was largely scandal-free and he did it all the while under a microscope because he looked different. in a sense, america made a big net elected barack obama as its first african-american president and with respect to his personal character and intellect most of the country believes it was a bet that paid off. i'm fareed zakaria. thanks for joining us. good morning and merry christmas and happy holidays to our viewers around the world and in the united states. i'm brian stelter, this is "reliable sources." our weekly look at the story behind the story, how the media really works, how the news gets made. this hour, a special report. for a few more weeks barack obama will be the president of the united states so it's time for a closeup look at how his administration interacted with

the president and vice versa. obama was a professorial president. n the age of twitter and snapchat. he was sometimes the media critic in chief during a period of tremendous change in the media, in newsroom which is created tensions on both sides. now, of course, obama's successor, president-elect donald trump, attacks the media almost everyday so today we have the perfect guest to put this in the proper perspective, what happened in the past eight years and what it means going forward. at the white house, we have three exclusive interviews about the president's efforts to bypass the press sometimes. outgoing press secretary josh earnest will tell me why he feels journalists didn't give obama enough credit on issues like transparency and earnest has advice for the incoming trump administration about the importance of daily press briefings. and later, a blunt conversation with the reporter who has called obama the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation, "new york times" reporter james rison will be here to explain. let's begin with a look

back. a look back to 2009 to inauguration day. this was a stark break with the bush administration and reporters who were tasked with covering history. the nations first african-american president -- and think about this. the nation's first social media president. think about how you use your cell phone in ways you didn't eight years ago. well, the white house had to reckon with that as well. obama's relationship with the press was -- complicated. so what should we learn from the last eight years and how can it apply to the next four to eight years of a trump administration? let's hear from reporters who were there covering the president every single day, david gregory, former white house correspondent and host of "meet the press," now a cnn political analyst. april ryan, white house correspondent and washington bureau chief for american urban radio networks, and ann compton, former white house correspondent for abc news. thank you for being here. >> thanks. >> ann, my impression, maybe i'm

wrong, is that obama respected the existence of the press corps but resented of how some reporters do their jobs, the breathless coverage, the demands for more access. does that sound right to you? >> he scolded us, sometimes with four-letter words. >> four-letter words? >> off the record at a garden behind the oval office because he said we made everything into a scandal. the president was able to at this time in history take the new tools, the twitters, the cell phone videos, and his own videographer, first president out of seven i covered who had his own videographer and newscast on whitehouse.gov every week. he was able to put out so much of his own material i think he allowed the coverage of the president himself and his activities to shrink. >> april, coming up on your 20th anniversary covering the white house. 1997 your first year covering the clinton administration everyday at the office. what was different these eight years between clinton, bush, and obama? >> social media for one. >> so the is videographer for example?

>> the videographer. but also this president going to social media, going on twitter, releasing information or going on facebook. we had to really not only rely on the press secretary but really rely on social media. he was the first social media president and now we look -- and also the fact that he felt that it was plor bid for us to follow him around as well so that's another piece. he said he did not like the body watch. >> so this is the press pool which has been in the news recently. donald trump not having the press go with him to dinner. it's gotten better in december. but you're saying obama also resisted that? >> yes, and i was in the oval office when president obama and donald j. trump were in the oval office together and i remember when we were leaving out president obama leaned over to donald trump and said "you don't always have to answer their questions." and i'm saying "why are you telling this man this?" this sounds like a contentious relationship. >> i think some conservatives look at coverage of the last eight years and say it was warm and fuzzy, the president was

always given the benefit of the doubt by i'm hearing contentious issues here. >> the relationship between the white house press corps and the president is meant to be disr t disruptive. go back to abraham lincoln elected in 1860 and the public can come into the white house everyday and as doris kearns goodwin has written, he would run around the white house trying to figure out where he could have his lunch, a glass of milk and a piece of bread with butter on it. then you have a press corps that becomes a kind of in-house part of the white house, the presidential experience so ronald reagan as he's walking out to the helicopter, ann compton can shout a question at him and he can decide to answer or not answer. but the idea was the press is close and is meant to disrupt the day so that we get access and we can ask questions and that the american people can have a proxy. >> is there enough of an understanding among the public, anne, about why journalists should be living in the

president's house? >> it's the people's house. >> that's a good point. >> and the idea that we have some of the most important real estate in washington between where he wakes up in the morning and where he goes to work at his desk i gave the administration credit for doing one thing, they opened up the staff and the press office and experts within the administration with frequent off-the-record or on background or on-the-record briefings. they did try to put some of their major policy people out and they did it for those of us at the white house everyday. we'd go in theed radioveldt room or they'd come into the briefing room so there was i think an effort on their part to get their policy points across. access to the president, though, is always the key. >> you said this administration had been more opaque than any you covered before. the columbia journalism review found it was a white house determined to conceal its workings from the press and by extension the public. was that true as well? >> their definition of transparency is putting out all

the visitors list online, flooding with us information and fact sheets and enormous briefings when he goes off on a trip but for access to the president himself to actually see him undertake the job of presidency that role of his connection with us this rashran public. >> interesting. we knew who was walking into the white house but we didn't know why necessarily? >> right. and we didn't know why because the white house wanted to make sure they kept their narrative. they kept the message as to what was going on and maybe why the person came once they released the information. they were very concerned with the persona of this president, the historic nature of this president. so many people gave so many different types of reasonings as to why this, why that. and they wanted to keep the messaging on point so they were very tight-lipped about many things because they didn't want to mar the look, the image, out

of this administration. >> but ronald reagan was the one who perfected the use of television and john kennedy was the forerunner of that and before that fdr who mastered the use of the radio. what was he doing? he was going outside of the white house. he was going directly to the people. so every president tries to do it. what's important to remember is if you're covering the white house you have a group of reporters there, it helps our democracy, it helps public understanding of what the president is doing, what his staff is engaged in when you have a press corps that's well briefed, that understand what is they're thinking strategically, substantively and can communicate that and challenge them bush once said to me, he said "gregory, we have a symbiotic relationship." and by that it was not that we scratch each other's back but that he -- there was a role for the press to play that was good for him. >> he recognized that. >> like you're saying, even as he fought to not have us interrupt their flow and reach people directly. >> david is right but you have

to add in the extra layer for this president. the fact that the -- the his store irk pitch th sto -- historic nature. they knew they had to control the narrative for better or for worse for us, for communication to the nation. >> does it mean he was trying to protect himself more? >> yes, i believe they worked to protect him. >> i think that -- and i know from talking to this white house adviser, the president has a bit of an elitist view -- not a bit, an elitist view that the media is silly. >> some media. some media. >> a lot of the media writ large. some he respected but he was very slib about those he respected and those he didn't. i think he thought there was a game and noise of media that he thought was silly and undermined the serious things he was trying to do. >> what did it mean for minority journalists to see the country's diversity reflect bid the commander-in-chief? >> for this president, the first term was different than the

second term. first term barack obama we dealt with issues of race but not in the way he did the second term. first term he talked about issues -- well, he was asked by lynn sweet about the issue with skip gates and the police officer in boston and that was a knee-jerk reaction that caused a whole crescendo of police issues for this president and he had to have the beer summit. then later on in the first term we had the trayvon martin issue where he said "that could be me." so we saw issues and in the second term he became a person we saw as, wow, he's engaged in the community more, talking about black issues more, he feels at ease. so it was interesting to report the dynamic of the first black president first term versus the second term. he had nothing to lose second term. he had a second term. >> the skip gates issue is interesting. so this was the issue of the officers coming into his cambridge home and even after it

was clear he was -- that it was him and it was his home they arrested him and the president said that was stupid that they acted in a stupid way. and i remember hearing the reaction to the coverage of that, that the president was so annoyed that we made that the issue instead of focusing on that press conference that day which was all about health care reform where he tried to explain it and i remember saying to an adviser, i'm like come on, he needs to understand that the first black president calls the police stupid in a racial incident like this, that's going to be a big story. he can't dismiss the gamesmanship of the press without realizing he is the game. he's president of the united states. so some of his critiques were fair and i said he was an elitist about the press, i think he was. i'm not saying he was all wrong but he didn't always appreciate that, yeah, i'm at the center and have to find a way to deal with it. >> and that racial profiling piece came from the beginning of his administration to the end. it followed him whether he wanted to or not. the unknown variables that came

up and that skip gates knee jerk reaction, that was a threat throughout his presidency. >> cbs' mark noeler said obama gave a thousand interviews over the eight years. so he was visible everywhere, using social media yet a lot of reporters didn't feel like they understood him. >> i would need two hands to count the times in which i had an opportunity with other reporters to sit down with the president off the record or informally to talk to him. i think those who cover the white house on a regular basis got a pretty good idea of what made that mind tick and that's what worries me about going forward. if you start taking away that access not only to the president but the senior staff and the west wing staff, there's a reason media organizations commit high-priced talent to cover the white house and that's to have experts there and to lose that understanding of a president and where -- what he said and where he's going i

think would be a very damaging -- very damaging. >> and i want to focus on what it means to have president-elect trump coming in but talking about the off-the-record sessions. i can imagine some viewers thinking wait, you were talking to the president and you weren't allowed to talk about it, report on it, share what he said? mow is that appropriate? >> it's an old white house rule that was undertake within all seven of the presidents, republican and democrat, that i covered. i don't think in the real world off-the-record really exists. some of those quotes are going to get out eventually someday but for a president to sit down -- president obabush did t, we were in the residence in a rainy march afternoon where he talked for an hour and a half about why things were going so bad in iraq and it was fascinating to watch his mind set so every president needs a chance to speak candidly and that better informs those who cover the white house everyday. >> look i think we all recognize we're living at a time when we

have real credibility problems as -- anyone in the media has real credibility problems and there are good journalists and not so good journalists but everyone that we've worked with were people who worked hard, who were smart, trying to get smarter about the presidency and their particular president they were covering. it's really important i think to get off-the-record access to the leader of the free world as a candidate or as the president. >> david, april, ann. stick around. i'll bring you back later. up next, josh earnest surprised me with his view of the press corps. the outgoing white house press secretary talking about president obama's legacy and what an income trump administration could do. how the briefings could change how the press corps relationship to the president could change. hear from josh earnest right after the break.

welcome back to a special edition of "reliable sources obama and the media." it's amazing to think about the change in the country. did you know barely 1250 million people were on facebook when he was sworn in? now the total is approaching 2 billion. the whole country and much of

the world is connected by smartphones. this has given president obama totally new ways to bypass the preside prison, but that also meent this administration had to react in realtime to videos of terror attacks, police shootings, oil spills and so much more. i'll never forget how a man in pakistan even tweeted about the bin laden raid not having any idea what was in abbottabad that night. now in 2016 obama is packing up. at his last white house correspondents dinner he literally dropped the mike. >> with that i just have two more towards say. "obama out." [ cheers and applause ] >> part of him maybe wants to get away from the mike for a while so how did administration approach thorny questions about media access and transparency? i sat down with outgoing press secretary josh earnest in the white house briefing room and

heard his advise for his successor. check this out. thinking about 2009, the beginning of president obama's time in this building to now, what are the biggest changes in the media landscape that have affected your job and the way the this white house communicates with the public? >> we've seen it change dramatically. that means there are news outlets people had never heard of that didn't exist that are now influential in our -- in the way people get news, including political news. there are now outlets or media platforms that were in their infancy in 2009 that now are prominent parts of our political debate in this country. reporters understand, for example, that twitter and facebook are good ways for them to get their reporting out. to get more readers and more viewers. to distribute this information on twitter and facebook. the same is true of the president's message. >> that old line we're not so different you and i. you're saying the press people and journalist experienced the

same changes due to technology. and we face the same challenges. >> president obama vowed to be the most transparent president with the most transparent administration in history. a lot of journalists have had their foia requests stymied and would argue otherwise. did the government do enough to become more transparent, to act on foia requests in these eight years? >> there are hundreds of thousands of foia requests that were answered and responded to with at least some of the information that was requested. we also succeeded in this administration in putting much more of that information available online so a lot of journalists didn't have to file a foia in order to get access to the information. >> are there shortcomings you see, that you would like to see the next administration address? >> there are institutional challenges with foia which is that you're never going to hold a big political rally that attracts a large crowd by saying you want to increase funding for government agencies so they can be more effective in responding to foia requests. and that's just a -- that's a

basic fact of our political system and this is an argument that i've made in a variety of settings. there is no constituency in american politics for transparency in government beyond journalists. but my point is if this constituency, journalists, are going to be effective advocates for the issue they care about they need to remember they have a responsibility not just to criticize those who are not living up to their expectations, any activist will tell you that the way you get people to support you and your cause is to give them credit when credit is due. to applaud them when they do the thing you want them to be doing when they start moving in the right direction. this is one of the beeves i have that with journalists and this will get tested a bit in four years. given the fact that president obama has been the most transparent in american history and given the fact that he has not gotten much, if any, credit

for that from journalists, what incentive does a guy like donald trump who i think has a pre-disposition against transparency when you considered the way he handled his tax returns, what argument does anybody have that there's a benefit for him to be more transparent? he has a responsibility to but is is there a political benefit? what leverage do -- does the press corps have? other than to criticize him in the same way that many journalists criticized obama. >> it sounds like there is a bit of respect in this room even though it's obviously antagonistic and uncomfortable relationship. >> my philosophy from this job from day one has been if there's ever a day when there's not friction between the white house press corps and press office, that's an indication somebody is not doing their job. >> final question for you. what advice you want to share with whoever takes over, whoever is behind that podium on january 22. >> two things. the first is make sure you know

where the president'sed he's at because your ability to faithfully represent his point of view is critically important. the second is just a principle for life which is be honest. honesty and credibility and trustworthiness is the most important part of this job. >> isn't part of your job evading people's questions, trying not to fully answer when you don't have full answers? >> i think peek can understand there's a give and take and argument wes make and that there are certain situations where i'm asked about things i can't discuss publicly but none of that should come close to compromising the truth because i think once it does it significantly undermines your ability to be an effective advocate for the administration and the things you believe in. that's worth protecting. >> josh, thank you very much. >> nice to see you, brian. up next. more of our exclusive interviews with the president's press team inside the west wing. they're talking about obama's appearances on leno, on fallon,

on youtube and his rocky relationship with fox news. we'll be right back.

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first with an appearance on the "tonight show" with jay leno. then with a visit the daley show, "letterman" and many more. no one quite slow jams the news like president obama with jimmy fallon. this routine they performed more than once together. i find myself wondering was there an entertainment or late night show obama didn't appear on? given how controversy this strategy was, how new it was for presidents. i asked white house communications director jen socsock -- jen saki if the president went before. >> how many requests does he get? >> every dozens. >> dozens, so a lot of your day is saying no? >> i am a big captain no at times, internally, externally, 15% of my jobs is to prevent terrible things from happening but we also pitch interviews to people and we have contacted a number of outlets that haven't

traditionally done an interview with the president or government official and that's interesting to us. >> do you ever think the administration went too far with these interviews? >> i think there's a very unhealthy "us versus them" going on between mainstream and newer online outlets. glozell was a unique and different interview. we didn't think of it as a hard hitting interview. >> all right, what about zach galifianakis in "between two ferns q." >> the person was urpose was to information about the affordable care act. theres a an authenticity about who president obama is. but i don't think democrats are the only ones or the obama staff are the only ones who have done

humorous things or thought of humorous things. that's probably not giving republicans enough credit. >> what should the next administration know about the press/president relationship? what must be preserved, in your view, no matter what happens with president trump? >> well, i think there are certain things that will make their lives easier that may be contrary to what they or others may think. the press briefing has a certain efficiency to it. hundreds of questions come into the white house everyday. there would be no way to answer those if we didn't have a press briefing everyday. >> sometimes this is like a tv show in this room. you're saying it has an important function? >> it has an important function for efficiency and democracy. the united states is one of the only countries. look at the diminishing number of countries that have a free press where you have three podiums in the government where there is official who goes out, gives a briefing and takes questions anyone has, that back-and-forth is a healthy

thing. otherwise i think you have an abligation to the american people to be honest and provide information that's accurate and that's the important role that any government in any press office has. that sounds like a shot at some of the trump aides who have been peddling false information in interviews and on twitter. >> well, look, i won't be specific other than to say there has been a long tradition that comments made by the president of the united states and senior officials are accurate and honest and if they're inaccurate it's not intentionally so. i think that flew out the window this election cycle and has changed how media is going to have to report but i also think you start in the white house and it's a fresh start and a new student. >> conservatives would say to you benghazi. they would cite other examples when they believe there was misinformation that was shared by the white house. do you have specific regrets with regards to times the white

house was not forthcoming enough? not honest enough? >> hindsight is always 20/20. i wouldn't say there's never a time that i have ever been intentionally dishonest, no. and i don't think my colleagues are the same -- i think my colleagues are the same way. i think there are times that we look back and wish we could have handled something differently or done it differently. >> there was recently a story suggesting maybe president obama would launch a digital media company after he leaves the white house. any chance he wants to host a television news show or talk show? >> are you looking for a co-host? >> any time. >> i'll let him know. i think he is very interested in how people consume information and the changing trends -- not just trends but the fact that more and more people are getting their information online. that mobile has changed so much in terms of how people digest information so he'll be an interested observer but not a -- not directly involved in the

media business, no. >> if nothing else, i'm sure the president will keep tweeting and facebooking. now, the president usually said hei espn but he frequently criticized his foes like sean hannity. here's one example of his many fox critiques. >> there's a reason fewer republicans are preaching doom on the deficits. it's because the deficits have come down at almost a record pace and they're now manageable. there's a reason fewer republicans, you hear them running around about obamacare because while good affordable health care might seem like a fanged threat to the freedom of the american people on fox news, it turns out it's working pretty well in the real world. >> you can see the president getting his jab at fox. he didn't freeze out fox all together. he gave interviews to the network. here's an example with bill o'reilly before the super bowl. but obama clearly felt fox and

the right wing media universe hindered his presidency. here's what he said in a recent interview with hbo's bill maher. >> if i watched fox news i wouldn't vote for me either. you have this screen, this fun house mirror through which people are receiving information. how to break through that is a big challenge. how. >> so how did the administration approach fox and the hyperactive fast-paced media world. i asked white house press secretary eric schulz. >> what's your biggest -- i don't want to agree vance but what would you change about the media today. >> how long do you have? >> that's interesting. often times a story happens, a medline happens and you try to put context around it and it's too late. >> this is an observation from myself but something i hear from journalists all the time. giving the economics of the media environment, there's fierce pressure to report

content around the clock and these deadlines hint err journal itself's ability to think things through, get more viceth voices in -- voices in a story. >> there were a times when this administration would criticize fox news, president obama himself would criticize fox news sometimes suggesting it isn't a legitimate news organization. was that appropriate? >> i'll let people judge for themselves. what the president has talked about is the trend of people being able to self-select their news. so in other words if you only watch fox news you get a certain perspective just like if you only read left wing digital news outlets. >> but he didn't complain about those, he complained about fox. >> i think he's made a lot of comments about the trends we've seen in our media and i think we now live in a world where it's easy to get published whether you're a reporter or not, whether you're a journalist or not so there's an expotential

amount of information. that's the magic of the internet is the proliferation of material at your fingertips is so people -- at some point this comes down to the viewer to make sure you're self-policing yourself and being vigilant about the information you consume. >> did you ever throw your remote at the tv watching fox? >> i throw my remote at the tv watching a lot of stations. >> do you? why? >> look, again, dan pfeiffer used to say you have to separate the signal from the noise and so often we in washington get consumed with a story of the day, a juicy tidbit that drives coverage for a certain number of hours and the next morning it's gone. >> give me a good example of that kind of distraction that television and digital media can't resist. >> i'll do the opposite. i'll give you an example of a time where you guys were singly focused on something and you should have been. when healthcare.gov was down. that was one of the hardest times to work in the white house

communications office. we couldn't talk about anything else because you were solely fixated on the web site not working and you should. >> you think the media coverage helped focus the administration? >> it was a hurj priority of this president? it was a massive undertaking and we screwed up so we should be held accountable until we fix it. >> very interesting to hear them talking about accountability, clearly sending messages to the next administration, up next on "reliable sources" a guest who says obama's administration was the greatest threat to press freedom in a generation, "new york times" reporter james rison saying obama was the worst since nixon. he's up after the break.

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during his tenure, president obama said all the right things about supporting press freedoms abroad. >> we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. >> but his record with reporters at home has been controversial, with some saying it's a far cry from the promises he made when first elected. >> the way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable and the way to make government accountable is to make it transparent. >> and this some ways his

administration did. we've been talking about accountability and transparency all hour here. but the obama administration engaged in a war on whistle-blowers, prosecuting far more government officials for leaking to the press than past administrations did. a few years ago, internal government documents about the administration's insider threat program equated leaks with espionage. numerous government employees including most famously edward snowden and chelsea manning have either been charged or convicted for leaking information to the press under the espionage act. journalists have sometimes been caught up in these investigations. let me show you an example. this is back in 2013. the justice department secretly obtained phone records of both associated press reporters and edito editors, the a.p. called this an unconstitutional act. this is how the white house justified the action. >> the president is a strong defender of the first amendment and a firm believer in the need for the press to be unfettered

in its need to conduct and facilitate a free flow of information. he also, of course, recognizes the need for the justice department to investigate alleged criminal activity. >> with a new administration about to take over, the question backs did the obama administration contribute to a criminalization of the press? what are the consequences here? james rison is here to answer. he's a national security reporter with the "new york times" who faced the threat of being jailed by the government for his refusal to reveal his sources. james, thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> your seven-year legal fight ended last year. tell us, when i say the word "criminalization of the press," when i use that phrase, is an an overstatement of what happened in your case? >> no, i think it's very accurate. i think in my case the government considered at one point charging me with obstruction of justice.

they considered at one point making me a subject of the investigation, they tried to drag me into an espionage investigation. >> let me show on screen something you posted on twitter last year. you said "i plan to spend the rest of my life fighting to undo the damage to press people are in the united states done by barack obama and eric holder." what other kinds of damage have you seen done in the last eight years? >> i think this administration has been the most secretive since the neck son administration. they've been the most anti-press administration since the nixon administration. >> in what ways? >> well, they have gone after -- they have as you said criminalized investigative reporting. they tried to take essentially stories they don't like and try to find some classified information that might be part of that and then turn it into a criminal leak investigation in

which they say someone mishandled or disclosed classified information. as you know, you can do that with virtually any story in washington. >> does it mean much to you or anything to you that eric holder, the former attorney general, others have expressed some regret about some of the ways this administration try to pursue whistle-blowers and in some cases wrap up journalists in that? i recall holder saying one of his greatest regrets as indicting james rosen in an unindicted co-conspirator in this case. >> after he said that he kept coming after me. i don't think there was any serious regret by the administration. i think they didn't like negative publicity and so wherever people pointed this out in the press and when it became a big issue they would say we're misunderstood. but i don't think eight years of a pattern of behavior is something that's misunderstood. >> so what does this tell us

about the next four to eight years? how could a president trump build on what we saw from the obama administration with regards to pursuing leakers and sometimes looking into the journalists publishing those leaks? >> i think it will be very easy. i think obama and holder have left trump a very clear path on how to do this. people don't remember that until the valerie plame case in 2004, leaks were basically ignored by the government. so this process that the obama administration engaged in was really new. it was a sharm break with past tradition in washington when leaks were largely ignored. >> it's interesting, so even about a dozen years ago you're saying there's been a big change recently? >> oh, yes. i first started covering the cia in the clinton administration and the clinton administration never did these kinds of leaks. no one ever did before really

the -- after 9/11 and then after the plame case. and then the obama administration took what the george w. bush administration began on leaks and ratcheted it up and make it a much bigger issue. it turned it into a top priority for federal law enforcement. it should have never been before. >> how does it change the way you do your job? do you try to communicate with sources differently? the names sent up an anonymous tip way. others have encrypted tip boxes. how do you do your job? >> you have to use encryption much more than ever before. the best thing to do i think is to try to meet people in person and try to go off the grid as much as possible that's really the simplest and easiest thing to do. >> james, thank you so much for being here this morning. >> thank you. >> as risen was just saying

there, new administrations often build on what was done before so what's the future of washington reporting during the administration? our all-star panel is back in just a moment. severe ulcerative, the possibility of a flare was almost always on my mind. thinking about what to avoid, where to go... and how to deal with my uc. to me, that was normal. until i talked to my doctor. she told me that humira helps people like me get uc under control and keep it under control when certain medications haven't worked well enough. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection.

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welcome back to this special edition of "reliable sources: obama and the media." some reporters are bracing for a much more adversarial relationship with the next commander in chief. president-elect trump has called the press scum, deeply dishonest and many, many more insults. so let's talk about that with our panel. back with me now, david gregory, political analyst. april ryan, white house correspondent and washington bureau and ann compton, correspondent for abc news. april, you're going to be in the daily briefings, if there are

daily briefings in the trump administration. >> well, we do know. we've seen it already. what you see, you brief. he's chastised the media personally and professionally. i can expect -- this is my opinion, i expect some of that to happen but it's interesting, i saw him again going back to the oval office. i saw him in the oval office with president obama and he pointed out at the end of the meeting, when all of the press was leaving, he said, hi. i said, hello. he said, you're good. i said, wow, thank you. i asked him for an interview and he just said nothing. but i expect that i'm going to be part of the media that will be challenged, that may even be attacked. there's a concern that our seating, our booths may be moved. but you know, at the end of the day, they need to have the real press, whether they don't like mainstream press, whether they do like mainstream press, we've

been there, that historic, the knowledge, the history, the understanding of how it works, we have been there. and if you want to change it, fine. but my big concern is what types of media will be coming into the briefing room and i'm just very concerned about the change of the tide in the press room and of the press in the white house. >> we have to remember, these fights have been going on for a long time and i think it's very easy for the white house correspondents' association to say, we should be able to decide what's media and what is not. you remember, ann, the clinton administration came in and wanted bar access to the upper press offices where you have free access as a reporter. that created a huge issue and they backed down. >> six months later. >> president-elect trump has tried to delegitimatize the media at every turn. >> yes, it's different, but we have to put in context other

presidents that have tried to delegitimatize the media in their own way. this may be blunt and crude the way he does it. reporters have to fight for access. >> how does fighting for access work? what does that look like? >> i think you have to advocate. you have to say that having a press corps that gets access to the president to be able to ask him a question. >> we want a press conference. >> right. press conferences, to have an editorial presence in meetings, to be able to follow the president. these things are important. the daily press briefing, look, a lot of times they are boring and don't make news but for white house reporters, some of that is what keeps you in an information loop about information that may not be news. >> i think we've got to be careful about judging an administration before it actually takes office because sometimes your worst fears can become real if the administration thinks, well, this is what they expect. the press has to do a

responsible, careful job as we have always done, uncovering not only the policies but the personalities in this presidential administration. and we have to show our viewers and listeners and readers why those presence there is valuable to them. so the press has to step up now as well with clear, good convincing coverage and the pressure will always be on for more access but we have to do it in a responsible way. >> and we have to recognize that we've got our own issue, right? and we've got credibility problems. so we can't just assert in all of ourself-righteous zeal, we are entitled. we've got to earn that respect to the american public and that has frayed over the years, whether it's the kind of coverage that the campaigns get, the kind of coverage that white houses get, this is going to be a back and forth and we want people to watch or read or listen to what we're doing. we have to cover this

administration fairly and honorably and be tough as well and protect the issue of access, protect the press freedom and keep advocating. >> a great news story is about to be told by the trump administration. thank you very much, ann, david, april, thank you for being here. >> we're back with more "reliable sources" in just a moment. at planters we know how to throw a remarkable holiday party. just serve classy snacks and be a gracious host, no matter who shows up. do you like nuts? come on! why doesn't verizon offer unlimited data like t-mobile? is it because their lte network was built six years ago?

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and that's all for this televised edition of "reliable sources." coming up next week, an exciting program, looking ahead to 2017 and we're assembling an all-star panel of top editors and media

decision makers to look ahead at what the new year in the news business may bring. sign up for our nightly newsletter and find more of my interviews with obama's press aidesf aides. so we'll see you online and back here next week. hello, thanks for joining me. i'm dana bash in for fredricka whitfield. netanyahu says he's summiting shapiro condemning israeli settlements to pass. israel also ten countries that voted forever the resolution, a foreign ministry spokesman said the meetings were to express deep anger and dissatisfaction as a result of the vote of countries that consider themselves friends of israel. the vote sparked