according to the report, this is largely due to the regulation of health care, finance and energy. it's worth noting that this is a report from the conservative heritage foundation. thanks to all of you for being part mief program this week. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." this is park city, utah, home of the famous sundance festival. the biggest names in the media business are here, and so are unknown filmmakers, hoping to be tomorrow's blockbuster stars. this week, we'll go behind the scenes with the big documentaries and the big business of sundance and we'll tell you about the rest of the week's biggest stories, including the battle between the weather channel and directv. and the premiere of a new comedian that had a lot of people laughing last night on ""saturday night live."

>> there's no prompter. no prompt -- good morning. i'm brian stelter. the biggest names in the business are here, film buyers, filmmakers and film buffs as well. we'll take you here and show you all about it, coming up. a few veterans that have been covering it before to fill us all in. we want to get to a big story that developed, involving new jersey governor chris christie. he went to florida, doing some fund-raising, but left some troubles back in new jersey. a scandal over a politically motivated traffic tie-up at the george washington bridge, new claims emerged that his office when would superstorm sandy funds from the city of hoboken

when its mayor would mot back a project. personal notes to back up her claims. there's no surprise that the channel has spent a dwrat deal of time talking about christi. in a statement on saturday here is what they said. msnbc is a partisan network that's been openly hostile to governor christie and almost gleeful in their effort of attacking him, taking the unprecedented step of producing and airing a three-minute attack ad this week. governor christie and his entire administration have been helping hoboken get the help they need after sandy, with them being already approved for $3 million of targeted aid and will be getting even more when the obama administration approves the next round of funding. "new york times," covered chris

christie extensively and eric wemple of the washington post. kate, let me start with you. gleeful to describe msnbc. do you think that's a fair word? >> in some cases certainly the later evening hosts, rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell. do we ever suspect that they were anything but liberal television hosts? steve cornaki has been pretty fair. well versed in new jersey. we started his reporting career there. actually, his story was fairly well reported. he talked about christie's reaction and pressed dawn zimmer pretty forcefully on why didn't you come forward if this is really what you were talking about? the network has been aggressively anti-christie. morning joe is pretty much still supporting christie. >> what do you think, eric? you recently spent a whole day watching msnbc and wrote a blog

post about what that was like. a story like this just show that msnbc is to the left what fox is to the right? >> i don't think that there's an equivalency quite that way. kate basically took all the words out of my mouth. what cornaki did was reporting. he added a significant dimension to this story. while certainly there was a lot of blather on the msnbc airwaves this week, everybody talked about christie and the story in terms of reporting much, he was sitting there, documenting this new revelation about dawn zimmer, i think that's a fairly significant addition in the "new york times" and just about everybody else has had to follow those revelations. so i don't think that there's an equivalency. just hammer away, hammer away, hammer away, doesn't make huge reporting splashes like this on a big story and as routinely, i think this is actually a very significant and good moment for

msnbc, which, of course, ended 2013 on a terrible, terrible note, set of notes. >> well, with martin bashir, alec baldwin, all these various controversies, snl, "saturday night live," brought up this issue of hoboken last night. let's run the clip. >> new allegations about how you when would sandy funds. >> really? you're curious? let me ask you a question, piers, how long is your drive to work? >> i don't know. maybe 15. >> well, that's a nice commute. it would be a real shame if something were to happen to it. >> governor, are you threatening me? >> i don't know. am i? >> i run this clip to make the point that christie is being raked over the coals about these various controversies. did you read the statement attack i

attacking msnbc to change the topic and move it over to media buy as as opposed to these actual issues? >> absolutely. kaunt blame him. other politicians would try to do the same thing and move the story to be about media buy as. earlier this year, a story locally in new jersey about how during hurricane sandy he had -- transit had not moved the trains to higher ground. anyway, governor christie was asked about this by one of the newspapers and he blamed what he called a mid-level civil servant. there are no mid-level civil servants. the pattern here is trying to shift the blame on to someone else. >> i don't think -- again, it might be -- go ahead, erik. sorry. >> no. there's a certain -- we've all watched msnbc. we know that when something bad happens to republicans, there will be a gleeful tone. i don't think that the christie people help themselves at all by

complaining about tone of coverage. i think what matters are the facts. >> i wonder if it's going to further hurt nbc news. nbc news would love to have interviews with chris christie, gop debates in 2016. do you see this affecting nbc news at all? a high-profile possible candidate for 2016? >> i do. nbc news people i talked to are always somewhat wondrous or, you know, shaking their heads about the fact that especially in the daytime and into prime time as well. there's a lot of talk and not enough reporting. but as i say, i think this cornaki thing steers it in a new direction. it's an interesting mishmash here. >> kate, i remember a story you wrote about a month ago about

the image of chris christie being a bully. back then it was hard to get pique people to come on the record. wasn't it? >> right. the stories included in that piece were generally the elements i had seen reported elsewhere that i could get people to talk about. it was incredibly hard to get people to talk. governor christie is an incredibly powerful governor. tremendous power of the purse, like other governors. there's really a feeling by democrats and republicans that they don't want to cross him because they could get in real trouble and they will be punished and have seen it happen to their colleagues before. what's interesting now is that msnbc is not the only one perhaps smelling a little bit of blood in the water. people in the last few days, their willingness to either share more or share on the record has been really striking to me. i think it's actually a sign of how much the governor is in trouble. >> sounds like more stories to come from you and your colleagues? >> i would think so, yes. >> and maybe the point is there

are stories from all sorts of places. msnbc is partisan in many ways. that didn't mean they can't do factual reporting. erik, i wonder if that's something they may have to remind viewers or viewers may have to come around to believe. >> that's a really good point. y think we should get this notion just because your a partisan journalism out fit you can't do news or break news. maddow had the rand paul thing. every time we watch her, we know she has a great or fabulously entrenched world view. i'm not saying world view itself is fabulous, but anyway she has done a lot of that. mother jones' view -- reporting and breaking a lot of stories. so, partisan outfits or, you know, idiologically leaning out fits certainly can do news. i agree with kate 100% that the

segments were really good. and i think they are a great reminder to all of us who think that partisan or ideologically invested journalism can't do anything on news. they can. >> do you think it will create more attention for msnbc, though. erik, kate, thanks for joining us. >> thanks, brian. remember, i'm always interested in hearing what you think about the show. what you're hearing today. brian stelter. live tweeting shoet thanks to my fiance over on twitter as well. directv versus the weather channel. epic media battle. we'll explain it, coming up. [ female announcer ] you get sick, you can't breathe through your nose... suddenly you're a mouth breather. a mouth breather! how do you sleep like that? you dry up, your cold feels even worse. well, put on a breathe right strip and shut your mouth. cold medicines open your nose over time,

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welcome back to reliable sources from park city, utah. the story of a blackout.

the weather channel disappeared, 20 million homes this week because of a nasty dispute with directv. these blackouts happen from time to time and they're usually short lived. this one is not. it's a doozy, almost a week old and affecting one in six american households. there's big implications here for other cable channels, too. i want to get into that. jim cantore, one of the faces of the weather channel, happens to be here in park city, going skiing with advertisers today. he came by and told me about how he feels about this blackout. jim, thanks for joining me. >> thanks for having me. >> is this the first time that weather channel has been blacked out on any major cable or satellite provider? >> 32 years strong and we've never been dropped, only added. >> what does it state with this blackout, then in. >> first that came to me is when i think about the coverage in the field and how many people come up to me and say, jim, we really appreciate you guys being there. you made us prepare. you got us ahead of the storm and you took us through it.

and without you on directv, because we can't get cable -- we're out in the middle of nowhere, we would not have known that storm is coming. >> that's what you said in the letter before the blackout, this is a life-saving channel. i've never seen a channel position itself that way. was it really appropriate to say this channel is about saving lives? >> i really think when you look at the weather channel overall, when you think about what happens before a storm, whether you're an emergency manager's office, local tv station, your first hint at what's to come is from the weather channel. >> that campaign didn't seem to work. directv dropped the channel anyway. do you have any sense what their motivations are? >> i'm not part of the executive committee that makes the decisions. obviously, there's money involved. >> you made a point in your letter and said this is not about a huge increase in fee. >> it's not. >> you said a penny? >> penny per subscriber. that's not a big deal. especially when it comes to

saving lives. as i said to you, people come up to me and make it a point to tell me and thank me how much they appreciate our coverage. and so i'm driven to get it back on directv. >> what's it been like the past few days? have you heard from people on twitter and facebook? >> keeptheweatherchannel.com is a website we started up so people could keep informed. we've had 4 million hits. a million people a day have come in to seek information about what's going on. a lot of people on twitter say we want this to be resolved. >> there weren't these online tools to complain years ago and push for a change. now i guess you're hearing from people all the time about this. >> i think it's amazing, actually. we're humbled by the outcome of support we've had. and it's immediate. it's immediate. as soon as we went off, you know, midnight, people were like, where is the weather channel? especially at resort areas. because -- the number one viewed

channel is the weather channel at hilton properties. when people are out and don't have access to local weather information, they're wondering what it's going to be like to fly back to new york, to fly back to boston and l.a. >> what about the comment that people can fete out the phone and view the app instead? >> you may see what the symptoms may be, what that compares with but at the end of the day, you're going to the doctor to find out what's going on with that. >> weather channel is the doctor? >> we're the doctor. >> jim, thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> directv has a very different story. they say this is all about saving their customers money. 12 cents per person per month. directv wants to reduce that by about 20%. public statements the company keeps pointing out what i asked jim about. weather station is a commodity. available on the internet, including weather channel's own website, its own app.

when the blackout started directv said consumers now understand there are a variety of other ways to get weather coverage free of reality show clutter and that the weather channel does not have an exclusive on weather coverage. the weather belongs to everyone. watching this battle unfold, joining me now, barry. thanks for joining me. >> thanks for having me. >> what do you think this is all about? >> well, there are a number of dynamics going on in the marketplace. certainly the fact that weather is a commodity is part of the issue here. the other thing is we're seeing a real transition in the paid television business, both within satellite and cable tv where they are going into an area where they're going to need to cut costs to their programming. >> does it hurt the weather channel? do they have such a great website and great app where you can get the same information?

>> well, i mean, it's not even just simply that the weather channel's app and website are so great. there are lots of places on the internet where you can get weather. also if you're talking about severe weather in a local area, the local broadcasters, both television and radio, are all over it. that's a key part of their local coverage as well. >> were you as struck as i was by this promotional campaign where they're say iing the weatr channel saves lives so it's irresponsible to take it off directv? >> that was a pretty astonishing statement. i was surprised that they would -- >> right. >> make such an extreme statement about what they were able to do and provide to local communities. and i'm not sure that the facts would bear it out if you would really examine it. >> let's dig down on what you said earlier about the cable ecosystem. there are going to have to be cost cutting moves by these

distributors. they can't keep rising forever. do you think directv was trying to send a message to other channels by taking weather channel off the air? >> well, if you look at what the weather channel represents in terms of the monthly cable bill, it's a pretty small amount of money. the fact that they were willing to play such extreme hardball with them suggests that they're really taking it as an opportunity to send a message to future negotiating partners. we saw earlier this year -- yeah, go ahead. >> well for a channel like cnn or al jazeera, which provides somewhat commodityized news. >> i think news is pretty different. cable news channels have a pretty strong relationship with their viewers. cable news viewership is down. on the other hand, that relationship with those viewers

is very strong. also, i believe that, you know, news coverage is pretty different from weather in the sense that that voice really matters. the way that you show the news on television can vary greatly from station, network to network, if done properly. >> barry parr, thank you so much for being here and explaining what this is all about. >> thank you. >> coming up, we're here in park city, talking about sundance. why is this a golden age for documentary film? we'll take you behind the scenes and tell you, next. what super poligrip does for me is it keeps the food out. before those little pieces would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was uncomfortable. [ male announcer ] just a few dabs is clinically proven to seal out more food particles. [ corrine ] super poligrip is part of my life now. over the pizza place on chestnut street the modest first floor bedroom in tallinn, estonia and the southbound bus barreling down i-95.

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welcome back to reliable sources. i'm brian stelter. lounge in park city. we've taken over a sushi restaurant. we brought the show to sundance. this right here is the beating heart of the film business, especially the documentary film business, which is getting more attention than ever, thanks to streams services like netflix, channels like this one. earlier being i went to catch up with a couple of park city reporters who explained the significance of the festival. >> three decades ago, actor robert red ford and a few filmmaker friends got together to develop independent film projects. >> i came here because of the beauty. i came here because of the

state's particular history, pioneer history of the i wanted to preserve that at sundance but also i wanted to add something that would create a new dimension. utah, let's put it in the middle of winter. make it weird. make it weird and strange. >> now celebrating his 30th anniversary, his film festival, leading independent film in the world. small mountain town gets taken over by filmmakers, buyers and ordinary film fans. >> it's tough to get around. you go from small town feel to rush hour manhattan. >> local tv anchor said even for sundance veterans, every festival is a new experience. >> even if you've been here many years, there's no way to completely prepare for what happens when sundance occurs. not just in terms of numbers of people but also in terms of the intensity of the activity.

>> 120 films were selected for this year's festival from over 12,000 entries. eventually, some of them show up in your local multiplex and streaming services as well. >> what takes place at sundance filters into and influences other films, not just here in the united states, but all around the world. and that's a cross pollenation. >> covered every festival says you never know which are going to break out and there's never enough time to see them all. >> i've been here, you know, for 30 or 35 years. i'm still trying to figure out the strategy for going to sundance. for a deeper dive, joining me here in park city are three film reporters, brooks barns, barbara chive from wall street journal

and new york film editor for variety. what's the news out of the festival so ar? >> little bit of a slow start this year. the first is "whiplash," sony pictures classic picked up for $2.5 million and second is dinosaur 13 that lion's gate picked up. >> we'll talk about that. cnn documentaries, what's that all about? >> i think they want a different audience or an audience that has been proven for documentaries but also big deals, you know, so far those aren't being compared to the history of sundance here. >> what were the biggest ones in the past? "little miss sunshine" with his a big one. >> documentaries are a $1 million premium price. i think we were talking earlier that the festival kind of rolls out a little slower in recent years as different buyers kind

of circle around and figure out like, can i make money on idea, is there theatrical at all? >> isn't this a great time to be a filmmaker? there are different ways to distribute film. >> exactly. with more and more technology, filmmakers are able to do things they weren't able to do before. a great example of this is "dinosaur 13" where todd miller auctioned the rights to a book by peter larsen, a paleontologist. and he said he felt every bit of intrigue when reading it as jurassic park or indiana jones. >> i bring up cnn. it's interesting to see television networks coming here, trying to do deals. for wha kind of television networks are in the bidding wars

now i dona days? >> netflix. is that a network? hbo used to be did. >> that was kind of the end all, be all? >> pbs, hbo was sexier, right? now univision yesterday bought that film, cnn came in with 300 films already this year and last year got one of the more controversial ones with "blackfish". >> they bought it here last year, short listed for the oscars. >> they came here with whitey bulgur. from "paradise lost" trilogy. new, shocking evidence about whether or not whitey b. lgur was an fbi informant. >> pivot or univision is to bring in a younger audience that otherwise wouldn't watch news? >> i guess so. cnn wants ratings.

>> "blackfish" did really well. >> it only made $2 million in the movie theater. people are watching documentaries, but they're watching them on tv and not in the movies. >> and on netflix. >> fahrenheit 911 came out almost ten years ago. people will go to music documentaries with justen bieber or katy perry, but these news documentaries now have shifted to the small screen. >> mitt romney showed up yesterday. they've been running documentaries for years. i guess what's kirch different is they want them exclusively on n netflix. >> you have a party, mitt romney shows up, it gives you more presence. >> joy wasn't a word that came to his mind. >> when he watched it? pretty flattering film about him, though. >> seems pretty nice to him. it's easier for netflix to acquire it than a big blockbuster. >> which they do with the square, which is nominated for an oscar.

it won the audience award here last year. >> one of five films being nominated. >> that's right. >> they can be on the stage with the oscars. >> it premiered here at sundance and by the time it got to toronto -- >> which is, what, september is this. >> yes. >> the other big film festival of the year. >> and events in cairo had been changed and morsi had been ousted and she had to go back and revise her ending. >> we see that with other real-time films? >> yes, such as west of memphis, the case of the west memphis three. that director had to go back and up did ls date it with the fact that they accepted this plea. investigative reporting in real time. >> and life itself, the documentary on cnn, the last four months of ebert's life. obviously, the filmmakers didn't know that going in. now they have important footage,

historic film going in. >> this is about art than commerce. it's not a big business for filmmaker. >> that's one of the questions with sundance. art sector has moved. what are the theatrical hopes of some of these films? and it means a lot for sundance because the sundance festival and filmmakers get into doing -- spend their money and go broke to get their movie in theaters. more from the agents, you hear oh, this would be a great -- >> do you all prefer watching on a smaller screen these days? do you prefer watching on a television set or smart phone? >> the first thing -- >> whitey director? >> did paradise lost. sixth time at sundance. he said how did my look on the big screen? i screened it on dline so i

couldn't even tell him buchlt i watched it on my big screen television so it felt like being in a theater. >> you don't want to compromise the movie theaters. you want to satisfy a movie in the movie theater and have that theatrical experience. hollywood's fear is if everything goes to vod. >> a real tension that will continue to exist. thanks for all being here. >> thanks for having us. >> real directors talk about the power to report the news for a documentary film. stay tuned. taking multiple medications, does your mouth often feel dry? a dry mouth can be a side effect of many medications but it can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath. that's why there's biotene. available as an oral rinse, toothpaste, spray or gel, biotene can provide soothing relief, and it helps keep your mouth healthy, too. remember, while your medication is doing you good,

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welcome back to park city. i've been talking to directors about some of the documentaries here at sundance. i get the sense that there's never been a better time for making documentaries, but also never a more tougher time. many of them still yearn for theatrical release and say there's something special about the communicaal experience of t movie theater. mixing elements of journalism and storytelling, something i discussed with the director of "dinosaur 13," todd douglas mrl. >> it's through the eyes of the people who found the dinosaur

and tried to hold on to her, her name being sue. do you feel it's an act of journalism that can make a film like this or something different? >> it's a little bit of both. it's a hybrid, i guess. the film follows mainly the four original discoverer discoverers after the discovery. >> you don't hear a lot from the other side. >> we made a conscious decision to have everybody -- there's no naration in the film. everybody's first-person narrative. yeah, we -- the one thing i will say, usually journalism is a lot quicker. i wanted people in a chair for sometimes two, three days. so our interviews were very long so we could -- these guys were used to being on camera. i didn't like want quick sound bite that is you're going to get within ten minutes. hour three, hour four, you start breaking that barrier into when you're really getting to what they thought about it. >> maybe day two or day three. >> yeah. if they hadn't passed out by

then. >> the great prince also involved days of interviews. he had two main characters, a palestinian, the son of the hamas leader who become an israeli spy and his israeli handler. he explained to me why docs are different. the subject of your film was covered in the news years ago. you went back and interviewed them. were you acting as a journalist or something else? >> not at all. i was acting as a filmmaker. >> you didn't see as a journalistic to fact check what they were saying? >> i come very well prepared. my goal is to necessitate emotion. this is my preparation work. when i interview them, i'm trying to get their emotional connection to the story, trying to generate emotion. this is what will create the connection with the audience. >> so it's not news but it's story telling? >> it's pure story telling, the

same way as a director you would work with actors to make them feel comfortable and create the circumstances in which they can best express their emotions. it's the same thing. most of the time it was interviewed largely on cnn, exclusive with christiane amanpour, amazing interviews about the facts. not about this emotional relationship. and, you know, he wrote a book which became a best seller. he was a media sensation. there were a lot of interviews. you will not find anything in the film about the interviews because it's all about the emotion. >> for so many of these films, access is essential. access is exactly what brad white had for mitt. that's why mitt romney was here yesterday. he spent years with romney. when he came by the cnn lounge yesterday, i sd him about his reflections. mitt romney in your film is not

the romney a lot of people seem to see in the press, day-to-day. does your film suggest that, you know, the press should be given more access to candidates and candidates would be better off if they showed more of themselves to the world? >> i don't quite understand that. obviously, this is something that was new to me. i noticed this very adversarial relationship that existed between the press and the campaign and the candidate, mitt romney, was sometimes caught in between the two of those. for whatever reason. and i take it as a compliment that people see the film and say, wow, i didn't realize that side of mitt romney existed. i wonder if that's true of other candida candidates. i tend to think that there is, that there's a side to all of us, that when we're more vulnerable and willing to show some of our weaknesses, we also become more likable. i'm not sure that you could parlay that.

netflix, filmmaker out to the public. >> for us, the apex of your buzz happens during sundance. >> some of these films have to wait months before they come out in theaters or on tv? >> all those people that original wrote about your film and were excited about your film, they don't want to write about it again. teaming up with netflix, talk to them about how this film rolled out -- they're somewhat nimble in how they can roll the film out. they don't have to go through the same machinations or use the same apparatus as the regular distribution method. >> find these on our blog on cnn.com. check them out. coming up next, "saturday night live" and the much-anticipated debut of their newest cast member. we'll see how she did. suddenly you're a mouth breather. a mouth breather! how do you sleep like that? you dry up, your cold feels even worse. well, put on a breathe right strip and shut your mouth.

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welcome back. the first african-american actress to join the cast since maya rudolph. snl launched a nationwide search last fall for a black female cast member after coming under

fire, as they should have, for what critics called a lack of diversity in the cast. what does her debut mean for future of snl? co-founder of the list and actress and comedienne deborah wilson. welcome to you both. >> thanks for having us. >> deborah, what did you thenk of the show last night? >> keep in mind, she's only -- not a full cast member right now. she's still on the fringes. i know a lot of people probably expected her to come running out and doing something pretty amazing, but most people don't realize that she is not a full cast member of the show. what you see is what you get for the first episode and it's not going to be projected that she is going to come out of the ballpark with this new york rise only because she's not fully there yet. i think we have a lot more to see and i think america is going to expect a lot more ethnic humor to really be able to open

up the palate of "saturday night live." >> let's talk about that. rachel, you and i are facebook friends. after the show you wrote, this felt like a big catch-up, leap forward for an american media institution. tell me why. >> snl reflects the reality and the current popular culture. and so when that is reflected largely through the views of a mostly white writer's room and mostly white cast without diversity across gender and race and experience, then you're going to have something much more narrow. so, this felt very much like a course correction. we know it was a course correction, number one, because we outcry and number two, because they actually made the change. we're going to see diversity now sort of perspective and philosophy and just experiences. even just the diversity of the characters that they'll be able to portray on snl. like, for example, rihanna.

they had somebody who could credib credibly play rihanna. >> right. we've seen a lot of -- we've seen a couple of other cast members who are men play women in the past. maybe we'll see less of that in the future. debra, what did you make of the pressure that was applied to snl last year and the fact that they did listen, it seems they did l >> well, i think they finally listened, but you have to remember something, the one thing i have been saying all along in other interviews, was that this was not a democracy. saturday night live can do whatever they choose to do. that's what they choose to do. and being that they responded to the masses, they're then saying i'm consciously taking responsibility for not having enough diversity on the show. now that they have got more diversity on the show, an african-american woman, they do have a responsibility to make sure that ethnic humor is brought to the forefront of the show and that it's not always

going to be frat boy humor anymore. not only that, but because they brought in two other writers who are black women, we're going to see this show open up and flower in different perspectives, and you're going to have more people of color and african-americans watching the show. they chose to recognize it, even if it was under pressure. >> rachel, is the writer hire even more important? >> the writer hire, the fact that they added two more black women to the writer's room, yeah, that's significant because it's not just one person who's expected to, you know, be the one who's the torch bearer and making the difference all by herself. it's part of a larger change. and that's why i want to pick up on what deborah said, she's right, "snl" is not a democracy, their goal is to get ratings,

they goal is to stay on the air. that's why they want to stay with the culture. this is actually an admission on "snl's" part that something was missing, a and that there was a hole in their cast, their writer's room that they needed to fill. that actually does fulfill the final product. this doesn't "snl's" bending to crybabies and the bleeding hearts on the left. this was actually about quality and the fact that already, the show felt better yesterday. >> is there a concern about her being stigmatized in some way? do you think that's an issue that will have to be addressed? >> i don't really think so. she came out and she supported some of the sketches she was in. she seemed like a great fit. again, the goal of "snl," i remember i did a story on "snl" in the profile the last time

there was a big cast turnover and back at that time, amy poehlar said we're not looking to change minds, we have a great cast to support each other and that's how we get there. that's been part of the "snl" magic, they are constantly evolving, they are trying to reflect what's funny in the world and they're moving with the times. and popular culture always lagged behind the times, now we have social media, sending the signal back to pop culture and merging with it. i think that that's why this turnover happened more quickly. but that doesn't mean that it wasn't necessary. >> deborah and rachel thank you for joining us. up next, a chat with a filmmaker here at sundance who once put me on the big screen, coming up. [ male announcer ] what if a small company

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to wrap up my time in park city here, i met with my friend andrew rossi whose film "ivory tower" premiered here last night. we have an unusual history, as you'll see. andrew, three years ago, we were both here, you were premiering "page one" about the "new york times" that i was in. and now you're back here premiering a film called "ivory tower." >> they're both about sectors that are in a moment of tran

transition or disruption. we were looking at the times, even through your place there, helping online become a bigger part of their journalism and with the higher education sector, we're looking at how the sort of cost disease that has made tuition rates skyrocket is forcing the issue of creating broader access at a cheaper cost. but the difference, i think, in terms of making the two films, is with the "new york times," we were on the media desk, following you and david car. >> you had to get access to the building and access to us. >> in one instance, when you were shaving in the bathroom. >> you followed me into the bathroom and i didn't realize it until i saw the film. >> but establishing that sort of trust with you that when you were on the phone with julian assange, we were there with you fliming. >> how do you get people to come out like that? >> i think it's a -- it takes a

a lot of time, i mean you film, i think in this film, we filmed over 300 or 400 hours of footage. >> i remember being very self-conscious about you in the beginning, but a week later, i almost forgot you were there. >> we spent several months after harva harvard, we were at stanford for a very short time. and san jose state university. it was actually in a sense, maybe more difficult because young people, you know, their lives are hectic and we wanted to get into the stream of their life to see what college is doing well for them and what it's not doing so well. >> well, that's all for this televised special edition of "reliable sources" from park cities, utah. we have a lot more coverage, including a big drop in the

ratings at the beginning of "american idol" this season. three al jazeera reporters remain in prison in egypt, but there was a glimmer of hope on friday. >> we have got a weekend roundup of other stories that may not have made news. thanks for watching this week, and let me know what you think of the show online, and we'll be back next sunday in d.c. reining in big brother. or not. today, privacy verses security. >> we still have a long way to go to make sure we balance