this is bbc news, the headlines: theresa may has been meeting her ministers trying to win their support for the draft agreement on brexit finalised in london and brussels. the full cabinet meets on wednesday, but some senior politicians have already said publicly that the deal appears deeply unsatisfactory and it is farfrom certain the government can pull together enough votes to get it through parliament. hundreds of people are still missing amid the worst wildfires in the history of california. 50 are confirmed dead. firefighters say the biggest blazes may not be contained before the end of the month. the long awaited trial ofjoaquin ‘el chapo‘ guzman has begun in new york. he was extradited to the us from mexico to face charges of being the leader of an infamous drug cartel. mr guzman‘s lawyer told the trial that he was being made a scapegoat. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk from washington, dc.

i'm stephen sackur. president trump is an extremely effective communicator. day in and day out, his messages is dominate the news agenda and yet and yet he professes nothing but contempt for what he calls the fake news media. what is going on here? what is the trump presidency doing to america's political culture? as part the bbc‘s beyond fake news season, my guest today is the editor of the washington post, marty baron. in the midst of all this hostility, who is the real enemy of the american people? marty baron, welcome to hardtalk.

from the outside, it looks as though there is a state of unrelenting trench warfare now between the white house and the news media in washington. is that the way it feels to you? i don't feel that way. the white house, and the president in particular, has said he is at war with the media, said that from day one, his very first day in office when he went to the cia and told cia officers he was at war with the media, but i've said ever since then that we are not at war, we are doing ourjobs as outlined in the first amendment of the constitution, which calls for us to examine public characters and measures, as james madison, founder of the senate, said from the beginning. you are sort of suggesting that you can simply ignore what is coming out of the white house but when the president himself talks about your newspaper as one the pillars of the fake news media,

when he calls you an enemy of the american people, you can't ignore that. i don't ignore it, but i make sure it's not a distraction from what we are supposed to do. i think we understand here well what our mission is and our mission is to get the facts and the truth, and get them no matter how many attacks he launches against us, we are just going to continue doing that and i think we are very focused on our mission. it isn'tjust about you, of course, it's about the president and the news media more generally. we have just seen one of the most remarkable performances i have ever seen from a leader, and let's face it, this is the most important leader in the world, in front of the mass ranks of the american news, white house correspondents. he accused some of them of being horrible, of being disgusting. he clearly believes they are lying. he has now revoked the white house pass of one senior correspondent

working for cnn. is there an obligation on you as one of the most senior figures in the washington media elite to take a stand? well, we have taken a stand and i have taken a stand and i've spoken about it often. i have said this has a corrosive effect. i pointed out that we are not the opposition party, i pointed out the flaws in statements he was making and that this is having a very deleterious effect on the role of the press in the united states, and it's inappropriate for a president to say things like this that are flatly untrue. in particular, whenjournalists are in the room with the president and he behaves in the way he recently behaved, do you believe usjournalists have to reconsider how they respond to him? for example, in this particular example, where the president refused to ta ke questions from certain journalists, where he has now banned one particular journalist, is it incumbent on the other

journalists in the white house press corps to show solidarity, for example, to consider walking out of a news conference? that's one option, and there are others. another is for the reporter to ask the very same question, or to give another reporter more time to ask a question that the president has cut off. there are plenty of other options beside walking out. what do you want to see happen? in this most recent press conference, obviously the white house decided to withold and rescind the press credentials of a cnn reporter, and obviously that is completely inappropriate. the white house correspondents association has said in a statement it's inappropriate. other news organisations have said it's inappropriate, and my hope is the white house will see the error of its ways and restore his credentials. look, we know what it's like to have credentials withdrawn. we had our credentials withdrawn by the trump campaign during the presidential campaign.

so we know what that's like. but we also know that we have to keep doing ourjobs, and the most important thing the press can do is continue asking the kinds of questions that need to be asked. but there are times when certain critics of the media here in washington think that it has become a circus. donald trump is the ringmaster, he is dictating the terms of the relationship, and journalists are frankly dancing to his tune. some people say that. i don't happen to believe that's the case. the important thing is we do not dance to his tune, the important thing is that we are journalists, we report stories and ask the hard questions and the best thing the press can do is to continue to ask the hard questions of the administration in the way it's supposed to do and not be intimidated. let me ask you about something from a while ago, it made news at the time, i don't know if you were there but it was the white house correspondents‘ dinner, where invited to speak was a comedienne, michelle wolf, and she said this to

all the reporters, some of the washington elite reporters gathered. she said, "the truth is, you don't want to admit it "but trump has helped all of you. "he helps sell your newspapers, your books and tv. "you helped create this monster and now you are profiting off him." i guess it's a pretty cynical view of what's happening. there's no question the coverage of the trump administration has led to higher ratings, it's led to more subscriptions and readership and all of that. it has been commercial gold for the washington press. in the short run, it's been commercial gold in some ways, absolutely, but in the long—run it is highly corrosive to the role of the press in the united states. we have a very polarised society and a polarised state of information consumption in this country

and over the long run, that's not a good thing for our business. let me ask you about that small little word, lie. it's a word that appears in your paper. you have a fact—checking team who record the number of lies, untruths and misleading statements that stack up from the trump administration month by month. i think you're well into the thousands now. 6,000. is that right? there are some journalists, such as the former wall streetjournal editor, gerard baker, who says journalists need to be much more careful about the use of the word "lie" because he says to use that word, you not only have to know what is being said is fake or wrong but you also have to know about the intent. i actually agree with him on that, and that has been our policy. we have been very cautious in our use of the word lie. we use it sometimes, but not all the time. when we've been able to document what the president said, he knows what he is saying is false, we use the word "lie". when he knows it and he intended it to be a falsehood.

how can you know? a great example, talking about the meeting with the russians in trump tower. it involved donald trump, jr. when donald trump, jr was expected to issue a statement responding to the initial press reports about that meeting, that statement, we wrote that statement was dictated by the president of the united states. the administration denied that. up and down, they denied that. later on, when they had to respond to the special counsel, they showed us a letter to the special counsel acknowledging the president had dictated that statement. we said the president lied. it was clear he knew he had dictated the statement, he knew he did it he allowed his administration to declare to the entire world that he had not dictated the statement. that is a clear lie. what does that say to you? you call out a lie and frankly,

a huge number of people in this country shrug their shoulders. sure, that is concerning and we have a very polarised society and polarised consumption of information. people will be dismissive over what we report or other people will be dismissive of other news organisations but the reality is, we have to look over the long run. it's important to look back at the time of watergate. that investigation was under way by the washington post and other news organisations, and a lot of people thought of that investigation as being completely partisan. they viewed the washington post as being essentially the opposition party to the nixon administration. they didn't believe what the washington post was reporting at the time. it turned out the reporting was solid. the reporting was later validated. and ultimately people came to realise that the washington post had done its duty. i spoke recently of the former editor of the guardian,

alan rusbridger, who i dare say you know quite well. and he said by 2017, it seemed that news, the thing that helped people understand the world and oil the wheels of society, pollinated the community and kept the powerful honest was, in that sense, broken. i don't think we are broken. there are some who believe it is, but there is an incredible amount of excellent journalism that is being practised today. some of the bestjournalism ever practised, as a matter of fact. i do think we have a broken information ecosystem at the moment, and we have an administration right now that is trying to disqualify the press as an independent arbiter of fact, and notjust to disqualify us as an independent arbiter of fact, but to disqualify other institutions as independent arbiters. so law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the court system, scientists, all of them, to disqualify them and say the white house itself,

the administration itself, is the only source of truth. that's what they would like to have. this, if i may say so, goes deeper than the trump administration and its behaviours. if you look at polling evidence among ordinary americans, there are some very disturbing figures. for example, according to a range of polls, clearly more than 50% of republicans, tens of millions of people across the nation, agree with the idea that the media it is indeed the enemy of the people. three—quarters of registered republicans, according to the polls, think that the media routinely makes up stories about the current administration. there is a crisis of trust here. i think there is a crisis of trust, and i think the administration has done a good job, not a beneficial job, but an effective job of suggesting to the american public that they can't believe what they were read in the mainstream american press. so you're piling all the blame on donald trump and his associates?

are you suggesting there is nothing the media needs to look at, to look inward a little bit and wonder if it might be partly responsible for this lack of trust? i think we do share some of the blame, and there are things we can do to help restore trust. i hope they will be effective, i can't assure that. we need to be more transparent about how we go about our work, to show more of our work, talk about more of who we are. there are an incredible number of stereotypes and misconceptions about who we are as journalists and we need to talk about our professional background, how we acquired our expertise. and also talk about the reporting process. that's a very interesting point. you're sort of suggesting that there might be some inherent, maybe unconscious, biases within media organisations such as your own, biases that do affect the way you see the world and report the world. everybody comes to the world with their own preconceptions and their own emotions

and things like that. people have been talking about that now for 100 years. walter lippmann wrote a book in 1920 called liberty in the news, where he broached the idea of objectivity, and the idea of objectivity really was, how do you set aside your own preconceptions? how do you set aside your own emotions and try to get the facts in the most objective way possible? that doesn't mean it's all balance, 50% on this side and 50% on that side, but how do we strip away our preconceptions and our emotions and almost in a scientific way try to get at the actual facts? do you, in a way, feel that there are understandable reasons why some people in the united states of america today could look at organisations like the washington post and, say you're a guy who's working in a factory in ohio or michigan or wherever, you might feel that that organisation has a set of attitudes, a moral outlook which is so far removed from yours,

that you can't necessarily trust the way they report the world, can really relate to your own life and reality? well, i certainly understand that, and that in fact is the case. that is how we are viewed in certain sectors of american society. do you think that your own newsroom is a good reflection of the united states of america today? well, i think we do quite a good job of — we get people from all over the country who grew up in a lot of different backgrounds, who grow up on farms, pennsylvania, south carolina, people like that. we have people who served in the military and we would like to have more people who served in the military. we have a photographer who is a refugee. we have people who went to state schools, who went to ivy league schools, who grew up in small towns. we have two people who went to evangelical colleges, one of them grow up in a home of 12 kids and she was homeschooled. now, people would be surprised

that we have people like that on our staff. we do have people like that on our staff and we welcome people like that on our staff. let me ask you something somewhat different. there is worrying evidence that there may be a connection between the toxic political culture that we see in washington right now and examples of very real abuse, sometimes even threats of violence aimed atjournalists. do you feel — and you've got long experience — that there is more danger in the world right now for reporters that there has been before? in the united states, yes, it has gotten much worse. there are a lot of threats against our journalists. we've had to increase our security significantly. and that started in the last presidential campaign. increase your security in what sense? i cannot give details. but in many ways we have increased security. for individual reporters and for our headquarters.

some of your reporters in certain situations have bodyguards? we have not gone that far, but there are reporters in the united states who do have bodyguards, particularly journalists who work for some of the television networks. arthur salzburger, the publisher of the new york times, he told donald trump to his face that trump's rhetoric — quote — "will lead to a rise in threats and ultimately a rise in violence." he meant towards journalists. do you echo those sentiments? i think he is correct, absolutely. the kind of rhetoric that has been used makes life more dangerous for journalists. it has already led to threats and it is a dangerous path to travel. the — one of yourformer papers, the boston globe launched the "not the enemy" initiative when they got a whole range of newspapers, mostly in the united states, but some overseas, as well,

hundreds of them, to join a declaration just insisting that the media was doing a vitaljob to society and should not be in any way characterised as the enemy. the washington post refused to sign that collective letter. why? well, i wasn't involved in that. that was the editorial page. in this country, for the most part, there is a sharp division between people who are responsible for covering the news and the people who write editorials. i am responsible for the news and features coverage. i have nothing whatsoever to do with the editorial... then may ask you, would the washington post have been well advised to actually sign up to a joint declaration that involved so many newspapers around this country of the world? quite honestly don't think that it would have made a difference.

i think one thing we try to do is to avoid suggesting that the media in the united states is a monolith, and that it behaves as a monolith. the washington post has written unnumerable editorials about the administration's posture towards the media. we have written about that in our news coverage as well. i don't think we need to act collectively with news organisations around the country in order to effectively make that point. i suppose one big question for you is whether you truly believe that this organisation, so identified with its history with exposing the truth behind the pentagon papers, the watergate scandal, do you believe that your own organisation is capable of running, resourcing those sorts of expensive investigations today? yes, i do. we are doing those investigations and in many ways i think those kinds of investigations are the business model. because the public wants us to do that. they see us as their representative in holding government accountable. and they support us as a result.

that is why they subscribe to us. when you look at it, yes, there is a lot of focus on trump, but what people really want is an independent news organisation that is holding their government officials, their politicians, and the policymakers, accountable. can you truly call yourself independent when you owned by one of the — actually, the richest man in the united states, jeff bezos, owner of amazon? can you really call yourselves independent? i think we can. i think the proof is in the work we do. if anyone looks at our work in holding powerful individuals and government officials and policymakers accountable, they see that we do it in a non—partisan way. butjeff bezos, in terms of this background, his values, of what he was to get out of the washington post, this is a different environment. you suggest he wants to get anything out of it other than us being a good

newspaper, a good news organisation, and what he really wants is for us to be a vibrant, self—sustaining, independent news organisation. and that is the message that he has sent to us. does he want you to investigate the way in which the biggest tech companies in the world use their global presence to avoid paying tax, at least, as many people see it, a fair share of their global tax? that is your statement. if it's worth investigating, yes we will. and we have. have you looked at amazon's tax affairs around the world? yes we have. and we have done a lot of critical stories about amazon. he said when he got here that we could cover him and amazon in the way that we cover any other company. he has reiterated that on multiple occasions and we have taken that to heart and that is what we have done. we have at any number of negative stories about amazon, and we haven't heard from jeff bezos on that matter. he doesn't get involved in the news coverage. you don't talk to him every week?

every two weeks we talk about business tactics, strategy, technology, things like that. we never discuss — we never discuss coverage. he has not assigned a story, suggested a story, nor suppressed a story. he has not critiqued a story nor criticised the story. he has told us those are our decisions and that is how we — that is how we do business around here. we're almost out of time, but there is one other subject we must talk about, and that is your thoughts onjamal kashoggi. i knew him a little bit. we interviewed him on my show. you knew him, of course, because he was a contributing columnist at the washington post. on october two he entered the saudi consulate in istanbul. we know that he was brutally murdered. do you think the us government has done enough to insist to the saudis that the full truth come out about the murder ofjamal khashoggi? no, it has not.

there is no question that they have not done enough. it does appear that the administration would like this issue to just go away, because it wants to have a strong relationship with saudi arabia, and it doesn't want an issue like this to get in between the interests of the united states and the interests of saudi arabia. and so we don't see a very aggressive posture on the part of the administration about investigating this brutal murder. this brings us back to where we began — the relationship between donald trump and the news media in washington. you have in editorial terms basically accused the trump administration, and this has been a word that is used in headlines, "enabling" the abuses of the saudi arabia's crown prince. is that really fair to call donald trump an enabler, in essence, of the murder of a guy who wrote a column for the washington post? well, you are citing our editorials, and as i pointed out,

i have nothing to do with our editorials. i'm the executive editor, but the editorial page doesn't report to me, but to the publisher of the news organisation. to end with a personal note, we have talked about the importance ofjournalism. i guess in many ways the loss ofjamal kashoggi brings home the degree of the commitment to genuine expression, freedom of expression. it brings possibilities and also dangers. there is no question. this was an effort not just to suppress dissent but to extinguish the actual dissenter. there is enormous risk in free expression, and that is why we need to work so hard to protect it. marty baron, we have to end there. thank you very much for being on hardtalk. with a good deal of sunshine. afternoon, and a very similar picture in perth and kinross. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock.

our top story: decision—time for the british government on brexit. ministers are set to consider the draft divorce deal. and i'm philippa thomas live in westminster, where we'll look at a possible breakthrough. the biggest moment since the uk vote to leave injune 2016 and the hurdles that stand in its way. rescuers hunt through the wreckage for dozens missing after the california wildfires. the death toll rises to over 50. a debate in the czech republic. will it become the first former eastern bloc country to legalise gay marriage? house prices are set to boom and 55,000 newjobs will be created. we weigh up costs and benefits of amazon's move to new york and virginia.