the end of the year is almost here. i'm brian stelter and welcome to "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. today, ronan farrow, irin carmon and rachel are all here taking us inside the halls of sexual misconduct. and a big question for newsrooms. as we all gear up for 2020, have we learned from 2016's mistakes? i'll have a blunt conversation about that with kathleen hall jamieson. and later, looking forward to 2019, oh, yes we are. some of the most powerful

editors in the country are here with their new year's resolutions. but let's begin with media shake ups, take dondowns, and ar that seemed like it lasted a decade. as the ball was dropping back on january 1st, i bet you had not heard of stormy daniels yesterday or christine blasey ford or alexandria ocasio-cortez. you might not have known the name jamal khashoggi, either. or the name of the newspaper in annapolis, the "capital gazette." so now at the end of a year of so much news and frankly so much bad news, you might have news fatigue. if you do, you're not alone. yes, news fatigue. most americans feel worn out by the sheer amount of news these days, which means they need trusted newsrooms as guides, as curators. so have we helped? have journalists done enough to cut through the confusion and lies and propaganda and actually put facts first? you know, right now, our country feels consumed by politics.

that's how it feels in america. from fire and fury the very first start of the year, a best seller straight through bob woodward's fear. the theme of the political coverage was an aberrant, possibly even dangerous presidency. president trump kept attacking reporters and reporters kept reporting. even after one of them, cnn's jim acosta, was blacklisted from the white house grounds. of course, that didn't last long. the courts proved to be an essential check and balance in that case. it was a defeat for trump coms a fox news veteran. yes, sometimes it's now hard to tell where fox ends and the white house begins. trump's live tweeting of fox continued in 2018, keeping fact checkers working overtime. and by the way, the one book that i still want to read, it's that diary. let's have a diary from that anonymous trump senior official, whoever it is, who wrote that "new york times" op-ed. it was the world's most-read

op-ed of the year. while big papers like "the times" are thriving, local papers continue to close up shop. and some digital start-ups are flailing, too. the media business is in a state of revolution. and that's partly because tech giants like facebook and google control so much of the media environment right now. it's also partly because you are choosing to consume news in new ways. that makes it an incredible and stressful time for my panelists. joining me now, kathleen carol. she's the board chair at the committee to protect journalists. matt murray, the editor in chief of the "wall street journal," and sally buzbee, the executive editor of the associated press. thanks, everybody, for being here. >> thanks for having us. >> sally, as the editor of the world's biggest news organization, what changed this year? what was different about 2018? >> i think there has been a lot of focus this year on the safety and security of journalists. some of that has been very naval gazing, but a lot of it is very,

very relevant. in terms of reporting inside the united states, i think it was a escalation of some of the trends we saw in the first year of trump's presidency. the fatigue that a lot of our audiences feel about the rush of news coming at them. a lot of us have to sort of also make sure that our journalists are able to handle that pace, too. and that we're keeping up our standards and that we're paying attention to that, you know, just very thoughtful process of not going too fast and really, really, really doing the best jobs that we can do. >> it's a really interesting point. matt, you're dealing with this firsthand. you became the top editor at the journal this year, congratulations. what's that been like? to take over "the wall street journal"? >> it's like getting on a tiger and you ride. and as harry truman said about being the president, you better ride or you're going to get eaten. it's been intense from the moment it started and that's the world we're living in today. i would add to what sally said, from my perspective, for what it's worth, i think the media business got much more realistic about the world in certain ways for us. there's no more illusion that technology is going to come

along and save us. that the social platforms are somehow going to be a miracle cure. and in fact, there's a lot more understanding of the real relationship we have with them. there's an understanding of the value of sort of real trust in journalism versus sort of the less responsible journalism. and both the opportunity we have, but also the challenge to get that out there. and i think there was a new realism about the conditions we're facing that's actually in some ways daunting, but in some ways healthy for all of us in journalism. >> there's so many websites following your lead. the website has had a pay wall for many years where you have to pay to read the news. all of these websites are now launching scripti ining subscri. cnn's parent company, now at&t, at&t took over earlier this year. now at&t is putting up a big streaming service, launching in 2019. disney's doing that. so in both news and entertainment, we're seeing more and more of this model, relying less on advertising, and more on scriptio subscription. >> i think people almost feel embarrassed when we said, all

content wants to be free and this is going to liberate us. it seems highly naive in retrospect. in the industry, but also readers, which i think explains part of the success we and others are having with subscriptions, they recognize, quality is something you have to pay for. and it's worth paying for. and we realize we've got to earn that every day. so i think the industry in that sense is maturing a little bit. >> interesting. >> i think part of what matt is talking about, that relationship includes being paid for your work. but also, explaning more about what you do and how you do it. it's easier to demonize and a profession when you don't understand how it works. if you just think that reporting is putting on a brightly colored dress and sitting on a panel like this. and reporting is a lot harder. and it's not very glamorous and not always very interesting, but explaining how you know what you know is really, really important. and people will be loyal to the organizations that they feel that they have a relationship with. and i think the news organizations that are doing well are those that are cultivating relationships with their audiences.

>> what have been the most important stories for your y'all's reporters to be focusing on? qua kathleen, first to you. i know the rise of autocracy was something on your mind this year. >> and it's not just this year. this has been a several-year trend and it will continue. and the demonization of anybody who's considered an other. i mean, we look at history, if you read history, this is a very troubling trend for the world. and to look at some work that, for example, my old news organization, the ap has done, counting the number of refugee who have died. and without that kind of work, no one notices, no one cares. >> because no one else is doing it. >> but it's bad for people, that people are considered disposable in that way. and i think that's an important thing for journalism to stand for. we're not doing journalism for the elite group or the people in power. journalism exists for all citizens. and the best news organizations are fighting for those citizens, because they deserve knowledge. so they can make decisions. >> and sally, we have managed to

go a few minutes without talking about the president. but all roads do lead back to trump, don't they, even in your ne newsroom? >> absolutely. there's no question that the presidency of donald trump and the mueller investigation, as it has expanded, was a huge story that had global interests this year. and a lot of resources, obviously, of news organizations were spent on that. the story has accelerated and become more serious, toward the end of the year. >> you mean, because the investigations have? >> absolutely. i think that the investigation has become more serious. the investigation has become wider and more expansive and, you know, closer to the bone in some ways, i think, is the way to say it. and one of the things that i think many of us worry about is there has been -- this investigation has gone on so long, that it is difficult to be able to assess what in this investigation is truly very serious and what is not as serious. that's one thing that journalists struggle with a little bit. i think the other big stories this year, obviously, you know, we survey editors and they all pointed to the parkland shooting as a very important thing that

happened this year, that seems a little bit in the past to us now, but the parkland and pittsburgh shootings really did have an enormous impact on the country. i think, overseas, obviously, the khashoggi killing, but also the focus that that put on the war in yemen, which is really one of the world's sort of unbelievable humanitarian crisis. that sort of focused some attention toward the second half of the year on that long-running war. a war that was getting essentially -- i mean, journalists were covering it, we've been covering it quite extensively and so have others, but it was basically getting no attention until the killing of khashoggi and then the focus went to that. >> is it fair to say that the threats have magnified or multiplied, meaning that there are more journalists being killed or imprisoned than there were a decade ago? >> yes, absolutely. and in fact, the jrnournalists that are being killed now are being murdered, so they're deliberately targeted and it's a retaliatory killing. a decade ago, journalists were

being killed, but a lot of them were being killed in accidents of war or warfare, covering a conflict of some kind. now two-thirds of the journalists who have been killed in 2018 are murdered. somebody has targeted them because they are journalists. 34. it's an astonishing number. and it's up threefold from last year. >> are there changes that you have to make in your newsrooms to deal with the threat environment that exists? >> i would say on one level, the awareness of everybody on the need to be aware of your surroundings and be security conscience has been much higher. although, i think the journalist also want it much more, so they're responsive. second place goes a little bit to what kathleen was talking about, which is, i think the intensity of the -- in some cases, the direct relationship between reporters and sources or readers has really grown. and you're exposing yourself to a certain degree when you're on

twitter or you're out there and people send you pretty direct things or target you. you know, we had jaurna journal this year who wrote a story about sort of a hate speech figure on youtube. and, she was actually fine, but over the weekend, she got subjected to a barrage of hundreds of hate e-mails. somebody sent hear scary photo. then they turned to me as the editor, i can got about 200 people sending me nasty notes and e-mails. and the ability of people to organize and morph and then use bots to continue these things and just sort of that scary feeling atmosphere, that's a much different thing than we've had in the past. so i don't know whether i can say that this constitutes a higher threat level, but it certainly puts an air of vulnerability around journalists. and it can potentially be very inhibiting. >> yes, because we want to be available and accessible and interactive. yet with that, comes these downsides. >> i think the "capital gazette" shooting was a big shock to

people. i mean, an organization like mine which has a bunch of journalists overseas has always had to worry about securitying, and we have had to worry about targeting and conflict zones. to start thinking about, we want our journalists to be out in the community, but how do we protect them while they're doing that was a sort of painful moment for many people this year. and i think a lot of them are grappling with how to do that. we're worried about many things, about the campaign trail, about our journalists overseas. one thing that sort of has surprised me, but is, i think, very distressing and matt sort of alluded to that, which is is that people who work in types of journalism that don't seem like they would be getting threats. let's say, women who work in sports journalism are actually getting some pretty nasty and very directed sorts of both harassment and outright threats at this point. and i think a lot of news organizations are struggling with trying to decide how serious is this, how do we protect our people, where is that dividing line between really aggressive harassment and

someone when might actually do something. and, you know, a lot of the stuff, unfortunately, is very gender focused, too. >> it's a really important point. and newsroom diversity, lack thereof, continues to be a problem. >> continues to be a problem. >> we say it every year and it's still true every year. >> to our panel, please stand by. much more ahead this hour. we're going to talk about media winners and losers after the break. david zurawik has some surprising picks, that's coming up. building a better bank starts with looking at something old, and saying, "really?" so capital one is building something completely new. capital one cafes. inviting places with people here to help you, not sell you. and savings and checking accounts with no fees or minimums. because that's how it should be. you can open one from right here or anywhere in 5 minutes. seriously, 5 minutes... this is banking reimagined. what's in your wallet?

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welcome back to "reliable sources." let's try to pick some of the biggest winners and losers of 2018. i think some of the big winners are those old-fashioned newspapers, "the new york times," "the wall street journal" we were just talking about, scoop after scoop from these papers are showing they're more relevant than ever. another winner this year is cnn's chris cuomo. he moved to 9:00 p.m. it was a really risky move, but "cuomo prime time" is now the network's highest-rated show here. and cable news in general continues to be a winner. we're seeing high ratings and high interest in all things politics. another winner, marc benioff.

he's the latest tech ceo to go out and buy a news outlet. in this case, he's bought "time" magazine. so maybe that means time is the winner? fingers crossed, they both win in that situation. now, what about the losers? i would say david pecker and the "national enquirer" is a loser this year. of course, the catch-and-skill scheme has been exposed. now he's been granted immunity from prosecution. sinclair, another loser this year. there's been expose after expose of bias at sinclair through their conservative-leaning commentaries, and sinclair's deal to buy tribune fell through. and perhaps the biggest loser of the year, facebook. this has been their worst year ever. the company under intense scrutiny for privacy concerns, for data concerns, and of course, the plague of misinformation on the platform. but those are just a few of my winners and losers. let's bring in david zurawik with his list. he's with me here, the media critic for the baltimore as you know. david, your biggest winner of the year. who would you single out? >> you know, brian, i don't want

to -- not that i'm agreeing with the host, but i really love the newspapers that you picked. because those are the publications that more than any have held to the high standards of legacy journalism. and they've done great work. they've done monumental work, i think, in -- i mean, it's a -- i don't want to go to golden age, but they've done some tremendous reporting. at this moment, when democracy is imperiled, i think, out of the executive branch of our government right now, where journalism matters more -- i don't want to say more than ever, but journalism matters more than it did maybe since watergate. >> and "the washington post," of course, of watergate fame, has really lived up to this moment. the other big papers, as well. and there was all of this talk a year ago about nfl ratings going down. but they're back up this season. let's talk about the losers. what losers would you call out?

>> i think one, network television. it's really terrible. it's in the sense of, okay, they're going to say our ratings losses are, you know, it's -- you can't get away from it. we're going to have losses every year. how much can we slow them down. >> yeah, they're managing decline. >> but i would say this, you name one show between "this is us" that anybody cares about? one drama. >> i was thinking "this was us" was going to be my pick. >> that's a great show. that could be anywhere. that is an absolutely great show. but here's why i have no sympathy for networks. in the '90s, when political conventions didn't draw very big audience, i remember doing story after story with network news presidents, when they started cutting back and saying, we're not going to cover the conventions or put on live. and finally they would say to me, hey, zurawik, look, there are three cable channels, let them cover it. we're going to show re-runs in the summer of bad sitcoms. okay, they did that to make a couple of extra pennies off

their sitcoms. and now cable news owns news. it owns news and it owns politics. nobody says, oh, what did cbs say last week -- it's cable news. you know, i'll tell you, you mentioned sinclair. this goes beyond sinclair. they were the final piece in what looked to me like a great trump messaging machine. they were the, going to be over 200 stations, and the messages, the messages from the white house were going to be wrapped or voiced by local anchors, local people who people knew in the community. that was a really powerful thing. trump lost that. you know, now he's stuck with boris epshteyn, their -- i call him a propaganda puppet for pump, you know? because i can't find anything he ever says negative. i read his news letter every day looking for it, i don't find it. >> trump's also lost the "national enquirer." the enquirer was supporting him, now not so much due to all of this michael cohen stuff. >> that's the point. he may be the biggest loser in

some ways. look at the enquirer on one end, sinclair on the other, and look at the ways as to how he's sometimes had to kiss up to fox or hold it. when fox -- when cnn -- msnbc, again, led the way, and said, we're not going to carry those rallies. and fox started to pull back a little bit. and then he said, i love sean, i love laura -- >> read off their names. >> he was kissing up to them. and that's a weakened system. look, last year, i was really worried about this right-wing messaging machine he was putting together. i'm not so worried anymore. >> one other piece of it, alex jones at infowars, a radical conspiracy theorist, he's been de-platformed. twitter, facebook, and youtube all banned him earlier this year. i think there's understandable concern about the tech platforms having that much power, but jones has almost vanished as a result. one more loser i almost forgot about, roseanne barr. her show was the highest rated

show of the year. for her to go off on that racist rant on twitter, that was the end of her show. >> i said that about megyn kelly, too, to not learn from her mistakes. two people, abundant riches that they earned because people -- the popular audience liked them. they should have learned. they should have grown, they should have evolved. they should have not be saying these things at that point in their career. again. no sympathy for roseanne, even though i loved having a blue collar sitcom on television, because there's historically so few. but not one with someone putting out those kinds of messages. and we should praise abc for the way it acted. that could have been -- that was a big financial hit that they're going to take and they acted like that. >> and the show without her, "the connors" still did okay. >> so it's a winner. >> call it a winner. great to see you. right after this quick break, we're talking about year two of the me too movement.

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♪ there's no place likargh!e ♪ i'm trying... ♪ yippiekiyay. ♪ mom. ♪ welcome back to "reliable sources." i'm brian stelter. this past year, major news outlets turned their attention to systems of harassment and discrimination and retaliation.

yes, there's been a lot of stores about individual perpetrators, but really, it's about the systems that are in place that have allowed this behavior to go on for so long at major media companies. for much of the year, the eye was on cbs. the network saw ceo les moonves accused of harassment and sexual assault by numerous women in a pair of stories in "the new yorker." in september, moonves stepped down under pressure. cbs had two law firms come in and review what went wrong. and earlier this month, based on that law firm review, the board said that moonves would not receive his $120 million severance package. there may be more to come on this story, but this is about a lot more than moonves and about a lot more than just cbs. with me now are three of the award-winning reporters who have been leading the way in this coverage. irin carmon is a cnn contributor, ronan farrow is an investigative reporter for the new yorker, and rachel abrams and a business reporter for "the

new york times." you know, all three of you have been reporting on cbs for the past year. i wonder, as rivals, do you all feel like you're competitive or do you feel like what you do is complimeementar complementary? irin, first to you. >> my commitment to this story is seeing the truth come out. and we were just talking about how there's a real sense of camaraderie among the reporters. of course, you've got to compete for scoops, you're accountable to your publication for breaking stories, to your editors, but ultimately this is about something bigger than an individual reporter getting the employ glory. it's about exposing what happened. >> and ronan, you now have a reputation for doing this dogged work that takes months. there were rumors about your les moonves stories for months before your work came out. what is it like to be kind of in that spotlight? >> you know, it's a double-edged sword. largely, it's a real advantage

as a reporter, because more people talk to you. it is true also, some people immediately hang updown because of that reputation. and you navigate those things. and i would echo what irin said, there's a real sense of all of us doing this tough investigative reporting that we're in this fight together. if you look at those early les moonves stories i did, they actually have a big shout-out to irin's work and further attempts that she and a colleague made at "the post" to get more information out, where they were forestalled by a lot of dirty tactics. so i think we have each other's backs in this, to an extent, even though we also are competitive sf competitive. >> and rachel, why did you start looking into cbs? this was after the first moonves story came out by farrow and "the new yorker." why were you curious about this? >> our editors were interested in how serious cbs was taking its own allegations of misconduct by both les moonves and broader cultural problems at the network. so that really got the ball rolling on just finding out a lot more about what the

investigators had uncovered. in large part prompted by the stories in "the new yorker" and in "the washington post". >> so it's a sense of stories building on one another. >> yes. >> and a sense of momentum as a result. it does seem like there's this rot inside cbs. is that fair to say? >> you know, when -- after amy britton and i did the charlie rose story at "the washington post" asbestosbout a year ago, wanted to follow up about cbs, what did people know? and that's when you find out it's not just about the individual behavior of one person. it's about a system that enables that behavior. a store system that says if this person is a rainmaker, they can behave in whatever way they want, that people look the other way. a series of mechanisms that keep people silent from speaking up. and so i think it's not just -- there's a tendency, i think, okay, somebody really high-profile got fired. we're going to move on. and that's why i think that the last year's reporting is so significant, because rather than just say, okay, you know, here's this big fish who's gone down in

a very high-profile way, you're trying to understand, what is the culture that leads this to happen? and our reporting shows that the culture at cbs did, in fact, lead to silence, or in the words of one of the women that we spoke to for the second "washington post" story, she said, i'd been there long enough to know that people did what they wanted to you and they said what they wanted to you. and that's why she said that she didn't support charlie rose sexually harassing her, because of that culture. >> in the midst of the harvey weinstein story, it was all very clear to me that this wasn't an harvey weinstein, it was about systems deployed by powerful, wealthy people to suppress these allegations against them. and therefore when i looked at the array of potential leads to follow up on, what was distinctive about cbs and moonves, is that it was a story about corporate accountability, and those vast systems informing a kind of rot in the eyes of dozens and dozens of sources we talk to. and all of us face a lot of pressure in these tough stories to carve off different elements and just focus on one guy, because it is so hard just to do that. but it was really important in

that reporting that i kept in that "60 minutes" material, that i paid tribute to the other reporters that talked about a broader cultural problem there. >> so that's a challenge. what are the other challenges about doing these stories about harassment, about retaliation. i would think a lot of sources do not want to talk to you. >> no. and i'm sure all three of us have experienced that in all of this reporting. and, you know, i think that, generally, one of the things that i try to do is to find any kind of documentation that i can, which can be challenging, but i think probably the hardest thing is getting people to trust you and to open opup. and the hardest question for me to answer is when women we talk to say, i worked really hard to move past this. i don't understand why i have to be the person to go on the record. i don't understand why you're calling me. i don't understand why i have to do any of this. it's not my problem. and coming up with an answer is specific to each situation and it's hard and i think it's probably been the most

personally challenging part of this reporting for me. >> there is a deeply unfair aspect of this, where the people who have sustained the most damage and have been treated the worst are very often the once on who it's incumbent to fix this. and their voices do have power. and i hope one of the lessons of the extraordinary work these two women have done and so many other reporters have done over the past year is you can speak, it can make a difference. because once again, i would point out, this was a systemic problem at cbs, but this isn't about cbs. this is true at other networks, at other media companies, at other companies in different industries. and it is only going to change if more of those sources do speak. >> you know, ronan mentioned that it's not just cbs. and one of the questions that ping we're all trying to answer about the culture at large, now that we've had these moments of truth telling, where people talk about serious wrongs being perpetrated, how do you rebuild a culture that doesn't enable that. how do you say, okay, we had this kind of accountability, but now how do we not repeat that?

how do we make sure that people do feel empowered to speak up? and those are questions that workplaces are still trying to grapple with? and the question is, will there be a sweeping under the rug or a clear transparency in this respect? >> absolutely. it's also notable the way that these issues have permeated the culture beyond reporting about cbs or any other company. think back a few months to the brett kavanaugh confirmation hearings and how so much of what we're talking about was on the table during those confirmation hearings. you, of course, were doing reporting about this, as well, are there lessons to be learned from the kavanaugh experience? >> well, i would say, that was a case where there were a number of women with very credible allegations and then there was a separate circus playing out in the media where there was an immense amount of partisan sniping happening. and all of this went into a caldron of mistrust and entrenched elm animties on the hill and the american public. and to me as a reporter, who has

a track record of tough stories about democrats and republicans, that was immensely frustrating. because the fact patterns themselves were compelling and important and deserved to be heard. and obviously, there were the two on-the-record stories that we broke, the first details of christine blasey ford and then debora ramirez, both of whom win, i think, were very credible. but there were other leads out there that were foreclosed because of that partisan race to confirm and because of the incredible rancor around it. >> so you are saying that there were women who had allegations against kavanaugh who never came forward? >> i'm not going to talk in specific terms except to say thatreported, more opportunities for reporting were foreclosed by the fact that there was this incredibly vicious partisan atmosphere around it. and that is at odds with anyone seeking the facts. >> i think any reporter talking to a potential source that wants to talk about serious harm has to be honest about the fact that they can experience some version of what christine blasey ford experienced. i mean, it was reported that she

had had to move several times, that she hasn't been home. and so i think, you know, transparency and ethics as a reporter involve acknowledging the fact that there are real risks to speaking up. yes, you are going to contribute to the truth, but it is possible that your life will never be the same again. and i think we should be honest about that. >> troubling. and more to come in the year to come. is it true, ronan, that you were able to get a ph.d amid all of this reporting on all of these stories this year? >> i think no one cares about my getting a ph.d except my mom -- >> oh, come on, i care. >> yes, a population of two. >> what's the secret? >> i haven't slept a lot in the last couple of years, i'm a little sick right now, i'm giving you all the plague right now. and i think it's totally worth it and i think we're all very tired this year. >> well, congratulations. all three of you. and all three of you have been winning awards all year long as a result of this reporting and i think there are a lot of viewers out there that are grateful for it. thank you all for being here. >> thank you, good to be here. coming up on "reliable sources," presidential lying,

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if we're being honest, president trump sometimes behaves like an internet troll, spreading conspiracy theories and bogus twitter peoples and faulty narratives. in 2018, we saw year two of president trump turning reality upside down in that way, completely on its head, and distorting and confusing a lot

of people. this makes journalist' jobs much tougher, but also thrilling, because we have to constantly be on our toes and we have to constantly be fact checking. in effect, with all the president's anti-media messages, he is leading a hate movement against the media. he's whipping up hatred on his rallies and on his twitter feed. but here's the thing, he is not our customer, you are, viewers are. and despite his attacks, we need to make sure we keep serving you, with straight talk about what's going on, what's going wrong, and what's going right. for example, by acalling a lie lie. but kathleen hall jamieson has a note of caution about that and a new name for fake news. she's the director of the annenberg public policy center and a professor of communication at the university of pennsylvania. one of the things i noticed most in the news coverage in 2018 is an increased use of the word "lie," an increased description

of president trump and others lying to the public. how do you feel, as a professor, about the use of the word "lie" to describe behavior? >> i don't like it, because we don't know intention. it is possible under most circumstances to say someone might simply be misinformed, might simply be self-deluded, or, worst, might not be able to apprehend reality when it's right front of the person. it's problematic that things are deceptive. but knowing that someone intended to do it doesn't necessarily add additional information. that it's deceptive means we have to figure out how to correct that, so people aren't misinformed. >> but lying, when the president says something 20 times on 20 different occasions and he keeps getting it wrong, at some point, don't we know he's lying? >> no, we may simply know that he's convinced himself that's the truth. the question is, what difference does it make that he's making that statement? one of the differences he makes is we may be hearing him making promise s that he's not actuall making or his allies may hear him signaling something he doesn't actually intend.

when someone communicates something in different kind of circumstances or worse comes out of a meeting and his account of what happened and the foreign leaders differs, you're risking that you're missignaling things. >> you've called this inconsistent signaling, that there are different snappignals being sent. sometimes on the same day or the same week. that's a communications crisis. if there are inconsistent signals being sent all the time. >> and it's a real problem. if you're not sending consistent signals across time, people begin to discount the signal. when you need to send a clear signal, as you do when the country moves into crisis, you might simply be ignored and he would sacrifice that important aspect of the presidency. and you confuse the heck out of our language. >> on the subject of language, the president keeps using the term fake news, and you say that's a problem. we need to take that out of our

vocabulary? >> we should consider fake news an oxymoron. if something is fake, it's not news. and one of the characteristics by news, and by that i mean, journalism, when it makes a mistake, and humans make mistakes, they make them in all professions, in journalism, they correct. that's called journalism, that's called news. that can't be fake. they got something wrong, that doesn't make it fake. viral deception, vd, venereal disease is the analog. i want people to say, oh, i don't want to catch it, i don't want to spread it, if it comes anywhere near me, i want to quarantine it. and viral deception focuses on the deception. now, that's problematic, news isn't. news is indispensable to democracy. >> there's no such thing as fake news. if it's fake, it's not news. it's viral deception. and as the added benefit of vague vd. >> it does. >> your book "cyber war" looks back at the 2016 election and the impact of cyber trolls. how much of a factor was viral deception and these kind of techniques in the election?

>> first, viral deception is what the trolls engaged in cyberspace. people pretending to be u.s. nationals who trafficked in forms of bigotry, fear, anger. and played to the worst instincts of the body of politic. largely in the process, amplifying themes that are already in the u.s. ecosystem. and the president didn't have much to do with it, because the press didn't know they were even there. the hackers, the second part of the russian initiative, came in and stole content from the democrats and then dropped it back into our media ecosystem through wikileaks. and the press made a series of mistakes. i argue in cyber wars, in cyber war, that the russian intervention through the hacking was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for influencing the outcome. necessary, because they hacked and they gave it to wikileaks. but the sufficient condition was our press' use of it. the press largely attributed it to wikileaks, not to the russians. they lost the source. they also didn't note that's julian assange, who didn't like hillary clinton, because she wanted him prosecuted. in the process, never explained

why putin didn't want to see hillary clinton elected. he didn't like her either and to reasons that go back to geopolitics. they also didn't stand up on air when they used the content and say, we have not been able to independently confirm it. good journalists do that. why did they assume the accuracy? suppose there was disinformation there. they treated it as though it was accurate all the way through. and then, they didn't look carefully at the stories they trafficked into news. so go back now and read the stories based on wikileaks content and ask which withstands the test of newsworthiness. we need new criteria to determine whether or not we should consider those things. >> thinking about 2020, the primary season is basically already underway. we're heading into a new year. what do newsrooms need to do differently the next time there's a hacking attack and a bunch of stolen e-mails are out there? >> first, they need to learn the lessons from 2016. they need to ask what they would have done differently from what they did. different news organizations make different kinds of decisions. and you want them to continue to do the things they did right, right. some of the major news

organizations didn't pick up some of the stories that were largely irrelevant to governance. others did. they also to have some basic regulations in place about how they're going to treat that content, if it particulars under pressured times. and in large quantities. because both of those played a role in journalistic lapses. >> like leading right up to an election on the eve of a vote or something. >> in france, when the content was released two days before the election, there was a regulatory structure that came into play that of course we don't have, because we value our first amendment protections. what that means is that the press has to voluntary protect us. >> coming up here on reliable sors sources, will the war on truth escalate in 2019? my all-star panel returns with their predictions and new year's resolutions, right after this. o. i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy. and last year, i earned $36,000 in cash back. which i used to offer health insurance to my employees. what's in your wallet? heartburn and gas?

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. welcome back to "reliable sources," i'm brian stelter. we look for 2019 and what it will mean for the news business and let's get predictions and resolutions from our panel. who wants to go first with a new year's resolution? >> sally does, i think. >> okay, sally. >> i think we should all resolve to spend less time or perhaps no time at all on polls that project forward to the 2020 presidential election. >> a year ahead of iowa. >> i could gar -- guarantee you that they will not be useful. i don't think anyone will follow my prediction or resolution but i think we all should. >> i think it is worthy. i'm hoping for more white house briefings, the daily briefing

died in 2018. i home it makes a comeback. i'm a nerd. what do you got, matt? >> i think we should all resolve to use social media intelligently and in a limited way and spend more time out in the field and reporting and talking to people and getting stories and finding stuff out and less time talking to each other on social media. i think that is what i try to tell our newsroom and i think reporting and facts are still the backbone of our business and the thing that will carry us through. >> hard to disagree with that. bring new information into the world. that is the value. kathleen, what about predictions for the year ahead? >> well i two challenges and one of them is for you, brian. i think there is an awful lot of really excellent accountability and investigative journalism in communities and they don't get attention and air time because of the trump factor -- >> the what? who? >> national news organizations and programs like yours that talk about the president and his

effect and that is a completely relevant topic. however, i challenge you to in the next year show case some of the really great accountability reporting that connects communities and their news organizations and let's stop talking how about they are coming about and talk about what they are doing well. >> and how can we help them and make these outlets more vibrant. >> i have an idea. i think anybody who plans to put on a future of journalism conference should scuttle that idea and instead give the money to their local news organization. >> fewer conferences and more coverage. >> absolutely. >> more news coverage. >> there you go. >> in the months ahead, more scrutiny of big tech. are you expecting that, sally? more of the stories about facebook and google and the minuses that come along with the pluses of these sites? >> one of the most interesting things that happened in 2018 clearly is that -- you think back ten years ago, everyone was like people should care about privacy and this should be a story and no actual people were

paying attention to it that much. in 2018 what happened is that people started to pay attention to this story. and i think that is because of the reporting. i think it is because there were actually sort of concretely laid out what is happening to your information, what is happening to your photos wha-- what is happening to what you do online. fur being traced through a cell phone, what does that mean for you and that kind of thing. >> right. >> we should feel good about this. this is when we found concrete examples of how this was affecting people's lives that people started to pay attention and i think this is one of the most compelling stories in 2019 and we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to ged -- to get ahead on that story and i think this is a global story. >> i would add with the mueller report, which will come out this year, presumably and we'll hope to get it behind us one day but while we think about it through the lens of the president and that is important. but the mueller report is likely to stoke questions about tech, influence, how it works and h %

how% -- -- how pervasive it is and we'll put in pieces of the puzzle to figure out what happened here. it is hard not to imagine that doesn't lead somewhere, whether into increased regulation or shake-ups or changes at the companies, whether it is to changes in consumer behavior as people turn them off. i'm not sure what. but the effects will play out for a while. >> sally, matt, kathleen, thank you for being here. after a quick break, a look back at one of the storytellers who we lost this year. can determine your future. but no matter what neighborhood you grow up in, the y creates opportunities for all. for a better us, donate to your local y today. for a better us, two... one... two... three... three... four... four... five... five... six...

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before we go, a tribute to a storyteller that we lost this year. cnn will never be the same without anthony bourdain who passed away in june. it was a shock to us all. he taught us about story telling, about travel and how to appreciate life. he wrote in one of his books, without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive and moribund so let's do more of that in 2019 and nor experiments with new ways to tell stories and more trying new things and more exploring of parts known and unknown. as this year ends i'm grateful to john and shanta and justin and daniela and julia and katie and the members of the team that bring this show alive. and i'm grateful to all of you for watching so send us your feedback and tell us what you want and less of what you want

and i'm brian stelter and i'm bstelter at g-mail and you make this better. thanks for join us. and stay tuned. "state of the union" starts right now. no end in sight. the president is now blaming democrats for the death of two migrant children at the border and backing away from his vow to own the shutdown. >> nancy pelosi is calling the shots. >> is anyone trying to make a deal to reopen the government? counselor to the president, kellyanne conway and republican senator lindsey graham are here to respond next. and decision time. all eyes are on democrats considering a presidential run. >> i have to make my decision. >> family, friends and advisers and decide. >> the race to 2020 starts now. former virginia governor and potential presidential contender terry mcauliffe weighs in.