question was b, the quest wing. he and his colleagues watched to learn about democracy. mrs. clton's response, we can do better than that. now, don't forget my latest special "global lessons: putting america to work" airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. eastern and pacific. i'll see you next week. now stay tuned for "reliable sources." in the pantheon of political media coverage, mother jones isn't usually a major player but the political magazine rocks the presidential campaign this week with the video of mitt romney at the fund-raiser. some conservatives defended the nominee and others savaged them. >> now we have a controversy over governor romney telling supporters that ta large portion of the population is depen end on government and will most

likely not vote for him. here's my question. why is that controversial? that's true. >> even conservatives who like me who don't think it's as damaging as a lot of people say, we have to see the remark was inarticulate at best and really done. >> if you don't want to be president of all the country, you won't be elected for any of it. >> was it fair for "mother jones" to public a save tishs media tame? is fox news fighting back with a 14-year-old video snippet of barack obama? bob woodward joins our discussion. plus, the president and his challenger are hitting the cha koes, popping off on pop culture. >> to you know who either of these two are? >> i'm kind of a snooki fan. >> she had a baby now. >> look how tiny she's gotten. she's lost weight and she's energetic. just her spark plug personality is kind of fun. >> is this any way to elect a president?

i'm howard kurtz and this is "reliable sources." the bureau chief for mother jones is a journalist it. . using carter's grandson is a go-between how strange is that he obtained the romney fund raiszer tape from an unknown source who approved of it. as corn told me in an interview for "the daily beast." >> he'd told me that he read my books and he was familiar with the earlier bane stories i had done. and he was impressed by that. what i i'm told is this was not a hit job on infiltration. he didn't go there looking to get romney. >> hit job or not, the result was a media firestorm over romney's zrimgs of twhoes were automatically supporting president obama, those who, he say, pay no federal income taxes. >> there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe they're

victims, who believe the government has the responsibility to care for him, who believe that they're entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it. that that's an entitlement. government should give it to them. >> romney turned to fox news for damage control. sitting down with neil cavuto. >> you said your wording might have been ineloquent but others have said you have kissed half the electorate good-bye this election year, that you all but called them moochers. did you? >> no. i'm talking about a perspective of individuals who i'm not likely to get to support me. >> so is this one of those make-or-break moments in the campaign and have they treated romney fairly? >> i spoke with bob woodward, associate editor and author of a new book "the price of politics." bob woodward, welcome. >> thank you. >> you obtained this videotape

of mitt romney talking about 47%. anything questionable of a journalist getting hold of a politician getting something and recording it? >> no, just the on sit. it's a big scoop and one of the big campaign stories of the year. everyone calls it a secretly -- you know, it's on open forum to a certain extent. it's a fundraiser, anyone can be there. maybe it was a waiter. maybe it was somebody who paid the 50 thou for the dinner. >> you're saying -- >> no one in the world has an expectation of privacy. it doesn't exist anymore. >> i think princess kate learned that as well. but if this tape was given to a lib rat magazine, "mother jones" and jimmy cart 'eers grandson is part of it, did look to the outside world like it's part of a hit job. >> no because it's authentic.

they said, you know, this is what it is and its authenticity is the question. and, again, it -- over the decades you and i have known each other, it's one of the themes. we don't know what's really said or done behind closed doors. here, somebody went behind closed doors and romney laid out a philosophy and some ideas that lots of conservatives and republicans object to. >> that right. this was not just liberal criticism of mitt romney. there were lots of others. if you pull back the camera a little bit, bob, and you look at the weeks and weeks of bad press that mitt romney has gotten, this goes back to the olympics and trips. now the 47% video, is there an appearance -- you know everybody said in 2008 the press was in the tank for president obama. is it our appearance that the media are being rougher on romney than on the president?

>> well, i don't know. i mean you have to report the daily story. the problem is that the daily story is often the daily food fight, which has no meaning for who these people are or what their values and attitudes and proposed policies are. >> mo meaning in the sense that we pounce on the gaffe, the attack ad, the latest poll, and get distracted by these femoral developments? >> it's overemphasized. you have to report it -- >> of course. >> -- but it shouldn't live on as this is the story of somebody's candidacy. the story of somebody's candidacy is who they are and what they've done and what they would do. >> you report extensively on the obama white house in this book. it seems to me unlike the first three and half years that the president's record is no longer at this center of the kpanl korchl, that it is more what you call the food fight as well as the candidates go at each other, but we do have a

3 1/2-year-record. why isn't he more focused that? >> because it's complicate, deals with lots of economic issues. when this book came out, i was talking to somebody from amazon, one of the people who interview you, and they said -- normally they categorize books as red or blue. i said what do do you with this book. they said it's purple. >> you have both colors out here. >> it's purple because it's an attempt at really neutral reporting and there's lots of stuff in there that the obama team and white house have been up to, that they really don't want to focus on. and lots of stuff that republicans have been up to that they don't -- >> i'll come back to this in one second. there was a political story one week ago in which unnamed romney advisers were trashing the campaign itself, trashing stuart

stevens who was the strategist. it used to be i had to wait for your book or john heilemann to find out who really hates each other behind the scenes. what do you make of it coming out in real time? >> each campaign there have always been stories like that and resignations. i mean during one of the reagan candidacies he fired his campaign manager, john sears, and put in bill casey. >> i remember that. >> in 1980. 32 years ago. at the time it was covered like this is the end of the reagan candidacy,'ll never be president. there was all of this -- i mean it -- >> i guess it turned out to be wrong. >> it turned out to be wrong. i went into the last two week os testify campaign and carter was ahead and then it turned out he lost by seven or eight points. so there was a 15-point shift. so covering the food fight and covering the polls, i think it

is misguided or overemphasizing. we really want to know what the performance is of these people. >> right. and on that point with journalists now as you know constantly tweeting and blogging and facebooking and instagram, all this realtime 24/7 stuff, how has that affected campaign coverage. >> well, it's accelerated. you talk to people in the white house as i have done extensively, and they just die because it's 24/7 somebody's going to come out and say we're going online with the following story, what's your response, you have five minutes, you have ten minutes. this can happen at 2:00 a.m., 8:00 at night. that tends to drive coverage because other people are looking for a response. and this is the essential difficulty with the news now that we run by it. we cover the day or the week and if you go back and try to

excavate it and say let's find out what the real memos, the real conversations were, it's often quite different than we covered it on a daily basis. >> more from that interview later this hour. when we come back, mitt romney ends a tough week by finally releases his tax return from last year. how did that play in the press? we'll take a look. one is for a clean, wedomestic energy future that puts us in control. our abundant natural gas is already saving us money, producing cleaner electricity, putting us to work here in america and supporting wind and solar. though all energy development comes with some risk, >> more from that interview on sy producing natural gas. it's not a dream. america's natural gas... putting us in control of our energy future, now.

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. the romney campaign put out what they call a document dump.

peter baker, so romney's tax returns from last year showed he paid an effective annual rate of 14%. does this diffuse some of the journalistic expectations, some of it based on the fact that he paid little or no taxes in some years? >> he said not that he paid 14% but in the last 20 years he never paid less than 13%. he gave us a summary, a topline summary. it diffuses the speculation that some years he didn't pay any income tax. it makes you wonder what on earth he is trying to keep from the public. it came more about the offshore accountsthat kind of thing will trigger a lot of suspicion. >> and the media story line, lynn, a lot of it was about romney paying more taxes last year than he had to. >> right. now i just disagree with so many of my colleagues, i respectfully say, use that 14% number when everyone knows he got that

number because he decided not to declare $2 million of his charitable expenses in order to say he paid more than 13% rate. >> the campaign doesn't dispute this. he didn't take all the charitable deductions. >> i give him credit for him. i for one never doubted that he didn't pay and i don't think that's the point. when you are able to leave on the table more money than most -- than a lot of people in america make just in order to have it conform with an earlier statement in an issue that does it really matter in substance if he paid 13% or 14% or 15% or 10%, it's going to be a lot less than people make because we have a tax policy that says you can pay less on -- how -- >> the fact that it was reported and not stressed adequately in your views. >> i think when he picksed a tax rate as he did with leaving a

$22 million on the table, that's pretty note worthy. let me move on to the hidden recording. many people this could cost him the election. is that an overreaction? >> it's this week's that's going to cost him the election. the week before it was afghanistan. >> clint eastwood. >> clint eastwood. possible as well. it's an effort to look at a story line. i think it's goumg to be important but whether it will cost him the election is too soon to say. >> it's not some off-the-cuff remark. he's talking about his view of nearly half the country and their dependence. the fact that it's a secret tape, would that add anything for journalists? >> yes and no. most of his fund-raisers are close and have been. so he has opened up some of them now and you don't even know really where he is most of the

day because he doesn't put out a full schedule. you don't each know where he's going to fund-raisers. so there is so much up known. i don't know the fact that we got the tape alone, i don't know of any circumstances that any comment would have surfaced, it would have been news. i don't think the, quote, surreptitious part of it would have made a difference. >> most of them pay. >> i think they've broken down and explained to people. it's been a good teaching lesson about the nature of the american tax system day and who pays what. i think what've missed perhaps is in the nature of the scandal and this sort of breathlessness, what we've missed is a very fundamental philosophical debate between romney and obama here. and if you go back to obama's gaffe or whatever you want to

call it, you didn't build it, could be overhype. if you look at them, they're a pretty interesting way of looking at the role of government in society today. >> i think that's a good point. we ought to look at the logger debate and there was substance at the heart of the debate even though some of it mate have been taken out of context. if you look at last week's events, clint eastwood's statement, coming out before the attacks were completed. and now this. it must look to the outside world that the press is beating up on romney. >> if you're in battleground state where the coverage is spoken on that candidates coming to your state, you may not be hearing this as relentlessly as you hear all these lists of problems that -- >> because people get cable networks and newspapers. >> but there's also a layer of coverage that we're not exposed to on a daily basis. >> the local reporting. >> right. absolutely. so i'm saying, yes, the messages are there but they get extra

information that is not on the national level. >> there was a story this week about filing a complaint against china, using a cabinet member to go out to the states, announcing grants that are well timed. you also say that george w. bush did this and bill clinton did this. why is this important to point out. >> they have to run what their operations are and what tactics they use. president obama just this last week announces a wto complaint about china and i thifrg it's important to peel back the surface a little bit and see wait's about. the complaint is very substantive. it's months of lawyering and campaign documents. it's not something the campaign can do. how you take advantage of it can do that. >> before we go to break -- and we have go to break -- i want to put up a chart. trusted media. look that line. 46% back in 1997 had little or

no confidence in the mass media. it's now up to 60%. it's a stunning verdict against our news business. up next, the president and letterman. how did the chat shows take over the campaign.

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in their latest appearances on a chat show circuit, mitt romney showdown up on kelly's show and president obama sat on the david letterman show. that ice how i look at 180. >> you look sharp. >> you haven't seen me naked. >> we're going to keep it that way. >> what does mitt wear to bed? >> really. >> i didn't write the question. >> the naked truth comes out. "washington post" columnist says the candidates are going to demeaning places and answering demeaning questions. >> this started when bill clinton went on mtv and was asked, boxers or briefs, it's a way of human nicing people, it's a way to get around the

candidates that viewers don't trust that and a way to get to viewers who don't watch sunday talk shows. >> absolutely. that's why they're used so much. the romneys are going to be on the view tuesday or the obamas. i'm sorry. they were just there. i got that screwed up. this is important audiences as you noted. different demographics, especially these daytime shows. yeah, and you get some very different questions. i think we shouldn't go by the exceptions, what you wear to bed but i found the answer interesting. why not. they do provide us with extra information about these people. >> there was a sun substannive discussion as well. mitt romney a little bit nervous about the view. here's another part of that fund-raising video which he talk about, his challenge in going on that program. >> "saturday night live" has a potential of looking slapstick and not presidential. but "the view" is fine, although "the view" is high risk because

of the women on it. all but one is conservative. four are sharp-tongued and not conservative. whoopi goldberg in particular. >> so he's going to pick on vladimir punt but he's worried about whoopi goldberg. >> vladimir putin can't beam into all of that. >> because "saturday night live" mocks whoever is there, i can see how it's a higher risk than going on "the view." >> but you want to show you have a sense of hue more. >> but if you can recognize you can't pull it off, it's a good decision not to go. >> he's right. "the view" is full of liberals and "saturday night live" has been lampoolampooning. >> it's so funny. we're talking about the likability factor with two candidates who are not that likeable. on the pantheon of politicians,

neither president obama or mitt romney are the kind of guys to take home and have a beer with. it's a side show and it's about economic interests and a lot of serious policy issues. >> one thing that's very important in politics is self-deprecating humor and possib president obama has demonstrated that many, many times and it can be a useful tool innancing your critics. >> we got one of our questions answered, mitt romney does know who snooki is and likes her. more "reliable sources" next in just a moment. [ mujahid ] there was a little bit of trepidation,

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cnn came under sharp criticism for its reporting on the attack that killed ambassador crister stevens and others. they had concerns about his security concerns as confirmed by anderson's cooper. cnn distributed its findings to othersal well as those reporting on the ground. cnn found a seven-page journal kept by stevens on the compound. they contacted the family and returned the journal within 24 horses at their request. days later cnn uset id as regards tips with security service. a state department spokesman called the network's hailing of

the notebook as indefensible. he also said, quote, cnn patting themselves on the back is disgusting. cnn says it reporting the existence of the journal on friday night only because news organizations had called to ask about it. the network adds in the statement that it didn't quote from or show the journal out of concerns for the family. the statement also said cnn did not initially report on the existence of the journal out of respect for the family but we felt there were issues raised in the journal which required full reporting which we did. we think the public had a right to know what cnn knew about the multiple warnings and fears with the tore very threat. perhaps the real question hee is why the state department is now attacking the messenger. i understand the raw feelings involved here, but my take is that cnn did the right thing in using the journal's contents for its reportings on a vital subject and at the same time

tried to be suns sensitive to the feeling of a grieving family. we'll be right back.

on the day that "mother jones" disclosed the secret recorded mitt romney tape it seemed like msnbc was covering the story every ten minutes. >> tonight the romney campaign is reeling from the leak of a secretly recorded video of mitt romney speaking all too candidly at campaign fund-raiser where he managed to insult and lie about 150 million americans. >> the poor of this country are just free loerds off society. >> there are two americas and he only cares about one of them. >> that same day there was no prime time mention of the controversial video on fox news

except for a discuss on greta van sus tren's show. >> a large portion of the american population is dependent on government and will most likely not vote for him. here's my question. why is that controversial? that's true. >> everything that governor romney said was 100% accurate. >> joining us now in washington, jennifer rubin, and bill press, host of a cirrus xm radio show. do you think they're overplaying it? >> i think so. >> you don't think it's important? >> i do think it's important but virtually every story in the campaign, the stories that are the gaffes are the ones that the obama team is more than happy to have at the top of the news, magically are at the top of the

news. by the way, media's responsible but so is the romney camp. i think they've done a very poor job in getting their own message out and communicating with the media. so when these things come along they're proactive and can diffuse them. there are many stories out there. >> is fox news downplaying this? >> totally, totally. i don't think -- big news, msnbc played it up, fox news played it down. what i think is more significant is that "the new york times," "the washington post," it was all on their front page. nc, abc, cbs all led with it on their evening news. it's a big deal when a candidate for president starts off by saying i'm not going to go after half of the electorate. that's a bfd. >> to quote joe biden. half of the harshest comments came from your sight of the political spectrum.

peggy noonan calling it a rolling calamity and david brooks. this is what he had to say on meeting with the press. >> it's not all of it. >> david brooks is moderate by his own zrepgs these days. he used to be conservative but he's a moderate now. i think at some point the romney team and specifically ann romney, decided that the hysterics should stop. listen, in many of the national polls, it's tied. even in these battle states it's a close race and yet the conservative intelligencia inside the beltway is having a meltdown. why is that? they never liked romney to begin with and now they're playing a little bit of i told you so. part of it is the plethora of polls and part of it is romney has left this vacuum of story line, of information, of message and people run it. >> i just admire jep fehr'nnife

attempt to put all this behind her. but, listen. what kept this story alive was, number one, the republican, conservatives, pundits, commentators who were very, very critical. bill kristol calling it stupid and arrogant. scott brown, dean miller, susan collins. you can go down the list of republicans, senators or candidates who distanced themselves from mitt romney. that kept the story alive. when harry reid went on the floor of the senate and said this means he's got to show his tax returns, not one republican senator stud on the floor to die fend mitt romney. >> there's a different reason for that. >> let me gate back to the media and let me turn back to the 1998 videotape which surfaced of barack obama that fox news played it again and again for a couple of days and here are is how some of the fox commentators answered the story. >> president obama espousing the

social tentative of redistribution. >> redistribution is code word, dog word for it. >> the power goes to washington. >> that is division, that is class warfare. this president has taken us straight down the road of europe. >> what state senator obama said i actually believe in redistribution. and this is where they cut it off. >> and leads to make sure everybody's got a shot. is that equivalent? >> i think somewhat. i think both of these, however, are representative of an undue fixation on the gaffe at the moment. in fact, we've had lots of these throughout the campaign. at one point i wrote on decisive comments that both sides had made and it never is. the polls move iffor a few days and then that e retreat. because the media loves to pounce on these and it's easy reporting and you can pontificate for hours, they don't cover the more complicated, the more difficult and the more problematic stories

for the children. >> one was 1998. the other was 2012. >> beyond that let me jump in for half a second. did the press do a good job of pointing it out? we do have redistribution. >> as you know, howard -- >> we can argue it whether they're out of control. that's a different debate. >> when you look at this context, he was talking about distribution of public funds, foundation and public funds for public education and they ought to be contributed more fairly so all kids have a shot is what he was saying but this was a classic bait and switch. the obama campaign gave it to drudge. drudge put it on top. fox news picked up and nobody el went with it because it was apples and oranges. >> you keep implying the press is not applying the same standards. he was interviewed by ramos.

he said you promised and didn't keep your promise. why don't we hear many of that from the media, places where the president's record has fallen? >> you can have one of two explanations. one is they're in the tank for the obama campaign. that's the popular one. the other is we have gotten too fixated on process and machinery questions, that people don't really look to politics. we also haven't had much explanation of poverty or, you know, the connection between debt and low growth. >> bill. >> i think jorge ramos did a great job. thing he showed us all how we ought to conduct an interview. i salute him. that's a good question. i think he has a good answer for it but he has to press more, even if it's the president of the united states. >> i agree with that. a lot of them have been self-inflicted wounds. we can't lose sight of the fact that he's running on his as well. thank you for coming by.

enjoyed our discussion. after the break i'll sit down with more discussion on bob woodward. he got more from the president and top aides, but -- >> one-word answer. if the white house would have asked for your approval, what would you have said? >> woodward's answer in a moment. syou know, i've helped a lot off people save a lot of money. but today...( sfx: loud noise of large metal object hitting the ground) things have been a little strange. (sfx: sound of piano smashing) roadrunner: meep meep. meep meep? (sfx: loud thud sound) what a strange place. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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pushed the country to default with them trying and failing to reach a sweeping budget deal. the threats and counterthreats were covered pretty extensively by the threats but it turns out there was more to the story. the compromise continues to shape the presidential campaign as both sides face plunging off the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year. what happened behind the scenes is behind bob woodward's new book, requestet the price of politics." here is more of our conversation. >> i wonder if it was a bigger challenge for you. your last four book were about war. but this battle between president obama and the congressional republicans was covered. was that more of challenge for you to excavate more deeply?

>> no. because there is always coverage, there was coverage on the afghan war, coverage on bush's war, but, you know, 80% to 90% of the information in this book is all new. you have to have some of the structure of what was being said in the public and so forth, and the president has quoted thousands, literally thousands of words in private meetings, things that people had no idea of. >> how were you able to get -- i mean i know that for one thing you talked to the president, you talked to mitch mccome, you talked to other key players, john boehner, but you had long verbatim reconstructions of meetings. i mean it wasn't just a quote or two that somebody said i remember the pretty saying that. how were you able to get this kind of specificity? >> there were people who take notes. they often sit in the back or they're off at the main table and there are some great note takers. and they get ahold of those

contemn rainous notes and then check with people who were speaking, give them an opportunity to talk. for instance, at one point, speaker boehner said that the president was so angry he was moaning and groaning and desperate and threateningthreati asked the president about that and he said anyone who knows me knows i don't moan and groan and i'm not desperate but as we used to say a long time ago, that's a nondenial, denial. >> anyone who knows me. >> it doesn't mean it didn't happen at that point and then when you lay out the circumstances and the drama of it. and this is -- look, war is central, but the condition of the american economy means so much to everyone. >> and coming to the brink of default as it did last year. >> well, and coming to the brink of the problem again in about three or four months we're going

to be in the soup. >> essentially kick the can down the road. one thing that caught my eye in your report is that peter orszag, former white house economic adviser, he left, he became a new york times columnist and he was sending drafts of his column to the white house in advance. what happened then? >> well, he wrote some things that were okay and valerie jarrett, the senior adviser at the white house, it turned out when the columns were published in "the new york times" she didn't like them and actually told him he burned his bridges with president obama. orszag was the budget director for the first two years. >> right. as you know, nancy pelosi was reported as having put the president on mute. she says that did not happen. >> the president wasn't on mute. >> she put her own people on mute. >> she put herself and her

people on mute. they had to come up with words on the stimulus package and they were dividing a great pie, and if you know lots of people in conference calls, which essentially is what it is, they get bore odder they want to do somethingle something else or focus, and they will mute their phone. it's not necessarily unusual. again, it was a nondenial. >> you're standing by the reporting. >> well, and the witnesses were there and emphatic about it. and there's nothing -- but the point of including that in the book is to show that this, you know, seven or 800 billions of dollars in the stimulus package was a dream come true for the democrats up there saying, oh, now we can spend it on education, we can spend it on this, we can spend it on new energy projects, we can spend it

on tax deduction. i mean they're -- the goodies in the candy jar at that moment were overflowing, and everyone's desire, including nancy pelosi and harry reid to get their share was such that, well, we'll let the president talk in his high-minded way, but we're still -- i need $4 billion in his high minded way. >> you seem more transparent in this book. some books you detail, you have interviews with the president. was it a conscious effort to push as much on the record as you could? >> i think key players should talk on the record, you can hear exactly what their words are. >> you're famous for talking to people that don't want to be on the record, deep throat chief among them. >> that's right. and i've got lots of information in notes and memos and so forth. i got a bunch of memos about

offers between the white house and republicans on various phases of deal making this eventually collapsed and the white house was not happy. i said why don't you give them all to me, they said this is like cat nip to you. i said well, you know, let's lay it all out, and to the credit of the white house, they were incredibly transparent on this. they didn't ask for quote approval as they have for some people, and as one of the people in the white house said, it is not a pretty story. what's not pretty about it is the basic problem has not been solved. we have $16 trillion of ious out there. >> if the white house asked for core approval, what would you have said? >> i don't think they could look at somebody like myself that's been around so long and looked me in the eye and asked that, i would have said come on.

>> you say at the end of the book it was president obama that failed to work his will in congress. you make clear that republicans in transjent, both sides had difficulty getting the troops in line. >> more than difficulty. there's a real war going on in each party. >> ultimately you choose to lay the majority of the blame on the president's shoulders, why? >> because the president is the leader, this is the obama era, not the john boehner era. presidents have to find a way to do hard things and this didn't happen here. look, the president himself a couple weeks ago in public gave himself an incomplete, and that's essentially what i'm saying. you know what, it's a shame for everyone in this country because there could have been some partial fix or we could have gone on the road to fixing some of these things. >> and did not happen. less than a minute. some of your past book critics say you layout the facts, you

vacuum them in classic style, but you go light on the analysis. did you feel more pressure to reach a conclusion, to say here is how it seemed to me after i've done the report? >> no, because the facts when you lay them out in a situation like this and talk to everyone and weigh it and as i point out, there's lots of discussion of clinton and reagan in this book, clinton did this, reagan did that, they would have done the following. you look at the president and you know as well as anyone, there's a lot of criticism can be directed at them. on the large issues of national business, they worked their will, they made deals and obama in the end made a political calculation to go ahead and make sure, do everything he cannot to solve the problem but to get reelected. >> at the end of the book we know where bob woodward stands.

thanks for sitting down with us. still to come, ted koppel takes on bill o'reilly. the "the new york times" pushes back against commanding resources. the media monitor is straight ahead. want to try to crack it? yeah, that's the way to do it!

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time for the media monitor, the weekly look at hits and errors in the news business. here is what i like. on nbc rock center, ted koppel looked at the ideological tone of commentary on the airways, particularly fox news and msnbc. >> you blame everybody else. you're a coward. >> here's the problem with going on your show. you start ranting. >> does that offend you? >> does it offend me? it offends me when you're rude. it offends me when you ride over people, which you have a tendency to do. >> but i only do it when they filibuster or when they lie, as barney frank did that one time. >> i give bill credit for coming on and sparring with ted, but even though it is an nbc program hosted by brian williams, the bosses wouldn't allow anyone from msnbc to appear with koppel, holding everyone else

accountable. i talked about author michael lewis trailing president obama but giving the white house veto power over all quotes. now "the new york times" is getting out of that business. the paper telling reporters in a memo the court approval game goes too far and gives the impression that we are conceding too much control over a story to sources. what made change it is if other news organizations followed suit. on fox and friends, they make a fair number of mistakes and happen to cast president obama in a negative light. here is the morning show saying obama is too busy to meet with benjamin netanyahu, but he has time for this. >> there he is, sitting down with a pirate, making sure he did not forget to commemorate international talk like a pirate day. arggh, he is in the oval office, the pirate is. >> the photo is from three years ago, and the president was doing a bit for the white house correspondent association. fox anie