mental trauma and suffering who may be carried, shame or embarrassment in association, those things and are patients and people in this book will help you lift that shame, that stigma from your shoulders. and so if my book helps people just feel better about talking about their own mental or connecting with someone who might be able to help get them care, that to me is one. and i'm going to basically echo what my wonderful panelists have said. you know, king reminded us that, we must stay awake to change that. we must continue to fight and that we must never lose infinite hope. and for a man who was stabbed in the chest and jailed 29 times and surveilled his own government to say that he never lost hope, then i think that we can at least try to do the same same. thank you all. it's been an honor.

our panel marty barron's book is the collision of trump, bezos and, the washington post. few newspaper editors serve their stint in the public eye as much as marty did first at the boston globe during the expos of the priestly abuse in 2002 and then later as editor of the washington post starting in 2013 and through the combative trump administration. marty collect pulitzer prizes, 18 of them earned under his watch at three different newspapers. marty, can you tell us a little bit your book? sure. this is this working? yeah. great apologies to people who were at the previous session.

i'll be repeating myself a bit. look, i never i didn't actually expect get to the washington post. i was total surprise to me. i had been working at the boston globe, got a call out of the blue and then what transpired? sorry to the post and i when i got to the post it things change pretty quickly once i got there so six months, about six months after i arrived it was announced jeff bezos, one of the richest people in the world, was going to be buying the post from the graham family, which had the post for 80 years. that was a surprise. everybody, the name of the parent company, the way was the washington post company. i thought a company with the name the washington post company would always hold on to the washington post, but it turned out not to be the case. and the deal closed a few months later. and then he set out to try to transform us, really for the digital era, turn things around. we were sinking pretty, pretty badly. and then along comes donald trump. in 24, the summer of 2015,

presidential. we'd never seen one like that before. president we never seen one like that before. and ah, and i thought somebody should tell that story of how we dealt with one of the dealing with an owner who's one of the richest people in the world, a president like donald trump, who was attacking us on a regular basis to how we tried to cover him and how that led actually a clash between donald trump and jeff bezos. this is a way of putting pressure on the washington post. he wasn't getting anywhere and to pressure us directly, he figured he threaten our owner and that the owner would then influence us. didn't happen thankfully. but i wanted to tell story from the perspective of the person who was in charge of that newsroom during that historic period of time. secondly, i, i just think that the public doesn't have a really good idea about we make decisions within news organizations and doesn't have a sense of the difficult decisions. and judgments that have to be made and i wanted to walk the

public readers through these decisions that i to made to make over a long period time, eight plus years as the editor of the washington post everything from decisions about the coverage of brett kavanaugh me to cases the russia investigation divided into two parts. i always divided two parts. the steele dossier, which is one issue of problematic highly problematic and then other stuff that was verified, which is russia's intervention in american election. all of these a whole variety of judgments of that sort. and i wanted people to have a feel for that and they can as always say, people can agree or disagree with the judgments that i made, but i want them have a full understanding of why i made them and how i came to those judgments. and then finally, there were particularly in the last few years of my time at post and i retired at the end of february of 2021, there were a lot of things happening in journalism that had deeply concerned about

how we were doing jobs or in my view, not doing our job appropriately, particularly what i saw as a level advocacy on the part of journalists, even activism, desire to express opinions, particularly on social media that i felt were really the reputation of the institution that these journalists had joined because of its stature, a stature that had been built based on a set principles and values and standards, and i made an effort to really enforce those standards. and that led to a couple of uprisings. and and so i wanted to explain what happened and and do that completely, thoroughly and which meant not doing it on. twitter. i was going to do it in book and explained the entire context of that. and so it was my way of sort of trying to stimulate a conversation about these issues that i think are very important in. the field of journalism and that have a could have a critical

impact on the public's confidence in the work that we do thank you. robert jones book. robert jones book. thank you. is tidden ots of white supremacy and the path to a shared future. robbie holds a ph.d. in and a master of divinity. he's the founder and ceo of the public religion research foundation, the author of many books about the interplay of religion, culture and politics. he has written that while mainline practiced may espouse racial justice, they have not addressed the existence of systemic racism. ravi, tell us about your thank you all. give me a second. here we go. all right. well, greetings. this is my first time here. this is amazing. let me just say so.

right. and martin just want to say i'm a washington, so let me. well, i'm a maryland resident, but we straddle the line between, maryland. and let me just say thank you for what you did at the washington post over those years. i can think of nothing much more important and a civic duty and service to the country. so i genuinely want to say thank you for the work you did there at the post and the work at the post continues to do for our country. so my field is religion rights. i'm trained kind of a sociologist of religion and i feel like in many ways, you know, the kinds of things you're described, the kinds of things that you're drawing attention to, disinformation, the thing turbo charges, a lot of that is religion, right. and my kind of struggle think is over the last decade or so has been trying to sort out what's going on right. the kind of craziness that we see, you know, trotted out the

name of religion, like, how do we get here what does it mean? and so i framed, i think, in the last book, really trying to get to the heart of identity crisis. and i think it comes down in many ways to this question. there's there's a dueling sense of what it means to be an american that has been with us since before the founding of the republic. and if i can boil down, i think it boils down like this, are we a kind of promised land for european christians or are we a pluralistic democracy? right. these are two mutually incompatible visions of the country. and the truth is, we've never fully answered that question. and we kept kicking it down the road. and because we've kept it down the road, it is still very much us today. i can guarantee you, if you that kind of bifurcation in your mind, you will hear a lot about that on two sides. those two vectors will be very

much with in 2024. one of the things i do in my day job at public religion research institute, we're a nonprofit research organization. we conduct a lot of we religious demographics, we conduct a lot of public opinion surveys. and it occurred to me around 2016 that one of the things we were seeing is that the biggest dividing lines in the country were less and less about issues per say and more and more about identity. who gets to be an american? who's a real american what does it mean to be truly american? who's in and who's out? who's us? right who's the our? when you hear politicians speaking and i think a lot of that it goes back to this thing. i kind of lay one thing out here and i'll i'll wrap up what i tried to do in book was actually trace it back and see far the kind of most proxy proximate cause of this vision. america as a new zion, america as a new promised land for european christians goes and really trace it back in this

case to a set of 15th century church doctrines. believe it or not, that actually get launched. in 1493. yes. is the year that columbus goes right. and this is the kind of heart of the heart of the kind of where i kick off the story. he goes back. right. and he goes back and he says, look, i need ships. i need more soldiers, i need more priests. and then he asks for something else. he asks for a moral for what he's about to do. and where does he get it? he gets it from the head of the western european church pope. and there's a whole of documents they get issued in the late 15th century to justify the entire colonial project, and they essentially prop it up on two things. the superiority of european civilization on and the superiority christianity and these are the things that get kind of launched into americas as the justification the entire

transit atlantic slave trade the, genocide and removal of indigenous people in this country it is all sort of wrapped up in this idea america as a news iron for european christians and that's still again, we're still struggling i think with with those things today could say a little more about that. but that's the heart of the book. so. barbara mcquade her book is attacked from within how disinformation is sabotaging america. barb teaches law at the university of michigan. she's a former u.s. attorney, the eastern district of michigan, the first woman to have held that position, appointed by barack obama. she lost job in donald trump's purge of. u.s. attorneys in 2017 for her. earlier in her career was a sportswriter. she's currently a legal for nbc and msnbc a co-host of co-host

of in law podcast. and a big fan of michigan football. and michigan in the crowd go blue. charges repel attack from within as well. thank so much. i can't tell you how what a good time i'm having here. i have never been to this event before. i'm a maize. it's wonderful and i be happier to be here. i was outside books earlier this morning and somebody me something called a sonoran hot dog know that delicious. thank you. hit the spot and. you know, i'm a little fair skinned and i didn't expect that. the bright sun sitting out while and so somebody brought me a hat which i'm delighted to wear so ordinarily it's only and blue for me but today i am a wildcat so thank you. thank you, all of you, for being here. i'll tell you a little bit about

my i spent most of my career as a national security prosecutor starting right after 911 in the u.s. attorney's office in detroit. we set up a national unit. and i have watched threat to national security evolve from at that time al qaida it evolved to isis. it evolved cyber intrusions and then russia. and since 2017, i've been teaching national security at, michigan law school and what started as teaching russian disinformation in 2017, an area i found so fast engaging and have done a lot of reading on, lot of teaching on has to me evolved a threat from russia to a threat within within the united states. and that's where the title of the book comes in. you know, we now seeing political actors, american media people seeking profit, engage in disinformation to advance their own agenda. and i think it's incredibly dangerous in the book you know, i've done a lot of reading on this in the past seven years. and so i tried to write a book

that is accessible to ordinary people to share with you what i have learned to talk about, the history of disinformation the tactics that people use so that we can identify them, the the reasons it works us cognitively. how is helping to spew the venom and the harm i am seeing to democracy, public safety, security and the rule of law, and also to offer some solutions. but if i were to summarize kind of the thesis about why this moment is so incredibly, i think is that although disinformation has been around forever. you know, propaganda. i talk about the trojan horse and hitler and mussolini and so many of the tricks we see today are really just the very same ones that have been propagated throughout. i think there are two things that are different right now that are so dangerous. one is technology. the ability to spread information instantaneously and reach millions and millions of people. one of the things i assigned to my students is the report.

and i know people tend to think of that as being all about donald trump. but what i on is russia and how russia set up fake social media accounts that people followed for months and months and months and believe they were following like minded americans. and there was an account called black activists is an account called heart of texas united of america. tennessee gop. and people thought these were real americans. and so they followed black activists said all kinds of really mainstream things, ordinary for months and months leading up to election. and then just before the election, 2016 said things like hillary clinton has never done anything for our community. and so we shouldn't do anything for her. we should send her a message that she should not take us for granted in the we do that is by not showing up at the polls. and so people read that thinking it was a fellow black activist when in fact it's some kid in a hoodie saint petersburg, russia say watch me with people now. and so technology is this incredibly powerful weapon. the other thing, i think, is that the reason it works on us

is because we are so polarized and we are polarized because people are using those divisions in society to push apart many of the things we see on social media are they're just generate outrage. and to get us angry with each other. and there are people who will tell things just to rile us up. i mean, first it was donald trump, but now it's elise stefanik, the congresswoman from new york, who refers repeatedly to defending arrested for their conduct on january six as hostages i mean, they're engaging in revisionist history. and i believe that they know better. i mean, certainly some people fall for the lie that the election was stolen and other kinds things. but i also believe for many the reasons that rob just talked about, because of our crisis identity, people are willing to sacrifice truth to align with the vision of america they share. and so they are willing to choose tribe over truth. and this is i read about in the

book exists in putin's russia which is if i can bombard you with enough claims so that you don't know which way is up, you don't even know what's truthful anymore. you'll get fed up. i don't know. all a bunch of liars. they're all a bunch of crooks which is right. really? where the cynics want you. because eventually people will disengage from politics. and then we've lost our democracy. and so i am hopeful that we can. we can rise up above this moment. it's going to require work in our government and work together among us as individuals. but through media literacy, through regulation of social media, i think we can rise above this moment. but we need to care more about truth than tribe. barb, i wonder if can help us out with some terminology of the what's the difference between disinfo and misinformation? yeah, well, you know, probably authors may have different definitions, but as i define it, disinformation is the deliberate

use of lies to manipulate or deceive other people. and so, you know, when donald trump, the fbi, planted evidence, my home in mar-a-lago, right. that is disinformation. but then other people read that and they pass on believing it to be true. and so that is misinformation. when we share something we genuinely believe to be true and we pass it on. and when live in our echo chambers, our our bubbles, it is very difficult to rebut those claims because all we ever see is what is in our own echo chamber. and so we repeat those things we hear believing them to be true. there is a member of congress in michigan, justin amash, who is a republican, libertarian, republican who held a town hall meeting after the mueller report was issued to explain the public why he was favoring impeachment for donald trump over the obstruction of justice contained in that report. and he said afterwards a woman came up to and said, wow, i had idea the mueller report said all of those things.

all i've ever heard is that it was a complete of donald trump. so had been a victim not only of disinformation but misinformation was sharing that with her friends. and so that's why it is so problematic. and can i just add one other thing? one of the reason that i'm so happy to be here not only my sister and hot dog, not only my hat from the university of arizona, but you are my people. you are book people, right? i'm seeing like book, book shirts, book clothing and people in the front row like taking notes. how great is that. i love i. love the inner geek. thank you. i appreciate your chant. we're channeling our inner geeks teacher it thank you, marty. let's stick with words for a minute. you write your book about the difficult at the post determining whether or not to use the word lie in discussing donald trump's comments and later about whether ascribe racist to his comments. now we've got very much back in the public eye. do you think that responsible news organizations have figured

out how to cover and write about trump not only what he says, but how he acts. well, you're going okay? well, no actually that's not the simple answer. no i don't think so. i mean, these are tough guy to cover. and it's interesting because the public itself goes every which way. you know, when when he says back in 2016, 2015, when he would say something outrageous, people say, why are you paying attention to him? and then when another in other instances, when he says something outrageous, i say, why? you write more about that? that's an outrageous thing to say. you should be focusing on that. and so it's a really it is really difficult, you know, with respect to lie, i mean, we we we historically have tried to be very in the language that we use. and i think we once you use a word, you can't take it back. and, you know, lie means deliberately saying something that's untrue. and so that's the definition of it. and with trump, you know you couldn't always tell because.

a lot of times he was self-deluded, which isn't a recommendation particularly for a president of the united states. but you know we kind of thought that i mean that maybe what he was saying was true at other times and forgive the language, you know you know, was a guy by the name of harry frankfurt wrote a book called on -- and said that -- is worse than lying. then you have no respect for the truth. care whether what you're saying is true or not. and in many instances, donald trump just makes things up as he goes along. whatever serves his purpose at that moment. so but in other and so we waited for a moment we could actually document that that he knew that what he was saying was untrue and is when he he had denied he he edited a draft in response to the that you know, during the election that russians were invited to trump tower to meet with jared kushner and others about supposedly getting dirt on hillary clinton and in drafting

that statement we that he himself had edited that statement and to say things that were not true and denied flatly that he had anything to do with that statement. and then later, when he was deposed, he he acknowledged that he had done that. so we were able to use lie then and we've we had used it other times since when it became clear that he was lying. i should say that in those instances, just the fact that we used lie doesn't mean that we're persuading anybody that he lied. keep in mind, the consumption of is totally polarized in this country. people who there are people who watch fox news and they totally it. and those are people who tend to obviously strongly toward toward trump people watch msnbc while. they have a different view of donald trump. obviously. and it's like you can use we're all the words you want and they're not going to have any impact on people. but trump is i mean, i think people are still struggling that now. and although i don't think they should struggle quite so much

right now. and i because i think should really be focusing less on the polls, which are, you know, can go any which way at this stage and in a campaign. and we should be focusing on what each of these candidates for president intends. to do. and in the four years that they're in the white house. so, of course, we should focus on what joe biden intends to do if he has another years we should certainly focus on what trump intends to do if he has another four years and he has been quite open about what he intends to do and he is talking about and this is not an opinion, this is it's authoritarian, it's the definition of authoritarianism. talking about using the military to suppress legitimate protest talking about him planning his loyalists, getting rid of the civil service, and in planning his loyalists government, talking about using the department of justice, prosecute his perceived political enemies, talking about bringing treason charges against the then outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, mark milley. and and most likely should be

executed talking about treason charges against treason charges. msnbc, nbc for coverage that he perceives to be an unfair to him talking about as he does now talking about wanting to imprison journalists. he about that actually in his first early in his administration imprisoning journalists. right now he talks about, you know, that they should be prosecuted imprisoned where, as he puts it, they can meet their bride, meaning that they should be sexually assaulted. and he celebrates that those authoritarian and we our coverage of him should be focusing on the policies that each of these candidates intends to implement. and we know what trump's policies are because he's being quite open about it. good morning. robbie. americans origin story generally starts with people talking about 1776 and then the 1619 project

came and tried to redefine the place, the moors and tenets that we hold today began to hold place. but you they go even further back to the time when the first europeans treated the native americans in something called the doctrine of discovery. can you talk a little bit about the doctrine discovery and why that's so important even today? yeah, absolutely. i tiptoed up to that in my opening remarks, but i'll go and clarify a little bit. let me also say this, though, to your point before i jump in there. one of the things to watch, right, about a healthy political party is, whether or not it has a platform that you can scrutinize. right. and one of things we saw in the last cycle is that the republican party never put forward a platform. right. that's a pure authority and move on their part. so it goes along with and there's overtones to this as well with the kind messianic kind of, you know, cult following that he has kind of developed as well. so it's all of the piece. but, you know, one of the things

i did at the beginning of the book, again, was kind think about this historical framing. and so i grew up the bicentennial, so i was in third grade in 1976. so i remember all of the 1776 stuff that was happening and you know, i think i dressed up in colonial finery at some. did you have one of those bicentennial quarters? i love that. i did, yes. and i had a little satin knickers in the school play. and like the whole thing. i also collected stamps. right. and i remember like this little know stamp that's a painting of kind. all the guys kind of awkwardly standing, you know, so you can see them all signing the declaration of independence. there's all of that like very heavily in implanted. and one things i talk about in the book is that the other thing tells you that we're having identity crisis that we're fighting over our beginnings right why has history become the front line of the culture war right. it's because we're over our genesis story, you know, in our many of our sacred texts begin right with a story that tells in

the beginning right. so even even the sort hebrew bible what what's the point of those first words in the genesis story. in the beginning god and it's a monotheistic argument and it's they're right out of the gate right so in the beginning monotheism. right that's the argument. right, right. and in a similar way, whatever in that frame when we say in the beginning x right that the rest of the story kind of falls out from there. and so it's really important we have in this room, i think, one of the biggest, you know, gifts the 1619 project gave us was blowing up that frame. right. and saying, wait, no no, no, not a bunch of white guys in philadelphia. right. that's not the american story, because if it is there's a very narrow lane, right to tell that story going forward. but in our view. if you remember back, how many of you can recall there was there was another image in the original new york times publication before it became a book, before it came of curriculum. right it was in the new york

times. you might remember the image it was. so it's interesting. it a monochromatic image. right. and it was a a horizon line an infinite horizon line of a kind of black ocean and a gray. that was the image. right. so a very different kind of thing than the happy guys with their quill pens in philadelphia. and so if you have to tell the american story from that image, right, you can't avoid. right. you can't slavery. you can't avoid the whole colonial context. and i think that's really important. but i begin noticing were native americans saying, wait a minute, you know, because, you know, the first contact right in the americas is right in the 15th century or so. by the time we get to 16, 19, there's been a century of european contact decimation, violence, genocide. all of that's already up and running by more than a century, the time we get to 6019. so i think the book is really kind of a yes.

and to the 6019. yes, like absolutely. we got to a kind of blow up that little postage stamp frame of the white guys in philadelphia. but we got to take it back even further if we're really going to understand what what happens. and like one of the ways kind of put it kind of starkly is this that, you know, we tend to think of like even white liberals in the 20th century would talk about solving the problem. right. or the indian problem as as if those were you know, you could talk about it that way from that perspective. and what i'm arguing in the book that if we really want to understand the mess we gotten ourselves into and the difficulties still ripping the country apart, we you know, if we kind of look upstream from the so-called -- problem and upstream from the so-called indian problem, we find is actually a white problem that we're having that we still, again, have yet to fully deal. and so that's where i'm kind of going to the. bar of the purveyors of misinformation are going to be

in force in the upcoming elections of the times had a story yesterday about rush's new program of misinformation and social media posts going to be monitored for accuracy by watchdog groups and the real media. how do you think, the social media companies will react to this cycle when confronted inaccurate and misleading posts their sites, and what kinds of guardrails can we erect to help it? yeah and also just to amplify the point that rob was just making, remember what william barr said about, history. he said the winners get to write the history, which is really interesting about the way we think about history so for sure, social media is going to be an engine of disinformation in this election cycle. it is going to be out in full force. and i think one thing that's going to be different this time around that makes it even worse is artificial intelligence, you

know, and it's cute when the pope wears a puffy coat, right. all saw that one. but this time i think we're going to see other things designed to deceive voters, to create chaos so that people waste their vote, are about voting or don't show to vote at all. and that's what i most worry about. you know, if there's something that's really outrageous that's online, i think maybe people will be able see through that, especially if there watchdog groups saying one is fake. but i worry about things. you know, for example, you've probably read about the robo calls that were sent out to new hampshire that like joe biden's voice, you know, complete the malarkey and everything sounded just like him. and it urged voters to stay home and not go to the polls, election day. and so people hearing these robo call messages, you know, that they received their phones, you know, it sounded pretty good. many people may have heeded that. i think we're going to see similar things on media with efforts to confuse people. there were.

some plots in 2020 and 2016, whether it be text messages sent out to people saying. did you know that this election you can enjoy convenience and voting from home by, texting your vote to the following number? of course it's false, but groups who are likely democratic voters in an effort to get thousands of people responded. and so how many people wasted their vote, right? they didn't show up at the polls because they believe to be a legitimate way to vote. i'm we're going to see more online. i think the way to respond to that i know in michigan we have a wonderful secretary of state named benson and she is yeah. she deserves a round of applause and election law expert. she is already working to provide accurate information for voters setting it up on website, creating pamphlets can be shared with people that you know senior citizens centers and groups and rotary clubs and others, and also credible ambassadors. get out and talk with people in the community and, you know,

trying to cross party lines. so enlisting professional athletes, for example, you know, the detroit lions and the detroit pistons and people that may maybe people of all parties are willing to listen to about accurate voting. and so i think that's going to be how we build resilience against this oncoming storm we know is coming leading up to the election false information. is there any hope in changing section 230 of the communications law? does that do anything is there anything really there? so section 230 of the communications privacy act of 1996 is the law. the statute that gives immunity to social media platforms. so 1996 think what the world looks like then. i mean there wasn't really media the way we have it today. the internet was very much in its infancy in 1996. i'm not sure even had an external email address in 1996. but the statute was created to foster innovation in and if you read the language of that, it

really almost sounds like a children story like the internet is a wonderful thing that will bring all people together to share peace and joy and harmony, if only. and of course, the internet has been a great to bring people together. right. think about the way we're information at this book festival. right. it's amazing all the information you can have at your fingertips. and to bring people here and share all of it. but of course, it also some hazards. and i think in 1996, we did not foresee the ways that it would evolve and be used as a weapon by some people. and so the comparison draw in my book is it's like raising baby alligator in your bathtub, like, oh, isn't that adorable until one day it becomes a man eating predator, which is where we are today? and so do we need different rules for the internet now that it has changed? i think we do. i don't know that we need to completely you know, it does have be all or nothing. and i think that's where debaters, you know, they try to say we can't eliminate immunity for social platforms or it will cease to exist. and i don't know if we have to

eliminate immunity, but i do think we could make social media platforms responsible for some of the things we see online. you know, for example, one of the things that we have learned facebook has done is it isn't so much about the content, but the algorithms that they have designed that are designed to push us toward content, content that will generate outrage. and and the theory is it keeps us on the platform longer, which means we're going to look at more advertisements, which means they make more money. but it's not great for society, right? we're always at each other's throats because they're deliberately making us outraged and manipulate us. we could have regulations, the algorithms at require them to be disclosed to the public. so if we're being manipulated, at least we know about that, how are we being micro targeted? if you go if you go on my my feed i'm a 59 year old white progressive leaning lives in ann arbor, michigan, who's a huge sports fan. if you look on my feed, i see a

lot stuff about the 1984 detroit tigers who won the world. well, yes, i'm very interested in or michigan football. michigan won the national championship. so they how to keep me on right i get all that feed all that so i have been, you know, profiled in a way where they they've scraped all my and there's analysis of me that knows what to push my way maybe so but let's let's share that let's disclose that so that we know how we are being micro-targeting, that we can avoid some of that manipulation. i think that's something we can do. so i don't know that we need to completely end section two thirds immunity, but i think we can social media platforms liable for some things that cross the line without eliminating their ability to be a platform where all users can engage mardi or sometimes uncomfortable and narratives are complicated and when you combine with the fact that the public trusts journalists less less and

less every year. how do we try to pierce that and regain the trust so that the news that you reported can be accepted. oh well thanks for giving me all insoluble problems that really appreciate i'll try to try to solve them here on a couple of reputation and a couple of minutes minutes, i think. look, i mean it's a long term thing of trust and in has been going down for a long period of time even before donald trump it accelerated after his arrival because he made the media a special target and he has his impact on. the media trust in the media as being one of his signature accomplishments, president of the united states. he has talked about that several, several times. and, you know, this was a strategy on his part from the beginning. i mean, even steve bannon, this is related. what others have said here is that, you know, steve bannon, i apologize for being the only who uses profanity up here. i generally don't.

it. but we're still talking about some subjects that seem to require so so so, you know, steve bannon at the beginning of the trump administration said that the media is the opposition party. and the way to deal with that is flood the zone with --. so a lot of what we're seeing is flooding of the zone with -- and i think what we can do is like, first of all, i think we need to think through what objective reporting is and rededicate ourselves to that which is not balance, not false equivalence, not both sides ism, but open minded, thorough, rigorous journalism that doesn't that we're we're not presuming we know the answers before you even ask the questions. and so being open to the evidence and calling the shots based where the evidence points and doing a thorough and rigorous job, the second is that i think we need to we need to cover all people in this country and in all of our communities having nothing to do with politics, having to do with their lives and how they're living and and the struggles

they're dealing with, with the expectations they have hopes they have the worries that they either consume them and trying to reflect their lives and they see that we actually understand and that we've taken them seriously and we don't hold people in contempt and we're not condescending to people. it's finally, i would say that we need to we need to show people are evidence more than just telling them. so show don't just tell. and that is when referring to a court document, show the court document. let's not endlessly annotate it to say, here's where we got this. but hey, you think we're taking it out of context read the whole thing yourself. you know, here's my here's my work. me okay. same thing with a video. same thing with an audio you. we can have a clip, but you to listen to the whole thing. listen to the whole thing and show people that you want to we're using a data set. take people to the data said, here's where we got it. see that we actually do a lot of work. you know, we put a lot of i put a lot of footnotes on my my book because i wanted show people that this stuff is real.

i didn't make this stuff up and you can go me and not for that only reason before that's one of the reasons why the book is so thick. but apologies for that in event i think that we need show people our work take and show we put a lot of work a lot of work into it. those are some of the things do. and the other point that i would make and i made this in the last session is we're not going to persuade everybody of everything. there is a long of conspiracy thinking in this of anti-intellectualism in this country. you can practically draw a straight line about concerns about fluoridation of the water supply, to concerns that vaccine are going to make you magnetic. and and so at any one moment, 25 to 35% of the country believes some conspiracy, whether it's they believe the holocaust made up or exaggerated, that 911 attacks were a conspiracy. the israeli government or something like that or or or

that the election of 2020 was completely fraudulent. so this portion of society we probably not going to persuade, but do i we can persuade another 5% to believe in facts are where we show the evidence. i think that's possible and we should work on that and think about that because. if you get another 5%, you change course of the country and we should focus on that. and if we get that, then we can focus on another 5%. and if we've done that 5% plus another 5%, we've probably done about as much as we can do. robbie, just so marty doesn't think that i ask him all the hard questions. yeah. you say we need to understand in the past in order to get to the and florida has instituted laws that it illegal to teach parts of the past. if it makes someone feel bad about their race or their gender and arizona's got some restriction other states are putting those in how do you combat that when you're trying

to achieve your goal? well, i think i'm sitting in a state that may be the beneficiary of some of that activity in florida, i'm guessing. i know for a fact that a few people are in this room because of what's going on in florida. so so here's what i want to say is like so why? why the debate? so why are we seeing. bookman right now? right. we're sitting in a room of book lovers, like, why are we saying why? what's going why are we seeing over, you know, so-called critical race theory, which is really something gets hot in like second year law school, right. getting drug into kind of elementary school, school board meetings with shrieking, yelling and, you know, all of this stuff like what really going on. and again, i'm going to posit that it really is because if you control the origin story, control the present right. so we're fighting over these origin stories because they the present and what they really do is that they are kind of

explanation and they're really a justification for the status quo. right. so who has who hasn't? is that legitimate or is not? well, the origin story tells that story. right. so i have a whole thing in the last chapter of my book where i kind of i'd say i try to i spent about three pages trying to channel what i think all those people who are banning critical race, so-called critical race theory and ranting about, you know, books in libraries, what are they really saying? right. i think what they're really saying is some version of like those of us who now sort of like how are the haves are there because of our own merit. right. and we are here and holding these receipts legitimately. right. and so the problem is that the alternate origin stories call all that into question. right. and that's why they're being defended so thoroughly, because call the present into question and that's why they're so important today. and religion is playing a really

role here because there's no like more ultimate grounding you can have than to say god willed it. right. that is the strongest way you can ground something particularly in a fairly religious country today. and that really, again, is the claim, right. that this country was ordained to be a kind of promised land for european christians. if that is true, then, you know, the displacement and genocide of native americans. well, you know that's kind of on the way to providence, right? that's what happens all the way to providence. it's an election. it come out the way you want it to. right. it raises stakes so high. i think that's one. the reason it's so corrosive to democracy is because if you raise the stakes so high and there's only one foreordained outcome, right, then the means achieving that outcome really become not so interrogate. all right. they just the thing you have to do to reach that preordained outcome. and i think that's one of the biggest dangers we're facing.

and why religion and i'll just say like white evangelical christianity is that, in fact, it's the day i grew up southern baptists in mississippi. so it is the world from which i come is, you know, today that 30% number right today we put a big huge survey, largest survey ever on christian nationalism. today all right. i've been talking about 15th century christian doctrines. if we take it too forward today, it turns out that three in ten americans affirm, like the u.s. should declare itself a christian nation. laws should be based on christian values. u.s. law should be based on christian values and the like. about three in ten americans are at least sympathetic to those. and here's the kicker though. why so why is that 30% so powerful? because 55% of republicans and it's 64% of white evangelical protestants who qualify as christian nationalists, adherents or sympathizers. right. who are kind of in that old, old tradition going forward. so i think that's that's what's at stake. yeah. so we're going to move to

questions. just a minute. if you've got a question, please come down to one of the two microphones since this is being telecast. but before we get to that, let me throw a question for for all of you. there is a tension between public right to information and the government right to retain privacy for national security or other. how do we try to balance those needs? it's another easy question. i have a feeling you're targeting that at me because i was the editor for deciding that we would publish the edward snowden leaks that the washington post was in my mind i thought. like i have a target on side side here. you know honestly i don't i don't know that we can we that we're going to come up with a law or anything like that that's going to help help us along lines. i mean, in the case of edward snowden, i mean, obviously, those were really serious matters. i was i mean, i took them very

seriously. i was in boston at the time of the attacks of 911 or i had arrived only six weeks earlier. the two planes that took down the two world trade center towers came out of boston. father, one of our moscow correspondent, was killed in one of those planes. and so, you know, highly sensitive to the national security implications. on the other hand, the government had engaged a in a had created a sort of a surveillance regime that was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and and sweeping up a lot of the private of not only people overseas, but a lot of them a lot of americans and a lot and and so the question was is there a public interest that we should should tell the american public about this or we just remain silent and let this surveillance regime continue to expand on the grounds of national security? and, you know i thought a lot about it and read the espionage act of 1917 quite closely, because there was always the

possibility that we could be prosecuted and anyway, i made the decision that we would go ahead and we would publish that and, you know, there was a lot of outrage. the intelligence community, of course, that we were doing stories. they were furious about. on the other hand, we received support from both and republicans about that and the balance hadn't been properly struck. i don't think you can just leave it to government to strike that balance. i think it'll have to be worked out probably in know in decisions like the ones i made and how the government reacts that and maybe has a different take on this. yeah, i was part of the national security when the snowden disclosures were made and i'm one of those people who think that you got it wrong. well, thank you. say we don't agree on everything. so you go. we can agree to disagree. yeah, it's tricky because there are certain matters that cannot be shared with our adversaries. and if we share it with the american, there's no way to keep it secret. you know, for example, i think

that the prosecution of donald trump for retaining these sensitive government documents about national defense information is an incredibly case. you know, storing them in a ballroom and in a bathroom where they could have fallen into hands. when we know that mar-a-lago has been a target of at least chinese espionage, if not other countries, there's certain things we need to keep secret. and i know you said we can't trust the government to. be the ones to decide. can we trust newspaper editor to be the one to decide? i mean at least the people in government have had training. i just i, i don't mean to interrupt you, but i, i've seen what happens in authoritarian regimes and it's entirely within the hands of government to make those decisions and they suppress the press for anything that is deemed to be a national security considerations. well, it's the the matters there with snowden, of course, where, you know, certain things get classified, does at the secret level means the disclosure of this information could harm the national security, the united states. and then there's also another level called topsy, which means that the disclosure of this

could cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security and some the snowden materials included that the safeguard are there and it is it's a real tension i mean in a society that is a government of the people we need information to able to vote and decide how to govern ourselves. on the other hand, if we share all of our information, then then we can't, you know, keep secret the location of our nuclear arsenal and other things that we really have to keep secret. so it's a really tricky tension, but we do have a safeguard that was part of the foreign intelligence surveillance in the 1970s of 1978, which was congress has these intelligence committees, the chairs are referred to as the gang of eight and they get briefings on all. so if we have a concern that the executive branch is overreaching, they are briefed on those things and that is the push back. and there's also, of course, whistleblower rights. i don't know that the system is perfect and we need to make sure that we're always tinkering with it to make it as good as it can be. but i don't think that, you

know, we can always just say because have classified information, the press gets to take the law into their own hands. the biden has made it clear that will not prosecute publishers or reporters, even though the act probably does allow it because they don't want to interfere with the first amendment rights of newsgathering. so although edward snowden could be prosecuted, i think you're off the hook. well, probably the statute does expired anyway. so i think finally thankfully. yeah, i mean i don't think there's a lot of pushback and system that you described. and i think that's been documented that there hasn't been a lot of pushback in that area. and so, you know, there's a lot to discuss here, but it's nice to liven it up here, you know, with a little sparks here on this issue. yes, sir. yeah. time for those questions. so i'd like to thank you. your research institutes, research on the shift of the white working class to the gop

in the 2016 election. it was some of the most compassionate and insightful and, useful for educators who have trump supporters, as well as devin in their classrooms so the story for subsequent elections is a shift of working class hispanics, blacks, asian-americans to the republican party, and that could prove decisive in 2024 as a shift of the white working class in 2016. so i'm wondering if discussion of christian nationalism applies to those populations as great. well, first of all, thank you so. there's a lot there. let me say this. one of the things we've seen over the last you know, really 5 to 10 years, they certainly are class differences, particularly among whites. and college education has become one of the, you know, bigger divides, whites with white, college educated americans going toward the democratic party, white, non-college, heavily.

in the republican party. but even there, interestingly enough, even though we're dividing that by class and by class, we actually mean education to be just like very about it. we don't mean income, mean education is the bigger divider than income. but even when we do that, one of the things we're seeing more and more is that the drivers we actually did we did a big study with atlantic magazine in 2016 to try to figure out, even among white class, what was the bigger driver, was the economic anxiety or, was it so-called cultural anxiety right, which is a big debate over in 2016. what we basically found is that, not surprisingly, it's both right. but when we put it in the statistical models and actually controlled for a whole bunch of things it, turns out that cultural anxiety i mean by that are the kind of things been talking about. fears of displacement by immigrants, anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-muslim sentiment, those kinds of things were and fear of a changing america. those sentiments were twice as powerful as economic anxiety in

driving toward trump in 2016. right. so they're both there. but if you're making a cocktail, it would be two parts cultural anxiety and one part economic anxiety and stir. right. that that's the cocktail. and that continues to be what we're finding is these cultural things. that's why you hear trump talking much more about immigration than is about the economy. right? because he's pretty astute about that that that's the cocktail that has kind you know got his machine got his machine going. so yes, sir. seems like you left an ingredient out when you look at the role of capitalism across the institution and you discuss whether it's the president, media, religion and even our democracy, how do you reconcile the fact that our democracy our religious beliefs inform nation is all for sale right now and underlying that, if you look at the great distribution of wealth that's moved away from the populace, i think the figure is

something like the top 1% controlled 47% of the wealth. and i'm a capital but when i grew up business and democracy work together in harmony. i don't see that and i also don't see it happening with elections or religion i'm just curious about how you factor that into the equation. for me again. yeah, go ahead. gosh, i just spoke i don't know. that's a big i mean, that's a big question. i mean, i i'll try to it down with regard to the press so look, i mean, i work for a guy who is now worth about $200 billion. okay. wasn't at the time, but it wasn't an insubstantial amount of sum that he was worth at the time. he bought the washington post and and people have complained about that, okay, it's, you know, here you have a powerful a media institution like the washington post being owned by what who is now the richest person in the world and at any one moment would be one of a

handful of the richest people in, the world. but there is no perfect model for the media, by the way. okay. so when i started in the business, i was working for what was called the knight ridder chain and owned the miami herald. people complained terribly about that, that kind of ownership it was publicly held. they were constantly trying to get their stock price up. they weren't investing in the future of, the business. so they were handing out dividends and trying to push the stock price up and not investing in and the editorial product and certainly not investing our and our future, the technology future we were going to have. and so it's one of the things that's responsible for the fix we're in today, very short term, quarter by quarter. so that then there's the model that, you know, we have the post or at the los angeles times also owned by a billionaire not one on jeff bezos scale, but who is and and so, uh, you know, they have commercial interests. bezos has amazon has interests in the u.s. government it does

cloud computing has contracts. the cia and other intelligence agencies and what have you. he has blue, which is looking for a contract, a space company that's looking for contracts from the government. but, you know, so there's about that. then there's about hedge funds and private equity firms which have now been snapping up newspapers all over the place and treat these news like an annuity and they extract try to just try to extract as much cash as they can out of it and then leave them there to die. they couldn't care whether they have a long term future or they don't. and then everybody thinks nonprofit. okay. well, first of all, there's just not enough philanthropic money directed at news organizations today support the ecosystem you have. and then when you have a nonprofit, who do you ask to give you money? okay. yeah, you can go around and ask for $10 from this person and $5 from that person. but you actually get a lot of money that way. so they're looking to wealthy people, capitalist, wealthy capitalist, to give them some money and or they go to foundations which are, by the way, the board, the board of

trustees is of these foundations tend to be the wealthy elite. all right. so you're not really avoiding the system that way. and as i said at the start there's not enough philanthropic money there. so there is no model that is going to satisfy everybody or possibly we can. and so what i argue and put this in my book is that we should judge these news organizations based on the work they do, not on the ownership model that they have. and speaking for the for the post at, least during my time there and certainly i believe since and even prior to bezos we were controlled by not a not a poor person the way don graham and his family were not impoverished. and and so we did our work independently. we didn't interfere in our journalism. he didn't tell us which stories to do. we didn't criticize the stories. he didn't critique the stories. he didn't any stories he gave us our full independence even when he was coming under enormous pressure from donald trump over that period of time with donald trying to arguing that postal

rates should be first doubled, then triple, then quadruple. you got the sense he made it up and and then his effort to intervene in giant defense department, a cloud computing contract, a $10 billion contract to take out a work. amazon was one of the bidders, but seemed likely to win to make sure that amazon didn't win that contract. he intervened so and bezos still did not interfere in any of our coverage at all and i you you would have known about it because newsrooms are the luckiest places on and if there had been interference you can be sure you would have heard about it. i apologize to all people in line, but we've only got one question time for more question. and it's over here. one of my favorite parts in the state of the union was when president biden turned to the supreme court justices in attendance attendance and reminded them about the power of

women and some have said that wasn't ethical that wasn't right for the president to do that and. i'm just wondering if any any of you would like to offer an opinion on that. well, i'll take the bait. lawyer you know, i suppose the argument would be that justice ortiz is as chief justice john roberts once said, called balls and strikes. and so to suggest that there is some political motivation, shapes their decisions, is suggesting that that's not they're doing that instead they are responding in to some sort of political decision. so in some ways, i would say joe biden was working the refs little bit. right. you what might be coming? what i find disingenuous about the current court is that chief

justice roberts knows that he is not calling balls and strikes because the selects its cases and so it isn't like the pitch is coming in i'm just calling it is this court has selected dobbs to make a decision an overturn roe versus wade. this court selected bruin to expand gun rights. this court selected the harvard and north carolina cases to affirmative action. so this is it, very much an activist. and so i think when joe biden says that he's he's not talking them so much as he's talking to america and says, we have ability to overcome the decisions this court is making. his jump in on that real quick. sure. and. says offer just one quick comment on that. i was actually on msnbc right before state of the union talking about this before the speech and one of the things interesting is that you know so biden think he was pretty careful he quoted the court not so much in advocacy way just

because the court was arguing. well can just go vote right if they don't like this right they can kind of go we can change the laws. and he was saying and they said like about to find out the power of women was his line in the speech. what's notable about it is that you know, if we look at again this kind of we're actually in a two thirds one third country on the issue of abortion. right. two thirds of the country today supports legality of abortion. it's not even a religious non religious issue. most religious americans today support the legality of abortion, including latino and white. catholics are in majority six in ten support the legality of abortion. if you look at the people who like who are out there where the republican party is ran on a complete and total ban on abortion, it is not. 9% of the country. that's it. in no state of the country we have we have data from 50 states. there is not a single state in the country with more than 14 one 4% support, a complete and total ban on abortion.

so it's not just women actually, he's like hang out in left field, even republicans, even among white evangelicals, you don't get more than a little more than a third are supporting a complete and total ban. so even in his own even mike johnson or, the supreme court in alabama, even in those states, they're way, way out of line with the mainstream opinion, even in those even in those states, even among republicans. so thank you. yeah. these are three terrific books if you've read them. you know what i'm talking about. if you haven't read them, i hope you and i know they hope you will. i'm going to ask authors to inscribe my copies of the book and can do the same thing at. the u of a bookstore tent on the mall right after this. thank you very much for coming in my book. i like when i'm on panels with