earlier than that in a press conference in falluja and got smacked. Pentagon at the standing at the podium. The press corps was hammering him. Great intellectual and understand that part of the world. He took a very diplomatic answer. , doctrinally speaking i guess what you could say is that we are facing a guerrilla war. Do you think, i straddle this as a military officer and itired as an analysts, it seemed to me for the current sonflict, unlike what matt wa describing in the civil war, this put a damper for a time on the standard military action was, to not talk to the press. Nothing ever good can happen talking to the press. At best it will be neutral. Im curious if you think they somehow that all began, this anecdote that kimberly brings up, does that persist in dealing with the media or the military or is that involving to a certain degree . I watch the evolution on the ground. In 2003 in iraq, the press conferences with a senior military commander who came and briefed every day or every other day and the large press corps that was there at the time, it was sort of like bulls circling each other. You had a lot of young east coast guys, never been around the military before. In the ranks of the press corps. War iiis a wrorld marine, but i have been covering the middle east. There were sparring matches back and forth. Then i watched the evolution as the reporter started doing embe ds getting to know the people, the lingo, the rank, how a hum vee door opens. And they started becoming part of the club. I saw this trend forming on the ground where people would he, little rara. Reporters would become case officered. One of the things that cia does is they case officer someone. The troops are winning the press over. But also the press was winning the troops over, winning their trust. You probably remember from the pentagon side of thing, the vehicles. Up armored the vehicles did not have amor. Rmor. Any insurgents were starting to use roadside bombs. I was watching troops try to weld on their own armor onto trucks. Between that and other reporters, they eventually got up armored vehicles. I felt troops were won over by that. And so this warmth built. From my perspective, two things happened. To me, it was choosing not aport a story when i saw senior officer using racial epithets that i caught on camera against a muslim suspect he had arrested. Of his otherone guys for using that kind of language, but i thought well this guy, hes just a bad apple. I did not know enough about chain of command and command climate to know that that guys put on camerao be because that would have alerted his command what was going on. Not realize that was a larger debate going on within the u. S. Military, do we treat the iraqis as an enemy . Or win the people over, provide them services, build up their government and divide the enemy from the people . Realized later i , that should have done was my lesson. The other one was the article that ended mcchrystals career. It is interesting. I did not spend much time at the headquarters in baghdad. I spent thereth were embedded at the small unit level. What they did for the American Public since the 1970s when the draft ended, we have not gone to this 1 and 99 . 99 of the American Public does not know how the military work heard for the first time the media stories not only talked about mission and the Campaign Plan and the war, but it really brought home the individual men and women carrying out the mission. I had a conversation with a vietnam veteran, he asked, why is the American Military today held in higher esteem now . Yes, but they did not tell soldier stories in the wars in vietnam. The very quick invasion will be greeted by liberators as promised by bush and cheney. Became the longest war in American History, i think those stories brought home the sacrifice of the individual military personnel regardless of your political view. For the war or against it, these men and women were carrying off the lawful orders of the commanderinchief and showing their lives was very important. Some of the civil war battlefields. Civil war, too, was being told it would be over in 90 days. There was no thought whatsoever that that war would drag on and on and on just like the invasion of iraq. People thought the troops would be home by september. There has always been embedded journalists in american wars. The civil war was notable for it. I think what kimberly is describing, that natural affinity that developed when journalists are covering soldiers is apparent in any war. Even the vietnam war. Sometimes i think there is a myth about the coverage of the thenam war overstates th friction. In the civil war, i can speak to that directly, there is this unbelievable story of an embedded journalist that people in our course know well. Keson was covering the army of the potomac. He went to the battle of gettysburg and was their headquarters covering the story. But his son was in the army of the potomac. He was a young artillery officer, 19. He was killed on the first day. His father found his body on july 4, 1863, and wrote the leave for the New York Times about the battle with an opening paragraph that describes his sons dead body and how he had died because of poor command decisions on the first day. It was furious, graphic. It created a sensation. At the end of the piece, sam wilkeson writes but it was worth will have these men created a second birth of freedom in america. Were friendssons of the link is. Lincolns. Riend of the i would be shocked if anybody in this panel had ever heard of sam wilkeson. Yet this is the legacy that has given us all of these embedded journalists. I think we need a deeper appreciation of that relationship. Im curious as to whether the panelists think it is changing at all. It seems to me that there is more continuity than change. What i was trying to describe was the maturation of a journalist covering the military. When you come to the subject initially and you are learning about it and then youre part of it, become part of the club because you know how some of the things work. Then you realize, wait a minute. My job is to be as hard on them as they are on themselves. My job is not to be a cheerleader. I am making them better by that first paragraph describing that journalists sons death. That is something that i see young journalists going to the same arc. As, there is a generation of journalists who covered the iraq war, and most of them have moved on to different jobs. I only see a small group of people who keep going back to the same war zones over and over. In print there seems to be much more of a situation back to d. C. Thethen i see frequently people covering wars are young freelancers going over there to get their start. It is those icy go through this arc. Arc. But also, i think linda mit speak to this , too. There are always exceptions. Their articles and reporters who are critical. You get occasional episodes like general kristol and his aides speaking to the rolling stone. By and large, i do not see a an arc. Icy supportive coverage in the see supportive coverage in the way that wilke sons coverage is. Aybe i am misreading it as history professor. I do not see a lot of criticism of troops on the ground in a consistent way. Having served my military career in the beg