equipment dealers to report customers who try to buy the garment and that dealers may only sell to verified companies with police approval. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hey, i'm brian stelter and it's time for "reliable sources." our weekly look at the story behind the story of how the media really works. how the news gets made and how all of us can help make it better. this hour, the "national enquirer" exposed. it all started with the story in the "wall street journal,". and a question, to interview kellyanne or not to interview kellyanne. and "time" magazine's editor is here. we're going to talk about the impressive person of the year issue coming up. let's start with this. does the public understand just how much trouble the president

is in? if not, that's a failing of the press. sure, there's lots of talk here on cable news about the president being boxed in, lots of warnings that the walls are closing in. it sounds like the white house is undergoing a bad renovation. but to viewers and readers, understand why. from my vantage point, i think so the press should zoom way out and make sure the big picture isn't being clouded by all of the hourly and daily developments. because don't get me wrong, each puzzle piece is important. each of the headlines and every minute, every hour, every day, are important. what's most important is we try to show people the entirety of the puzzle. show people all of the pieces that have been filled in so far. and what we already know. and to be sure, there have been some strong examples in the past week, some great examples just in the past couple of days. look at this graphic from cnn on friday. this was in heavy rotation on cnn throughout the day on

friday, showing all of the various investigations that involve trump. everything from his company to his foundation to the inauguration to the transition. of course, to his administration, et cetera. and more here from the associated press. a similar story on saturday. and the "washington post" in today's paper putting it this way. two years after donald trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he led in the past decade is under investigation. that's the kind of writing we need more of right now. zooming out, connecting the dots, emphasizing the facts and skipping the spin. because extraordinary times call for new, different extraordinary ways of story-telling. here's a few examples of how it's been framed on television the past week that i thought got it right. >> the president is battling a ton of investigations. frankly, we've never seen anything like it. >> clearly, the investigative walls are closing in.

>> this is not normal. things are not okay. the president of the united states is in serious trouble. >> this last week was a pretty bad year for donald trump. >> trump, by the way, lashing out at snl today and we'll get into that later this hour. i think what we need to see on television, in prohibint, online more than just the 90-second packages, more than the 500-word stories. we need trusted voices, both nonpartisan anchors and point of view-driven hosts to explain what is going on, and why trump is in such a precarious position. let me show another good example. this is how rachel maddow put it thursday night. i thought she framed it really well right here. >> i don't know who you know or how old they are. but nobody else has ever lived through a moment in the american presidency like this. we're the first. >> she's right. and we need to come up with new ways of telling that story and helping people understand what it means. let's talk more about this with joan walsh, cnn political

commentator and national affairs correspondent at "the nation." matt lewis, senior columnist at the daily beast. and will bunch, national columnist at the philadelphia inquirer and daily news. thank you all for being here. matt lewis, first to you. you've said the conservatives need to prepare for the possibility the mueller probe is going to find damaging, criminal information on the president. you've said that the conservatives need to prepare for that possibility. why is that? do you think conservative writers are preparing for that? >> well, look. and i think liberals probably should prepare for the possibility that donald trump is maybe not exonerated. but that he's not brought down by nixon. i think it's healthy for people to not get caught up in their own spin and their own hype. and i do think it's entirely possible that if you're a conservative and you're in that bubble, and you're just reading and watching conservative outlets, that you would think, oh, this is nothing. this is just a witch hunt.

well, guess what? something may come out of this. there's a lot of problematic things, and who knows what's going to shake out when mueller issues his findings. but i think it's healthier and safer, it will keep you sane to be prepared. and i think that conservative writers, especially, need to preserve, respect the legitimacy, and if you fall for some spin coming out of the white house that this is all a witch hunt, you're going to end up ruining your reputation going forward. >> interesting. and what about you, will bunch? you have said that the real shock is what we already know. that already we know so much that it would take down any other president. that's obviously more about perspective. >> well, absolutely. you know, the last couple of weeks, i think the tone of a lot of the coverage i've seen on tv has been we're waiting for the cohen plea, we're waiting for moth another memo on manafort and new developments. and people, i think, were

expecting a big bombshell. and there really weren't that many bombshells in the last couple weeks. they basically confirmed things we already know. and i think the trump administration and some people in the media -- i saw an mpr piece this weekend, are going to spin this as a question of whether the mueller probe is fizzling out or something. i would argue just the opposite. i think the biggest electoral conspiracy in american history has already been laid out there. hiding in plain sight. i think the bombshell is the details we already know. you know, in terms of the quids and quos. there has been a lot of great investigative reporting over the last two years. and that's why we know some of the things that came out in court. but i think all the evidence of cnn reported on the 15 trump campaign officials and their meetings with 15 russian officials. we have dramatic evidence of collusion, of quids in terms of the russian hacking, in terms of the promises of sanctions relief. we have a motive with the trump tower moscow deliberations that were going on.

i think we have all the proof we need of a scandal that's arguably worse than watergate. >> this is what i mean by the puzzle pieces. a lot of the pieces have been filled in. so, joan, to will bunch's point, are some in the press too timid about explaining where we are and how bad this picture already is? >> i think some have been too timid. i really do see a sea change in the last two weeks, i would say, brian. i really think there is a lot more willingness and capacity. we do have more information. i'm not sure i entirely agree with will that we haven't had bombshells. i think we might not have had bombshells, but we are getting pieces of the picture filled in that make reporters and anchors more comfortable, saying these appear to be crimes. i think, you know -- we are challenged in our profession. >> how so? >> from the left and the right. it's a huge story. that graphic was fantastic. we need graphics like that, that show that every aspect of this man's life is under investigation. we had major blockbusters this

week from different news organizations about the trump inaugural committee. it just keeps expanding. and we try to do this pretty much every day, coming up with new superlatives, new expressions of shock. we need a whole new language. but i think every news report should lay out -- practically every news report, there have been 33 indictments. so when people say what's mueller doing, this is taking too long, it's nothing, it's a witch hunt, smoke. no, there have been 33 indictments. we have examples of 15 people, as you have said, in the trump organization, who have talked to russians. and -- >> you're saying repeat the basic facts. go back to the basics. >> and i know she's on another station, but i'm glad you gave credit to my old friend rachel maddow. some people get bored, some say, come on, rachel, ease up. but she has brought her viewers along on a journey. and now she's able to put together the pieces.

i'm actually semi surprised, and this may happen -- that we haven't had a "nightline" type of show on one of our stations. you're not old enough to really remember "night line." >> oh, come on! >> but it was about the hostage situation in iran. and so, you know, became a great show. but we could have a -- i don't want to tell don lemon what to do, and i'm often on that last half hour and it's a lot of fun. we could have a midnight roundup of investigations. because it's coming fast and tour i couldn't say. >> in a priorera, it would be a prime time broadcast documentary. but we're not in that time any more. the networks don't seem interested in doing that. and the audience doesn't tune in at the same time and the same place. to me, the audit whence is so fragmented. so much fragmentation of the audience, even if the ap and "new york times" and cnn and the rest are explaining this scandal, there is still going to

be a 30 to 40% of the population that does not necessarily hear or believe that reporting. >> right. and look, i think this is a serious scandal. scandals. and as i said, i think conservatives ought to take it seriously and be prepared that things could go down that are very intense. but by the same token, it's not the only story, right? we've got a good economy. we've got isis on the run. there are a lot of things that conservatives look at and say, you guys are focused solely on the mueller investigation, on these scandals. a lot of things are going right in the country. and i do think that there is liberal media bias. and it has the unfortunate effect of actually proving donald trump right. i think it's horrible that donald trump attacks the media and tries to cast us as enemies of the people. but i think that sometimes we help him along by biassing -- i would call it, you know -- it's

not necessarily bias within the story. it's what types of stories are we talking about? we have to talk about this story, but there's a lot of stories out there. >> matt, i just -- >> are we talking about them all? >> i cannot agree with you on this one. i think when you have the potential for the kind of corruption that is at the heart of this administration going back to the way this man got the office in the first place, is now profiting from the office, the level of scandal -- we haven't even mentioned the name ryan zinke or scott pruitt. okay, we report on the good jobs numbers every month that continue to be good. i hope they continue to be good. we report on news like that as it breaks. but i just don't think that there's a way to balance this and say, well, here's the good news, but the bad news is our president might be a complete and total corrupt man. >> let me give an example of this. will bunch, here is the cover of "mother jones," a really nice, bright, yellow cover, saying let the sunshine! all about examinations and

oversight of trump. now, that's a left-leaning cover. but it's not liberal or conservative to want to let the sun shine and know what the heck is going on in the administration. >> no, absolutely not. and, you know, i think getting to jones' point, i was a 14-year-old watergate geek back in 1973. and right, you -- people got their news from three networks and they all had uninterpreted coverage of the watergate hearings, and everybody saw this. and now exactly, we're so splintered that, you know, the 30% of people who get their news from conservative sources are just getting a totally different story from what other people are saying. and it's a shame, because i think -- i think there could be a lot of consensus on a lot of the facts about the wrongdoing in the trump administration. >> that brings me to "the weekly standard" and friday's news that this famed conservative magazine will be shutting down. one of the knocks against the "weekly standard," it was too

independent, too challenging of trump, too critical of trump in order to effectively operate in the conservative media realm in this day and age. matt lewis, your reaction to the shuttering of "the weekly standard"? >> the brand is two things. the iraq war and never trumpism. and neither of those things are terribly popular on the right today. so i think donald trump is certainly part of the back story. i think, though, the notion that they're being shut down solely because of that doesn't really hold water, because the existing outlet is the "the washington examiner" is they're not carrying trump's water day in and day out either. so to me, the real story here is actually a media story. and this is in a way bipartisan, but as a center right journalist, especially problematic to me. i just think -- the irony here is, i don't think the free market can support quality, serious conservative writing. you either -- you look at people experimenting and trying to

figure out how to make this work, right? do you have click bait? do you have pictures of kate upton riding on a horse to get people to click on your stories? do you have a pay wall? do you have a beneffactor. that seems to be key. is it going to generate the revenue? but what happens after a billionaire has been funding a magazine for a decade or so that's losing money? we have seen this happen on the right and left. it's a big problem. >> gets tired of funding. conversely, we've seen some billionaires come in and buy up the "washington post," "time" magazine and make a profit doing it. there are these different models, some coming from billionaires that are interesting to see. matt, will, thank you. joan, please stick around. a quick break here, and then we'll talk about how the national enquirer helped get trump elected, but why that support is over now. plus, later, a live fact

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confessed to the practice of catch and kill. buying up bad stories and burying them. and the inquirer has finally broken off ties with trump. i want to show you a time line we put together of all of the magazine's cover involving trump, starting in january 2017. on these covers, trump is the hero! and his enemies are numerous from obama to the fbi to the deep state. but these covers were selling trump. they were promoting trump, right up until then. right there. april and may of this year. when the subpoenas arrived at the office of the american media inc. they went back to the typical celebrity covers the inquirer is known for. all of a sudden, as soon as cohen was being investigated, the pro trump covers stopped. so what does that mean from a media perspective? it means that president trump has lost one of his biggest backers in the media. think about it this way. millions of people see the "national enquirer" on the

newsstand every week but now they don't see the trump boosterism. so this story was broken wide open by a newspaper. but it wasn't the "new york times," it wasn't the "los angeles times" "washington post" or "a.p." first to reveal the hush company scheme. it was actually rupert murdoch's paper, the "wall street journal." some people forget that the first story was actually published before election day, four days before election day in 2016. further stories came out earlier this year, and michael rothfeld has been on top of it from the beginning. he's joining me now here in new york. michael, great to see you. >> great to see you. >> it is a sense of satisfaction when you see cohen finally admit to something he had been denying in the past? i mean, your reporting is two years old about this and now he's finally confessing. >> it really is, because this was kind of a classic journalistic effort of peeling away layers of the onion,

starting, as you said, two years ago with the karen mcdougal story and the "national enquirer," which ultimately led, you know, me and joe and others at the journal to michael cohen and stormy daniels in january of 2018. and then kept peeling away those layers until we got to president trump and his direct involvement, which we reported in november, all the ways he was directly involved during the campaign. so over time, we just kept learning more and more about what actually happened. >> and this week, cnn and nbc confirmed your reporting, that trump was in the room for that initial meeting about how they could use the inquirer to cover up bad stories about trump. let's go back to 2016. ami, american media, inc., published this statement. they said, quote, ami has not paid people to kill damaging stories about mr. trump. is that now proven to be a lie? >> well, they have admitted it was a lie, because they reached a nonprosecution agreement with

the federal prosecutors in new york in which they admitted the real purpose of this agreement, as we reported in november 2016, was to help trump's campaign in which we now know that pecker and trump met in 2015, and they hatched this agreement, where pecker was going to use his tabloid and his resources to help trump try to win the presidency. >> it's always tough, though, when a company lies. now we know it was a lie or falsehood, on the record like that, and you have to include it in your story. i talked to your editor, matt murray. here's what he told me. he said, no one has ever substantially challenged the facts we reported and in fact subsequent events confirmed them. and murray said the credit goes to a large crew of people, starting with your colleague. and he listed off these reporters. and i was just curious about this, the reporters, editors. it really takes a team to break a story like this, doesn't it? >> yeah, absolutely. i mean, there are so many different elements of it. joe and i are based in new york. we have legal reporters who are covering the federal prosecutors. we have reporters in washington

who are covering the washington angle. and, you know, just getting more and more people involved and with different sources. i mean, that's, you know -- we're not territorial about it within the paper. we really just want to uncover as much information as possible, so the more hands we have on deck, the better we can do. >> what questions do you have now going forward? one of my questions is, what's in the safe? there are these stories -- put up an ap headline about a so called safe or vault at the "national enquirer" headquarters where secrets were kept, damaging stories that were bought were kept. do we know what else is in the safe? >> no, we don't. we know that david pecker and trump's relationship goes back many years to the '90s, at least. and that he was helping trump throughout, even well before he ran for president, started. and -- but there's also questions about whether the safe has been emptied or if there's actually anything in the safe. >> might not be. we don't know. >> what we would certainly be

interested in finding out is if david pecker were called to testify before congress, you know, if -- now that the democrats control the house in january, what would he tell in terms of what did he tell -- we know he told a grand jury in the federal investigation about, you know, what he did for trump. but we don't know all of the details of that. so that would be very interesting to find out. >> and we know pecker has agreed to cooperate in the future. is that a sign that prosecutors here in new york do intend to indict president trump once he's out of office? >> you know, it's unclear, because that would be discretion. they would have to make a decision, this crime happened a few years ago and do we have enough evidence. it certainly seems like they have more evidence in the karen mcdougal matter, because there is a tape of trump talking to cohen about this. and we have pecker and cohen both, you know, have told federal prosecutors stuff with stormy daniels. there's a trump cfo, allen weisselberg, who has denied

knowing anything about it. so it's unclear what witnesses there would be in that case. >> do you feel like you're uncovering something that has echos of watergate, that has echos of the nixon presidency? is that what it felt like for the past two years? >> it certainly felt like we were chasing a very big scandal. and it's very exciting, you know, just kind of leading straight to the president, and just -- these vociferous denials from the president's aides. you know, we know nothing about this, which, frankly, didn't make any sense, because the way donald trump ran his company and runs his operation, he knows everything, you know, about what's going on. >> right. his name is on the buildings, yeah. >> yeah. so, i mean, it didn't make sense. and, you know, but it was being able to actually prove and report that he actually was directly involved. i mean, that was -- you know, you never know if you're going to get to the point where you can make those connections. >> and i mentioned rupert murdoch. murdoch is a friend of the president. is that ever a factor for you all in the news room at the

"journal"? >> i mean, it wasn't a factor at all in terms of our ability to report and nobody ever suggested that we not report any of the information that we had. the only -- externally, i think people may give it more credibility, because they say, okay, murdoch is a friend of the president and it's his paper that's reporting it. >> ah, right. >> so in that sense, it's helpful to us. >> interesting. all right. thanks so much for being here. >> thank you. >> congratulations. and a quick break here. after the break, kellyanne conway. she says calling president trump is a liar is a slur. we'll get into that. plus, good riddance to the white house christmas party for the press. we tackle that and more, right after this. charmin ultra soft! it's softer than ever. charmin ultra soft is softer than ever so it's harder to resist. okay, this is getting a little weird enjoy the go with charmin

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if you watch cnn regularly, i know you have an opinion about this next topic. to interview kellyanne conway or not to interview kellyanne conway. there are differing opinions even right here inside cnn and that was visible on thursday night after chris cuomo had a 39-minute interview with kellyanne conway on his show, don lemon called out cuomo for it. let me show you a bit of their debate. >> i know you don't think she should be on tv. i don't believe in silencing the other side. >> it's not silencing the other side. it is not a right for someone to come on cnn and lie and deflect. >> people do it all of the time. >> this was dismissive and histrionic display of nonanswers. at a time -- >> people do it all of the time. >> please, please, please. >> what's the right answer here? let's talk about that and a grab bag of other stories with oliver darcy and joan walsh also back

with us at the table. oliver, i actually -- i've had kellyanne conway on this program three times. i tend to side with cuomo. what do you think? >> i think, look, if kellyanne wanted to come on and have a genuine discussion about policy that was rooted in facts, i think that would be one thing. but it's very clear that when she does come on, she's aiming to deflect, she's deceiving the audience. she's spreading misinformation. and i think that's the problem. you know, i see chris' point that he wants to show that there is this other side, and that the white house cannot answer some of the pressing questions of today. but i think there are better ways that he can do that. he could point out that the white house basically has gotten rid of the press briefing daily. he could show and play audio of the president contradicting himself. there are ways that you can illustrate to the audience that the white house has no good questions for the pressing issues. 40-minute sparring back and forth with kellyanne conway, i'm not sure what purpose that serves the viewer. >> i think you see the hollowness. white house's arguments. >> you don't need 40 minutes of

that to see the hollowness of the arguments. he can show the president contradicting himself. we have audiotape of this. it's easy to show to the viewer. and in a way that doesn't allow someone from the administration to come on for 40 minutes and spread misinformation to cnn viewers. >> but cuomo interrupts and makes sure it doesn't spread. i guess my view is, i like that we have a cuomo and a lemon. i like both versions. it's good to have a place where you can have an interview with kellyanne. and let me show what her husband george said. she said calling trump a liar is a slur. half an hour later, conway's husband, george, tweeted that trump lies constantly, he lies about virtually everything. trump pointing out that -- conway pointing out that trump's word cannot be trusted. besides the issues involving this marriage, i think the vast majority of the country sides with george conway and recognizes the president lies frequently. >> i agree. i think -- we do. you know, i loved the debate

between don and chris. and i think most of our viewers do. they love that little segment every night when they mix it up. >> right. >> and i do find myself coming down with oliver in a sense that it went on for a long time. i praise chris, highest props to chris for the way he handled her and the way he parried. and periodically she is going to come on, should come on, and expose her lies and the sheer number and capacity of shameless lying that she is able to do. and she is somebody that some of us once knew as a bit more of a truth-teller. always conservative, but never at this dimension. so i think it's news worthy that trump has a woman who continues to do this and in some ways, sometimes makes herself look rather silly and have her husband fact-check her. i think that's all news. 40 minutes of it, maybe not. >> meantime, we're seeing the president react to all of the coverage of these investigations and these scandals. he's on a twitter storm again today. i don't want to get distracted

by it, but i do want to fact-check one thing he posted. because yet another example of him shattering norms. he said, a real scandal is the one-sided coverage hour by hour by networks like nbc and spin machines like "saturday night live." he says it is nothing less than unfair news coverage. should be tested in courts. that's a curious line. should be tested in courts. can't be legal? question mark? only defame and belittle? can you just give a quick first amendment refresher to the president? >> yes. we have the right to say these things, and "saturday night live" is a satire show, and it's mocked every president and every major political figure. so -- >> and i believe now president trump used to be on snl, oliver. let's remind folks of that. >> he has hosted snl and i saw maggi haberman of the "new york times" make a good point when she said there are so many investigations and probes, this is not -- this is not a positive fact set that journalists have to deal with. these are inherently critical stories that are going to be printed.

and, of course, the coverage might seem overwhelmingly critical of the president, but that's because we're covering a lot of things that are inherently not positive news. >> what's the positive spin on that? one more media story to mention. mi mi mika from msnbc apologized. >> please allow me to say this face-to-face. the term is crass and offensive and i apologize to everyone, especially the lgbtq community and to my colleagues for using it. >> so she apologized for it. but was she let off the hook by the press? would this have gotten more scrutiny if it happened on fox news? >> i think there is certainly a higher level of scrutiny for fox. i wouldn't contest that. but i think she did receive a significant amount of coverage. this comment was covered by cnn, virtually almost every single news outlet and she issued an

apology on twitter and started mortga "morning joe" with this apology. i don't think she got off the hook. and i think if you look at a number of comments that fox hosts have made, they have come out and apologized and they're still hosting shows. in fact, i think you can make the argument that in some cases they haven't apologized for their comments and they're still hosting shows and get promoted up the chain. so the idea that there is this imbalance -- i think, yes, if a fox host says something, it does -- receives a little more scrutiny. but mika was not left off the hook. >> i don't think so either. i mean, i think that, you know, it's a terrible phrase, should be banned from anybody's vocabulary at this point in time. but the other issue is, she's not known as a homophobe. i don't know her well, but we don't know of her -- >> not part of a pattern. >> not part of a pattern. >> sometimes with fox hosts it was part of a pattern. >> right. and it can be a crude term, but it exhibits a real feeling or real belief system. this is not -- i don't think that's true in her case. >> quick break.

and then we come back with more, including politifacts lie of the year. we'll reveal that right after the break. ♪ ♪ ♪ the united states postal service makes more holiday deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. ♪ with one notable exception. ♪ [[clap, clap]] ♪ hey, jen, which tie says, "trustworthy but also fun"? gold down, oil up. oil down, gold up. this is too busy. we need to make sure people can actually use this stuff. which one says, "hours of free live streaming coverage without cable or subscription fees"? aluminum, aluminum? you ready, zack? oh, we're ready. welcome to the show. let's make finance make sense.

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politifact, was the online smear machine that tried to take down and discredit the survivors of the parkland shooting, by calling the students crisis actors. joan and oliver are back with me. did you like this choice for lie of the year? >> i thought it was good. there were a lot of lies this year, but i thought this cut into what 2018 was, which were these online corners of the internet that spread -- that start these conspiracy theories and then sort of seeps into the mainstream dialogue. >> one of the tools used is spread misinformation is youtube. youtube is a huge plat form for lies and smears and there was a great story examining this on tuesday. let me show you a quote. the post says the platform, youtube, routinely serves videos espousing neo nazi propaganda, and conspiracy theories claiming that large numbers of leading politicians and celebrities molested children. just asay sampling of the sewer that is youtube. so you were on capitol hill for the google ceo testifying this

week. of course, google owns youtube. so did google have a strong answer, a strong response for what it's doing to try to clean up this mess? >> google's ceo really did not. the bottom line is, he said the company needs to do better. and that sort of -- you know, the crux of his answer. >> it's what they all say. all the tech ceos say, we need to do better. meanwhile, my youtube feed is full of pollution. >> the thing i don't understand, this is certainly a very complex issue. >> yeah. >> but the kind of videos that youtube is recommending to people should be very easy to filter out. and why youtube hasn't taken it seriously enough to just figure this out after a year or two of being pointed out and highlighted by media, it makes no sense. it should not be this difficult. >> here's a slightly more positive note for our segment. the "washington post" published a brand-new poll, first of its kind poll by the fact-checker. they tested a bunch of trump lies and found this. they said fewer than three in ten americans, including fewer than four in ten republicans,

believe the prominent claims that the president has made that are totally made up. this was a notable finding, joan. that the president can go out there and say that millions of people voted illegally. he can go out and say there are riots in california, all of this bull. but most people do not believe it. >> i think it's encouraging. i took some encouragement from it. i think the worrisome thing was, though, that even though they didn't say this is a trump lie or this is a trump story, they didn't put names on these lies -- >> yeah. >> -- you still have this segment that kind of matches up with the trump -- the level of strong trump support. so that somehow even without his name being attached, the president is getting this information in certain people's minds. and it is taking hold, and they now believe it. 70% of the country doesn't. that's good news. let's celebrate that. but the way he's done that to those 30%, they're not -- they don't just politically disagree with democrats. they hold different facts and facts that are not facts. facts that are lies. and that's kind of scary for

democracy. >> right. even three out of ten is a problem. >> yeah. >> it's millions of people. >> tens of millions of people. oliver, joan, thank you both for being here. much appreciated. one more of the year title, a really important one. "time's" person of the year wound up being the very journalist who had been attacked, targeted and jailed this year. we're going to talk with "time's" editor-in-chief right after this break. there are so many toothpastes out there which one should i use? choose one that takes care of your gums and enamel. crest gum & enamel repair cleans below the gum line and helps repair weakened enamel. gum & enamel repair, from crest. two... one... two... three... three... four... four... five...

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251. let that number sink in for a minute. that's how many journalists are currently in jail around the world, according to a brand new report by the committee to protect journalists. the group is warning that the hundreds of journalists in jail every year, it's starting to feel like the new normal, even though it shouldn't. and prison time is only one of the ways countries crack down on the press. we saw another way earlier this year with the senseless killing

of "the washington post" columnist jamal khashoggi. this full page ad ran just in the friday paper saying his life is gone but his principles of free expression endure. for that reason, for a number of reasons time magazine chose the person of the year as the guardians. the guardians are on the cover of the times this week the case in the philippines, the two reporters behind bars one year in myanmar and jamal khashoggi as well. let's talk about this choice, why time magazine chose these covers. the first deceased person to be times person of the year. did you think about making him the only cover image? >> you wrote actually before we announced a choice this week that person of the year is about a moment in time.

and as we look back at 2018, it just became clear khashoggi obviously one of them, that the common thread in so many of the major stories from 2018 from russia to riyadh to silicon valley was manipulation and abuse of truth. so we chose to highlight these four journ les in the newsroom who have taken enormous risks of the ultimate in some cases and to speak up for truth, to speak out and for free expression, the lifeblood of democracy in this year where we saw democracy under such great threat. >> and one of the points he makes is telling the story about this oppression is difficult. that there are attempts to cover up and hide what's going on. for example, the two reuters reporters in myanmar, we can't speak to them, we can't interview them. so these governments crack down on the press and make the story

of the crack down hard to tell. >> it's the first move of the authoritarian play book, suppression of information of people who try to get the facts out. and we saw that in a major way and continue to see that in a major way this year. >> she was here a few weeks ago, for the viewers at home who don't know this, there was a time magazine fotog rf following her around that year. turns out it was a tifor times person of the year. >> one fact about the photographer here that day, he actually traveled 30,000 miles to seven countries around the world. black listed in some parts of

the world and we felt he brought a real authenticity to the story he was trying to tell. how do we do it? we meet really at the end of september, the entire staff in new york and around the world and discuss the major things of the year, the dominant of actors of the year. but you have to watch and wait. some years it is apparent early. this year so many of the major stories were moving into the last week that we didn't have it fully nailed down. you know, we knew what the elements of the package were going to be and the issue, but it got close to the end there's some watching and waiting in a year like this that's so dynamic and complex. >> and time now owned by a tech billionaire. he bought time a few months ago, had a big party this week in new york. what's it like to be owned by a

tech billionaire? >> it's interesting. we were going through a sales process through much of the last year. to telling your own story we're used to telling other people's stories. but the story we told that we built the foundation based on a long legacy, great digital growth, huge progress in transforming our business, a profitable business. they're excited to help us build on that foundation and believe in the potential of the brand. we all believe in it. that's why we're there and why we're excited about the future. >> i saw you're hiring 20 people. i hope that's what it means to be owned by a billaionaire. thanks for tuning in. we'll see you back here this time next week. the zip code you're born into can determine your future.

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trouble for trump. the president's life under a microscope as more of his associates are headed to prison. >> it's sad that i should take responsibility for his dirty deeds. >> what new probes might house democrats launch in january? incoming chair of the oversight committee, elijah cummings, will be here exclusively. plus on life support? health insurance for millions of americans now hanging in the balance after a federal judge strikes down the affordable care act. >> great ruling for our country. >> could republicans pay the political price? susan collins responds next.