and don't forget to watch cnn on election day. in fact, stay with us until the very last vote is cast and the final results is in. thank you all for being part of the special program. i will see you next week. hey, i'm brian stelter. it's time for a special edition of "reliable sources." this is our weekly look at the story behind the story, of how the media really works, how the news gets made. a special welcome now to our viewers here in the united states and around the world on cnn international. we're live from our nation's capital where we're about to find out if hillary clinton or donald trump will be moving into their house right behind me, 1600 pennsylvania avenue. there are fewer than, get this, 60 hours until the first polls close. we're counting down by hours now. and then the healing begins, right? hopefully. so will the news media help or will it hinder that? today, we're going to try to

answer that question. we have a jam packed program with limited commercial interruption to cover this from every angle, starting with a week full of media missteps, mistakes, and opportunities. joining me now, an all-star panel of top editors and journalists. michael oreskes, lynn sweet, a bureau chief for the chicago sun times, karen tumulty, for the "washington post," and jeffrey goldberg, editor and chief of the atlantic magazine. we all have to start with the security scare in reno last night. donald trump being rushed off the stage by security because a trump protester, a republican against trump, was holding up a sign creating a motion in the audience. now, we saw on twitter after this happened, after trump returned to stage and all went well, one of trump's advisers called this an assassination attempt. then a couple people close to donald trump, like his son, retweeted that message, creating this narrative there was an assassination attempt against mr. trump.

jeffrey, what are the consequences of this kind of blizzard of misinformation after a security scare? >> well, bad information moves faster than good information, right? we have seen this over and over again in this race. traditional media, meaning people who try to deal in fact-based observations, can't keep up with the torrent, the blizzard, whatever you want to call it. can't keep up. and social media allows people like those in the trump campaign who were tweeting that, to move right past us. so by the time that news gets out, we're just playing catch-up and saying no, no, this is not actually what happened. this is a very dramatic instance of that, assassination attempt is about as serious as you can get, and another example of how we're always playing catch-up with people who don't care about fact-based observation. >> karen, is it much worse, is it qualitatively and quantitatively worse this year, as someone who is covering politics every day, more misinformation, more disinformation than there used to be? >> there's both an issue with

the quantity and the velocity. >> velocity. >> because the real problem is, too, that even when somebody tries to reign in something that was initially misspoken, initially misstated, you know, a wrong impression, i think you used to be able to do that. by now, by the time you figure out what the actual facts are, the not facts are way far ahead of you. >> then of course there's so much fake news. there's information that's misleading, claims about politicians thereat bogus. but then there's websites that are trying to trick people every day, lynn, websites trying to hoax people. all i see on facebook is people buying, being tricked. >> the biggest media story of this campaign is the rise and the total control that twitter has over the messages. which then influenced facebook and everything else. you have an example that you used of the assassination of trump, the only reason it came out so fast is because twitter exists. and it never existed to this point. we know that trump is the master

exploiter of twitter because even if you have wrong information that we have talked about, until the rise of twitter, even if you had bad information, even if you wanted it out, you couldn't have. that's the big story here. >> you could have 10, 20, 30 minutes. now you have five seconds. >> there's wishful thinking happening. people are inclined to believe some of these lies. let's play donald trump, something he has been saying all week long, saying the television networks won't turn the cameras around and show the audience. >> it's not easy. i have to put up with some of the most dishonest people in the world, the media. they never show crowds like that. look at that, goes all the way back. they never show crowds. they don't show crowds. >> for the record, we do show crowds. the other networks show crowds as well. there's one pool camera that is fixed on trump at all times. that's on purpose so that if something happens onstage, we have a shot of trump. other cameras do show the

crowds. >> there's one pool camera focused on hillary clinton. >> as well, so why does trump keep saying it when he knows it's gnaw true. >> he can reach lots of people with whatever his version of reality is. it's really important for us as journalists to take a step back and say, yes, the world has changed. and yes, twitter and facebook and digital media in general have changed a lot. twitter may or may not be around five years from now, but there will be something. >> something faster. >> we need to frame what we're for, not what our problems are. we have a lot of problems, but we also believe in something that matters more than it's ever matt mattered, which is verifying and establishing what is actually a fact has become more essential than ever before. if we frame ourselves as having that as our purpose, i think a lot of people do actually come back to us for that. and one of the things that's interesting is while there's a lot of nightmarish things happening in this election about falsehood and flat out lying,

the public, i'm not sure, is reacting as quickly to all of these things as we fear they are or as we do. i think the role we can play with the public, if we focus more on them and less on these immediate twists and turns, will actually prove a real role for us. >> which i think the media, writ large, especially the organizations with resources, you know, for whom much is given, much is expected. need to play that role much earlier in this campaign. >> you're saying you wanted more aggressive coverage of trump and clinton earlier on. >> more fact-based, more fact checking earlier on. i'm using the word investigations, but some stories were kind of routine. >> calling out lies when they're obviously lies. it was hard, though. very hard, because we have a -- we're in a novel experience. >> how so? >> i think one of the candidates blows past the truth fairly regularly. and doesn't care when he's

called out. and his followers, many of his followers, don't care when he's called out. it's hard to adjust to anything new. >> and we were too slow to adjust. every sign was there. i know media books will be written and a lot of introspection, deservedly so, but media writ large was slow to pick up on a lot of this. >> at least social media is transparent, when something that is false gets out on twitter, you can watch it happen. you can watch it happen on facebook. where you can't see, whethre it sort of subterranean are these e-mails we have all gotten that have forward, forward in the subject line. and that, i think, in some ways, is the more pernicious information that's out there. >> part is on the audience. the audience has to be skeptical about the e-mail forwards. also, even about cable news. let's look at fox news. bret baier on wednesday claiming an indictment is likely in an fbi inquiry into the clinton foundation. let's play two sound bites.

this is bret baier on wednesday, reporting inaccurate information from anonymous sources and on friday walking it back and apologizing. >> the investigations will continue. there's a lot of evidence. and barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they'll continue to likely an indictment. >> that just wasn't in artful. it was a mistake. for that, i'm sorry. i should have said they will continue to build their case. >> many clinton critics still believe an indictment is impending and it's because of that fox news report. what went wrong here? >> first, i should say, i think bret baier is a terrific journalist. >> one of the best fox has. >> he is absolutely -- he's cautious, and checks his facts. he says he misstated something. i believe he misstated something, but this is a case, too, of the velocity. it's already out there. it's already being repeated over and over again. even as bret baier himself

stands up and says, hey, i screwed up here. >> people don't want to believe his backtracking, but they want to believe the original report. jeffrey, isn't this partly, again, wishful thinking by the audience? >> by the audience and by bret. >> you think he was too willing to believe his anonymous sources? >> absolutely. the problem is it was from one source, and here's a basic journalism mistake, we have all made it at different points. >> he may have had multiple sources on the word indictment, but he had one source on the different claim he also retracted that 9%, a 99% chance that her private e-mail server had been accessed by five foreign intelligence agencies. he said he said that on-air with one source. >> the atmosphere created around the subject makes what he heard credible. therefore, as the reporter, he feels he can move that forward, and again, not to single him out, although this was hiss mistake this week, people have done that. you go in the direction that the

culture is moving. that's what happened. >> i tell you what i'm really worried about. i'm worried about some kind of leak on tuesday morning, an anti-clinton or anti-trump leak, something that comes out through a seemingly reliable source intended to interfere with the election, and it can't be corrected in time before people go to the polls. >> this is again, we're talking about it from the point of the view of the audience is really important. i think people are smarter than we sometimes give them credit for. they know last-minute things have always happened in elections. i think they know that a lot of things being said at the end of this election need to be taken with a grain of salt. besides all that, they're making their decisions on much bigger questions. and a lot of those big questions revolve around trust and an engagement across communities. and the country's big problem, which then becomes our big problem, is people don't trust each other. people don't believe in each other, people don't respect each other. one of the big questions for us after this election is, we can call out people all we want for

truth, for lying, we can do all of that and feel good as journalists. it won't make any difference unless we have built better connections to broader adiences. and the fact is that all of these news organizations, this one, fox, everybody else, are speaki speaking -- >> people seem to be impervious. they're hermetically sealed. they don't seem to take in new information. >> i'm going to focus on being the glass half full. >> you're an optimist. >> you're right, some people are. >> a lot of people are. that's one of the discoveries of this cycle. >> one thing doesn't cancel out another. okay. you can have both. of course, you want to know who your readers are better. of course, you want to do fact finding. i think you want to encourage reporters who make mistakes, bret baier, i applaud him for doing what he did. you know, he made a mistake. he said it, his apology was clear and precise. the irresponsibility was of the trump forces who wouldn't let it go after he said he made a

mistake. >> who keep saying there could be an indictment. to your point, michael, about trust and audiences. we need to keep understanding and covering trump's america whether he wins or loses. there was too much -- and by the way, sanders' america, and a lot of african-american america, latino america. there's a lot of people in this country who do not feel connected to society as a whole, and they don't feel connected to us. >> you mentioned trust. let me talk about cnn and donna brazile. cnn announced longtime commentator donna brazile had resigned in mid-october, after wikileaks dump of e-mails showing she sent a question to the clinton campaign for a town hall. that was bad enough, but then this week, one of the new wikileaks e-mail dimps showed in the flint, michigan, debate, donna brazile also heard about a question and then sent it to the clinton campaign. donald trump, of course, has said a lot about this. it's unfair from brazile's point

of view and clinton may have known the questions in advance. the clinton question, it was donna saying they're going to ask about the water and what you're going to do. >> why send it if it's such an obvious question? >> this brings up loyalty and conflict of interest. let me show you what cnn said about the matter once they announced brazile had resigned. the state read in part, we're completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the clinton campaign while she was a cnn contributor. the best sense we have, talking to executives at cnn, is that this question in flint came from a community member. not from a cnn staffer. there's no indication that the so-called cone of silent where debate prep happens was ever breached. this brings up a serious question about commentators who donna brazile, working for cnn and the dnc. >> i have enough trouble figuring out how we should do

things, but it's real a important to do a couple things. one is obviously total transparency. it's not actually a big mystery that donna brazile is a loyal and firm supporter of the democratic party and of hillary clinton. >> but she embarrassed on of cnn by talking to the campaign this way. >> the system creates that kind of a problem because the surrogates for the republicans are always in communication with various other republicans. the surrogates for the democrats. i think one of the places where the network, the cable networks gept in trouble is they trouble is they mix up people in that kind of role with people like us. to be honest, i feel good at least on this panel i'm pretty confident i know that everybody on this panel is coming here as a journalist, perhaps as a representative of an organization. but not representing anything outside of our sphere. when you see a lot of panels, both on fox and cnn, there's a mix of people. some are paid surrogates for parties. some are journalists, some -- >> don'tia need the journalists there to correct the surrogates? >> a moderator can sit there and correct the surrogates, but the

mixing is one of the dangerous aspects of it, i agree with michael on that. >> she was not a surrogate. cnn hired her. she was a partisan with a paycheck from cnn. i think that's a totally different situation. when somebody has under their name cnn contributor or fox contributor or msnbc, newspapers have dealt with this for a long time on the editorial page. television doesn't have that. >> so television maybe has still to figure it out a little more. >> you have to get the categories straight. >> let's look at another lewand contributor, some viewers do not believe he should be paid by cnn. others believe he's an important edition. kellyanne conway posted this picture standing with corey with the hashtag #teamwork. another example of a cnn commentator talking with campaign staffers.

it's not surprising he would be communicating with trump staffers, is it, lynn? >> not surprising but the cables have to lodo a better job of no looking like they're buying inside information. that's what you do when you pay someone to commentate and be on your team when you're still connected to the other team. >> in corey lewandowski's case, cnn hired someone with inside information, not if he has the nondisclosure from the trump operation, and it should be pointed out, wads still getting paid by the trump opwragz. >> this is on the networks. you cannot expect corey lewandowski not to be corey lewandowski. >> this is on the networks, but he makes the broadcasts better because you learn the trump point of view from lewandowski. >> it sets up a debate with corey lewandowski and donna brazile and moderate it. you'll know what they're representing but don't say they're cnn employees. >> now that you raise the

subject, i'm on these panels and it's with people who say that they're always what the vague term, a democratic adviser, republican adviser. you don't know their clients. it's never announced. >> everyone is a republican or democratic strategist. >> who aufrb have consulting firms. you don't know without asking them to disclose a list. i don't -- i have never been on your show when you say, by the way, democratic adviser, who are your clients this cycle? >> it makes me think about karl rove at fox as well, who is raising millions of dollars. paul begala at cnn with a clinton super pac. after the bottom line is after the election, it's time for a reevaluation of some of these relationships. >> you want expertise, but you have to figure out a way, if these are people who are also players to either define the role more, i think brazile was an official at the dnc before she was an interim chairman. maybe just have to figure out a way to define the role more to say we have people here in a

dual role. one as a player and participant as well as analyst. >> participant. that's a great word. >> none of us are saying that corey lewandowski shouldn't be on cnn. he will come on anyway, so maybe it's an issue of pay. maybe it's an issue of labeling, but we need to hear from him and from donna brazile. >> also, there was an issue within the democratic party in that donna brazile was passing herself off as sort of a democratic party official, a neutral among these campaigns. what the e-mails showed was that for all her declared public neutrality here on cnn, she was actually working with one side versus the other in the clinton/sanders primary. >> one good news of news manage mth is whenever you write a check for anything, be sure you know what you're paying for and you can explain it. >> all of you, i appreciate the conversation. we need to have it. transparency is crucial when the comes to these sit wazs and the

fake news online. >> coming up next here, in tv terms. we're approaching the end of the ultimate reality show. just think about it. donald trump has been producing and programming the trump show since day one of his historic campaign. i mean literally producing it. >> look at all the cameras like the academy awards. this is like the academy awards. let's go, ready. turn off the lights. stupid mike keeps popping. i would love to have those cameras turn over here and show those people. don't turn the light on. >> gave me a defective mike. >> take the cameras off me and pan the crowd, okay. go ahead, pan the crowd. pan it. >> now, this has been frustrating to democrats like president obama. this week, obama has been telling audiences, hey, this is not the "bachelorette" and he's been critiquing the media's coverage of the race, what he calls the normalization of trump's offensive views and

outright lies. >> but now, we act like i guess this is normal. and as if it's some parody. you can't tell the difference between "saturday night live" and what's actually happening on the news. >> well, on tuesday night, you will be able to tell the difference. election night is the series finale, but it's serious business. right now, conventional wisdom holds that race has tightened. the trump campaign says it's expanding the map, finding new paths to 270 electoral votes. that has some trump critics worried. my next guests produce a podcast that has had huge success. it's cohosted by dan pfeiffer, also a former senior adviser to president obama, and jon favreau, who is president obama's former chief speechwriter. great to see you both.

jon, let me start with you. is this race tight, as we keep hearing on cable news, or is it rather steady and predictable? >> yeah, i think it's been pretty stable all along. you know, this has been a four, five, six-point race from the very beginning. a few bumps here and there, but like public polls go all over the place, and all we try to tell people is look at the fundamentals of the race, and you know, don't freak out all the time. >> the most popular word on your podcast, dan, is the word bed wetters. your whole podcast is about talking to democratic bed wetters who you say worry too much about the state of the race. do you think of your podcast as a form of therapy? >> it's become that to a lot of people who are looking -- there's a lot of anxiety around the election for good reason because a trump presidency would be disastrous for the country. what we try to do is break through the noise. there's a lot of misinformation. we try to explain based on our experience how elections work and why you should have confidence. it would be a different podcast if the fundamentals of the race

were different. >> do you think it at as a bit like nate silver's role in 2012, providing information saying hey, president obama is still likely to win. >> neither of us are math majors. we have become for a lot of people a place to go to try to nothing what's happening in the race, and data is on the side of democrats. we provide data, it makes democrats feel better. >> your point of view is increasingly playing a role. do you think there's a version of what you're doing on the right? >> there are a lot of really smart republicans who like mike murphy who have started a podcast that are very good. there is much more of a right-wing media infrastructure that people can turn to. we don't pretend to be journalists. we're not telling people what the news are. we're helping explain the news with an obviously biased partisan perspective, but with real world experience in how campaigns work. >> jon, let me go back to you, because you had many gripes about cable news. media coverage in general.

what would you say is your -- if you could change something, if you could be a cable news executive right now, what would you have changed about the coverage this year? >> well, look, you were just playing the clip of president obama complaining that this is treated like a game, right? i was talking, complaining to a very prominent pundit about how his coverage of donald trump was much more about trump's personality, political skills, the game of it all, as opposed to substance and policies and his character. he said, well you know, that's the job. hitler was a good politician, too. i'm like, that is crazy. >> you can tell us who you're talking about. >> what's that? >> you can go ahead and tell us which person you were talking about. >> i'm not going to do that. but -- >> do you think that journalists bring a certain bias to coverage? what kind of bias is that? >> yeah, that's what i'm saying. i think the mistake is people think it's partisan bias. some journalists or pundits are in the tank for one side or the

other. i think it's a bias towards horse race coverage, towards sensationalism, about keeping dramatic and exciting for people. i understand the impetus to do that, but this election, there's so much at stake right now, and a lot of people are scared about the outcome. there are lot of stories that have gone ignored because we focus too much on the horse race coverage. >> i think you're right that we need to acknowledge the fear that many people have on both sides. that's what's different about this year. let's look at the cnn poll of polls. the most recent bringing the five most recent national reliable polls all averaged together by cnn shows only a thee-point spread this morning. clinton, 45%. trump, 42%. jon, why is that not very dram t dramatic? why should that not be covered as a minute by minute horse race? >> it's a toit race, but we should realize how stable that is. i think it's been -- we have had wild swings. this is what dan was talking

about. we had wild swings in public polls, but the campaign has always believed and i think if you look at a lot of the data it's a relatively stable race. overall, yeah, but it should be covered as a tight race. >> here's what i want to know from both of you before i have to let you know. dan, someone who worked in the obama white house behind us, now as a cable news talking head, i don't mean that disparagingly, what are you going to look for on election night? >> i'm going to look very quickly at the states of michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin. because the only way in which donald trump can get to 270 is to win one of those states. i don't think he has any more than an infan tesmal chance to win those states, but if one comes off the map, he gets a better path. he still has a narrow path, but a path. >> jon, what will you be watching for and what should viewers and anchors watch out for. >> florida. there's been a huge latino surge in the early vote. i think if she has banked a

couple-point lead in florida when the night starts, it will be very hard for trump to catch up. i think she'll win it narrowly, but if she wins florida, that closes off all his paths. >> what happens, jon, after the election? will your podcast continue? >> we would like it to. if people still want to listen, there's going to be lots more to explain. we're happy to keep doing it. >> all right. what is it, 300,000 downloads? interesting to watch how these podcasts have taken off. thank you for being here this morning. the collective american mood right now is best summed up by this "time" smag zine cover out this week. a double entendre saying the end is near. it sure is. which means long days and sleepless nights for journalists in the final stretch. let's go behind the scenes in d.c. with one of the most powerful men in this town, martin baron, the executive editor of the "washington post." great to see you this morning. >> good to be here. >> do your journalists at the

post headquarters two blocks away have to write multiple versions of multiple stories getting ready for elengz night because we don't know what the outcome will be? >> we can't do anything. there's so much that's uncertainty, but there's a habit of writing skeletal information so people are ready depending on what the outcome is. people prepare, but it's hard to prepare for this particular election because there could be any number of differnt outcomes. >> has this election year been particularly grueling on your staff? if so, why? >> i think it has. first, it goes on for a long time. as we know, it's been two years really that everybody has had to endure this. and there's been so much venom and hostility during this campaign that it's unusual in that respect, and so i think that's been particularly hard. and also, the press has been the subject of so much attack. and while we're used to being criticized, it's been particularly difficult this time. >> looking back several months, we can put up trump's facebook posts from the summertime when he banned the "washington post"

from receiving press credentials alt his rallies. that was lifted for the "washington post" and every other news outlet that was banned a couple months ago. it was a big deal for the campaign. they were proud of themselves when they lifted a ban that shouldn't have existed in the first place. what was your reaction to the ban, the black list? how did it affect your coverage and are you concerned if donald trump moved into the white house behind us, there could be hostility like that if he's president? >> my reaction then was it was a repudiation of the role of an independent press in a free society. that's my reaction today. i don't think it should have been imposed then. and i have the same feeling today. the impact on us during the primaries was not so great. there were all these rallies, things like that, and we could attend and be part of the general audience. during the general, it was more difficult because he was moving around much more quickly and there were places we couldn't go. when he went to scotland, we were not included. we had to stay outside of that club. so you know, the press always wants to have access.

you need to be there. you need to be a witness. when you're excluded, you're not able to do that. >> what happens if he's elected? >> in what sense? the hostility, it will continue. i think regardless of who is elected, there will be a very difficult relationship between the white house and the press corps. >> i wanted to ask you about that, the prospect of a clinton presidency. some people have said no matter who wins, we'll see even less transparency from the next administration. why is that? >> look, there hasn't been a warm relationship between the press and the clinton campaign and hillary clinton herself. she's had a hostile and suspicious relationship with the press for a long period of time. that's been evident throughout this campaign. with donald trump, that's been open hostility. he said at one point i'm not running against crooked hillary. i'm running against the crooked media. he has called us from the lowest form of human being to actually the lowest form of life itself, and in recent weeks. he's called us the enemy. so obviously, it's going to be a very difficult time if he's

elected. but we'll have to deal with whichever administration ends up in the white house. >> let me go back to clinton for a moment. youts she's been suspicious of the media. does she have reason to be? >> you know, the media has an obligation to vet both candidates, both major party candidates. that's what we have done. that's our obligation, and that's our job. i think that we have done that with regard to the clinton foundation, with regard to special employment arrangements for her closest aides, with regard to speaking fees and with regard to a whole range of issues. we at the "post" were doing that as early as 2015 as soon as she got into the race, and we have been doing it throughout the campaign. no candidate likes that, but that's our responsibility. we have done that with regard to hillary clinton and we have done that with regard to donald trump as well. >> i was looking at your website this morning, looking at the most read box, the list of the top five story said. four were about trump, one was about clinton. does it matter financially to the future of the news business if donald trump doesn't win? we know he's click bait. we know people love to read

about him. is it actually going to cause news outlets like the "washington post" to feel a financial hit if he's not president. >> i really don't know. i don't know what the result is going to be and i don't think we should speculate on that. there's a heightened interest in politics and policy right now, and regardless of who is in the white house. there's going to be a lot of interest in what's happening. >> you're not so concerned about a giant drop-off after election day. >> there will be a degree of normalization, but i'm not expecting a gigantic drop-off because i think if hillary clinton is in the white house, there's going to be an intest interest in her administration and what happens and her relationship with congress. i think if donald trump is in the white house, all sorts of things could happen that people are going to be enormously interested in as well. i would expect those to generate a lot of interest, and therefore, a lot of traffic to our sites. >> this morning, your front page, we'll put up on screen, beautiful red and blue map of what the states are looking like. do you think about election night and the historic front

page you'll be printing. will you be printing extra copies on wednesday? >> we will. there's going to be an enormous amount of interest in that. moe of our audienceson online. they're not looking for a print edition anymore, but there's going to be a lot of interest in who wins and we'll print extra copies. >> how late can it go before a projection, where you can still print the wednesday morning front page? >> we're making preparation for it to go deep into the next morning. >> like 1:00, 2:00 a.m.? >> we will be fine with that. it won't get to people's homes but it will be available on the street. that we will have a print edition. and of course, there's always the website. >> a good note for our audiences no matter where you're living. if you want the fresh copy of the historic headline, you probably have to go to the newsstand. >> or go onto your computer or your phone and get it right then and there. >> you're selling the digital pretty hard, but doesn't print still make more money? >> print does make more money. no question about it, but that's not where the growth is. the groelth is always in

digital. that where most people are getting their information, ands as of september, we had 83 million unique visitors to our website, an enormous number. a record, and probably october will be an even bigger record. so that's where most people are. >> call me old fashioned, i still want that print edition on wednesday morning. >> we'll deliver it to you. >> we're just getting started here on "reliable sources." ee have a quick break here. after the break, a must-see report about how the coveraligations of voter fraud and intimidation. >> plus, an in depth look on how the election changes journalist, maybe forever. we'll be back in a moment.

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man: in cities big and small, newspapers all over say it's time. woman: time to legalize and regulate marijuana in california. man: time to "vote yes on prop 64." woman: it's "better for public health, for law and order and for society." man: "it makes sense to regulate and tax" marijuana. woman: "prop 64 would bring discipline and oversight." man: "prop 64 is the first step toward a rational drug policy." woman: "it's time for a new approach." man: vote yes on 64. welcome back to "reliable sources." live from washington, d.c. you're in the middle of 100-plus hours of nonstop live coverage, all culminating on election night, tuesday night.

trust me, you're going to want to see what cnn has planned tuesday night. i have five tvs in my living room ready to watch it all. turning right now to one of the biggest narratives of this year. donald trump wants voters to beware, because according to him, the whole system is rigged. >> it's a rigged system, folks. >> rigged system. >> totally rigged. >> absolutely rigged. >> a crooked system. >> the issue of voter fraud. >> voter fraud. >> we're millions of votes ahead. >> these dishonest people don't tell you. >> we're going to go back to the old way, you vote and win. >> voting is rigged. the whole dool is crooked, 100%. almost as crooked as crooked hillary. >> he keeps saying it, suggesting the election could be stolen for him. that has dire consequences after tuesday. this is destabilizing for democracy. how can reporters cut through the clutter and help voters

understand what's really happening? we have ari berman, here to figure it out. here's a writer for the nation and the author of "give us the ballot." let's listen to donald trump from last night in nevada talking ability this issue, talking about suspicious behavior in clark county. let's listen. >> being reported that certain key democratic polling locations in clark county were kept open for hours and hours beyond closing time to bus and bring democratic voters in. folks, it's a rigged system. it's a rigged system. and we're going to beat it. we're going to beat it. >> ari, what is he talks about? what's the truth there? >> so, what he is saying was that there was very high latino turnout in las vegas over the weekend. lots of people were in line when polls closed. so the polls were extended.

this is something that is totally normal and legal. >> legal. >> that if people are in line when polls closed, they're allowed to vote. trump is making it seem like there's some sort of fraud taking place. this is a narrative throughout the campaign, you know, brian, any time things go a way trump doesn't like. any time he's down in the polls, any time black and brown people are voting in large numbers. he starts to talk about the system being rigged. >> you're saying when black and brown people, when minorities are voting, he does not like it. he said he's making a play for african-american voters. >> if you just look at what he said, he's talked about monitoring the polls in certain areas of country. certain communities. he specifically singled out places like philadelphia that have large minority populations. i think everyone knows what he's talking about. the polling places he was talking about in las vegas were almost entirely dominated by latino voters. if you look at how he's polling

among latinos, african-americans, other people of color, he's polling poorly. this has been one giant dog whistle to try to keep certain people from the polls. >> so how should journalists cover it carefully? let's look at fox news from yesterday morning. this disturbed me. a banner on the bottom of the screen talking about voter fraud. the banner says "running rampant." the clear implication here is that voter fraud is happening all over the place, all the time. is it? >> no. it's not. and it's really, as you mentioned, extremely irresponsible for fox news to say this. we have lots of studies. we have lots of data that shows that voter fraud is a very, very small problem in american elections. and that voter impersonation, which is a type of fraud that a voter i.d. law would stop, is extremely rare. that you're more likely to be struck by lightning, for example, than to impersonate another voter at the polls. voter fraud is a small problem. does it occur sometimes? yes, but when it occurs it is usually caught and it does not

swing elections. we saw, for example, the first voter fraud conviction in iowa, which by the way, was done by a trump supporter, but leave that aside. the point was, when someone voted twice in iowa, they were caught. the system worked like it was supposed to. it got rid of bad behavior, and now that voter is facing felony charges and $10,000 fine and five years in jail. >> all right, voter fraud on the one side. vanishingly rare. what about voter intimidation and voter suppression. what do you believe news outlets should be doing to educate the public about that? >> this to me is a much bigger problem. this is the first presidential election 50 years without the full protections of the voter rights act. 14 states including some very important battlegrounds like wisconsin and ohio, have new voting restrictions in place for the first time. and i think the media needs to do a much better job of covering this. they talk about the polls in places like wisconsin or ohio, they need to talk about what is the law, what kind of i.d.s do you need, how many polling

places will there be, and what is the impact? what groups are impacted? are younger voters, voters of color more impacted pie the restrictions? what's the justification for them. what do the numbers show? >> we hear from this progressive p publications. how do you convince conservative media outlets this is a serious problem? >> you just look at the data. i'll give you one piece of data. in 2014, north carolina elimited same day voting. there were 2300 documented cases done by a well known group there of people who were turned away from the polls in that one election. in comparison, there were only two cases of voter impersonation in court that north carolina presented to justify its voter i.d. law. you have 2300 documented cases of people eaturned away from th polls and only two cases of voter impersonation. that kind of data, telling stories of people who have been

turned away from the polls, to me, is extremely important. we need to see a lot more of that on cable news and broadcast news in particular. >> the other factor, of course, the possible hacking of elections. people have been spreading fear that your vote could be hacked. what's the reality on that? >> i think it's a pretty unlikely scenario. it's concerning given everything we have seen in this election from wikileaks on down. the department of homeland security is taking this very seriously. interestingly enough, they said the u.s. electoral system is so disorganized it would be difficult to hack because things are so localized. we don't have centralized systems, so it's a concern but i don't think it's a likely one to happen. >> ari berman, thank you for being here. appreciate it very much. >> thank you very much, brian. >> let's take a look back and a look forward. the media may have used donald trump for higher ratings and paid revenues this year, and trump clearly used the media for attention. and yet he declared war on the

media. and now, now we have to reckon with the consequences. whether donald trump wins or loses on election day, he has already won his campaign against the media. with record low levels of trust in the news media, partly thanks to trump, i'm left wondering, is this an aberration. >> terrible, horrible, unbelievable. illegitimate, disgusting. >> scum. >> or is that the new normal? will other candidates copy trump's shoot the messenger strategy? if so, what should reporters do about it? >> i'm not running against crooked hillary clinton. i'm running against the crooked media. that's what i'm running against. >> the cheering, all of that cheering. that's what matters. writers, editors, producers, executives, all of us have to wrestle with what trump did and how he did it. >> he used the news media while at the same time running a vicious anti-media crusade.

this was his two-sided strategy from day one. >> you have to trust your instincts. you can't believe the press. you can't believe the press. >> his rage against the media machine went on for 16 months. >> i have a very big group of support, and i think one of the reasons is -- let me tell you, the people don't trust you and the people don't trust the media. >> trump was right about that. he was tapping into resentment that was there. trust in media levels were already pitifully low, and trump helped us see it, helped us hear it. in some ways, this was a good thing. journalists need to better understand how readers and viewers feel. but then, of course, trump exploited it. he encouraged more and more media distrust, and he outright lied to his fans. he peddleed so much this information that journalists did take a more forceful approach than usual debunking his lies. >> take a look at the crime.

>> the research and crime does not match what you're saying. the pew research, which is independent, says -- >> don't be naive. you're very naive. >> let's call it what it is, the most extreme anti-media talk we have ever heard from a modern presidential candidate. >> do we all love the media? do we love the media? >> no, there's great dishonesty, unbelievable dishonesty, in the media. unbelievable. >> such bad reporting. they're so bad. they're so illegitimate. they're just terrible people. they're scum. they're horrible people. >> look, hillary clinton is no friend of the media. but donald trump is different. trump sought to strip the press of legitimacy, of credibility. he claimed the corporate media was part of a massive conspiracy against him. and he went after his targets individualualy. >> blood coming out of her wherever. >> george will is a disaster. he's a sleaze in my book. you're a sleaze. >> and this attack against "new york times" reporter surge cove

alessky, when he dared to point out that trump was misrepresenting him. >> now the poor guy,ia don't know what i said. i don't remember. >> if that wasn't bad enough, there was this verbal attack that put katy tur in danger. so much so that the secret service had to give her an escort to her car. >> what a lie it was from nbc. she's back there. little katy, she's back there. what a lie it was. no, what a lie. katy tur. >> you see, the press pen, the area where the press was, gave trump an opponent right there in the arena. he reveled in the anti-cnn chants. >> you know they call it cnn, clinton news network. >> that's why the ratings aren't doing very well. >> they are so biased toward crooked hillary. >> now, from trump's

perspective, he was under attack from a biased press. >> it's called the greatest pile-on in the history of america. >> and trump wanted to do something about it. >> i'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. >> comments like that led journalism advocates to say trump is a real threat to press freedom in the united states. some even said he was ripping off a script from ought ocratic leaders like vladimir putin who openly suppress the press in order to bolster their own power. now trump completely denied that. but you can't help but wonder, what would a president trump white house press briefing room look like. what would a press conference sound like? >> you have set a new bar with being contentious with the press core. >> not all of you, many of you. >> enough of us. is this what it's like covering

you if you're president? >> yeah, it is. >> to answer my own question, yes, this is the ugly new normal. something journalists have to reckon with. because while this election will be over soon, the public's relationship with the press will never be the same. >> joining me to discuss this in more detail about the changes we have seen this year, david and dylan, senior reporter for senior and politics. good to see you. where to begin. david, you wrote this week for the sun, this was the worst year for media. you said the biggest loser this year was the press. ? >> the thing that concerned me most about this was the fast answer is we failed to give citizens trustworthy, verified information that they can use to make an informed decision about the presidency. and you have covered that a million ways. all the fake news, all the different stuff out there. we're in some ways responsible for that, but here's what really troubles me about this, brian.

donald trump, this phenomenon rose up. there's always going to be challenges to us. when donald trump came up and started to run the table on tv time and rise in the polls and win all these primaries, people said, we have never we have to invent a new way to cover him and with that came a corollary that said we can ditch legacy values and so people said things like fairness. we don't have to adhere to old fairness values. he's such a vial character, we'll call him a liar on page one of the "new york times." that's was a huge decision when "the times" made that call. because shortly after that, hillary clinton said that james comey said she was truthful in everything she said and "the washington times" gave her four pinnochios. should they call her a liar on page one, too? we ditch sod many legacy values

in this that if trump was in your town -- >> it's not stupid. fox is a real part of the journalism community. >> i saw isolated stupidity. >> yes. >> what did you see changing here? was fact changing the biggest change? >> i'd respectfully disagree with david. defining the media is always a hard thing to do. i would say it's very generally speaking, donald trump challenged the mainstream media to abandon this sort of notion that the north star journ lia j was he said, she said, even if that meant acknowledging that these two candidates weren't the

same. donald trump did so much to challenge reporters, not only did he lie, serially lie, he said he would impose a ban on people coming into this country based on their religion. he threatened the free press. i mean, there are so many instances in which he has done things that reporters had to embrace more objectivity. >> not to totally disagree but with some of the examples that dylan cited, i think george wallace was just as much of a dangerous character, just as vial a character and even more dangerous because he was governor of alabama and oppressing black people in that

state. we don't know -- well, we have lawsuits against trump but he hasn't had the powers of a government agency behind him yet to do it. we confronted this. was there a bigger liar in political history than richard nixon? we didn't have to invent new rules to bring him down. "the washington post" did it with old fashion legacy, investigative reporting and he had the powers to crush everything and they did it. we didn't say we had to start storming the barricades. >> anti-trump supporters, like the american media, is finally embracing its liberal bias. >> and admitting it. >> and going on the front page and calling donald trump a liar and not doing the same thing for hillary clinton. that's not so much getting rid of false equivalence as it is embracing that liberal bias. i think that's a legitimate

concern. i also think at the end of the day we are looking at an historic candidacy. there is a responsibility to hold them accountable for things he said that are fundamentally anti-american. >> in the two minutes i have left, let me bring in two more guests. lynn sweet and carol tumbletee. trump would be an historic figure. so would hillary clinton. let's assume for two minutes hillary clinton is elected as the first female president. number one, how should the networks and a.p. call this race? are you concerned that there needs to be more care and caution than usual because americans have been told that the elections are rigged by donald trump? >> it depends on what the margins look like. if it looks like it's a big win for either candidate, it's not as crucial as if, you know, there's a key state hanging in the balance.

hello, 2000. >> does it matter which reporters are on the air, lynn? does it matter that female reporters might view her candidacy different than male reporters? >> there's no gender. you've just got to get the job done and i'm glad that you asked so that people who may wonder is every female reporter throwing it? of course not. it's just enough to get the job done and this is a night of all nights where you leave everything alone. it's a big enough job to get the story done right and on deadline, especially if it's a close call. >> newsrooms still dominated by men. what i mean by that, most editors, most officers are men. does this matter? does a clinton candidacy have an impact for women in these rooms? >> i think women in these rooms are going to have to fight their own battles as long as we are journalists. it really shouldn't.

>> it should only be so easy that this gender inequity in newsrooms, which i've seen in my years, that has taken so long to show up in top-management positions, and the political beats, we have a lot of women out on the trail and that's one area where there's been a terrific equalization. there's so much more to do on top management no matter who's president. >> to our panel, i thank you very much. this final thought for you. frankly, the theme of this whole program today, the whole program all year long is how to wrestle with a wild campaign. i have a mild proposal for anyone bewildered by it all. if you're insulted by trump's anti-media campaign, subscribe to a paper. subscribe to a news website. do nate to a nonprofit news organization like "politofact"

and help support the next generation of political reporters. we're out of time here on television. sign up for special editions every 24 hours all week long covering the campaign coverage. i'll see you next week. [quack!] medicare only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. so think about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like any standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, they help cover some of what medicare doesn't pay. so don't wait. call now to request your free decision guide and learn more.

this is it! >> we have unfinished business to do. a glass ceiling to crack once and for all! >> just two days left until an epic election day showdown. >> can you believe it? days away from the change you've been waiting for your entire life. ♪ >> from beyonce and jay-z. ♪ >> to barack and michelle. >> they want to