hopes to have tubmans in their wallets by 20120, the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you back in new york next week. a network anchor under fire. and this time it's not brian williams. is saying sorry enough for george stephanopoulos? now that we all know about his donations to the clinton foundation. plus a famed investigative journalist challenges what we were told about the killing of osama bin laden. how can we know what's really true here? and a war of words between president obama and fox news about the war on poverty. good morning and welcome to "reliable sources." i'm brian stelter, and we're starting with brand-new information about this ethical controversy that's really encircled abc's george stephanopoulos. this morning he apologizing again for donating to bill and hillary clinton's charitable foundation. what his colleagues and his rivals are wondering is whether

that's going to be enough. let me back up and tell you the story from the beginning. stephanopoulos was one of bill clinton's closest aides in the '90s, and pretty much ever since then he has been distancing himself from those roots. he has turned into one of the biggest stars of television news cohost of america's most-watched morning show, skilled political interview and abc's chief news anchor. well now it turns out that abc's chief news anchor gave $75,000 to the clinton foundation. this might sound like a wonderful act of charity. the man makes millions of dollars a year and donates a lot of it. but stephanopoulos has been reporting on the foundation without telling viewers or his bosses about the donations. that is a journalistic lapse. and let's keep this in mind. the clinton foundation is no ordinary charity. it is one of a kind. created by former president bill clinton that expanded to include potential future president hillary clinton. the foundation is controversial for all sorts of reasons. it is sometimes hard to tell

where the good works end and where the politics begin. so in "the washington free beacon" discovered the donations earlier this week stephanopoulos apologized profusely, first in a statement to politico then in phone interviews with me and others then on tv on his morning show and again today on his other show abc's "this week." >> over the last several years, i've made substantial donations to dozens of charities including the clinton global foundation. those donations were a matter of public record but i should have made additional disclosures on air when we covered the foundation. and i now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake, even though i made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of aids help children and protect the environment in poor countries, i should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. i apologize to all of you for failing to do that. >> abc's support of stephanopoulos is unwavering and they are hoping this story will now fade away. but some people are going to

have long memories. the most glaring example about why this is a story right now is that stephanopoulos interviewed the book author who has made claims against the clinton foundation without disclosing that conflict of interest. this interview happened just a couple of weeks ago. we had schweitzer here on the program last week so we asked him back this week to hear how he feels about these new developments. thanks for joining me. >> thanks for having me. >> i wanted to start by going back a few weeks to your appearance on abc's "this week with george stephanopoulos." here's a sample of some of the questions you receives. >> the clinton campaign says you haven't produced a shred of interest. we've done investigative work here at abc news, found no prof of any direct action. >> you either have to come to the conclusion that these are all coincidence or that something else is afoot. >> you just said you have no evidence. >> i'd be glad to brief

democrats before may 5th. >> as you know, the democrats have said this is indication of your partisan interest. they say you used to work for president bush as a speechwriter you funded by the koch brothers. how do you respond to that? >> he asked you to respond to allegations of partisanship. why didn't you put him on the defensive there and bring up allegations against his partisanship? >> well you know i obviously didn't know about the donations to the clinton foundation or the fact that he's given multiple speeches and served on panels for them. >> but you knew about his long history. >> yes, i knew about the fact that he had worked for the clintons but honestly i sort of believed and assumed that he had sort of put that in the past. and i thought he was simply asking tough questions. now i think the revelations that have come out put the interview at least in my mind in a totally different context. i don't mind tough questions, but you wonder what's the motivation. is it the search for truth, or is it because he's trying to in a sense, do something to benefit the clinton foundation which he obviously has some affinity for. >> you're the kind of guy who

said what you did in the past doesn't affect your current work. isn't that sort of stephanopoulos's defense? what is in his past is in his past it's behind him. it doesn't affect his reporting work today? >> well i was operating under that assumption. i have no problem with people bringing up my past. i have no problem with people knowing stephanopoulos's past but i very much figure we need to judge him based on his journalism except for the fact that we now know he has these entangling relationships with the clintons which doesn't make it in the past it makes it in the present and that is i think, a very very different context for which to evaluate all of this. >> earlier you week you told sean hannity that you think a rematch is in order. have you heard from abc "this week"? >> i've had no contact with abc news. i have to also say, you know the comment that he made about abc news has looked into this and has found no direct action abc news's investigationive division has reported on findings in the book and they talk about the troubling patterns.

so i don't know where he's getting that report from. but it puts everything that occurred in that interview in a very different context. i would welcome the opportunity to come and share with the audience what i uncovered in the book and have you know even an aggressive conversation with somebody there about it. >> it sounds like that's a publicity ploy. >> no it's not a publicity ploy. part of the frustration there was i never really got a chance to explain or describe what is in the book. so it was a very stuttered conversation. that's what was very frustrating to me about it. and now i think it's incumbent upon them to allow their audience to hear the evidence that's in the book. >> do you think a follow-up interview is actually likely or even possible? >> i think, you know a follow-up interview in a sense would be an admission on the part of managers there that they've made a mistake, so i think it's probably unlikely. i think it's the fair thing to do. but i think there right now seem to be in cover-up mode. >> cover-up mode, that's a strong way to call it. >> yeah. i mean i think it is because

there's no discussion about the larger extensive relationships that he has. i mean he's been on panels with chelsea clinton at clinton foundation events. he's moderated debates and discussions at clinton foundation events. how can you do that and cover that same political family in the political season? to me it's mind boggling. i can't imagine that cnn or other news organizations would tolerate that. and i think there's embarrassment and a desire to just hope that this is going to go away but i don't think it is. >> i think to talk about abc and stephanopoulos is crucial here because the moment this was disclosed, abc put out a statement saying they would stand by him. that has not changed in the past few days. it makes me wonder whether they'll just be able to have this blow over. >> yeah. i mean it's hard to say. and of course now you've got other reporters that are coming out. i think that geraldo rivera came out and said well i was let go of abc because of a donation or a contribution or something for far less than this. so i think there's frustration.

and the question is is are journalists, in general, going to be held to the same standard at networks or are you going to have superstars that are allowed to do things that you know regular reporters are not allowed to do? and if that's the case i think that's very troublesome. >> that would suggest to me you think he's going to go ahead and skate by. >> well, it suggests to me that history suggests that perhaps he might as well. but i think the bottom line is there should not be double standards. i focus on the fact that i don't think we should have double standards for politicians, and i think that applies in the media as well. i mean it's just inherently unfair. >> one thing i did wonder withhen this came out earlier in the week is whether your investigators ever came across this. how is it that you all did not notice when working on your book that stephanopoulos had made these donations? >> that's a great question. you know i think if during the midst of our research a researcher had come to me and said you know i'm going to look on the clinton foundation database and see if george stephanopoulos is a contributor, i would have laughed at them

honestly. i would have laughed at them because i thought it would be so sort of over the top that i couldn't imagine that it took place. so when this came out, i was dumbfounded. i was absolutely dumbfounded. i never would have imagined that those donations had existed and would have, you know laughed if my researchers had suggested we look into this. >> there was attention in the last few days about some corrects that are being made to the next edition of your book. obviously the clinton camp wants that to be pointed out. some liberal bloggers have been pointing it out as well. what's your reaction to this issue of the corrections that have to be made? >> oh yeah. i mean the corrections are very straightforward and very simple. there's a couple of dates that we got conflated instead of something in 2011 it was in 2010. probably the most changes -- i think there's two of them -- is in a section on haiti. so you know, these changes are very minor. they don't go at all to the core of what's in the book. and they don't really change at all the details of the timing of the flow of funds and beneficial actions that she took as

secretary of state. >> peter, thanks for being here. i appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. in the hour since i spoke with schweizer, he has been in touch of abc but there's no indication that he'll be appearing in "this week." he's not the only one criticizing the network. my next guest is one of several who say the donations taint stephanopoulos's ability to cover the 2016 election at all. jim gilmore is a former rnc chairman and former virginia governor and he joins me now from richmond. welcome welcome, governor. >> thank you, brian. >> when this story broke on thursday abc right away said it's afforded step number of husband. here's what it said. he should have taken the extra step to notify us and our viewers during the recent news reports about the foundation. he's admitted to an honest mistake and apologized for that omission. and the most important words are at the end, "we stand behind him." what more do you want to hear from abc about this? >> well first of all, brian, my position and what i believe is that george stephanopoulos not

only is disqualified from moderating a republican debate i think he's disqualified from moderating a democratic debate. furthermore, i think he's disqualified completely from covering as a newsman the 2016 race. he should not be doing that. he's tied into the clintons. he may have tried to separate himself out from that but now with these donation revolutions, it's very clear that he is not an unbiased person. so he can't do that. and this follows right along with a statement i made several weeks ago when i had the gumption to say that hillary clinton should withdraw from the race. because she's disqualified. because of her scandal, she's not able to get the central issue in the 20 -- one of the central issues in the 2016 race. and that is going to be who can instill and restore confidence of the american people and the honesty and trustworthiness of their candidates to be president of the united states. hillary clinton is disqualified from that. she cannot do that. and now likewise this gentleman

tied to her, george stephanopoulos he can't objectively cover the race. and who does abc news think they are to come out here and say well we stand by this. it was an honest mistake. they have a public obligation as abc news if they're going to offer the news to the american people to be able to themselves instill confidence in the american people. >> let me ask you a two-part question. you've talked about possibly running in 2016. are you running for president? >> i am considering running for president. i've been in new hampshire five times this year and i'm having a great time listening to the people of new hampshire and talking to what their concerns are. >> so if you run -- if you run will you go on with stephanopoulos? will you be interviewed by him? >> sure. as long as i can make it clear and abc news makes it clear that he is an opinion guy. he's a commonentator. he's not a newsman. >> they're clearly standing by and supporting him. they're not going to do that. i haven't seen a republican

boycott of him in recent days. >> yeah but if i go on "this week," i'd make it clear that i'd consider him to be in the pocket of the clintons. that's okay. >> what do you make of the idea that that you know everybody does make mistakes. we're talking about charity. how about the fact that you and i don't get to decide who anchors abc's election coverage? >> this is a free country, and i get the chance to have the microphone like i do right now. the name of your show is "reliable sources." iny what you're trying to do is underscore the fact that the american people are entitled to reliable sources. those like stephanopoulos who have made great wealth who has connections over to the clintons over the years or whether it's a candidate for president of the united states. you have to be able to instill confidence -- the american people are distrustful right now. we have to be able to reinstill that for the american people. george stephanopoulos cannot do it as a newsman, and hillary

clinton cannot do it as a candidate for president of the united states. >> governor gilmore, thanks for being here this morning. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> and we're going to stay on this story because the case is against george stephanopoulos and brian williams we've talked about him a lot here. they are very different, but the result may be the same. another blow to the credibility of big network anchors. we're talking about that right after this quick break. it's more than a network and the cloud. it's reliable uptime. and multi-layered security. it's how you stay connected to each other and to your customers. with centurylink you get advanced technology solutions, including an industry leading broadband network, and cloud and hosting services - all with dedicated responsive support. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner you're free to focus on growing your business. centurylink.

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welcome back. maybe i should be welcoming you back to anchor on the rocks. we thought this would maybe be the week nbc would announce something about brian williams. it's been a long time. but instead the media was diverted to abc and george stephanopoulos thanks to his failure to close money to the clinton foundation. we heard from critics but there are also defenders especially inside abc. he has a lot of good will built up there, and that might be very important in this case. joining me to discuss this carol simpson and jeff greenfield. welcome to you both. >> hi. >> thank you. >> carol, when you heard about these donations, how did you react? i mean i was dumbfounded by it. how did you react to it? >> i was dumbfounded, too. i like george. i worked with him and have great

respect for him. but i wanted to just take him by the neck and say, george, what were you thinking? and clearly, he was not thinking. i thought it was outrageous and i am sorry that again, the public's trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business. >> that is ultimately what this always comes down to. and yet, jeff what we have not seen is a coordinated gop boycott, the leading contenders for the gop nomination come out against stephanopoulos. we've heard from rand paul. we've heard from ted cruz. but the rest have been noticeably quiet. do you think this suggests that this will be a short-lived story, not a long-lived story for stephanopoulos? >> what i think is -- >> are you asking carol? >> -- that you are seeing -- i'm sorry. >> i'm sorry, jeff, go ahead. >> what you are seeing is a

concerted attack from conservative outlets, from the national review from the weekly standard, from people like that. but what i think is in some sense, they meaning the republican party, is in a really good position vis-a-vis abc because of this embarrassment. >> oh, interesting. >> yeah because one of the reasons i think stephanopoulos immediately recused himself from the one primary debate that's scheduled between the republicans and abc is that i think a lot of the republican candidates were threatening or would have threatened to boycott. and what it also means is i think, they can raise questions about him -- you heard it from governor gilmore -- you're going to cover a democratic debate with hillary clinton? are you going to cover our conventions? you're going to analyze the debates given this situation? and this is why i call this a self-inflicted wound. abc has said george stephanopoulos can moderate a republican debate. what else are they going to say

he's not going to be able to do? like carol, i was completely dumbfounded, particularly in the interview with scheizer. i couldn't believe as he was making a whole conversation about the foundation that it didn't occur to him to say maybe i should disclose that i've given them a lot of money and participated in a lot of their events. it simply is an indication that very smart people can sometimes be very foolish. >> carol, let me ask you about the behind-the-scenes machinations here because when it was discovered by a conservative news site abc then apparently went to politico and leaked the information. politico then broke the news. then "the free beacon" pointed out that the pr person for stephanopoulos used to work at the clinton white house. they didn't overlap, but heather riley, then worked at cnn, a bunch of other places and is now at abc. my full disclosure she entered me for a book i wrote about tv. does it sometimes exist in this

bubble of the media business? >> well you heard it talked about at the white house correspondents dinner with all of the politicians in washington and so on gather with the reporters that cover them. >> right. >> yes, there's a coziness that george cannot escape the association. he was press secretary for president clinton. that's pretty close. and while he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist he really is not a journalist. yet abc has made him the face of abc news. the chief anchor. and i think they're really caught in a quandary here. and one other thing i want to tell you, brian, is that while abc said this was an honest mistake -- >> right. >> -- they don't feel that way. secretly they are hopping mad, i am sure.

because the worst thing that could happen to a network and to its celebrities is to have bad publicity. so i don't know if he may be having a suspension within abc. we don't know what is going on and what they're telling him. they have to put this face out for the public but george may be in some hot water within abc. >> the official word of course is that they have unwavering support for him. i wonder this is going to be a four-day story for most people but a forever story for republican chen tateommentators and others. jeff before we go we need to put on support for donations for the clinton foundation. there are a lot of media companies on this list including the parent company of cnn, time warner and the division cnn is in turner also media companies in the u.s. that have given big donations to the clinton foundation. as we roll through these on screen jeff i just am curious

if you think this is also a problem going forward for the media, in general? >> i do. in fact in thinking back on this of all the foundations, and no question that the foundation -- but of all the foundations that media outlets should probably have figured out how to stay away from it would have in this one unless you believed that hillary clinton was going to leave the state department and then retire to an academic life. i mean anyone who didn't realize that they were talking about a potential president of the united states i have a 6-year-old grandson. i believe he knows hillary clinton is running for president. i'm not sure about the 4-year-old, but the 6-year-old definitely. >> right. >> and i don't know what's in their minds. i even think, you wonder to what extent stephanopoulos was trying to repair relations with the clintons because the book he wrote in 1999 "all too human," really put him on the outs with the clintons and not many people raised doubts about him covering hillary clinton in 2008. so i don't want to go into

motivations now, but the idea of a big media company partnering with this kind of weird mix of charitable political and financial interests that i think peter schweizer's book demonstrates is really a problem. and the white house correspondents dinner which i am proud to say i have never attended and will only attend if i'm ever someday president of the united states is a perfect example of what i am talking about. >> there are some good reasons why moderators have agreed to moderate events. but i do wonder in the wake of this story if some will be rethinking that. i've got to go unfortunately. but carol, jeff thank you both for being here this morning. >> thank you. >> thank you vrfor having us. coming up the question for you all, did you hear that the president attacked fox news this week that he accused fox of bashing poor people? i'm going to show you what almost everybody missed in a special red news/blue news next. the pursuit of healthier. it begins from the second we're born. after all, healthier doesn't happen all by itself.

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on any device. just sign into my account to pay bills manage service appointments and find answers to your questions. you can even check your connection status on your phone. now it's easier than ever to manage your account. get started at xfinity.com/myaccount this week we're bringing back "red news/blue news" because this week fox news seemed absolutely positively shocked that our blue president criticized it again. the reactions were wild. and i want to show you what everybody at fox and everybody else i think, missed in the aftermath. now, president obama's aides always say that he rarely if ever watches any cable news.

and yet the president had a very specific critique of fox when he was speaking at a georgetown university panel discussion about poverty. obama was talking about class divisions and how it's sometimes politically ex-feed yept to stir up resentment toward poor people. here is what came next. >> i think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, or don't want to work are lazy you know, are undeserving got traction. and look it's still being propagated. i mean i have to say that you know if you watch fox news on a regular basis, it is a constant menu they will find folks who make me mad. i don't know where they find them right? they're all, like i don't want to work. i just want a free obama phone

or whatever. and that becomes an entire narrative, right? that gets worked up. >> he kept talking, but maybe fox stopped listening because it dialed its outrage meter up to 10. >> it's extraordinary that the president of the united states in his waning years, has decided that his policies for the last six years aren't to blame. it's some little cable outfit that's causing the problems in america. >> look i think the president is spinning the failure of his own policies. and i think he is blaming us and i think we are an honest messenger. >> did you catch what steve said there? it's funny how fox brags about how popular it is except when it's convenient to act small. for the blue news in the story, we have to turn not to msnbc but to jon stewart whose staff went searching all throughout fox's archive for evidence that obama was right. now, "the daily show" obviously takes cheap shots sometimes, but

take a look at these clips they pulled together. >> we have conditioned people to look to the government to be their answer for every problem they have and take zero responsibility. >> the moocher class. >> subsidized freeloaders. >> give me these goodies. cell phone, pay my rent. >> bailouts from cradle to grave. >> nation of moochers. >> freeloaders in america. >> entitlement mentality. >> sitting on the couch eating bon bons. >> sleeping till noon. >> sucking off the nipple of the government. >> how [ bleep ] removed from reality is fox's perception of their own coverage on poverty? >> here's the thing. after obama's original comment about fox pushing a narrative about poor people mooching off the government fox news commentators basically all agreed that the president has been skimmed. meantime jon stewart argued that fox that is thin skin. and on saturday day number four of the story, neil cavuto on fox agreed. >> i expect us to be

thin-skinned and pay attention when it's about us. i kind of have a different standard for my president, whether republican or democrat and i know these latest remarks were in the context of what, an hour and a half talking about poverty or whatever but it immediately glommed to us and the discussion about us. >> cavuto that's because you made it about yourself. here's what almost everybody missed about the panel discussion. the president was talking about what he called a 40-year effort to stir up class divisions. fox, of course has only been around 15 years. let's go back to the original video, but let's let it keep playing so obama finishes his thought. fox only played this part of the clip once. it was in a news report by howie kurtz. notice that obama is talking about the whole news media's responsibility to make sure the middle class and poor americans know -- no i'm sorry, what middle-class and rich americans know what it's like to be poor. >> and that becomes an entire narrative, right? that gets worked up. and very rarely do you hear an

interview of a waitress which is much more typical, who's raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can't pay the bills. and so if we're going to change how john boehner and mitch mcconnell think, we're going to have to change how our body politic thinks which means we're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues and how people's impressions of what it's like to struggle in this economy looks like and how budgets connect to that. and that's -- it's a hard process because that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news. >> he called for a broader conversation but fox ended up having a very small conversation. anyway that's "red news/blue

news" for this week. could the narrative that the obama administration told us about the killing of osama bin laden be a lie? and how can we tell? the difficulty of reporting on covert ops when we come back. big day? ah, the usual. moved some new cars. hauled a bunch of steel. kept the supermarket shelves stocked. made sure everyone got their latest gadgets. what's up for the next shift? ah, nothing much. just keeping the lights on. (laugh) nice. doing the big things that move an economy. see you tomorrow, mac. see you tomorrow, sam. just another day at norfolk southern.

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welcome back. this weekend we learned of the death of a man who we're told was a leading figure in the terror group isis. how do we know? because that's what they're telling us. "they" meaning u.s. government officials. how we learned this and other news about covert ops came into

question earlier this week when legendary investigative reporter seymour hirsch calls a media explosion. his article in "the london review of books" alleges that many of the official details we've been told about the raid to kill osama bin laden are false. much of the article relies on a single unnamed source. but then again, so do some other news stories. there has been widespread criticism of some of the details in his stories. some reporters have been refuting it altogether. other reporters have been saying parts seem to be true. other parts don't seem to be true. what's unusual here is that hirsch has oftentimes published by "the new yorker" magazine but instead this article showed up in "the london review of books." i thought it would be useful to explore how this kind of story gets transmitted to the press and the public. who better to ask than a man that wrote an article that ruffled a lot of feathers former ambassador joseph wilson. he joins me now from santa fe. thanks for being here. >> nice to be with you. >> i wanted to bring up the

reporting about isis because it's a very recent example of something we also saw in the coverage of the bin laden killing several years ago. and that is a reliance right away in the early hours of the story on u.s. government sources. of course it's very hard to corroborate what the government is telling us in cases like this. so what should the lesson be to our viewers at home? >> well i think the lesson is to understand that the government is always going to give you one side of the story. their side. and if you're going to do serious investigative reporting, you've got to go out and talk to all your other sources. i have no -- really no knowledge about the hirsch article. i've read it like a lot of other people have. i have a lot of knowledge about the article i wrote for "the new york times" and about the brouhaha that resulted from that in which a large number of journalists decided that they would take the bait offered by the u.s. government and make the whole story about my wife and

myself rather than about the 16 words in the state of the union address and the lies and falsehoods that the bush administration told the american people about the rationale for going into war in iraq. >> we're talking about attacking the messenger as opposed to investigating the message. you experienced it, you're saying with the bush administration. do you sense that the obama administration has engaged in the same tactics here? >> well i think there's a tendency -- and it may be inherent in the american psyche if you don't want to talk about the facts, you attack the character of the person presenting the facts. i believe that's one of the principles of trial law. so if may well be something that anybody is going to resort to if they have to. and it then becomes a responsibility of the journalist to ferret out the difference between the attacks on the messenger and whether the message that is being put out is accurate or not.

>> sometimes the attacks on the messenger are completely worthwhile because the messenger is wrong and there are grievous errors in an article. it seems to me that oftentimes in initial hours after a story comes out, we just don't know. it's very very hard to know. and that makes these stories very challenging. we're talking about maybe the single most difficult type of journalism. >> well, i think that's exactly right. but if the messenger is wrong, then his message is wrong. and if you go and you look at the message rather than focusing on the messenger, then perhaps you can figure out whether the message that the messenger is giving is correct or not rather than focusing on who the messenger is or what he is. or he or she is. >> one main anonymous source. i mean you know how the u.s. government works, how a bureaucracy works. can a story hold up when it's based mostly on a single anonymous source who perhaps has an ax to grind? >> i have no idea. i'm not in the journalism business.

i know what editors require. i'm familiar with what editors require before they post a store. >> but i mean as a former u.s. diplomat you know how large, how complicate a u.s. sort of government organization can be and how many different interests -- different competing interests are at play. >> and how many stories there are. and so again, i would go back to what i said earlier. in the past week there's been a lot of talk about the messenger. in my case a decade ago, there was a lot of talk about the messenger. and it took a lot longer for investigative reporters to actually ferret out what the true message was and whether the message was accurate or not. we now know for example, that the 16 words in the state of the union address were just fabrication. we now know that the propaganda that we couldn't afford to wait for the mushroom -- or for the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud was absolute hooey. and i would point out in the article i wrote for "talking

points memo" yesterday that mr. bush jeb bush who's running for president now, has that same cast of characters who provided these lies and fabrications to the american people a decade ago on his foreign policy advisory staff. >> i was about to say, what has been so wild and revealing about this week is how iraq dominated the political news narrative. here we are more than a decade later, hearing all of the republican candidates being asked those questions. joe wilson thank you for being here this morning. i appreciate it. >> thanks very much. coming up here a journalist aboard the crashed amtrak train in philadelphia becomes part of the story. hear about the decisions he made that night and how he says it changed how he would cover tragedies in the future. don't go away. it's more than the cloud. it's security - and flexibility. it's where great ideas and vital data are stored. with centurylink you get advanced technology solutions from a trusted it partner. including cloud and hosting services -

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commute from d.c. to new york put 238 people on board a derailed amtrak train at the center of a national disaster. there were at least five journalists on board. in some ways these trains are like a media express. and some of the journalists immediately started reporting from the wreckage like my next guest, paul chung. he took these dramatic photos for the associated press. this disaster also put those journalists at the center of a media frenzy since they all became part of the story. paul joins me now here on the set. he's the director of interactive and digital news production for the a.p. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> how are you doing personally? were you injured at all? >> minor scrapes and bruises. you know i think now, coming off my adrenaline so i'm processing everything that has happened. >> yeah. but you were able to pretty quickly help other people off the train. and then at what point did you transition into taking photos into reporting? >> well the minute i jump off the train, you know i fell pretty hard. >> yeah. >> and then people were just screaming at me.

and i was completely disoriented. and once i kind of get my bearings and saw the wreckage that's when i knew wow, this is major. and immediately i sent an e-mail to my newsroom saying hey, my train just crashed and derailed. give me a call. and after that i just kind of lent my phone to a couple other passengers who need to call their loved ones. and once i again processed a little more that's when i kicked into my journalist mode. >> in retrospect do you feel you turned toward journalism at the right moment? it must be a hard decision to process. >> i think the instinct was to turn immediately. but since i'm not a front line journalist just the plain idea of hey, i might die was really frightening. >> right. >> i want to take pictures inside the train but i smell smoke. so i jumped out. you know once i got up and saw passengers were crawling out the window my instinct was let me go take some photos. i saw sparks coming out.

and at that moment i thought something might explode and i have to run the other way for safety just in case. so i think those were the decisions i was struggling with. >> i wonder what it's like to be bombarded by media requests after something traumatic like this. did you hear from dozens of media outlets trying to interview you the way you're being interviewed now? >> yes. and you know you gain a new appreciation for our craft. >> do you? >> yeah. >> some people would say it's tacky the way journalists are all like vultures trying to reach the victims, trying to reach the survivors. >> i mean, i think working on the front line on a developing story is never easy. so i have really grown a new appreciation for all the photographers, tv and reporters who are really going out there to find out what's going on you know. and i understand that primary sourcing is important. and me being a primary source at that moment was the easiest access for them. >> what happens when you do get all these media requests?

do you just kind of throw up your hands and not respond to any of them? how does it work? >> for me since i wok for the a.p. i was like hey, you need to coordinate everything with the a.p. >> you let them call your bosses. yeah. >> i mean once i got off i was thinking do i need to tweet this out, periscope it, and i just kind of kept it simple. coordinate with my news desk. send all the photos and video i have to the news ds k and i figured i'd let the a.p. kind of handle how the news evolved. >> it's just so uncommon to have a journalist actually affected by the story. it's one thing to witness a plane crash land or a train derail but to be on the train a whole other level. let me ask you one other thing. you tweeted, you said message me if you were on board the train, all of us have a unique shared experience i'd like to find a way for us to connect. have you heard from any other survivors, and are you going to connect? >> i heard from a few survivors. and you know i really want to connect with them because i think this is such a unique experience that all of us share. and i'm finding that there's weird connections through this experience where, you know, a passenger that i lent my phone

to helped someone else that i knew on the train, you know out of the train. and so -- and i can see these different connection points starting to form. and i just really wanted you know to get together with these folks and share our knowledge. >> i would imagine. paul thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> great talking with you. >> we have to note that one of the eight passengers on the train that lost their lives was a colleague at the associated press, jim gaines. he was a video software architect. he was 48 years old, a husband and a father of two. and our thoughts go out to his family today and to you and your co-workers, paul, at the associated press. we'll be right back with more "reliable sources" in just a few minutes. ealthier doesn't happen all by itself. it needs to be earned... every day... using wellness to keep away illness... and believing that a single life can be made better by millions of others. healthier takes somebody who can power modern health care... by connecting every single part of it. for as the world keeps on searching

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everybody wondering who his final guest will be and what he will say in his final top 10 list. you know letterman is truly the end of an era. he says he's not retiring entirely just retiring from "the late show." but people will all be tuning in wednesday night as he actually says good-bye to the show. stephen colbert is ready to take over. he will actually not take over until september. but he's already starting to talk to advertisers, warm up for his takeover of "the late show," and he made a very funny joke at the cbs up front presentation for advertisers this week. he said "i'm going to strive to honor letterman by occasionally making cbs very mad at me." that was colbert's preparation to take over for letterman. but that's on wednesday. there's another big tv finale tonight, and that's the end of "mad men," the pioneering amc drama that actually really put amc on the map and was among other things the most influential show about advertising in the history of the medium. earlier i spoke with the president of amc, charlie collier. he told me he has watched the finale and he thinks we're going to be impressed.

>> i've seen it and the beauty of the show for years it's not just a great hour but this is you know 90-plus amazing pieces of art. and the consistency that they've brought to the set from start to finish is remarkable. and i think you'll see that the finale just is as beautiful as you'd hope it would be. >> you can check out more of my interview with collier on cnnmoney.com. he told me all of amc's other channels like ifc and bbc america, they're actually going to go dark tonight. that is a way that amc's going to try to honor the show by peel having people refer over to amc to watch it. they are really trying to make this a piece of art, trying to lift it into the hall of fame is what collier said. that's all for this televised edition of "reliable sources." but our media coverage keeps going all the time on cnn.com. check out our stories there about letterman and all the rest of the week's media news. and if you can't join us live next sunday at 11:00 a.m. make sure you set your dvr. stay tuned here because "state of the union" begins right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

the u.s. deals a major blow to isis and a new mystery in the deadly amtrak train crash. this is "state of the union." u.s. troops take out a top isis leader, congressman paul ryan sides with president obama, senator bernie sanders on his run for the presidency, and jeb bush's rough week on the campaign trail. good morning from washington. i'm brianna keilar, and right now u.s. officials are analyzing at a treasure trove of new information on how isis operates. this after a daring raid by american special ops in syria that left a top isis commander dead and his wife captured. cnn's nick paton walsh is in beirut with the latest on this. nick, what do we know about this commander who is known as abu sayyaf? >> very little, frankly, until