a book about sarah palin is bound to be big news, especially one by controversial author joe mcginniss, the guy who moved next door to her alaskan home. the book is full of salacious claims, related to unnamed sources. why did so many media sources spread this before seeing the book? and how the other presidential candidates are ganging up on rick perry, but it is also the journalists and debate moderators who targeted him. plus, did the media let michele bachmann get away with scare talk against vaccines? and a columnist for tech crunch takes on aol for pushing out the founder. paul carr said it was fine for his ex-boss to buy stock in the same technology companies covered by tech crunch. cover got fed up and quit. we'll ask why. this is "reliable sources."

it would be easy for me to recite all the sensational claims about drug use, affairs in the new book about the former governor of alaska. probably would be good for our ratings. new york times critic janet maslin said this about "the rogue." mr. mcginniss used his time in alaska to talk to people like, one resident and a friend. he was featured on "today" in a piece by savannah guthrie. >> he described a rocky palin marriage with todd and sarah fighting and threatening divorce, something they have denied in the past. another bomb shell, he writes todd and sarah have both used cocaine in the past, a claim that was not verified. >> you talk to somebody who snorted it with her and many of

todd's friends who describe him as having been on the end of the straw frequently in his youth. i'm not saying todd and sarah palin today abuse cocaine or even use it, but it is no question that they both did at one point in their lives. >> reporter: he quote friends who speak of a sexual encounter palin had with glen rice in 1987 while she was a sports reporter for a local anchorage station prior to her marriage. >> how should journalists handle the contents of the book? steve roberts, professor of journal ichl and media ethics at george washington university. and senior editor at national review. steve, in the first 24 hours, nobody has seen this book. lots of websites were trumpeting the sleaziest allegations. why? >> ratings. traffic. there is a conspiracy between the sarah palins and the donald

trumps of the world and a lot of websites who, let's be honest. you need the eyeballs to sell advertising. media is under tremendous revenue pressures. >> and old fashioned notions like checking it out falls by the wayside? >> that often happens. i would give know mcginniss a failing ethics grade in my class but it is pushed by tremendous pressure and demand. >> is the sarah palin and alleged drug use, alleged marital problems, or trig isn't her baby, is that too irresistible for media? >> of course. you can taub about sarah palin, the contents of her bathroom medicine cabinet and we go after it. she's a celebrity, not a politician. she is judged by the rules when people go in to report about her. >> even celebrities are entitled to fair treatment from the media. a statement from todd about this book.

this is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife. his book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo and smears. to report on what sarah palin did when she was 23, if she did or didn't have a one-night encounter with a basketball star, does the media have a different standard for sarah palin? >> look, this is an irrelevant story about increasingly irrelevant figures. one wonders what it is doing in the news. you can't even denounce the book easily without retailing the stories inside it. the new york times review was very tough, appropriately tough on the book, but at the same time it repeats every one of the not terribly well verified stories. >> look, she bears some guilt here. i think the book is a heap of trash. but she's played the game

herself. she played the celebrity game. she wants to be a celebrity. she's been on reality tv. she change it is standard herself. >> we talked about the bus tour and why we cover it. it's fair to say that. the palins obviously didn't want the book written but a fascinating debate at the miami herald where a sports writer named armando selguero wrote this. the herald played up the glen rice alleged incident. do we know this story to be true? are we certain it is true because we have done the work? did anyone actually try to confirm this story before giving it herald front page credibility? did anyone call glenn rice? he lives in miami, you know. is it now okay to repeat any report from the national enquirer on the front page of the herald's website without actually reporting even one fact independently? >> the answer is no, it is not

okay. >> it happened. >> it does happen. the dynamic is not just the pressure for eyeballs. there is a web culture with a different standard from traditional media and a notion of if it is a buzz, if it is out there, we can repeat it without independently checking it. that is an ethical problem for a lot of people. >> not just the web culture. given all the unnamed sources, should "today" have put mcginniss on? >> i don't think so. it's not a question of whether these things are verified and check out. i don't see the relevance of this rice story from prehistory. >> even if it were true? >> it's none of our business. >> same for past cocaine use? >> i would say, you know, look, i didn't see a ton of scrutiny given to obama's cocaine use. people accepted his take on that

story because his political stance or whatever. i think the same should be extended to palin. >> i have no idea if the cocaine allegation is true or not. mcginniss will be on all kinds of programs. piers morgan is having him on. tv has an idea that if it is a book it has a stature that allows it to be covered but there are crappy books out there. >> there is an idea they fact check and then it has a certain gravitasse which isn't true. the same could be said if it's in new york times it's true. newspapers don't have fact checking. you have to trust the author. >> there are editors who can say, you don't have the story nailed down. >> presumably so do book editors. you have to have a certain amount of faith in the author. if his publishers do. >> i worked for the new york

times for 25 years. there are editors. there are filters. there are standards. there are processes your material goes through. what is increasingly happened in this web culture is there are no filters or editors. many people say, this is great. it's the wild west and there are more voices. but what has been almost entirely eliminated in n many ways is the notion of accountability and verification. in a lot of the web publications. >> but we are not talking web. we are talking about a book. >> covered by the web. >> it's covered by everything. >> i think mcdprks i ncginnis i on his previous books. >> he was accused of deception, had an out of court settlement. what bothered me most of all was the way in which the web ran with this before anyone has seen the book. it wasn't like an editor said, i

think there are reasonable allegations here. >> doonsbury had it out and the chicago trib didn't run it, but everyone else did. including the post. >> every website, even the most serious ones have links to jennifer aniston's latest pictures or kim kardashian and palin is more like jennifer aniston and kim kardashian today than like mitt romney or any serious political figure. >> there seems to be an under current that because palin is more celebrity than politician though we don't know for sure still if she'll run for president but there are different standards. i will push back and say to run with the stuff -- >> i don't think there should be. by think there are. >> in the case of doonesbury, gary trudeau had the book in advance. the chicago tribune killing it, how many people did it stop from

reading it? you can get it online. there is news of another book called "confidence men" about the obama white house. already the white house is pushing back. larry summers, all officials quoted in the book who are denying what they are quoted as saying. this is different it seems to me. suskind had the cooperation of the white house and interviewed president obama. sit in a different category? >> sure. he's also in a different category. ron suskind has a reputation as a reliable reporter. former wall street journal reporter. even there, there is the implication that he's blown up some of the stories into feuds and has taken the extreme version of events. they are different. obama white house is a serious subject. sarah palin is not a serious subject in anything like the same way. >> from what you can tell in some cases it looks like, yes, there were casual conversations. perhaps he got them from a third

party and repeated the quotes. it makes it look like there was some brug irritation and people would riot. >> suskind quoted people directly, interviewed a lot of white house officials. i called barack obama and he said he can't comment yet because he's going on "today." >> donna is denying she gave the quote. that is a direct quote. so at a certain point i think one or both parties has to say, okay, is it okay to put this on the record. >> who said sarah palin isn't a serious subject. >> me. >> what do you mean? she was a vice president yal nominee. this is a serious book about her. >> i'm saying she has cast herself in in m ways much more as a celebrity, a reality tv star. >> she's more donald trump. >> she defined herself as less

serious, not the rest of us. >> which still doesn't give any author or writer or journalist the right to publish crap. >> i agree completely. >> we have a rare moment of consensus. thanks for joining us. when we come back, rick perry on the firing line at the cnn presidential debate. does the media have it in for this guy? [ indistinct talking on radio ] [ tires screech ] [ crying ] [ applause ] [ laughs ] [ tires screech ] [ male announcer ] your life will have to flash by even faster. autodrive brakes on the cadillac srx activate after rain is detected to help improve braking performance. we don't just make luxury cars. we make cadillacs. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has

one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that's a huge breakthrough. that's good for our country's energy security and our economy. helps defends against occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating. with three strains of good bacteria to help balance your colon. you had me at "probiotic." [ female announcer ] phillips' colon health.

z.

announcer: when life's this hard, it's no wonder 7,000 students drop out every school day. visit boostup.org and help kids in your community stay in school. when i was sitting down to write about the cnn presidential debate there was no way around the lead. michele bachmann and the others were ganging up on rick perry. but they had company. if you look at wolf blitzer's questions they singled out the governor even when addressing perry's rivals. >> governor perry, speaking of social security you said in the past it's a ponzi scheme, an absolute failure, unconstitutional but today you wrote an article in usa today

saying it must be saved and reformed. >> as you well know you signed an executive order requiring little girls 11 and 12-year-old girls to get a vaccine to deal with a sexually transmitted disease that could lead to cervical cancer. was that a mistake? >> congresswoman, you know that perry said ben bernanke should be tried for treason. >> governor romney you said governor perry's position on social security is unacceptable and could even obliterate the republican party. >> so the media, not just cnn but msnbc and other organizations singling out perry for harsh treatment. ben smith from politico joins us and jeff zelany from the new york times. you were at the debate. with so many questions about rick perry, so what do you think about what perry said about x,

blitzer guaranteed all the stories would be about perry. >> he was in the center of the stage for a reason. interesting how the front runners are in the center. part of it is that he's the newest person in the race. he is the story line in the race. we can argue if it's fair or not. i'm sure senator santorum and ron paul don't think it's fair. jon huntsman was barely mentioned at all. voters want to know more about rick perry because he's unknown because he has not been running as long as these people. >> i have no problem keeping the spotlight on the newcomer, looking at his texas record. there has been story after story about him in the new york times, washington post, politico and elsewhere. >> we are neutral observers but this is a cost perry took on

when he decided not to enter six, eight months ago and jumped in now. that means questions asked of every candidate but they will be asked all at once of him. mitt romney has been doing talk shows for nine months which allowed him to keep a low profile because he's been asked about health care a ton already. perry dooifd in and has done no challenging interviews on tv or with print reporters. so when somebody gets him there is a list of questions. >> he did an interview with time for a cover story this week. brian williams took heat at the debate for asking this question. let's roll it. >> your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. have you -- [ applause ] >> have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any

one of those might have been innocent? >> no, sir. i have never struggled with that at all. >> anything unfair about the question? >> i think bringing up executions certainly isn't unfair at all. i was surprised when he said struggled to sleep at night. his point was, you know, the question of if any of the people executed had been innocent. but the whole matter is overtaken by the applause in the room and the audience watching the debate rose up in applause and then he followed up with that question. i'm not sure about the sleep at night. not how i would have phrased it. >> ben smith, some critics are questioning why cnn partnered with the tea party express. some people say the network is trying to build conservative street cred. anything give you pause about the partnership? >> that sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the tea party is clearly a big force,

particularly in republican primaries. it made sense both structurally and also for the purposes of television drama to have people who are seen as being central and active in the republican primary asking questions and in the mix. >> cnn washington bureau chief sam feist said the tea party is such a force that it made sense to include it when you talk about building drama, i'm all for audience members asking questions. i don't think journalists have a monopoly on wisdom but many of the questions were so vague as to be useless. what would you do to get the economy moving forward? what is your plan to reduce the cost of health care? there is a reason journal is ask narrower questions than that. did that help the debate? >> i viewed the questions from voters as a topic to discuss. i thought wolf blitzer did a good job honing in on the questions. he was basically asking the questions.

the voters were setting the themes for the questions. the majority of the questions in that debate were asked by wolf little bitter, not voters. >> and following up on tea party questions as well. want to turn now to a moment that got a lot of play. that was michele bachmann. we want to show you what she said in the debate about something rick perry did in texas regarding vaccines against cervical cancer and the next morning she was on "today." we'll take a look at matt lauer's question. take a look. >> i'm a mom of three children. to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. little girls who have a negative reaction to this potentially dangerous drug don't get a mulligan. >> do you feel he placed the health and safety of young girls in the state of texas behind or

below the need for campaign funds? >> well, i will tell you that i had a mother last night come up to me here in tampa, florida, after the debate. she told me her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. >> the problem with that answer is that there is no scientific evidence that these injections are dangerous, as she said in the debate or cause mental retardation yet matt lauer didn't follow up. took 24 hours for media to bring the facts to people. shouldn't we move more quickly with that kind of inflammatory charge? >> as soon as that was online people started asking questions. i know a guy from an autism group sent me an e-mail later that day saying, this is outrageous and dangerous because it's playing to the vaccine fear that a lot of researchers believe getting kids actually killed. >> your newspaper in the new york times had a good story on

the facts involved or lack of facts in the case of what she said. cnn did, nightly news did a good fact check. i have a feeling a lot of organizations were more interested in perry and bachmann going toe to toe than in sorting out what she said. >> that's probably true. it was a dramatic moment. all of us were waiting to see how she would respond. if she would aggressively respond to governor perry. that's part of it. i think a bigger thing, in the moment it looked great for congresswoman bachmann. she was tough and responded well. but like everything else once you inspect it a little bit more, even some of her own advisers were wringing their hands. she seems to say often the last thing that was said to her. whoever this woman in the audience was. i'm sure it happened. >> that doesn't mean it true.

>> and we have the responsibility to check it out. >> in the case of rick perry, are you saying that he got in the race late so there is a t e telescoping of the process? i'm sure people think reporters don't identify with this cowboy cultural candidate. >> the texas press has been examining him most intensely fight now. i think there are a ton of questions that need to be answered quickly because the vote is soon. in fact, he runs a very secretive administration, just as a matter of reality. they delete e-mails every week. they go to great lengths to prevent his schedule from being released. there are specific things that have caused questions that are hard to answer to be put directly to him. >> i'm waiting to see when rick perry starts answering more questions that the journalists have on behalf of those doing the voting.

thanks for joining us. stick around. coming up in the second part of reliable sources, is twitter making political blogs passe? ben is nervous about that. and the uproar at tech crunch over the ouster of the founder who was trading in technology companies covered by his website. paul carr on why he quit and why he thinks the critics are out to lunch.

we're back with ben smith. you're a pretty prolific blogger but you told ad week that writing on twitter as so many of us do is sort of draining the life from the blog. explain. >> well, i love writing my blog and plan to keep doing it, but in 2008 during the presidential election the quickest way to find out a new piece of information was often to hit refresh on my blog or somebody else's blog because we were working directly from the event we were at, typing up the notes faster, getting information faster than anybody else and putting it online. you know, it was incredibly intense but fun. you had the sense people were hitting refresh to find out what just happened on your blog.

>> and now? >> now it's on twitter. the central conversation about what's happening next, what did somebody say, what's the response. it's either being reported on twitter or just tweeted by the players themselves. >> if the blog is where you earn your paycheck and twitter you give it away for free, why tweet so much? >> well, because it's where the action is. you know, politics is a conversation. twitter isn't just a place where you're kind of having a conversation with your fellow reporters or the side conversation. it's become, i think, the central conversation. so you just have to be there. >> are blogs over? are they, oh, so 2008. >> i feel like i'm setting type and i have ink on my hands. they have a use as a repository of longer, thoughtful pieces, things that are observational stuff that's short of a 3,000 word analytical article, but

it's a different -- fewer one-liners and more meat on blogs. >> funny that you say that. when blogs became popular it seemed everything was speeded up. we thought this was worrisome because blogs are so quick. now it takes 20 seconds to tweet something from your phone. what's lost in this hyper speed process? >> i think what can be lost is reporting. i have tried to write a reported blog. i think readers want new news but there is a sense that sometimes everybody is writing 300-word items on the same thing instead of each reporter going out and doing their own reporting. >> you tweeted the other day, perry's run allowed romney to slip out of the spotlight after the mittness protection summer. once i read that i might be less

likely to click on your story elaborating on the point. >> i felt i could get that point across in 142 characters. then i can go report another story. there is a time savings there sometimes, too. >> you think there is a great advantage or twitter and it makes you part of a conversation with political junkies and journalists but at the same time you are competing against yourself. >> absolutely. if you're covering politics you don't have a lot of choice about where you are. that's where it's happening now. >> being on twitter is mandatory. we'll follow you in both places. thanks for stopping by, ben smith. you can follow me on twitter as well and a lot of people at major news organizations. after the break, the battle between tech crunch and ariana huffington. we'll talk to the columnist who got so disgusted he quit. only one calcium supplement does that in one daily dose. citracal slow release... continuously releases calcium plus d

for the efficient absorption my body needs. citracal. for the efficient absorption my body needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ when your chain of supply ♪ goes from here to shanghai, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ chips from here, boards from there ♪ ♪ track it all through the air, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ clearing customs like that ♪ hurry up no time flat that's logistics. ♪ ♪ all new technology ups brings to me, ♪

♪ that's logistics. ♪ isn't some optional pursuit. a privilege for the ultra-wealthy. it's a necessity. i find investments with e-trade's top 5 lists. quickly. easily. i use pre-defined screeners and insightful trading ideas to dig deeper. work smarter. not harder. i depend on myself the one person i do trust to take charge of my financial future. [ bell dinging ]

the world needs more energy. where's it going to come from? ♪ that's why right here, in australia, chevron is building one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. enough power for a city the size of singapore for 50 years. what's it going to do to the planet? natural gas is the cleanest conventional fuel there is. we've got to be smart about this. it's a smart way to go. ♪

it was, to put it mildly, a clash of cultures. michael arrington is from tech crunch which specializes in evaluating hot new silicon valley companies. he saw nothing wrong with a $10 million fund to invest in

companies covered by the website but also sold tech crunch to aol where huffington decided the practice was a violation of journalist ethics and forced him to leave the company. that didn't go over well with the writers including paul carr who wrote, my own position is clear. unless mike arring ton appoints his own successor guaranteeing that tech crunch retains its editorial i'm gone, out the door. control to huffington post will be the death of everything that makes tech crunch great. on friday paul carr resigned. he joins me now from las vegas. welcome. why did you quit? >> hi, howard. oh, just for some time off. i made it clear in my post the reasons why i was going to leave. tech crunch was built by mike arring ton and it is not tech crunch without him. of he was just the perfect -- for me at least, the kind of writing i do which tends to get people's backs up, he was the perfect editor. i felt he had my back.

with him gone it's not the same. i also don't think he was treated fairly at all by huffington, by aol and some of the people he worked with at tech crunch. i just felt it wasn't somewhere i could be anymore. >> the new editor of tech crunch is a guy named eric shinefeld who worked at the website. he wasn't somebody brought in from the outside. he was huffington's choice. he didn't take kindly to your going out in a blaze of glory. he said you're grandstanding, you don't know what you are talking about and in any other place you would have been fired long ago. >> he's right. in any other place i would have been fired. that's the point. he was darkly hinting that it might be the situation going forward. he had to respond in a way, but i was surprised to see him respond on tech crunch. as he put in the post i am a grandstanding columnist. i didn't expect the new editor to do it but that's what makes

tech crunch fun. we take jabs at each other in public. mike used to say it's all about transparency. >> you wrote about tim armstrong the chief executive of aol and said he doesn't understand what he's going on here, not because he'sen idiot but because he's not a journalist. why did you do the digital equivalent of sticking your finger in the eye of the head of the company? >> when tech kruchblg was acquired it happened at a conference. on stage tim armstrong said we will respect your editorial independence. they had an agreement. part of it is when aol screws up and aol is pretty good at that. it's important that we as the tech publication of record, calls aol out. that was part of the deal. so to my mind that's a continuation of that. if we are not able to do it then editorial independence means

nothing. >> you used the phrase in writing about people who leave under these circumstances stunt resignation. is that what you have just done? >> mm-hmm. >> well, yes, insofar as if it wasn't i could have written a nice polite letter to eric. >> you could have quietly gone into the shadows but you chose not to. >> i chose not to do it. it's kind of my value-added tech crunch being the noisy one. frankly people would have assumed i would be hushed up had i quietly gone into the sun set. i have always been loud and it would have been weird had i left quietly. i use the phrase about myself, too. i'm willing to acknowledge i ticked on all the stunt resignation boxes. >> most journalists would say it is a serious conflict for the founder of a website that covers technology to at the same time be putting his own money and some of aol's money obviously into technology stocks.

why do you not see it that way? >> well, much of what you said, i do see that way. i argued that to mike privately but also publically calling it the crunch fund was idiot tick. aligning it closely to tech crunch which was clearly something aol wanted it to be was ridiculous. mike has been an investor for years. mike is a guy who's part investors, part insider, part journalist. the big mistake everybody made and particularly mike and aol was calling it the crunch fund. >> no matter what the name was you still have the basic inescapable fact that anybody reading the site has to wonder, maybe we are talking about appearances here, but has to wonder if the judgment of any of the writers influenced by the fact that the boss, the guy who runs it is putting his money into some of these companies? that smells to me. >> i agree 100%.

i said it's a perception issue. i know the writers well. there are fine journalists there. sarah lacy from business week and eric shinefeld from time. mike has been an investor since the beginning. there is a perception problem here which is why it was only right that mike step down as editor and become a publisher figure, write his column, be as conflicted as he likes and bring in a new editor. i felt it should be mike's choice. >> this week -- >> ariana felt it shouldn't. >> there was a big conference. tech crunch awarded a $50,000 prize to a start-up company and the winners and two runners up all have mike as investors and he was a judge. >> it was disclosed. so the interesting thing is eric, the new ethical editor said mike had no part in the judging of the finalists. mike said it's important not to say things that aren't true and

mike said, you know full well i was involved in the judging. mike will say i'm conflicted but he'll admit it. it was very clear that mike was invested in the companies. >> what about the piece in fortune magazine saying tech crunch gets scoops because the start-up companies bring them to the website so they get good promotion and maybe the whole thing is too cozy. >> there are two issues there. do they come to tech crunch first? of course. if i was a start-up i would go to tech crunch first. tech crunch has people showing up at the office sometimes with cake. there is no doubt people want to be covered on tech crunch. is it cozy, no look how mike went to the people involved in social gaming who he felt were scamming young kids by getting them to buy offers they didn't need. i think we go off the start ups well. >> in light of everything happening has it now ruined technical crunch as a website? >> it ruined the tech kruchblg i

worked for. they have the page views, the domain name but it's not the tech crunch i know and love. that's sad. >> the first interview you have given since you went out the door. thanks for joining us. up next another view of tech crunch from the wall street journal. and what is nbc to do when hackers fill the news feed with bogus stories? throwing away s about natural gas vehicles. more of the vehicles that fuel our lives use clean american natural gas today. it costs about 40 percent less than gasoline, so why aren't we using it even more? start a conversation about using more natural gas vehicles in your community.

and today, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has microparticles so it enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief right to the site of your tough pain. in fact, it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin. extra strength pain relief, twice as fast. [ male announcer ] test our fast relief. love it, or get your money back.

i tell you what i can spend. i do my best to make it work. i'm back on the road safely.

and i saved you money on brakes. that's personal pricing. joining us now from san francisco to talk about the ethical battle at aol's tech crunch is kara swisher of the wall street journal, coexecutive editor of the site all things d. you heard the tech crunch columnist who quit over this saying there was nothing wrong with the founder except a perception problem. both investing in stocks on the site that covers tech stocks. you say it's vaguely icky. who's right? >> it's more than vaguely icky. i was listening and it's different from what happened there. this is a simple case of someone starting a venture firm with all the mayor venture capitalists and it was $20 million, not $10 million and pretending it was all right to cover the

companies. these writers who like to write about themselves because they believe in the show here rather than the start-ups. they are trying to twist it into a journalistic battle. it's ridiculous. >> there is no question in your mind that huffington was right to force out the founder of tech crunch over this basic issue of can you invest in companies that your site is writing about? >> i think mike arrington knew what was going to happen here. he's wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. he wanted his giant payout from selling the site and be able to behave any way he wants. the problem originally was he wasn't investing for a long time. he stopped investing, wrote a blog on it years ago and suddenly started to do it. i don't think aol knew about it. then he just upped the ante more by not just personally investing but creating a venture nund. i think the first time he started investing again a couple months ago, arianna left him go

and make these investments, making a rule at aol saying nobody who writes about these companies can invest in these companies. that started the ball rolling. initially they should have stopped him and didn't and then got this. they shouldn't have been surprised this would escalate. >> the tech writers who seem to enjoy writing about themselves say the whole reason this site is valuable and was worthy of being purchased by aol that we're independent, people can trust us, and now you're screwing with our independence telling us where we can and not put our money. >> they're using a word, editorial and independence. thomas jefferson would spin in his grave. this was not what woodward and bernstein fought for. it's not editorial independence. it's a bunch of people that want to go around and do whatever they want and act like there aren't standards in journalism, and there are. this is a close financial relationship between every major vc in the valley and a news site.

what they want is not to be a news site when it suits them and be news site when it suits them. i don't know. it's pretty basic and simple, and they want to make it into this big circus site so that's what it's become. they're writing conflicting blogs back and forth against each other because, again, it's like watching toddlers on a playground. it obscures the very fact that the very base of this, it's very wrong to have this many financial interests interlocked with a news site. it's just the case. transparency is one thing, and i agree there should be transparency, but this is to cover up crimes as far as i'm concerned, journalistic crimes. >> not saying anyone should go to jail. >> no. >> another thing in the digital world that was troubling was when hackers took over nbc's twitter feed. we see one bogus story posted. nbc of course immediately apologized for this and -- do you think this sort of thing can undermine the credibility of a network, or do people understand

that nbc was the victim here? >> well, in that case, nbc was the victim. i think, you know, there's some things in this news site or world that you can't control. it's happened before in journalism before all these technological tools. what's more dangerous is, for example, there was a cbs contractor that wrote about steve jobs dying, and they put out a tweet and the it was under sort of this cbs news kind of banner and then took it back in sort of a glib fashion. oops, sorry, he's not dead. i think the whole question of the idea of it's okay to be a little looser, i suppose, okay to have a personality, and not everybody does, but what's not okay is to lose basic standards of fairness, accuracy, and ethics. >> right. when you put out that somebody has died, you know, that there's no nuance there. the person is either dead or not. in the case of jobs, of course, he was not dead. a brief time for you to respond. >> no. he's fine. you know, he's not fine but, you know, he's not dead. >> was cbs right -- was cbs right to say to lazar we can't

run your work anymore? >> probably so. especially with the response was a little glib for what was a very serious error. but it shows a lack of control. and this whole tech thing shows a lack of control, that it's okay to do whatever you want and cross all kinds of ethical boundaries and think it's okay. and it's not okay. i don't want to be like miss crabtree of silicon valley, because this thing is hysterically funny. >> glad you're enjoying it. >> everyone's enjoying it. it's ridiculous. >> kara swisher, thanks very much. we've got to go. still to come, one television doctor takes on another. abc gets scooped on the jackie kennedy tapes. and the invention that could make journalist obsolete. just one phillips' colon health probiotic cap a day helps defends against occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating. with three strains of good bacteria to help balance your colon.

you had me at "probiotic." [ female announcer ] phillips' colon health.

time for the "media monitor." here's what i like. mehmet oz put out a warning on his show that certain brands of apple juice are dangerous because they contain high levels of arsenic. you don't often see one high-profile doctor take on another. but when oz appeared on "good morning america," abc's medical correspondent, dr. richard bezer, let him have it. >> mehmet, i'm very upset about this. i think this was extremely irresponsible, putting out this

kind of a health warning, manufacturing a health crisis based on faulty, incomplete data. >> we did our homework on this threat. we spend a lot of time making sure we got our numbers right. >> but the fda says oz's research was wrongly conducted and inaccurate. good for bresser for taking him on. diane sawyer did a nice job in the two-hour abc special this week featuring taped interviews from 1964 with jackie kennedy showing us another side of this most popular and mysterious first ladies. >> someone said where do you get your opinions? i said i get all my opinions from my husband, which is true. how could i have any political opinions? his were going to be the best. it was victorian relationship. >> but abc can't be pleased at an nbc news nightly news producer got a hold of the book and audiotapes and ran a story on brian williams' newscast four days before the heavily promoted

sauer special. the pub liber asked the network to hold off. did the network do anything wrong? no way. and the publisher wound up with more publicity for the jackie book. check out this story written during a recent college football game between wisconsin and the university of nevada, las vegas. now, that, as "the new york times" informs us, was written not by a human being but by a computer at a company called narrative science, which has sold the low-cost service to 20 clients. that's scary. but, look, i've got to believe that no computer, no matter how sophisticated, can match the wit and wisdom of a living, breathing journalist. i mean, that's a no-brainer, right? right? well, that's it for this edition of