times but also agreed to additional resolutions authorizing the use of military force. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. i'm brian stelter and it's time for "reliable sources." this is our weekly look at the story behind the story, how the media works, how the news gets made. in this hour how a narrative gets made. another tough week for president trump. so what does he do? reignites his war against the news media. speaking of that, today has been declared international fact checking day so does the white house get it mostly true or pants on fire grade for this week? the top editor of politifact is on. this weekend there's a new report about the fact that fox star bill o'reilly harassed them and the secret settlement payments that are being revealed. it's all included in this front

page "new york times" story saying five people were paid by either o'reilly or fox after accusing him of sexual harassment or other sorts of verbal harassment. "the times" says the payouts totaled a staggering $13 million. the first settlement was back in 2002 as you can see here. two of the payments happened just last year after the sudden departure of fox news founder and ceo roger ales. ales was sued for sexual harassment by ex-anchor gretchen carlson. then many other women came forward including megyn kelly. ales was forced to resign. there's a federal grand jury investigation. other unrelated lawsuits are pending and o'reilly is sort of the center of the fox universe. the biggest star with the biggest ratings on cable news. responsible over the course of his 20 years on fox for hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. o'reilly says that makes him a big target. he is denying the claims against him.

but all of this begs the question, if ales was discussed with numerous harassment claims, this behavior would not be targeted, then why does o'reilly still have a job, the biggest job on cable news? we will talk to one of the attorneys for an alleged victim coming up. joining me first are the two reporters who broke this story, emily steel in new york and in washington michael schmidt. they co-by lined the story. and also matthew garahan broke some news this week about fox about the mourdock empire. so thank you all for being here today. emily, let me start with you on the broad strokes of this story here. you have a very detailed story that i believe you've been working on for many months. can you tell me how this story came about? >> this story came about, we were in the middle of the scandal with roger ales last summer and we thought that we shouldn't start looking into what else was happening at the

network. there was this case of andrea makris that happened in 2004 where she sued him for sexual harassment. and we were curious to look what was happening there. in the course of our reporting we found that there were other settlements and other women who had made allegations against bill o'reilly. >> makris was the not secret settlement. $9 million back in 2004. you're saying there were $4 million worth of other settlements that were made more privately. >> right. that's what our reporting shows. >> what is o'reilly saying about this? >> what o'reilly has said is because of his prominence, he's a target of suits and allegations. >> does that stand up? is that true? >> well, what we've seen is that there has been this pattern where a number of women have come forward to make complaints about him and as a result of those complaints there have been settlements that were made. >> let me turn to michael as well. michael co-bylined this story.

what was probably the most important revelation that you believe you all found? the most important fact you all put on the record? >> the biggest thing here was establishing that payments had been made after ales left. that showed that fox's way of approaching this had not really changed and that they were willing to cut these deals and hope that they remained secret in a way to keep them out of the press. they saw this as the only way they could deal with this without them bringing -- you know, sort of bringing the issue to light. the thing at fox which they would say is, look, we're under enormous pressure here. the ales stuff was out here. these were meritless claims. this was the only way we could deal with them. >> do you find that in your reporting, michael, in other businesses? the line i'm getting from folks on o'reilly's side is, hey, everybody settles. companies settle all the time. o'reilly is no different. is that true of your reporting in washington? >> what we do know is that companies at times will settle

claims that they think are meritless because it's expensive to go to trial. the legal costs are there and you can also lose at trial and you can also have some really nasty headlines along the way. so the thought is, okay, i'll pay a little bit of money here to make it go away and keep it quiet. the problem is is that there's a repeated pattern here of it happening so the question is is mr. o'reilly simply someone that people are taking advantage of or why is it that all of these women have come forward or why is it that all of these women who worked for him felt, you know, so strongly about this that they were willing to do this, to go to fox and ask for money like this? >> you said the word pattern. let me quote from your story. i'll put it up on the screen. the reporting suggests a pattern. as an influential person in the newsroom he would create a bond and promise advice and help them professionally. he would then pursue sexual relationships with them causing some to fear if they rebuffed

him, their careers would stall. did you find other than the five, other women that you didn't write about in the story perhaps for legal reasons? >> well, what we wrote about in the story was the information that we felt comfortable with. in the story along with the five are two other women who have made allegations against mr. o'reilly but have not received payouts. one is wendy walsh who says mr. o'reilly reneged after she rebuffed a sexual action against him. and there's another woman. she describes some harassment that she had received from mr. o'reilly during her time and that had been backed up by a statement signed under oath from her psychologist who said she had contemporaneously to when she said this behavior had occurred had told her therapist about this. >> wendy walsh, her lawyer coming up later this hour. matthew garahan, let me bring you in here from "the financial

times." you have been covering the mourdocks for many years. what does it say to you? what does it stand out to you about the reporting? what's the headline as someone who has not been involved? >> we've been doing our own reporting on this, too. you look at the fox response, why did these women come forward at the time? why didn't they call human resources? it's important to remember that at the time all of this is going on roger ales ran fox news like a despot. he controlled human resources, legal, financial. he and bill o'reilly were very close. the women who had a grievance against bill o'reilly or roger ales, they knew it would come back to roger ales. >> that's a point that's very important. a lot of the women that we talked to said they feared making complaints. they feared retaliation. they thought if they were to bring forward a complaint about someone as powerful as bill o'reilly that their career would be in jeopardy. >> let me ask a couple questions

about the reporting process here, emily. you've been working on this for months. i had a personal o'reilly side that said emily steel has had it out for o'reilly for years. is this at all personal? >> it's not a personal story. we're trying to follow the facts and write a fair and accurate story about. >> did you have any third party corroboration like audio tapes or anything like that? >> what's interesting is that two of the women who reached settlements, these are settlements that bill o'reilly paid himself, andrea makris and rebecca gomez diamond, they both had evidence, recordings. >> so there was some but you didn't hear that directly. >> we didn't hear the tapes, no. >> i'm asking because i'm trying to think about what holes o'reilly's folks are going to try to poke in your story. i've not see them challenge any facts. >> no, that hasn't happened. >> what are you expecting now? on saturday "the wall street

journal" reported that bill o'reilly recently renewed his contract. it was going to be up later this year. these renewed for an unknown amount of time. ally he be staying at the network for a while. do you think there's any fallout to come from this? >> i think one big question is whether there are other women who might come forward with allegations or accusations. >> you can't say whether you have other women besides the five settlements and two others you name in the story, you can't say there are other women like you all interviewed? >> like what mike said, the facts are the facts that we thought were ready to go. >> if i can just say, there are clear parallels here between the culture at fox news, the fact that it was effectively this rogue unit run by someone who did whatever he wanted pretty much, who had complete control of every aspect of the business, top talent who were allowed to do what they wanted to do, big power between that and this burgeoning scandal and the phone hacking scandal which obviously happened at another roof and metal company.

>> this was in brittain, reporters secretly tapping into phones. >> this was another business run without any effective controls from above, without anyone -- without people going rogue. cutting deals with ee grieved victims for millions of dollars. you have to ask yourself. happening once is bad enough. happening twice it's unclear to me. it's unclear how they can justify it in this way. >> you mentioned one of the comments, they said in part, call the sexual harassment hotline. >> i said there was fear within the fox news. there's speculation. millions of dollar checks were written, were concealed within the fox news accounts and the

financial reporting structure. they didn't know anything about it. >> one of the things that's really interesting is that one of these settlements that we covered was so secret, it was this woman, rebecca gomez diamond, in 2011, the parent company, 21st century fox did not learn about this until late 2016 when they were conducting their own investigation into fox news under roger ales' tenure. >> what does it mean that fox has renewed o'reilly's contract apparently given all of these facts, matt? >> it's kind of baffling to me. roger ales, they were so boxed in. they had an independent law firm come in and investigate to me. standing by o'reilly in this way, o'reilly was a figure head for the network. he stands for something that the network stands for, too. he represents a huge constituency in the country, the pro trump voter which is the

bread and butter for foxx ne ne. >> he's the corner stone. there's no heir apparent. no one else to be put on at 8:00. he is by far the biggest star of the network, maybe shawn hannity number two. >> michael, now that you mention trump, is bill o'reilly the donald trump of fox news? >> well, as you pointed out, he's certainly the face. the question here will be is there any other pressure on fox to really do anything. in the case of ales, there was a lawsuit that was moving ahead. there were other women that were coming out and i think that fox really started to feel the pressure. the question is is there any other pressure that will be put on fox that will be put on the mourdocks to do something here. that really remains to be seen. o'reilly could sort of ignore this, fox could ignore this and it could kind of fall off. if this becomes let's say part of the federal investigation or if there are other women that come out then fox is going to be forced to defend it in a way

they haven't at this point. they haven't explained why o'reilly was treated differently than ales. until that happens, they may be able to avoid that. >> you mentioned the federal investigation. matt brought it up as well. was your story, michael, linked to this federal investigation? was there any connection? >> at this point we see no connection to the federal investigation at this point, but as -- you know, as a law enforcement reporter myself, you know, when the feds get in and they start looking at things, they continue to dig and dig and look at other things. if they see vulnerabilities or possible other wrongdoing, they really like to dig in on that. although the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york preet ba harrah has been pushed out by mr. trump, that's a very aggressive office. when you have them rummaging around in your stuff, that's not a good place to be. >> fox said back -- about a month or two ago, they had not been subpoenaed. they are cooperating with the

attorney's office. still no subpoena. matthew, what does it mean to be under a grand jury investigation? you reported the grand jury is going to meet again this week and someone has been offered immunity. >> two witnesses have been subpoenaed and offered immunity. one is mark crons, the cfo. he wrote the checks. if anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it's this guy. fox news and 21st century fox may be bullish about how this pans out but there's a group looking for this. preet recused himself because of the friendship with the 21st century fox board members. slight red herring. >> interesting. >> they're looking at it. they've got witnesses subpoenaed. they have the power to go in and shake the tree. >> two separate stories that may be related but are separate. >> yeah. >> the grand jury investigation

into fox finding out about these payments and then this bill o'reilly story that you all have broken in "the new york times" this morning. let me wrap up by going back to the o'reilly story. emily, your colleague was talking about what the fallout could be. could there be an ad boycott? could there be some financial impact on the show? >> that's a good question. you see that he has generated more than $400 million in revenue for -- in ad revenues on his show over the last three years. you wonder, will those advertisers continue to support snim the other big question, too, is whether women inside of fox news, what they'll think about this. and whether there will be some backlash inside the network, inside the company. >> that's a crucial point. not only that, a semi-related point. will women not appear on the o'reilly show? matthew, do you see other versions of fallout, other possibilities here you'll be looking for? >> i think the ad boycott is

interesting. i don't think necessarily that's going to happen in the short term, but it just creates this, you know, pretty bad impression about atmosphere around the place. i mean, james murdoch will end up running the company -- >> rupert's sons? >> rupert's sons, don't like this one bit, i can tell you. there are people within the network itself who don't like this one bit. rupert mourdock, the buck stops with him. he's been running fox news since roger ailes was pushed out. >> o'reilly says there is no merit to these claims. the people around o'reilly, the people running the company all know he has this reputation inside the company. he may have these consensual relationships but the women say it's sexual harassment. >> on that point there is a big question about whether there is a consensual relationship in the workplace. if someone has power over you, if they have power over your career you may enter into the

relationship thinking as a woman that you have full power and authority, but what happens when you want to get out and that person has power over your future, your job, your career. can you? >> emily, matt, mike, thank you for being here today. coming up, one of the lawyers involved in this story. we're going to ask how many more women could possibly come forward. lisa bloom is the attorney for wendy wass. she'll join me after the break.

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now in kids chewables. roughly $13 million has been paid out to address harassment issues with bill o'reilly.

thank you very much for being here. >> good morning. >> how did you get involved with this case? >> this is not my first case against fox news. i tonight expect it will be my last dr. walsh had been a client of mine on some business matters. i am very proud to stand with her and represent her. she did not sue. she did not ask for a dime. she has not asked for any money. she simply has told her story publicly and so i wonder what mr. o'reilly's response is to her given that his defense is simply everybody's after money but she's not even asking for any money. >> why is she holding a press conference with you tomorrow? >> because everybody in the media has come to her since the story broke yesterday asking for more information, and we do have something to reveal at the press conference as to what the next

steps are going forward. i will give you a little preview. there needs to be an independent investigation of sexual harassment at fox news. how many women have to come forward? by my count it's already been dozens and dozens of women who have been reported in reputable media to have come out against roger ailes and bill o'reilly and others. the law firm of bill weiss has not done an independent investigation. >> paul weiss looked into the ailes matter for fox last summer. >> they represent fox news. they told me that. that's fine. fox news is entitled to have an attorney. those are attorneys for fox news. they have not done an independent investigation and that needs to happen immediately. >> now, lisa, here's what folks at fox are going to think. we know what they're going to think. you're a former nbc analyst and liberal activist on a competing

channel, cnn, calling for an investigation of fox. isn't this all political? isn't this all competitive? >> yeah, that's all they have. bring it on. how many women have to come forward? how many millions of dollars have to get paid before fox news takes sexual harassment seriously? in my opinion, this network is the bill cosby of corporate america. women over and over again are driven out. >> what evidence do you have? >> the dozens and dozens of women who have come forward and said, i was sexually hassed there. how many gretchen carl sons. how many andrea tantarases do we need? all of these women driven out, their careers over. bill o'reilly is sitting pretty. this has been going on since 2002 according to the "new york times" article. this is absolutely outrageous. do women's careers mean anything at fox news? do the laws of sexual harassment ever get enforced there? we don't see any -- >> 21st century fox would say yes. we're having sensitivity training. >> oh, please. >> we learned from the ailes

scandal. they would say they cleaned up the house. >> they would say that but the claims are still going on from 2016 after roger ailes left according to the "new york times" article yesterday. sensitivity training is not enough. i say bring back the women who were terminated after they brought claims of sexual harassment, drive out the predators at the network and then we'll think you're starting to take this seriously. >> are you the right person to be speaking out? i'm thinking about this optically. very antitrump. you're taking on a pro trump post. >> you know why i'm antitrump? because i represented four of the women who accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault. this is not about me, okay? this is about fox news and their culture of sexual harassment and showing over and over again that they don't get it. i believe there are more women out there and to them i say get a strong woman to stand with you. it doesn't have to be me, but it should be a feminist attorney. i know you're scared. dr. wendy walsh is very scared. she has me at her side and that's what you need. you don't have to go through this alone. >> in o'reilly's statement this

weekend, on his website, bill o'reilly.com, he said the worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, the fox news channel. i asked his spokesman to come on the channel and he declined. i asked them to provide someone else and he declined. the statement says o'reilly feels he is a vulnerable target. what's your response? >> oh, boo hoo hoo, so hard to be bill o'reilly and have woman after woman come forward. some of them with recordings of what he said what he was doing in the shower which i probably can't say on your show, right? it's not like people are accusing him of i slipped and fell on your property and i'm suing you. it's always sexual harassment. and you mean to tell me woman after woman for 12 or 13 years, they've all conspired together, women who don't know each other to accuse him of sexual harassment? how many women have to come forward before he starts to take this seriously and stops portraying himself as a victim? >> lisa bloom, thank you very

much for being here. >> thank you. >> you can imagine we'll have plenty of more on this story in our nightly newsletter. you can follow along all week long. nightly updates, go to reliable sources.com for our nightly newsletter. coming up next here, president trump reigniting his twitter attacks on the press and once again asking if liable laws should be changed. our panel weighs in next. it's our little differences,

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welcome back. i'm brian stelter.

i have to tell you when you log on and read them in a row, it really is downright shocking. no, it's not surprising anymore but it's still seriously shocking. fake news has become a crutch for him. he wrote it is the same fake news media that said there is no path to victory for trump that is pushing the phony russia story. a total scam. here resulting to name-calling, when will sleepy eye chuck todd stop with the fake trump russia story. is that more deflecting? joining me, jeff mason, president of the white house correspondent's association and correspondent for reuters and charles blow, columnist for the "new york times" and matthew contenetti, weekly contributing editor for the weekly standard. are you starting to need a flak jacket? >> they have become contentious, there's no fact about that. the fact that it's getting so

much attention, people are interested. the american public is interested in how the relationship with the press and white house continues. they're interested to see how sean answers the tough questions that he's getting from the white house press core. >> do you trust what he tells you now? >> i think it's important to listen carefully and to fact check this administration like we would for any administration. >> so they're no different from any other administration? >> i'm just not -- i'm not going to contrast. i'm going to say it's important to fact check and there's no -- there's no question that there are things that have come out of the mouths of administration officials and this administration including president trump that have not been true and that requires a steady hand by the press fact checking and following up. >> so i'm pulling up trump twitter feeds since i took a break for the week. i wanted to ask you about it, matthew. the most recent post from the president, the real story is

surveillance and leaking. he says, find the leakers. is this an example of two alternate realities. the conservative media is saying obama surveillance and the other side is trump and the russia issue. >> i think it's two different stories. there are several stories going on. the story of mike flynn and the leak, there's the story of the trump team contacts with russia, what that means and then there is the story that's late breaking about devin nunez and what kind of collection was going on of the trump campaign or of trump family members during the election. the key for me is, you know, trump was elected to be commander in chief, not media critic in chief. when you go and talk to a lot of his supporters, there's some kind of exhaustion with the endless criticism of the media. they want to see the jobs. that's what -- that's what they put him in office for. >> i think media critic in chief, it's an attempt to

inoculate him from all the real news coverage that's going on. >> i think it works during the campaign and i think it's a tool trump uses to introduce new stories, stories that he would prefer people to talk about. >> charles, it's not a good idea to be calling chuck todd sleepy eyes? >> absolutely not. i think there's something shakespearean about it. by protesting as much as he does that this is not a story, it makes people who are -- the real reporters among the media more suspicious. i mean, you and i have both worked in news -- the newsroom and those guys are just trying to call balls and strikes as best they can. what people don't seem to understand about most news organizations is that they're bottom up organizations, not top down. people are not necessarily coming in saying we want to craft a story this way, go out and find us a way to do it. rather, they wait for reporters to kind of search their sources. whatever they come back to the

table with from that they cobble together that day's report. and so for those -- >> but what i wonder do matt's readers believe that? they're describing his remarks -- matthew, do your readers of the free beacon believe that? >> that's how my newsroom works. >> media chases stories. >> it's helpful to point out there's media bias. reporters pursue stories. i think the president is frustrated that they're pursuing one story, he would like them to pursue another. what i'm fascinated by is he is the president. he has the power to declassify these documents in the nunez probe. it would be helpful for him to be more transparent. he's being hit by all of these revelations that they weren't forthcoming whether it's general flynn or jeff sessions. >> that lack of transparency i believe is what makes reporters' antennas stand up. the idea if you were to say, please, go ahead and hang yourself on this, search as much

as you want, you'll find nothing but exculpatory evidence that says we did nothing wrong and, in fact, because you are selling credibility -- >> right. >> -- you will hang yourselves by doing so. >> that's so interesting, the antenna. >> the idea that he is saying nothing there, nothing there, shiny thing, shiny thing to a veteran reporter that says why are you going so far out of your way to say there's nothing here. let me hang myself. if not, let me find it. that idea -- and the secondary part of that is that he seems to see this as a matter of branding, which is what he's always done. this is how he built his career. he looks at what is coming out of these reports damaging his brand and he's basically saying you damage my brand, i will damage yours. i will -- you continue to report things about me, i will continue to call you fake and false and failing. >> at the end of the day everything's just muddied. >> right. but the problem is is that -- but media and donald trump are playing two completely different

playing fields with two different sets of rules. if media lied as much as donald trump lied we'd be out of business. there's nothing else for us to do but to sell credibility and facts. so he's basically operating in a different realm and people -- he keeps trying to position it as if we are the media and he and politicians are the same thing and they're just simply not. >> i'm running short on time. thank you all. jeff, thank you very much as well. up next here, tina brown, she covered trump in her early years, but how would she cover him today? and why should the president be good for the feminist movement? she joins me next.

welcome back to "reliable sources." i'm brian stelter. we were talking about bill o'reilly. what about the hostile working environment that culture takes.

i was going to talk to tina brown. tina, thank you very much for coming on today. >> thank you. >> i was going to ask you about your conference coming up wednesday, but first this o'reilly headline, what do you make of this ongoing story line involving fox news and the culture there? >> well, you know, it's an extraordinary thing to realize that 13 million bucks has been paid out by fox to these different -- >> o'reilly and fox. >> o'reilly and fox regarding the sexual harassment cases. what it really shows is that, you know, nothing has changed. i mean, obviously what bloom said is absolutely right. fox news is the bill cosby of media coverage. sexual harassment has not changed. one of the points that we're making at women in the world this week is we have gretchen carlson, the giant killer with regard to this, she's the person who toppled roger ailes. she was a very affluent woman with a lot of connections and a top lawyer who's also joining us. but, you know, most women don't

have such means. they cannot hire a top lawyer and there was sexual harassment in our industry is like food and beverage and in retail. look at the kay jeweler case. where the frat club of silicon valley, it's unchanged. so it's really a huge issue that has to be addressed. kirsten gillibrand is good on this where she talks about how the superiors cannot adjudicate these because they're the harassers. >> there was a quote i wanted to put up from this morning's paper. in corporations it's not the glass ceiling, it's the sticky floor. tell us about that. what do you mean? >> you hear all of these big ceos at davos talking about the pipeline, they like to call it, the big pipeline of women headed for the top and all of these schemes and initiatives of getting women to the top. they don't get there.

the numbers are paultry. they're not making it to the top spot. that's largely because corporations are not whose pit annu hospitable to women. they're stuck in the male construct of what a business environment looks like rather than re-inventing the business environment for the needs of a wholly different kind of working life. >> in the media business is that partly because these companies, these big media companies are still almost all run by men? >> they are all run by men. we'd like to think that bill o'reilly is a predator from the age of when white entitlement of guys of his kind was, you know, still there, but it's actually all the way through the company. i think at this point they have to clean out that entire shop. that culture is not fixed and it won't be really until bill o'reilly hits the door. >> now you did make it to the top of the new yorker, vanity fair, "the daily beast." now if you were running a daily newsroom or magazine, how would you be covering president trump?

>> well, i think when i was editing "vanity fair" i'd have him as mad king ludwig. he'd be in a gold bathrobe with his phone tweeting. it's like being in the ward of a mental hospital half the time with what's going on with zblump we're all the patients of the mental hospital? what do you mean? >> watching his behavior is like watching out of control, that's why it's riveting viewing. his entire administration seems to be so out of control. unfortunately, it's addictive. >> there was a new yorker cartoon that said we're just at home binge watching cnn. folks liked that. >> exactly. >> trump coverage. >> you can't get enough of it. >> is that a bad thing in some ways? >> it's disastrous. you're talking about very serious things that are not being discussed and that is what's so scary about it. i was thinking the other day, how many hours have been spent by everybody in washington in the last, you know, two months

whether it's in the intelligence community, national security, everybody trying to retrofit the crazy tweet about being eavesdropped by obama. the need to backfill his audacity is the most time consuming thing. >> it was a month ago. >> we'll never get that back. >> exactly. think about all of the things that weren't done in that month. >> you have hillary clinton. what would you like to hear? what do you think she should be doing next. >> that is an interesting question. we have her introduced by samantha bee. i think that everybody in our summit, women in the world, is really looking for from her a way forward. it's because in a sense, you know, her loss has motivated women in a way that in a sense her campaign never quite managed to ignite. so it's as if suddenly there's this huge wake-up call really for feminism, rejuvenated feminism, women are saying it's

up to us to man the barricades of social justice and figure out how we can now have a game plan to go forward. i think it's very interesting to hear from hillary about what she thinks we can all do at this point to make sure that much of the things that she certainly cared about, many americans cared about because as we know she won the popular vote really do, you know, have top of mind. >> you include that had in your column, she won by 3 million votes. didn't that come across as complaining or bitter? >> no, i think it's just a fact. i don't feel that -- it's not post truth. it is the truth. >> you think it's worth reminding people. >> i do think we have gone overboard in trying to say that real people have sent us a new message. i think there's too much of a crouch position from the so-called elite about, you know, how we didn't listen to real people. guess what, i don't think that ex-people who know stuff should feel somehow embarrassed about the stuff that they know. you don't go to have your leg amputated by someone who walked in off the street. the fact is that --

>> that's true. >> -- people who know things, know fact, whether it's about the economy, journalism, what's happening in foreign affairs are worth listening to and they're not morons because they're not in a red state, you know, with an iphone. >> in defense of experts. great to see you. >> thank you. >> thank you very much for being here. up here after the break, international fact checking day. we're going to celebrate with the head of politifact right after this.

just me...your me and my four daughters.. there's a lot of dancing and pageants that go on in our kitchens and living rooms and things like that. i've had to learn to accept certain things like the fact that my toe nails and finger nails are going to be painted constantly. but it's really awesome to watch them at their own things. they're great kids. all of them.

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it seems appropriate that yesterday was april fool's day, so today is international fact-checking day. yes, that's a official name, a bunch of organizations celebrating the day.

so i'm joined now by one of the top fact-checkers in the kbiz. she's the editor and chief of plitt fact. why does fact-checking need a holiday? >> i think we need to bring more attention to facts, reasons, evidence, logic, there is so much information, misinformation, out there right now. and people need to think about what sources do they trust? how i do that know if something is true or not it's easy to get fooled right now. >> compared to campaign season, there was talk about all of those fox news websites trying to trick people with bogus stories, is it better now? are there fewer stories or just as bad as it was during the campaign? >> it seems like it's just as bad. now, it's hard to tell because this is all internet, it's all being put out by anonymous players. it's hard to measure, but from what we're seeing, as far as things to fact-check, it's a never-ending stream.

we just can't seem to fact check enough right now. >> and what about president trump? i mean, during the campaign, politfact found that he was by far the most inaccurate speaker on the campaign trail. he was coming up with more falsehoods than other candidates. has he improved his credibility since taking often? >> as far as what we choose to fact-check, which is what we grab and sound wrong, his track record has not improved, he's still on our scale, earning about 70% of mostly false, false, or pants on fire. the other thing that i've noticed about president trump is he will stick to his inaccurate talking points. he won't drop them the way some of the more traditional and experienced politicians would do if they get repeatedly fact-checked. >> so does that mean fact-checking doesn't really work? >> i think fact-checking works from the point of view of citizens being informed. i think people really need to

have their skepticism up and they need to really look at their new sources to see if they're getting information that's good. >> that is the eternal challenge, isn't it? your point is you're not in business to tell president trump what's true, you're in business to tell everybody else what he says is true or false. >> and that's exactly the point. democracy doesn't work without an informed lek tort. and right now for people who are seeking credible, accurate, independently vetted information, they can't just wait for it to come to them. they have to active lie seek it out. >> well, happy fact-checking day. thanks for helping us celebrate. >> thanks for having me. out of time on tv, reliablesources.com. also check out our midweek podcast. new guest every week. more in depth on the week's biggest media stories. thanks for tuning in and stay tuned "state of the union" with jake tapper is coming up next.

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immunity deal? fired national security visor general michael flynn says he has a story to tell about russia but if the congress and fbi are willing to give him a deal. >> when you are given immunity, you probably committed a crime. >> what does he know? the top democrat on the intelligence committee will be here live with the latest. and republican civil war. the infighting intensifies as president trump threatens the hard line conservatives who brought down his health care bill. >> i understand the president's frustration. i share frustration. >> will the bad blood poison trump's relationship