james buchanan was the only lifelong bachelor to serve as president, but he preceded cleveland by three decades. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. good morning. i'm brian stelter and it's time for "reliable sources." we have a whole lot to talk about today. it's been a tumultuous week for reality tv with several shows hit by reality checks. pardon the pun, but it's not been hard keeping up with the kardashians thanks to the mastermind who orchestrated the rollout of caitlyn jenner's coming out. the star of "19 kids and counting" remains in a revelation while revelations about josh duggar's molestation remains in the news. a lot of people think the interview only made things worse for the family. and, of course there's the

endless reality drama that's dominated nbc news. you could call it american anchor survivor with both brian williams and his sub lester holt in limbo. more on that coming up. but let's get to the duggar story and the jenner story. the jenner story in particular because the reveal of her new face and new name was flawlessly executed. the "vanity fair" cover dominated newscasts and then the e! cable channel announced the name of her new reality show. these are all steps in jenner's public transformation all carefully thought through. i want to give you a peek behind the scenes. you might have wondered who helped jenner pull this pr plan off? well let me tell you. jenner's publicist is named allen nero. he often declines to comment. it's no surprise he declined to comment for this segment but one person who worked with minimum says i've never seen it done better and called him a mastermind. so joining me now are two experts who know how all this works. press representative howard bragman of 15 minutes pr who

joshg -- and bonny fuller. good morning to both of you. >> thank you. >> howard since you helped celebrities in situations like this when they want to make announcements to the world, how would you describe how it's gone with caitlyn jenner this week? >> you couldn't have asked for a better rollout. i'm very impressed and i've talked to allen numerous times and i have told him i'm a little jealous. i would have liked to have handled this assignment but allen did a masterful job. he's a grown-up. he's smart. and he did his research. that's really important. >> tell me what you mean. what kind of research? >> there's a lot ever land mines you can step on when you're dealing with a topic like this. the community is very sensitive, and allen really went and got together with the organizations, went on a big learning curve,

and that's a big part of the reason that it was done so intelligently and so sensitively all at the same time. what they were really trying for was to tell bruce/caitlyn's story but they were also going for a teachable moment and i think they achieved that in a big, big way. >> sometimes people see this and roll their eyes. they think it's too carefully orchestrated. >> for the general public no. they're not thinking about this being a beautifully executed plan. they're just thinking about, oh my goodness there's this gorgeous cover of caitlyn jenner introducing herself to the world and beautiful photographs and a long story that they can read which is a very sensitive story and really explains the whole transition that has occurred but also what bruce jenner experienced for 65 years and the secrecy he had to live with and how that hurt him and hurt his family and so it turned it into a very empathetic situation so

people who have never met a transgender person don't even know what a transgender person is suddenly found themselves sympathizing and being very open to caitlyn and to learning more. >> and there has been a lot of empathy but, howard there's also been some backlash. >>ity a bit of backlash actually. a great story in "the washington post" pointed out some conservatives, republican party commentators and talk radio host are purposely calling caitlyn bruce and rejecting this announcement of this trans gender moment in history. are you struck by the backlash? do you think it's something that allen and the other pr people expected or is this something that's revealing about the state of our society? >> you know as well as i do we live in a very contraryian society. i tell clients you could cure cancer tomorrow and you're going to have a handful of people who are going to criticize you and say, great, now you put the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors and the nurses out of business. it comes with the territory.

it came with chaz bono. it came with taking michael sam out of the closet. you have to look at the big picture, and the overwhelming message was positive. >> let me play a sound bite from anderson cooper's show. he was interviewing buzz bissinger and he talked about all the secrecy involved in the article. >> those pictures are incredible and we didn't want them out -- >> before. >> before. and neither did caitlyn. caitlyn said i will not let a paparazzi make money off of me because that's a big deal. this is the picture heard around the world. i will not let a paparazzi make money off me. if i have to stay in my house for two months i will do it and that's basically what she's done. >> i think that's a key point, bonnie. one of the reasons this is all stage managed so that he back then bruce, now she, caitlyn, was not being exploited by the paparazzi. she wanted to do it on her own terms. >> it's her right to decide when

she wanted to reveal herself as her trueself self because she wanted it to be a teachable moment and she wanted it to be a moment that was a freeing moment. she said as of this moment when the "vanity fair" cover comes out, i am free. and so it had both i guess pr impact but it also had a huge a monumental emotional impact for her. i think it was entirely her right to be able to do it on her own terms. >> you think about everybody who has profited. "vanity fair" profits. abc profits with a special. e! will profit with their reality show. caitlyn will also profit and she's trying to ensure the paparazzi won't profit as much. let's turn to the other big celebrity news and that's the duggar family. the interview with megyn kelly was not perceived to be flawless. a lot of people brought up questions about it. the interesting thing to me however is this was all organized, talking aboutp r people organized by mike huckabee's pr concern, chad

gallagher. he's a senior adviser and works for the duggar family. would you have advised the family if you were representing them to go to fox news? >> absolutely. you've got to go to your base and i looked at the interview, and i actually give meghan credit, she did ask some tough questions. it wasn't all soft balls. the follow-up wasn't as aggressive as it possibly would have been on another network but i think people who went in wanting to like the duggars, probably left liking the duggars and believesing believing them -- >> so you think it made sense to go with fox? >> absolutely. >> what did you think of the questioning? >> i don't think with the interviewing and the questioning that they turned around any of their critics and they have a lot of critics, and i think by not asking some of the tougher follow-up questions, i mean for example, michelle duggar had made comments about transgenders and relating them to child

molesters. now, meghan asked the question but michelle didn't answer it, and she didn't pressure her. she's just an example, and i think that for people who might not support the duggars, they could have been turned around depending what she said or if she had a mea culpa moment and said you know what? that was a mistake. i shouldn't have said that and my views -- if she had something like that i think it would have opened up her critics to being more sympathetic to the situation that they're in. >> what i was struck by most was the way she framed some of her questions. take a look. >> what the critics are going for is that you shouldn't have been preaching about moral values when you had a secret like this your own family. the main charge we've heard from your critics has been they're hypocrites. they preached family values. what i'm asking you is can you understand the critics' reaction to the news? >> what she was saying was framing things as critics. doesn't it frame the duggars as

the victims of a nasty media? >> absolutely. the duggars kept criticizing the tabloids and saying the tabloids had jumped on this story and were attacking them when in fact she's then really calling "the wall street journal," "the new york times," every media outlet tabloids. >> howard where does this family go from here? what does this family do next? tlc isn't saying whether they're going to bring "19 kids and counting" back or not. >> this family is on life support and i'm afraid the plug is going to be pulled for them. i'm not really afraid. i'm comforted by the fact i think the plug is going to be pulled. what happened is hulu pulled them tlc has put them on hiatus advertisers were running for the hills. it's hard to see a scenario where they come back. >> is it the fault of the media, the pile on we've seen that will end up taking this show away from the family? >> no. it's the fault that the family

was stupid enough to go on a reality show when they had these skeletons in their closet and you just don't do this. to think this stuff isn't going to come out is a naive way of looking at it. and the second part is the hypocrisy of this family who is judging everyone else's life and i think there's a biblical verse about that which i won't try and reiterate here but they clearly got what they got because of the position they put themselves in. >> thank you both for being here this morning. later in the show, the man who had more hit shows on the air in the '70s than most networks do now. norman leerar. also the gop worried that the highly influential women's magazines are going to be schilling for hillary. i'll ask the editor of "cosmo" joanna kohls if that is the case. (kids laughing) he's flying

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"getting my free credit score at credit karma when is the last time you checked?" "your credit is outa sight!" "alright!" "aren't you curious to know what yours is now?" "still got it." "credit karma, get your free score now." welcome back. why prolong the agony? that's what one tv executive asked me this week as we were talking about nbc's big and still secret decision about brian williams. there's still no update about what's going to happen to williams once his six-month suspension is over. but this morning i want to move our attention to someone else this man, lester holt who has been filling in for williams for more than four months now and still doesn't quite know what's going to happen to either of them. does lester holt get to keep the job or not? well here is what my sources

are now telling me. holt is being kept completely out of the loop and so is his staff. but things have mostly gotten back to normal at the "nightly news." people aren't really talking about williams anymore. it's looking increasingly likely holt will get the job permanently. now, this cannot be easy for either man or for those that work around them at the network. this is really the untold story of the brian williams' controversy, the lester holt story. joining me now to explore where this is heading are here in new york former machines executive mark efron a media consultant and professor and andrew wallenstein wallenstein, the co-editor in chief of "variety". >> mark you were at msnbc in the mid-2000s about lester holt and everybody praises him.

what is it about him that's so special. >> he's the consummate professional on the air and off the air. i've worked with great apgors who are not so great off the air and wonderful people off the air who are okay on the air and some combination thereof. it's very rare when the tumblers all click and with lester it does. he's so easy to work with. prepares but makes it look like he hasn't prepared yet on the air viewers trust him because they can tell he's done his homework and he knows what he's talking about. >> he's kind of gon it all at msnbc and nbc. he was anchoring the iraq war coverage for you. >> i have never worked with anybody who you can literally sit him down brief him for 30 seconds, and just leave him, and he can go for six hours, eight hours, and that looks easier said than done. >> for sure. >> especially when there aren't a lot of facts and you don't want to conjecture wildly but you want to be informed.

lester could do that better than any other anchor i have ever worked with on the network level, on the local level, on radio, anywhere. >> the banner here says lester in limbo. you have stayed in touch with him over the years. you let him know you were going to be on the show today so he wouldn't be surprised. and this must be such a tough situation for him. do you feel he's in limbo? >> what i know from lester is that he's making the best of a great situation in that he's anchoring five nights a week a national newscast and anybody who has worked with lester feels his leadership but not in an i'm in charge here kind of way. so knowing lester the way i do and having worked with him very closely for a number of years, he's doing everything he can to make the people off the air as well as the viewers feel comfortable in this current situation. >> you're out in l.a. where lester's agent happens to work. is there any sense a new contract is under way or there are talks going on about what's going to happen to holt if williams is not returning to nbc

"nightly news"? >> no evidence that i can speak of, but i find it interesting that if on the one hand nbc is so keen on keeping him around that they would, as you're reporting, also keep him in the dark. i would think if they saw a long-term future for this guy, they would be doing something to cultivate that relationship better. then again, maybe we should just kind of check that off as nbc news not necessarily being great at managing talent. we've heard that rap before. >> we certainly have. i think it is often true in television the anchors are the last to know about changes. mark is that fair to say as a former tv executive yourself? >> it's clear there are going to be times when you involve the anchor in the situation and there are times when you don't want to not for any kind of devious reason but you're trying to get all your ducks in a row because you know things leak. >> i remember when ann curry was dispatched from the "today" show in 2012 forcibly removed, savannah gult rithrie, her replacement, didn't have a new

contract until the same week. the last thing they did was take care of savannah guthrie. >> i think in lester's case i know lester's agent pretty well the point is i think nbc probably knows that lester is not going to go anywhere so when it is time and hopefully it would be time for them to offer something to lester, they will work it out. >> you say he wouldn't leave, but if he's passed over for this job, if "nightly news" goes to someone else or if brian williams comes back to the chair, even though that seems unlikely at this point, wouldn't he look to leave at some point? >> again, i don't want to speak for lester. >> andrew let me ask you about one of the most sensitive parts of this story, and that is lester holt if he becomes a permanent alaskaor would be the first permanent african-american nightly news anchor in the united states. does that add another layer of complication for nbc thinking about keeping him in the job or not? >> i don't know if i'd characterize that as a complication of any kind. i think it would be a great thing for both lester for both the network, but also i don't

want to make too much of this. i mean the sad fact of the matter is the evening news 6:30 p.m. is not what it once was. so, you know the honor here for anyone of any race unfortunately is diminished. >> i think lester represents a sizable portion of the audience, and i think he's earned his place at that table, but it would seem to me that if i were looking to -- for somebody who could lead a nightly newscast in this very fractionalized media environment we live in i would pick lester holt for a lot of reasons, not just because of the color of his skin. and i think the other thing we haven't talked about is, you know lester can also do the lighter stuff. lester is a musician. lester has played jazz on television. lester has a lot of the skills beyond reading a prompt ter and doing interviews that it's necessary to have if one is going to be leading a nightly

newscast in 2015. >> andrew what's your spin on the ratings. people look at the ratings and take away different things. lester holt's "nightly news" is holding up pretty well but not quite as well as brian williams' "nightly news" did. >> as my variety colleague recently pointed out, there's no promotion behind lester and that doesn't make for a fair comparison. it will be interesting to see what happens should he get the nod and take over for brian williams and get some depent promotion behind him he could be beating abc day in and day out. >> andrew mark thanks both for being here. when we come back, the man who brought the sitcom to the modern era, norman lear the father of "all in the family" and so many other hits will join me to talk about his tv legacy.

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of our most popular plans. welcome back. you know this upcoming week is '70s week on cnn because the channel is premiering the follow-up to the '60s. decades before caitlyn jenner and la vern cox brought lgbt issues to our screens or the outspoken rang wage allowed on cable tv there was norman lear. lear got his start in tv in 1950 writing for jerry lewis and dean martin on the colgate comedy hour. he would eventually revolutionize and redesign the american sitcom "all in the family," good times, sanford and son, the jeffersons maude, one day at a time and so anand so on. the shows broke boundaries of

subject matter and language. you name it, he went there. thanks for joining me. >> my pleasure. i'll take that back. we'll see. >> we will see. >> yeah we'll see. >> people always say even decades after your programs originally premiered that you made people talk. you got people talking with your programs. is that a failure on the part of other show creators they didn't get people talking in the same way as you? >> i think the difference might be that what they talked about following "all in the family" included the subject matter of the show, whether it was either menopause or mike's inability to make love because he was studying so hard or archie is out of work or his feelings about richard nixon or whatever we were dealing with. >> did it ever occur to you that television was just supposed to be disposable and mindless and

entertaining and not make people think? >> when i was accused of if you want to send a message, lear there's western union, that was the general idea of you're not supposed to have a point of view in a show. and for a long time i didn't think we were expressing a point of view. i really thought we were just making people laugh, serious people, we were dealing with serious subjects because there's humor in everything. then i realized now, wait a second i'm 52 years old or whatever the heck i was at the time. i have a point of view. i have children. i care about my country. i care about my family. i deal with real subjects and find the humor where they were. then i realized preceding us were dozens of shows in which there were no problems in the american family.

they didn't deal with menopause. they had no -- abortion didn't exist in the world. nobody was out of work. well that carried a message, too, you know. wall to wall floor to ceiling it carried a message. there were no problems except the roast is ruined and the boss is coming to dinner and the family was really upset. >> so how often were you called on the carpet so to speak, for controversial or provocative subject matter? >> well weekly. every time they saw a script they had something to say. the american people were ready for 98% of everything we ever thought of doing, and it was these frightened people representing other people who were representing other people who were representing ultimately response sors response certifiessponsors.

i wanted to do a story about edith losing her faith in god, and we found a way to do that when we had this -- you mentioned her -- we had a wonderful transsexual character on the show that she loved, and beverly, archie was driving a cab. a woman had an attack in the back of the car and he gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and when she came to thank him, edith answered the door and found out she was transsexual and the audience found out she had been a male. so now we're faced with archie is going to come downstairs in a moment. he's going to meet somebody he gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to. she's there to thank him and it was a guy in archie's view dressed as a woman but the character was really wonderful. and we thought the only way that

edith might lose her faith is if this character was killed for being who the character was, and so we were able to do two parts. if you were to ask me which two shows, you know, on "all in the family" i favored the most it would be those two episodes. >> let me ask you about language on your shows. there was a memorable episode where you used the word fag. i can't imagine hearing that on network television today. how did you get it by the censors? >> it was the language of the moment when it was used by people who would use it. archie would use it and we did. that was a perfect example of it would be silly to take it out of archie's mouth. it's so a part of him. i remember the dialogue. mike had a friend over who

wore -- was wearing glasses and carried an umbrella and archie was calling him gay or queer. he was calling him queer. and mike said just because he wears glasses, carries an umbrella you call him queer. he said, no a guy who wears glasses is a four eyes. i guy who is a fag is a queer. it was so archie. it wasn't misusing the language. as i sit here and think about it now. you know would america live with that? it wasn't one state that seceded from the union. >> what are the chances we'd ever see a reboot or a recreation of "all in the family"? >> i have been asked to consider it by -- what did you call them. they're not networks.

zroo >> streamers. >> i think that was your word. >> people who stream. >> netflix perhaps? >> netflix, amazon and i'm thinking about it. i'm also thinking about i think you know that they've come at me to do latino version of "one day at a time" and i like that idea. so i'm thinking about it. >> so many people are able to connect with these shows decades later. >> because we were dealing with human problems. they don't change. there's been so much forward movement since then but there are a lot of people trapped in lives that are not aware of that forward movement. but that certainly explains why people are watching today and think they're watching something that might have been made last week. >> i wonder if the same is true when it comes to race relations. it feels like one of the dominant narratives on television for the past year in news television has been race with ferguson and baltimore and everywhere else. >> race problems have not gone

away. and we have barely begun to deal with them when you see the kinds of things that are happening in the cities you mentioned. things are every bit as difficult racewise as they were then. we may be better involved about the problems but whatever is behind it all, our human nature has not changed. >> if the '60s were a time of revolution the '70s were what? how would you describe it as a decade? >> it was a decade in which i was having one hell of a time and i had five families on the air and one on moon crest drive. >> if you could go back to the 1970s for one day, what wha would you do? >> i'd work out. >> thank you so much. >> my pleasure. my pleasure. thank you, brian. >> norman lear really is one of a kind and he's a big part of this week's premiere of the cnn's original series "the '70s."

the episode on thursday is all about television. coming up here a turn to politics. are hugely influential women's magazines going to be schilling for hillary. the editor of "cosmo" joanna coles answers that right after this. neither is afraid. buy in. quickenloans/home buy. refi. power. meet the world's newest energy superpower. surprised? in fact, america is now the world's number one natural gas producer... and we could soon become number one in oil. because hydraulic fracturing technology is safely recovering lots more oil and natural gas. supporting millions of new jobs. billions in tax revenue... and a new century of american energy security. the new energy superpower? it's red, white and blue. log on to learn more.

welcome back to "reliable sources." check this out. campaign reporters sure did not appreciate this. it says there will be no opportunities to interview hillary clinton. her speech will be her interview. that's the blunt wording handed out to reporters attending her speech this weekend. it's another reminder clinton hasn't opened up to the press. she has answered questions a couple times but she hasn't granted any formal interviews. that prompted wolf blitser to vent his frustration a little bit in a futile request to the campaign's adviser. >> joe is the senior adviser, a major strategist in the hillary clinton campaign. we'll stay in close touch with

you. thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you, wolf. >> please tell the secretary we're looking forward to a full-scale interview with her asap as well. thanks very much. >> i thought that silence spoke volumes, you know. when clinton does start giving interviews might she seek out friendly forums like maybe women's magazines? this recent piece in politico asserted the republicans are worried these magazines are, quote, in the tank for clinton. let's go right to the source on this one. joining me on set is joanna coles, the editor of "cosmopolitan "cosmopolitan." take me inside the editorial meetings in your magazine. are you taking more of an election this time around than in the past because of hillary clinton? >> well first of all, i think anybody would find the editorial meetings at "cosmopolitan" where we discuss endless sex positions extremely interesting and may i say it might change things.

we are very interested in the issues around politics and how they impact our readers which is to say that we have many millions of millennial readers and they're interested in how they pay off their student debts, interested in are they going to get a job in this economy. >> but also in the personalities, right? >> they're also interested in how they're going to get great health care and do they have access to contraception and god forbid should they need it do they have access to an abortion. they're watching candidates they feel will reflect their interests as everybody does but what's important about this election in particular is there will be a lot of millennial voters because there are so many of them and a lot of them will be voting for the first time and our first priority is to get people to the polls. there is such lethargy around that. we want to animate readers, go in and vote. you don't have the right to complain about d.c. if you're not exercising your right to vote. >> you have a rooted interest in making them vote.

do you have a rooted interest in them voting for hillary clinton? >> we have a rooted interest in them being part of the political process. we leave it to them if they want to vote for hillary. would we like to see more female candidates running? of course we would. i think the political system would be better off. it's really early in the campaign to say whether or not they would be better off with hillary because we don't know all the candidates and we haven't seen what hillary stands for yet. >> this issue of whether women's magazines are tilted in favor of hillary clinton came up recently in politico. let me read a quote from the article. she said she reviewed several months of covers and said looks like readers will be getting a heavy dose of liberal cheerleading this campaign season along with their skin care and makeup and fashion tips. liberal cheerleading, is that a fair phrase? >> liberal cheerleading probably is because for the most part young women's interests are better supported by liberal/democrat candidates but not all, and i do think it's too

early in the process to say which candidate is best going to represent them. we just did in the magazine a piece on all the female senators so we interviewed 16 of the 20 and so across party, and actually it was the most optimistic piece i'd read about d.c. for a long time because these were senators actually working across the house with each other and it suddenly made you think, goodness washington is actually a functional place after all. because voters don't like it when women politicians brag about their achievements they don't brag as much as the men. they don't always say i got this big passed or i got this done but they are getting on with it. >> let me show you a conservative comment. it was from fox and friends last week. >> hillary clinton as she moves into 2016, laura, is noting one of her secret weapons and it may be the women's magazines. you look at some of the past covers here and the coverage of

the clinton family in general, it kind of suggests that readers will be getting a heavy dose of liberal cheerleading to say the least. their readers are 53 million. "glamour" has 28 million for "glamour" alone. "cosmo" has a reach of 53 million. >> that's smart. >> that reach is strong. >> so you can hear fox and friends ripping off that politico article. >> we have them reporting and them deciding. >> fox and friends very good at that sometimes. >> they are. >> i wonder if some conservative commentators should be concerned about the women's magazines? >> well you heard them say the reach of cosmo is 53 million. women's magazines have enormous reach and i think young women are very anxious about what's happening to the political process in washington and they do want to get involved. >> it's an example of candidates or politicians in general being able to go around what we would call the traditional media and reach people in different ways. we talked a lot about going

directly through the media, going to social media, having candidates speak on twitter and facebook but they could also go to alternative media, so to speak. maybe women's magazines are an example of that. >> i don't think of women's magazines with 53 million readers as being alternative. i think it might be as big if not slightly bigger than the footprint of "reliable sources" brian, but i do think what you're hinting at and what was reflected on "fox and friends" is that this is a really big audience that has been underserved by what i think is the mainstream media news programs in the evening which actually people are stopping watching. >> if there were republican female candidates leading the pack, it sounds like you're saying you would be on that beat and covering them. >> we absolutely would. we're very interested in women in leadership roles. we cover a lot of women in business leadership roles, and we would love to be able to cover more women in politics but, you know, there's less than

20% in congress only 20 out of 100 in the senate so we have a ways to go. >> thanks for being here. >> my pleasure. >> up next on the program, one of the thorniest issues for the news media. every politician and every source these days is demanding to be off the record to be unnamed. we'll meet one reporter who is trying to find this trend right after this. begins to change. (ray) i'd like to see her go back to her more you know social side. she literally started changing. it was shocking. she's much more aware. (jan) she loves the food. (ray) the difference has been incredible. she wants to learn things. (vo) purina pro plan bright mind promotes alertness and mental sharpness in dogs 7 and older. purina pro plan. nutrition that performs. what do you think? when i first sit in the seat it makes me think of a bmw. i feel like i'm in a lexus. you would think that this was a brand new audi. it's like a luxury car. feels kind of like an infinity. very similar to a range rover. this is pretty high tech.

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welcome back. on the record. it's a phrase every journalist knows and uses. but at home you may not know exactly what we mean. and nowadays it seems like everyone from political campaign operatives to even other journalists always say things are off the record. they pre-empt their comments by saying "off the record." i want to explore exactly what this means and why this is one of the biggest battles in journalism right now with spencer ackerman a national security reporter for the "guardian." he has had enough of this practice. this week he was tweeting a new addition to his e-mail signature. let me show it to you before i bring it in. "all e-mails are presumed to be

on the record unless and until a mutually accepted negotiation of ground rules has successfully concluded. any unilateral declaration by recipient of this e-mail that a conversation is on background or off the record will not be honored." very serious language there. so joining me now to have an on the record conversation is spencer. thanks for being here. >> no problem. this is on background. >> okay. let's explain this to the viewers at home. what is the problem? when you say something's off the record or on background what do you mean? >> so this is a weird kind of argo that journalists and sources have developed over the years that basically means lots of different things to lots of different people. so it's good to define these terms. off the record means there's information that someone's going to give you but you can't cite it you definitely can't name that person but it should inform what you're going to write going forward. on background is the sort of thing you've sort of seen ubiquitously increasingly especially in the media over the years in which someone can't be named but they're called an official or someone familiar with this person's thinking,

that kind of thing. >> the white house will say a senior administration official when in fact who are they talking about? >> pretty much always a spokesperson. we've just sort of gotten into the habit of referring to everyone we're not quoting by name as senior because it makes us sound more important. >> this is really a plague in journalism. it really is. because so much information is being shared on background. sources are more and more reluctant to go on the record meaning we can attach their name to something, say who it came from. so what are you trying to do to stop this? >> so i'm an anonymity pragmatist. right? i'm not a politics reporter. i'm a national security reporter. so that means very often i'm going to speak with people who really do have very good reasons for not having their name attached to something, particularly on really sensitive matters. >> so you're not saying all anonymity is bad or is a problem. what you're highlighting is this problem of people e-mailing you and automatically saying it's off the record without you even talking to them about it. >> exactly. so this happens by degree. the way these things are supposed to work between

journalists and sources is you have a conversation about it. there should be some kind of reason given up front i think for the granting of anonymity. it shouldn't be an automatic reflection reflexive thing and definitely shouldn't be the sort of thing that acts as an up-front toll or a tax on information. >> a tax on information. that's a really interesting phrase. >> yeah. so think about it like this. if i need to know something and i need to know something because my readers need to know something, i go to a source for that information and the source starts out by saying before i tell you this you have to agree to not cite me or to not cite the organization i work for in some cases. you know and so on and so forth down the line. and we've gotten so used to it for a variety of reasons, some of which are professionally advantageous to us. we're afraid that if we don't grant this the next reporter will and then we'll miss out and we'll get scooped on something. that kind of thing. we've just grown too accustomed often in our business to just grant the anonymity. so i don't want to say i'm never

going to do it. i wrote a story this week after i put it in my signature file in which i gave someone anonymity but i made them argue for it. >> ron foreignnier who was here last week often says on twitter journalist should ban together and fight against unnecessary use of anonymous sources. do you agree? >> i think there's definitely a collective action problem we have for precisely the reason that a lot of us will grant anonymity. we're afraid that the other guy, our competitors, you know if i don't do it she will. she'll give them the rules that the source needs in order to make sure -- or maybe not even needs but wants, in order to make sure her readers are served with this information. >> i use anonymous sources all the time like you do. even people in media often insist on being anonymous. but i worry the viewers at home don't trust you. readers don't trust us as much as we want them to. we need to be pretty transparent about why we do these things. spencer, thanks for being here. i appreciate it. great to sigh. and we'll have more "reliable sources" in just a moment.

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before we go this morning our show called "reliable sources" we definitely want to let you know when we've made a mistake. last week when glenn greenwald was here talking about edward snowden's role in reshaping the debate about mass surveillance he was bemoaning actually exactly what spencer ackerman was just talking about, the overuse of anonymous sources. but greenwald called it "the kind of reporting that got judy miller fired from the "new york times."" miller reached out to me and i'm glad she did. she was actually not fired from the "times." back in 2005 she agreed to leave after weeks of negotiations with the paper. now, i should have caught that when glenn said it and i'm sorry i didn't. as always we want to hear from you about the show. so send me a tweet. i'm @brianstelter on twitter or

look up my name on facebook. we're out of time on tv but i'll see you on twitter and facebook and check out the media news of the newly relaunched cnnmoney.com/media. and stay tuned because "state of the union" starts right now. harleys, a pig roast and politics. republican white house hopefuls swarm iowa as a crowded gop field gets even bigger. this is a special "state of the union." good morning. i'm dana bash live from iowa where several of the republican presidential candidates turned out this weekend for senator joanie ernst's inaugural roast and ride. this hour my interviews with newly announced presidential candidates rick perry and lindsey graham and some colorful moments with scott walker ben carson and mike huckabee. for years joni ernst's predecessor, former iowa senator tom harkin hosted his famous steak fry. it was one