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tv   Reliable Sources  CNN  October 5, 2014 8:00am-9:01am PDT

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of the resources earth can provide. we've linked to the report on our website. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. good morning. i'm brian stelter. it's sunday, october 5th, and it is time for "reliable sources." we begin with ebola. a reporter in a self-imposed quarantine after returning from the front lines of the deadly disease. he tells his story of covering an enemy you can't see. plus, how the plague is bringing out the best and the worst in tv news. and sex scandals and politics. is the tabloidization of political reporting getting in the way of uncovering what really matters? and a resignation at the top of the secret service. did gender play a role in both who got the job and why they lost it? journalists like to tell you the news. they do not like to be the news. and that is especially true this weekend. this morning my thoughts are
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with the freelance nbc cameraman who tested positive for ebola while working in liberia. he's the fourth american who has been stricken by the disease while spending time in that country. he is scheduled to return to the u.s. for medical treatment. so you might be wondering, what are journalists doing to protect themselves? i mean, we know that journalists can cover wars and disasters and take certain precaulkses when they're doing that but covering the fight against ebola is different. it is an invisible enemy. nbc medical correspondent dr. nancy snyderman was working with the cameraman when he contracted the disease and here is how she described it. >> when he realized he had a fever and was feeling achy in this environment, the word ebola popped to the top of everyone's mind. he self quarantined overnight 48 hours ago, got his test. it turned out to be positive. he's at doctors without borders and he will be airlifted out to a medical center in the united states. >> first, i want to bring in in
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washington "the washington post" reporter lenny bernstein us what he has also been in liberia recently and he has been spending time at home in a self quarantine ever since. he joins me now. lenny, good morning. >> hi, how are you doing? >> i'm well. thank you for being here. originally this segment was going to be from the washington bureau of cnn but you're at home on skype instead. tell me what happened. >> so there's advice in a general sense that you should stay home, keep away from crowds, keep your distance from folks even in your own home for anywhere between 2 and 21 days. the virus can incubate for 21 days. most people who start to show symptoms start to show them between 7 and 10, 7 and 11 days. this is my 8th day home so i thought you know what? i'm going to be prudent about it. >> were you feeling sick at all this morning? >> no, just a little, you know,
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little not myself so i figured i'll just take -- i'll just be super cautious. >> what have you been doing? have you been taking your temperature? other sorts of things like that to check on yourself? >> right. i have an infrared thermometer and you just take your temperature. i have no fever. and, you know, you watch out for other symptoms, severe headache, cramps, achiness. obviously vomiting would be a very strong sign that you're infected. >> i have to admit, i was a little worried when you said you were preferring to stay home this morning but it sounds like it's just out of a precaution. it's not because you believe you are sick. >> no, no, just being very cautious. >> i was struck by what you wrote for "the washington post" website. you wrote about the rules of reporting about ebola. that's why i was hoping to have you here this morning. what is the number one rule so to speak when you are actually covering an outbreak in an area where so many might be infected? >> so for us in the press, in the media, and pretty much
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everybody else over there, the number one rule is you don't touch anyone. you try not to touch anything that you don't know about, but you don't touch anyone. you don't know where the virus is. your odds are very good, particularly if you're not around a lot of sick people, but in an abundance of caution as you go around monrovia, no one is shaking hands or hugging or high fiving. no one is putting their arms around each other. every once in a while you will see somebody do the liberian handshake which is just an elbow bump usually with long sleeves over those elbows. you just don't touch anything you don't have to. >> hearing you describing this, i'm thinking your family probably didn't want you to head over there. >> my wife was okay with it. she was somewhat wary. she understood why i wanted to go. she gave me her blessing. i wouldn't have gone if she didn't want me to go. my daughter was fine with it. she also understood why i wanted to cover it. pretty much else thought i was crazy. >> and now that you're back, do
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you agree with them? was it crazy or was it worth doing? >> it was absolutely worth doing. i would go back in a heartbeat. the story is very important, and the risk is manageable. now, i say that, the numbers are growing and they're growing fast and if things get completely out of control over there and the numbers got very, very large, i would have to think about that. but the risk is manageable. there are many people from the media there right now doing exactly what i did for 12 days, taking -- they're taking a manageable risk in return for reporting what i think is the most important health story in the world right now. >> i'm glad you brought that up because i know that on twitter, on facebook i have seen viewers say why are journalists over there in these countries in africa putting themselves at risk? i think you're answering it very effectively. it is our job to be there even though there's a certain amount of risk. you're saying manageable risk that comes from doing this. >> absolutely. it is our jobs. somebody had to be there. "the washington post" wasn't there. i felt very -- it was very
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important for "the washington post" to be writing about this, for our readership to be seeing reports from the ground, what it was like for people to be outside treatment center gates and not be able to get in, for pregnant women not to be able to get anybody to assist them in their labor. you know, that's not to belittle any of the work "the new york times" is doing, it's been fantastic. cnn, you guys, npr, everybody -- the major immediate wmedia is o. the foreign press is there. but i felt like "the washington post" needed to be there. >> and, of course, the big story obviously is the people that are hurting, that are dying. the big story is not the journalists but here on "rehe l "reliable sources" it's important to hear how journalists do their work. i'm interested in these rules for ebola. when you got back, what happened then? i guess you didn't hug or kiss your wife when you got had home? >> a quick peck on the cheek. as everybody has been saying over and over again, if you
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don't have symptoms, you can't hurt anybody. i didn't have any symptoms when i came back, no fever vomiting, diarrhea. there is no threat unless you are showing symptoms. . haferg sa having said that if i hugged my wife and the next day spiked a big fever, i would be pretty upset. we're keeping our distance in the house and i'm monitoring myself. >> what you're doing is what nancy snyderman and her team from nbc will be doing once they return to the u.s. their cameraman will be going to the medical facilities while they will be self quarantining for up to 21 days. let me bring in another doctor while i keep you here, lenny. dr. gavin mcgregor skinner. he's an expert on ebola and recently returned from nigeria where he was treating patients. thank you for being here. did you take some of the same precautions you're hearing lenny talk about? >> i agree with lenny 100%.
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everything i said is exactly what we do on the ground. the other thing we do in our training with our doctors and nurses is not to raise your arms above your shoulders and touch your face. it's a human behavior challenge. it's difficult to do but something we put into our training. >> what sorts of advice would you give to journalists who are maybe preparing to go to these countries in africa to cover this? >> that's a great question. when i worked at cdc as a disease detective and i went to do outbreak investigations, journalists ach caoften came ou me to see the conditions in the field. i would say right now with the public health people, the cdc people, the dod people and all the other doctors and nurses we have from the u.s. on the ground let's form a team through a buddy system and get the journalists to come out with us, to keep them safe but report the stories that need to be reported. >> let me broaden out a little bit and ask you about the media coverage of this situation.
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both outside of our country and here in the u.s. what is your impression overall about how the press has been treating this topic? has there been too much fearmongering do you think? >> we have to be very careful. the stigmatization of the patients, of the family, of friends, of contacts. we have to be careful we don't cause more grief or stress for those people. what we saw in africa, we saw a whole community approach where they had been dealing with years and years and years of hiv aids patients and they know what happens when stigmatization happen. they flipped the paradigm and tried to make these people within the community to be heroes. >> lenny, let me ask you the same thing. i bet you have had a lot of time to watch tv and read online coverage of the ebola scare in dallas this week. what's been your impression of how the press has approached this topic? >> i'm pretty happy with the way the press has approached the topic. i thought it was very important that very quickly the media focused on the mistakes that
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were made in dallas. we reported the story but if you notice today everybody was carrying two themes and one was that they didn't burn that guy's sheets and towels or dispose of them in a responsible way. i thought that was a big error. in monrovia they learned that the painful way. you get rid of that stuff, burn it. all the ppes are burned at the end of the day, the protective garments the doctors wear in the treatment centers. and the other thing was that glitch where it was never communicated to the doctors themselves that this fellow had been in liberia. the nurse knew it and she wrote it down in the computerized file but it somehow never got to the doctor. that cannot happen. we need to be better than that. >> as we wrap up, dr. mcgregor skinner, what should lenny bernstein here do. how many more days should he stay at home for example? >> he needs to stay there for 21 days. that is the world health organization and also the cdc
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guidance. that's what we do when we're in niger nigeria. we weren't able to quarantine people in their homes so we used cell phone sms text messaging and we sent sms text messages to all the contact people he were tracing and saying how do you feel today and what is your temperature. if we didn't hear from them we would look for them. >> different situation here, of course. lenny, i'm guessing you're still filing stories with "the washington post" from home. >> i am. i filed that first person story from home. just wrote another one today. i don't know when it's going to run. we have another story coming out on sunday that i was participating in. can do all your work from kitchen table and it's not a problem. >> lenny bernstein and dr. gavin mcgregor skinner, thank you both for being here this morning. >> thank you very much. >> my pleasure. >> we have a lot more to discuss about ebola and about the situation both in those countries in africa and here closer at home. we're going to tykeake a look a some of the best and worst media
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coverage from the past few days and talk about that with miles o'brien right after this quick break. finally get in shape. not to be focusing, again, on my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis. so i finally made a decision to talk to my dermatologist about humira. humira works inside my body to target and help block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to my symptoms. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance on humira. and the majority of people were clear or almost clear in just 4 months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal
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introducing synchrony financial, bringing new meaning to the word partnership. banking. loyalty. analytics. synchrony financial. enagage with us. now, more on our big story this morning, ebola. the very word sparks fear because, quite frankly, there is still a lot of questions about how serious this outbreak is and what the authorities are doing about it. in some ways it's a mystery and it's the sort of mystery that brings out the best and the worst in the mainstream news media. we right here on tv and online can either heighten people's
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fears or help to contain those fears. that's why i have been impressed by all the explainers on the internet and the q & as that cnn and other news outlets have been doing taking viewers' questions and answering them. but if that's the best of this journalism, well, let's take a look at the worst with miles o'brien, the science correspondent for pbs news hour and a former anchor at cnn. let me play a couple clips for you from the coverage in the past few days. first this one from fox news and elizabeth hasselbeck. >> you have a very calm tone. i think it must calm by nature with what you do professionally doctor. i think the rest of us are saying wait a minute, there's a lot of panic when it comes to flu, to lice. as a parent, i'm thinking, well, there should be a little bit of justification for worry here. am i wrong? >> the viruses behave a little different and flu virus is contagious through the air, through droplet. this carries another layer because it requires bodily
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fluids. >> but it's here. >> it is here but we're not in the same infrastructures a other area where is this has taken off. >> we've heard the words ebola in america a lot the past few days. to me that kind of feels like an exaggeration. it's technically true. but to say ebola is here sunt that sort of inflame people's fears? >> it sure does. i wish everybody could take a deep breath and take a break from trying to pull fewers in by scaring them. that's what we're seeing here. it borders on irresponsibility when people get on television and start talking that way when they should know better. they should do their homework and they should report in a responsible manner. unfortunately, it's a very competitive business, the business we're in, and there is a perception that by hyping up this threat, you draw people's attention. that's a shame to even say that and i get embarrassed for our brethren in journalism.
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>> i give credit to fox for having a doctor in that segment. >> we are not equipped to habitual this and at the time when we should be preparing, the president was dancing in martha's vineyard and assuring us that would never happen. i said it before, i'll say it again. in these countries they do not believe in traditional medical care, so someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor that would practice. this is a bigger fear. we're hoping they come to the hospitals in the u.s. they might not. >> miles, not much to say here but witch doctors? >> well, i mean, we could digress into what motivated that and perhaps the racial component of all this, the arrogance, the first world versus third world statements and implications of just that. it's offensive on several levels and it reflects, frankly, a
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level of ignorance which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse. >> what is for you as a science correspondent for so many years, what is your biggest wish when it comes to the audience at home? is it what you just said, that they will seek out more authoritative sources than they sometimes do? >> my biggest wish for the audience is that the mainstream media, the big outlets, cnn included, realize that science coverage is important and they should have people on staff who have a certain amount of expertise who study this beat. you would never run cnn without a political reporter, would you? why is it in this world where cli pat change is a big issue, ebola is a big issue, missing airliners, all kinds of science and technological implications, why is it that big entities don't maintain science specialized units anymore? they're gone. and that's a shame because we live in a world with a lot of things that sound very scary and
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it requires a little bit of digging to get to the bottom of things and put things in perspective. >> as i mentioned, a former reporter for us at cnn. you used to have a specialized unit like that a number of years ago. let me play a bite from cnn. i mentioned that q&a thing i really like but there was one question i don't know, i was a little skeptical of. >> here is somebody concerned about the ability for our pets to get e iebola and then pass i on. is that even a concern, sanjay? >> not in the case of dogs, for example. you know, i have dogs. a lot of people ask this question. dogs we know can actually have the virus this their bodies but they don't get sick from it. >> now, is that even a concern? she was acknowledging it might not be a question that's legitimate to ask. in a case like this, having covered a lot of science stories in the past, miles, is there such a thing as a dumb question? >> no. there's no dumb questions. you know there are people out
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there thinking just that thing. i think that's a reasonable thing to put in play. and, you know, let's give credit. cnn has the best medical correspondent on the planet in sanjay gupta and a unit to support him that is extraordinary, and that should be heralded and he's done a great job doing just what we're talking about, putting things into perspective. >> i have to say there has been some very strong journalism and i want to close the segment by playing one of those clips. this is dr. richard besser of abc news in liberia. we'll watch what happens. it's shocking. >> here in the street of monrovia there's a body here. maybe ebola, maybe something else, but the burial team has come. they're busy spraying down the area where the person is. they're going to wrap him in plastic and take him away. he's not dead. he's not dead. they were wrapping him up to take him away but he's alive. he's moving his arm. they almost took him away to the
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crematorium. >> just a stunning moment and it reminds me that dr. besser, dr. gupta are doing solid reporting, real education in these segments. miles, thanks for being here and going over the best and the worst with me. >> you're welcome, brian. >> when we come back, we'll try to answer these evocative questions. by keeping the best and the brightest from entering government s that hurting you and me? a big question when we come back. taste better in our savory broth. vegetables!? no...soup! oh! soup! loaded with vegetables. packed with taste.
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welcome back. cnn will stay on top of the ebola cases in the u.s. and abroad but now let me turn to politics. with just a month to go before the midterm elections, reporters are trailing candidates looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops and the most it a
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tantalizing news nuggets of all, any hint of a character di fi efficienfis deficiency. as legend has it, woodward and bernstein brought down a president and that set the bar for every journalism student since. my next guest has thought a lot about that and he has a lot of problems with it. he has a message we should all here. he's matt bie of yahoo!. he's the author of a new book. matt joins me from d.c. this morning. matt, tell me why it was that one week that politics went tabloid. >> sure. and thanks for having me on, brian. it's nice to talk to you again. if you think back in the 20th century where the standards we set for roosevelt, johnson, kennedy, obviously personal
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morality and behaviors were not really considered relevant to or essential to public integrity. flash forward to this bizarre moment in 1987 that's mostly forgetgotten where you have gar hart, the hillary clinton of his day, the presumed nominee of the democratic party, literally backed up against a brick wall penned in by four reporters who are asking him is there a woman in your house? did you have sex with her? have you cheated on your wife? and no presidential candidate had been asked this before, and it's a moment i think in that alley in that moment the ground much americ of american politics is shifting. the rules changed forever. >> i think partly what you're saying through the book is something has gone wrong, that political journalists are too focused on the trivial, on the tabloid. am i expressing that correctly? >> yes, i think you are.
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it's not even -- it's not just sex. as you point out in your opening, it's were you tired and said something stupid that can be used against you. did you get caught changing your mind. the whole ethos of political journalism after 1987 shifts away from the illumination of world views and shifts to you're a hypocrite, you're a fraud, you're lie being something. if we can find something about that, that's our primary directive. when he got out of the race, gary hart was given a speech to read by his aides and he ripped it up and he goes out and speaks from this heart. he says, you know, mark my words, if we go down this path, politics will become a spectator sport with the hunters and the hunting. he said i tremble for my country to paraphrase thomas jefferson when he says i fear we will get the leaders we deserve. the press mocked that speech roundly because it wasn't
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contrite because he seemed to be blaping everyone else and couldn't take responsibility but here we are 27 years later there aren't too many americans that would laugh at the notion we are getting the leaders we deserve. >> i remember you quoted in the book lyndon johnson telling a group of reporters, one more thing, boys, you may see me coming in out of a few women's bedrooms in the white house but that is none of your business. you're really saying that we were better off then potentially than we are now? >> i don't think -- i didn't write a manifesto and i don't make a judgment because that wasn't perfect and there were issues of character that probably went unexplored -- >> biy by the way, you point oub woodward's couch is where hart sometimes sleeps when he's in hawin house. and there was a coziness between politicians and reporters. >> and he separated from his wife twice. he doesn't think anybody is going to go looking for this.
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the way we misremember this, it's important because it's wrong, just about everybody we remember from this is wrong. one of the articles of faith about this incident is that hart said follow me around, and in doing so he challenged the media and they came into his bedroom and then he set a new standard and they came into everybody's bedroom so we have gary hart to blame. there was a lot going on in the cuil tur churning. this thendency toward entertainment, the ghosts of waller gait. hart did give that quote but it was not public. it did not cause the press to change their standard of scrutiny for him. and, in fact, you know, we misremember who changed the rules and the boundaries, it was us in the media and i think we have to reckon with that. >> and perhaps change them again. i would end with one more thing i noticed in "the new york times." it was mark leibovich's column talking about mitt romney. he's quoted as saying if i ever want to run again i want a
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camera to follow me the whole time because then i will remember that i'm always on. and that's the extreme of what you're describing started about 25, 30 years ago. >> that was a remarkable interview mark did. romney said this is the end of spontaneity in politics. >> thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to hear how this sounds to another reporter, michael isikoff. he recently joined yahoo! news after hour years at nbc and the better part of 20 years at "newsweek." he broke the news the obama administration has decided not to apply it's targeting standards to syria. it means a looser policy in effect. isikoff is best known for his work uncovering president clinton's affair with monica lewinsky. he joins me in d.c. as well. michael, if we buy into the conceit, the trivialization of american political reporting really begin in earnest with the
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gary hart story, where are we now? is it so much worse today? >> there's no question that political report, perhaps all reporting has become more and more trivial in part i think sort of driven by the way media has evolved with twitter and facebook, attention spans are shorter, news bites are shorter. >> does that mean it becomes more entertaining as a result? >> i think there's no question that people's attention spans are shorter and to break through and grab people's attention you need something catchy, you need something grabby, and that tends towards the trivial rather than the in depth and substantive. but that said, look, these are very complex issues, particularly the ones that maths matt is focusing on in terms of when does private conduct become public business? and, you know, it's very hard to
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draw hard and fast rules. we've seen over the years, whether it be john edwards or mark sanford or eliot spitzer, you know, multiple occasions in which what seems like private conduct can very much become the public's business and affect public figures. so, you know, where i come down is it's important to know as much as possible. what you end up publishing or airing, you know, is going to depend on the circumstances, but, you know, when somebody is running for high office, running for president of the united states, you know, they have to know that almost everything about their life is going to be inspected by the news media. >> but as matt points out and i know you and your colleagues now, as he points out, maybe that hasn't always been the case. has there ever been a time when you held something back, some information you had about a candidate or politician because you felt it wasn't actually
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necessary for the public to know? >> absolutely. many times. in fact, more times than not. but that said, let's go back to the -- >> what do you mean more times than not? there's many times you have held back -- >> held back stuff that just didn't seem to be relevant and was not -- didn't seem to have any public justification for airing or printing. and, you know, disgusted with editors. we debated and concluded there's no reason this has to be known to people, but -- >> do you think the bar is lower now? in 1997 with lewinsky's story, you had your story ready. your editors wanted more work and that's when matt drudge reported the fact you were working on the story. is the bar lower than it was in the '90s. >> i think probably in some cases, but, look, in that case the story in particular was the ken star vtion of clinton's
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relationship with monica lewinsky. there was no question that was going to be bombshell news and we had it. let me take you back to a few years before the gary hart incident. i think a turning point was the church committee in 1977 when it disclosed john f. kennedy's relationship with one woman, judith exner, who happened to be the girlfriend of a chicago mobster who the cia had hired to try to assassinate fidel castro. back during kennedy's time, reporters didn't delve into who he was having affairs with. we learned from the church committee there are instances in which that can matter, and it could very much become the public's business. and i think that combined with not just watergate, but that kind of information showed there are instances where what seems like private conduct can very much be the public's business. >> michael isikoff, i could talk
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with you all day about this but i have to wrap up. thank you for joining me this morning. >> thank you. >> time for a break but what role did gender play in the recent scandal. that's the hiring and then the resignation of the head of the secret service. we'll take a look at that through the prism of red news/blue news in just a moment. [door bell rings] ♪ [phone rings] hello. introducing wi-fi calling. now every wi-fi connection works like a t-mobile tower. it's wi-fi unleashed.
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it helps keep dentures firmly in place. with a smooth formula, free of flavors and colorants. so you get a closer feeling to natural teeth. new fixodent plus true feel. fixodent. and forget it. it's time for red news/blue news. the topic i have chosen this week is one that a lot of people have strong feelings about. and for good reason. it is about the safety of our commander in chief. the security breaches that we have all been hearing about, whether it's the fence jumper at the white house, literally in the white house. or new details about that 2011 spree of gunfire at the white house. or the revelation that an armed man rode in an elevator with president obama without the secret service knowing. all of these are fundamentally about our bipartisan fears for his safety. i'll tell you where i stand right now. this twitter message from former u.s. army officer andrew exom
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channels how i feel. he said if the secret service needs an extra fence to keep a dude from running riot through the white house, we need a new secret service, not a new fence. on wednesday we got a new secret service agenticting director, j clancy. we kept hearing this question, was pearson appointed because of her gender? was political correctness to blame. mind you, commentators who were asking those questions didn't really have proof of that, but they did not let that ever stop them. >> remember when he appointed this director. he was under fire for liberal -- from liberal groups for not having enough women in his administration. so can't let a crisis go to waste. got to score political points. he appointed a woman who probably looking at her background wasn't the best person for the job. she didn't have the experience. she's a glorified hr director. was not equipped to fill that
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role. but to appease women voters and fill a quota, he put her in charge of this department and frankly she wasn't qualified from day one. >> she checked all the bocks with that one, right? i think part of the assertion is pearson got the job after that prostitution scandal involving secret service agents in cartagena, and putting a woman in charge was part of a rebranding effort. here is how "morning joe" brought that up the morning before pareson resigned. i'm going to go further. i want to any why she has that job as the first woman to lead the agency and i want to know why she still has it. still ahead, we'll ask that -- >> you did that softly. >> that was soft? >> that was soft. >> as opposed to did she get the job because she's a woman. >> she's the first woman to lead the agency. i don't understand it. do you? do any of you get it at this point? >> coming off the prostitute scandal a woman on top makes sense, good for the brand, if you will, but the brand doesn't work if it's not competent and, you know, in positions of national security, quota second,
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competency first. it's a delicate subject. >> and talk about it they did. they talked and talked. what i just want to underline here is all of this talk is rooted in speculating, not in reporting. maybe some day a dogged reporting will discover that the obama administration was determined to put a woman in that job just for gender's sake but there's been no discovery like that.bryce covert linked what happened to pearson to economic theory. she wrote this, it's probably not pure chance that pearson who had he would that position for just a year and a half was a woman. time and again women are put in charge only when there's a mess and if they can't engineer a quick cleanup, they're shoved out the door. the academics michelle ryan and alex haslam even coined a term for this. they called it getting push over the glass cliff. a lot of times in red news/blue
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news it seems different outlets are occupying different planets. if this case there was a shared outrage. true answers to the question about why pearson was appointed in the first place cannot be obtained nearly as fast as guesses can be made up. it's fine to be asking, it's fine to be guessing, but we should look for reporting that can actually answer these questions. that is my red news/blue news note. coming up, a very different kind of political story to share with you. we'll go halfway around the world to hong kong to the occupied protests there to hear from a journalist turned activist. she's standing by, so don't go away. to use special care in keeping the denture clean. dentures are very different to real teeth. they're about 10 times softer and may have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. polident is designed to clean dentures daily. its unique micro-clean formula kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria and helps dissolve stains,
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welcome back. this next story is something that i have been captivated by all week, and maybe you have been, too, and it is the protest
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movement in hong kong. borrowing language and tactics from people around the u.s. and the world, and it is known in the english language as occupy central or occupy hong kong and it is a remarkable call for democracy in a city a administer by china. the organizers can not get their message through the china's government-run media. and so how are they communicating? i am looking forward to this story, because we have our reporter claudia ho who is up late to the talk with us. so tell us friday what happened friday because you were speaking in one of the protest sites, and you broke down and ended up crying. tell us what happened. >> well, i was rather upset. thanks to the hong kong thuggish government, they certainly gave the hong kong people the impression that the local police would work with thugs and goons to disp pers the occupied crowds
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in hong kong, and that is what has happened. i was in that particular neighborhood for the days on end, and four days altogether, and -- i had mothers with young toddlers and babies, and all saying that all we are doing is trying to fight for what we deserve, to turn hong kong into a better society for our children. and at that point, i was slightly upset, and i sort of snapped a tiny bit, yep. >> and so tell me how you are getting the message out in the other protesters are getting the message out, because a lot of what we have heard about in the u.s. is that there is a lot of censorship in china and that the protests are portrayed very negatively by the government-run media there. >> well, there is nothing unusual about that. i mean, the way that the, well,
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how free press is lacking in china. >> right, right. >> that is universal knowledge, right. and so they portray us as unpatriotic, but i hope that the chinese will finally understand for anyone to be a real patriot, you have to the kactually protet the people from your government, right? if a regime is controlling the country is not doing its best or is actually harming the country, we need to speak up, and we need to speak out. >> is it happening on facebook and instagram instead, and are you using those tools to get around the controls of the main media there? >> oh, yes. we are going online, indeed. we are going online, and even if the conventional media in hong kong, they are conducting that much self-censorship to the point that you realize that all
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of the media tycoons in hong kong almost every up with of th them, and not everyone, but almost either members of the chinese national people's congress or the parliament, and so you know where your boss stands. and all of the journalists know how to write the stories, so we are all going online, and we trust the fifth state more than the local and the conventional main stream media. >> the fifth estate is the interesting term, because the fourth estate is a term known for the news media around the world, and the fifth estate is the social media and the internet. there are report s ths that insm and other social networking sites have been blocked, but are there other tools that you use? >> yes, that is correct. apparentlily once or twice, the government tried to cut down the wi-fi or something, and i'm i.t. slow myself, and not i.t. savvy,
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but i am trying my best to learn, so while many people in my generation as well, i'm sure. >> yes. and the cameras are there showing what is happening, and i'm happy that the fifth e estate is recording what is happening. thank you, claudia mo for getting the message out. >> thank you. we will be back with a quick word on "reliable resources" next. no...soup! oh! soup! loaded with vegetables. packed with taste.
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and finally this morning, a big media business story. it has been a tough season for nfl, but this week, good and lucrative news for the league. it renewed the billion dollar deal with directv for sunday ticket, and that is the package that i and a lot of people subscribe to out of market football games via the internet and satellite. this is a deal worth more than the existing deal. 1$1.5 billion for each of the next five years. no wonder the spokesman picked up right away when i called to ask about it. and there are many important questions surrounding the league and the handling of the domestic violence, and the commissioner roger goodell is sought after for serious interviews, but this deal with directv is a reminder of how incredibly popular and profitable football remanins. our media will continue to keep going 24/7 on cnn.com, and you read more on the directv deal
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and interesting study about diversity. and we will have next week some very interesting guests, so if you can't join us live, set your dvr. candy crowley "state of the union" begins next. we begin with breaking news about ebola, a nd we are moment away from a conference in atlanta. at last check, the patient in dallas was in critical condit n condition. at the beginning of the news conference, i want to bring in the chief of the med starr national hospital, and joining us from nashville is the chairman of the department of prereventive medicine at vanderbilt university. doctors, thank you so much for being with us, and while we await this news conference, let me start with you, dr. shaffner and ask you, if there i