abandoned in the canadian arctic, only to be found by american sailors and returned to queen victoria. the desk was a token of good will and friendship, as the plaque on it attests. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." when we interviewed glenn greenwald on last sunday's program, i was a little puzzled that the guardian columnist was in hong kong. hours later, he had followed his source on the administration's massive surveillance program, ed snowden, and it was there that they made a video. >> i'm no different from anybody else. i don't have special skills. i'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes this is something that's not our place to decide. the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong. >> the media debate migrates

from what the 29-year-old analyst revealed, the government compiling a vast warehouse of e-mails to snowden, his life and even his girl end. >> is the nsa leaker a hero or a traitor. >> so is snowden a hero or a villain in your opinion? >> hero orrville an? the man behind one of the biggest leaks in u.s. intelligence history hiding out in hong kong. >> is it good enough to make him a hero? >> is the news business turning a serious subject into a morality play? glen greenwald who broke this story will be here. the george zimmerman murder trial already drawing coverage as the jury is being picked. the cable debate is ratcheting up over the killing of trayvon martin. >> a rally in miami drew thousands of protesters. i was there joining those calling for an arrest. calling on authorities to let the criminal justice system do its work. >> the media, which is obviously liberal in america, the national

media is, there's no doubt about it, they would be sympathetic to the african-american teenager who is unarmed and was killed. >> in this tragic trial, are the media playing a polarizing role? cnn's new morning anchor, chris cuomo will weigh in. plus a new anchor for a very influential newscast. >> how am i supposed to explain this to jon stewart? hey, boss, yeah, the show is going okay. on the other hand, i think the country might be completely falling apart. and by the way, good luck tracing a finger phone, nsa. >> does john oliver translate as jon stewart's summer replacement? and does "the daily show" need a comedic transfusion? i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." for a guy who's in hiding in hong kong, ed snowden hasn't

been totally inaccessible to the media. he granted an interview to the south china "morning post" this week and he had this to say in that video interview with the guardian's glenn greenwald. >> i think the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. when you were subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy. >> and just about everyone on television it seems has a view about snowden, his leaks from the nsa and his motivation. >> i don't think this snowden character is a hero at all. >> whistleblowers in general, we need them and they are heroes. >> i certainly don't think he's a hero. >> i have no doubt that he felt like he had the best intentions. >> as far as him being a hero, yes, he's a hero. did he break a law? perhaps. but many heroes break laws. >> glen greenwald has continued to work on the story and says more exclusives are coming. we invited him back and i spoke to him just a few moments ago

from rio de janeiro. >> glenn greenwald welcome. >> good to be here, howard. >> your source, ed snowden, on the cover of "time" magazine. lengthy profiles in this morning's "washington post" and "the new york times." calling him a hero or a traitor. are you surprised how personal the coverage has gotten? >> unfortunately, i'm not. one of his big concerns with coming out, really his only one, is that he knows that political media loves to dramatize and personalize things. he was concerned that the focus would distract away from the revelations about what our government is doing onto him personally. the other problem is whenever there's a whistleblower, the favorite tactic is to try and demonize him and highlight what are his alleged bad personality traits. that's one of the reasons why we wanted to present him in his own words to the world so they could form their own impressions before these smear campaigns began. >> which you did in that video.

you write that there is a sustained demonization campaign against ed snowden and cite various columnists. but why is it a campaign for some commentators and writers to criticize what snowden did with these nsa leaks? others are, of course, defending him? >> i don't think there's any problem with people who want to criticize what he did on the merits, although i think it's extremely strange that people who call themselves journalists find more contemptible than anything when somebody steps forward and brings transparency to what the government is doing, that's supposed to be their jobs. they should be in the lead cheering for that but so be it. if they decide that disclosure and transparency for the government are bad things, i think it's odd that they call themselves journalists but they have every right to do that. what i'm talking about is this effort to smear them personally. remember the first instinct of the nixon administration when they published the pentagon papers was to break into a psychoanalyst's office to get

his sexual secrets. richard cohen in the "washington post" did the same thing. it's the tactic of the establishment to demean the psyche and personality as a way of discrediting their revelations to the public and distracting attention away from it and that's what you're seeing and that's what i think is illegitimate. >> you have also come under attack for your reporting in the last ten days and since we had you on last week, for example, in london's telegraph, a columnist writes this. he says maybe it's the things that suggest he's a little odd, like self searching his own name so he can pounce on people criticizing him. you can be a great activist or a great journalist, but not both. i think mr. greenwald should pick before something goes wrong. what do you make of that argument between your blurring the lines of having a strong point of view and being a reporter. >> i think there's this mythology in journalism that has subsisted too long and has degraded how journalism is

perceived which is in order to be a, quote unquote, real journalist you have to hide your political opinions or pretend that you have none. as human beings we all have strong political opinions and i've always personally believed that it's much more honest and it makes you much more credible to say explicitly what your opinions are rather than try and conceal them or hide them or have this conceit that you are free of them. i think that our reporting stands on its own. we published five stories now, all breaking news. the only one about which there's been any questions raised is one of the stories, which is the prison story. all four of the other ones everybody acknowledges are completely true, that the u.s. is collecting phone records on every single american. all of those stories have been unquestioned. and there's a very good article in fact by "the new york times" public editor just today that says that journalism is changing and it's healthy because of the fact that sources can now go to people who aren't at these huge

institutions that conform to these old-style rules that people view as discredited. that you can have strong opinions and crusade for transparency, as i've done, and yet still do very important journalism. i think everyone acknowledges that these stories are that. >> that column echoed some of what we talked about last week as about why snowden came to you as opposed to sniemz which had delayed the publication of the bush surveillance program back in 2004-2 h005. i want to turn to something else where you were critical of the media and the way -- or some in the media and the way they have handled this. you write about liberal columnists. quote, i'm not surprised at their reaction. i've been amazed and disappointed for a long time at how the most slavishly partisan media democrats who pretended to care so much about these issues when doing so undermined george bush are now the loudest cheerleaders for these policies

but why is it an example of hypocrisy if someone criticizes what edward snowden did. he acknowledges that he broke the law in doing these leaks and at the same time have some ambivalence about the surveillance programs. >> well, remember, howard, i first started writing about politics in late 2005. i focused almost exclusively for the first year on the nsa scandal back then, which was revealed by "the new york times" a year late, but better late than never. that the bush administration was eavesdropping on americans without the warrants required by law. the way that i developed a platform was because almost every progressive liberal, democratic blogger, media outlet, person with a platform would promote the work i was doing. i was using my expertise as a constitutional lawyer and my interest in these issues. and they were all cheering for the condemnations that i was issuing. there were all kinds of controversies back then the same as now. alberto gonzalez threatened to prosecute "the new york times" for publishing that story.

there were calls for the source that turned out to be a midlevel justice defendant lawyer to be prosecuted. uniformly, i bet you cannot go back and find a single liberal, progressive or democratic pundit taking alberto gonzalez' side or condemning the source who blew the whistle on that program. >> now you think they have flipped? >> they have completely switched gears. yeah, you can even look at polling data. overwhelmingly democrats opposed nsa surveillance programs back in 2006 and overwhelmingly they now favor them because it's a democrat in power who's doing it rather than a republican. >> a number of polls show that either a bare majority or plurality agree with edward snowden's decision to make this material public but also majorities think that somebody who breaks the law in that fashion should be prosecuted. let me ask you about the "washington post" bart gelman who reported on the story about the same time you and "the guardian" did. he said ed snowden told him that he could no longer have the

story exclusively 1 the "washington post" wasn't agree to publish all the documents he turned over. were you aware snowden was dealing with bart gelman at the same time he was dealing with you? >> i was. mr. snowden told me he thought it was a good thing to have another media outlet, especially one at the heart of washington, invested in these leaks, namely "the washington post." he told me bart was working on one of the stories, which was the prison story and that turned out to be true and we were going to work on all the others. if we wanted to, we could work on the prison story as well but i think it is significant that the prison story in particular was published by bart gelman, a two-time pulitzer prize winner and vetted by the "washington post" editors as well as the editors at "the guardian" and me as well and the source did want the "washington post" involved in that story. >> that is e-mails, facebook postings and things like that and there was some pushback

because the companies said they hadn't fully cooperated but their definition of what the government was doing and what was shown in government documents turned out to be different and your point is you reported both sides. >> correct. >> let me briefly ask you before we go, you say in the time you've spent with ed snowden you have gotten lots of classified documents that will be the basis of future stories. are there things that you will hold back because you might make a determination that it could harm national security? >> yeah. i mean there are things that we've already held back. and in part we're doing that because we want to honor his wishes. he didn't want us just dumping documents that would, for example, enable other countries to copy the massive surveillance scheme that the nsa is building and impose that on their own citizens. so we don't want to print blueprint guides for other countries as to how to replicate what the nsa is doing. we just want to inform the american people about what the government is doing so they can democratically decide that's what they want. >> when we spoke last week, i

certainly didn't realize we would find out so quickly who your source was and that has become a big story as well as your own reporting. thanks very much for joining us this morning. >> thanks for having me, howard. when we come back, we'll examine the coverage of glenn greenwald, government surveillance, edward snowden and, yes, snowden's girlfriend. that's next. at a dry cleaner, we replaced people with a machine. what? customers didn't like it. so why do banks do it? hello? hello?! if your bank doesn't let you talk to a real person 24/7, you need an ally. hello? ally bank. your money needs an ally.

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surveillance programs. joining us now in san francisco, paul farry and lynn suite, washington bureau chief. paul, you just watched our interview of glenn greenwald before the break. does the newspaper publishing this story, does that give you any pause? >> yeah, it does, because you and i and people -- journalists of our generation grew up with this old-school notion that you're an opinion writer or a reporter but you're not both. and so it makes all of us feel like there could be a problem here. does glenn greenwald have his thumb on the scales as he's writing these news stories? he is right, though. you can judge the stories on their merits and on their merits alone. forget about his opinions. tell me the information. is it fair? is it accurate? and in this case it has stood up. >> ed snowden, the source, also approached the liberal filmmaker

laura poitrace who was in touch with greenwald and bart gelman. lynn, you heard glenn greenwald say the old notion reporters have to keep their opinions out of things is old fashioned and sources gravitate toward people who agree with them. >> i disagree with paul. i think that greenwald is featuring more like a columnist who a source went to. that's it, howie. and a columnist often breaks news. >> speaking as a columnist yourself. >> and my column is newsy, more than opinionated. but in this case i do have an opinion for you. greenwald, you know where he's coming from and because of the enormity of the news in it, yes, he wrote it as a news story with a mainstream news outlet in britain, and i don't see any problem in this because as we've said, the facts are the facts. and, okay, so the reader knows that this is a sympathetic reporter that the source is

going to, but you know what, sources always go to sympathetic reporters. i have not met a source that goes to a reporter -- >> someone they would deem to be unsympathetic. >> right. >> and the facts have indeed held up. let's talk about the way in which the story or the narrative, the media narrative have swirled around edward snowden, saint or sinner. is this a simplification, paul farhi, of a very complicated set of questions about government surveillance, civil liberties and privacy? >> well, i disagree with glenn on this. it's not ville fiction, it's an attempt to find out who this guy is, what his motivations are and where he's coming from. yes, there's going to be opinions you don't like about this, but to criticize the search for understanding is absurd. i'd like to know more about him

and what he's all about. >> well, by doing that video interview with glenn greenwald, ed snowden put himself at the center of this narrative. he personalized itself the way it's real eat case but on the other hand in these detailed profiles we learned about what he was like in middle school, that he was a geek, he was in the boy scouts. even what kind of doughnuts he likes to have after sex. i wonder if there's a point in which this just becomes the politics of personality. >> it's not the politics of personality, it is just the interest everybody has in somebody who comes in the news. i don't think he's villified or demonized. in the end, his material, stands or falls on its own. he knows he has legal consequences. but every story that brings in a new face to us, that person becomes profiled. you want to know about him both for the political access he may have to grind or not and he just seems like a very interesting

person. >> the most interesting question in journalism, who is this guy and increasingly many in the media are asking who is this guy's girlfriend. let's play some videotape with that in mind. >> part of the life he left behind involves his long-term girlfriend, lindsay mills, a pole dancer and member of a hawaiian acura battic dance group with her own youtube channel. >> on her blog that has been taken down, mills called her boyfriend a man of mystery. >> snowden's girlfriend said she is adrift in a sea of chaos. >> other than an excuse to show those bathing suit shots of lindsay middle, why should the media focus on a girlfriend who apparently knew nothing about what her boyfriend was up to. >> i often thought there was the two stories, important stories and interesting stories. the best kind are interesting and important. in this case you've only got one, it's interesting. people want to know who this person is. to discover that she's a pole dancer, you know, it's mind

blowing in a way. >> you can't make this stuff up. you just can't make this stuff up. >> yes, exactly. doesn't anybody live a boring, ordinary life anymore? apparently not. >> but why -- since edward snowden told her that he was going away and doesn't seem to be a shred of evidence she knew anything about this, why drag her into the media spotlight? >> well, i know i'm talking to two men so you will understand and i don't necessarily -- i'm not an advocate of this, but she was an attractive woman, the pole dancing. >> she had a blog where she posted her own pictures. >> and there's video material. so you have the visual presentation. i just think it was too tantalizing for other people to ignore because there's material out there. one thing in this age, howie, everybody who leaves a trail about themselves, you don't need the nsa to find out stuff about people. her boyfriend is in the news, she's in the news, pole dancing didn't hurt her.

>> especially if there's video of her performing said activity. up next, the ties between the press and the administration can seem rather incestuous. are family connections affecting the way journalists cover barack obama? there was this and this. she got a parking ticket... ♪ and she forgot to pay her credit card bill on time. good thing she's got the citi simplicity card. it doesn't charge late fees or a penalty rate. ever. as in never ever. now about that parking ticket. [ grunting ] [ male announcer ] the citi simplicity card is the only card that never has late fees, a penalty rate, or an annual fee, ever. go to citi.com/simplicity to apply.

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do family ties affect the work of washington journalists? that's the question posed by paul farhi whose piece pointed out numerous connections to the obama administration. ben sherwood who's sister is a national security adviser to president obama. david rhodes whose brother is a white house foreign policy adviser and then the marriages. claire shipman whose husband is white house spokesman jay carney. and npr white house correspondent ari sha peer row married to a lawyer in the counciles office. in every case you had journalists who recused themself or changing assignments to deal with the perception of conflict. >> yeah, i think it's definitely a perception of conflict, but whether you can prove an actual conflict is really not obvious to me. and i really would like anybody who suggests otherwise to come forward with some kind of

evidence to say, aha, you're pulling your punch or not covering something or you're favoring somebody because of a relationship. and it does not appear to be the case that that has happened. the only people -- the only thing that critics can point to is the fact of the coincidence, the fact of the connection rather than the actual work that was in some way changed to favor a relative. >> right. lynn sweet, is it fair to cast apersians on the presidents of cbs news or abc news because they happen to have siblings that work for the administration? >> no, no, it's not fair to past apersians on that. we could find other things, maybe what their coverage policies are. >> what about marriages. what about if ari reports th that -- are journalists supposed to give up their profession because a spouse as an independent career? >> no, but it is hard. certain low if we look at

capitol hill, there's all kinds of relationships between staffers and reporteders. i think you have to be very careful. i think you have to disclose relationships. maybe something that says so-and-so is married or wherever you draw the line or is a sibling of, that would not hurt on that. >> one other issue before we go, president obama dropping by an off-the-record briefing for white house reporters and that caused some hand wringing. peter baker saying if they had known in advance the president was going to show up at this session, maybe the "times" wouldn't have attended. is this some ethical breach? presidents have talked to journalists off the record for a long time. >> yeah, and i wish it were on the record and so did the reporters. the president dropping by, i don't really see a problem. it would be nice to be able to get that information out to the public to know exactly what he said. >> right. now, there was this flap about eric holder, the attorney

general, have those off the record media briefings at a time when he was under attack for going after reporters and their phone records and their e-mails, but, you know, what were the reporters supposed to do? they didn't know the president was coming. run out of the room? >> not all off the records are equal. nobody knew obama was coming. you would be crazy to run out of the room and frankly not to take that off the record action even with the chief of staff just to get to know what's on his mind. eric holder, different story. he should have just met with bureau chiefs or the academics or whatever, or the news organizations to make policy different, the meeting with reporters who write about policy. >> lynn sweet and paul farhi, thanks for stopping by. ahead on "reliable sources" some of the media taking sides as the george zimmerman murder trial gets under way. chris kwoem kwoe on the coverage of the new racially motivated case and his new morning show.

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it's been more than a year since 17-year-old trayvon martin w

zimmerman. >> they think that -- they have learned that the media is very good and putting their own spin on what they want the narrative to be. >> does he have a point? >> i spoke with chris como, the host of "new day" which has its premiere tomorrow morning. chris cuomo, welcome. >> great to be with you, howie, thank you for the opportunity. >> oh, i don't know, howie, this is tough because, as you know, i believe that the media does perform a very specific and valuable function when it comes to the criminal justice system. the stories are so immediately relatable, they're such a part

of our social fabric from everything from the narratives involved to the nature of consequences and how the process works. this case, unfortunately, really checks all the boxes of urgency. race looms large here. some will take issue with that, but i think objectively it just does. and when that's the case, it really makes people even more tuned in, howie. people want to make sure this is done cleanly, it's proper and justice -- >> maybe tuned in is the key phrase because i'm going to check back a little bit. you say it checks all the boxes. i think it checks all the boxes to get ratings for tell vigts. while it's undeniably a tragic situation, if these were two white people or two black people involved, this wouldn't get any national attention. >> well, i think that that might be true in part. you want to push? now i'll push. you want to do the ping pong push, let's do it right now. i think if it not were trayvon were black and zimmerman were not black, it would change the

calculus a little bit. you don't know what it would mean if zimmerman were someone who were african-american and trayvon were a white kid, what that would mean. but race is involved any way you want to look at it. here's the bet that you and i can make. i do not think that that story in any way will resonate from a ratings perspective the way jodi arias did. why? because this one is about real things beyond the satisfaction of the victim's family and the call for justice. and those matter a lot. i don't mean to in any way diminish them. but you had sex there and you had beauty at play and the fascination with the salacious that drove jodi arias. also the highest stakes involved, obviously, death penalty eligible case. this case is about urgency and outrage and concerns about social justice. now, whether or not they are placed fairly in this situation is another question. i think the outcome of this case could very well be a not guilty verdict, and that not be because

of race or because of injustice or prejudice, but how will it be perceived. can you get a fair trial, can you get a fair analysis of the trial, those are big questions. it should be paid attention to for that but i don't think it will rate as well as jodi arias. >> that's setting a high bar. as the media choose up sides here, some people saying trayvon martin, obviously unarmed teenager ends up dead, others thinking george zimmerman got railroaded and there was pressure to indict him. i fear and i think we saw signs of this that the media might play a racially inflammatory role. your thoughts. >> racially inflammatory meaning playing to the fact that trayvon is african-american and what that means and whether or not it's being treated with the urgency it would if you were a white person? what do you mean? >> meaning portraying this as kind of a rorschach test of whether or not somebody can get justice in this system when the victim, sadly, tragically, is a black teenager. of course, as you know, george

zimmerman's brother, robert, says he thinks the media are already showing signs of bias against his brother. >> one of the problems -- not a problem, but one of the interesting parts of dynamic of race in this country is you do have so much attention paid to it on one level so it could fuel the observation, the belief that this is going to be harder on zimmerman because race -- the race of his victim. and yet you also have just as many people coming at it the other way, that boy, zimmerman should be in jail already. if this were a white person who had been victimized, this would have been done beforehand. i don't know that either is 100% true. rarely does one side have a stranglehold on the truth. but i do believe that the issues involved make this worthy of coverage. it's going to be a very tricky case. it's very difficult for analysis because people don't see the facts of the case as they lay, they see them through the lens of their feelings about what's going on on a higher level. >> a lot of personal prisms. now, tomorrow morning you will

debut as the co-host of "new day," a new cnn morning show with kate bolduan and michaela pereira. it is no secret that cnn has had ratings troubles in the morning roughly forever. how is your show going to be different? >> not on sunday mornings, with "reliable sources." i don't think it gets bigger for me than being on this show today. tomorrow is only a step down. i'm just pushing for more time. can you see the logo if i move my head? i am very lucky getting into it tomorrow. cnn is a phenomenal brand, you know that, you helped build it, howie. it's a big reason that i came here for this opportunity. jeff zucker is such a figure in our business, his word means so much. being able to work for him and learn from him is a big sglunt in fact you left abc news just a few months ago. you had been on "good morning america," you were on 20/20, because you wanted to come to cnn, correct? >> absolutely, absolutely.

it wasn't because i wanted to leave abc news. i loved the organization, people are like family to me. i think they're the best in the business on the network level, carving out cable for us. but this was a great opportunity and that's why i took it. i came to this for all positive reasons and that's important for me, for people to understand. i love abc news. i wish them every success. happy that they're number one in the mornings with gma. but here, i don't believe that cnn is dealing from anything other than a position of strength. why? one, i dismiss what critics say about the perceptions of the morning, the ratings. cnn is going through a journey of going from being largely an exagainsty-based emergency platform, when something is going on they want to see us because we'll be there in force, and that's a great cache for your brand but i also believe the evolution jeff is trying to take us through, mr. zucker, is

there are reasons to watch even when there's not this huge urgency and that's where the morning comes in, howie. as you understand better than i, it's important in an absolute sense to have the morning be strong so that it's a flow-through for what cnn believes is important. and that you have personalities there that you'll see other places and platforms on cnn when it's called for. >> speaking about personalities, you have a well deserved reputation for conducting aggressive interviews on hard news stories. is that going to be a transition for you to be on as a morning personality, which as you know, people are eating breakfast and supposedly the conventional wisdom is they want a little bit of lighter approach. >> i think that you have to be defr shal to the day part, people are starting their day. you only get one chance to start your day. you want to be equipped with the information and perspective you need to get out and do whatever responsibilities you have. also it is a little more quiet

and more gentle of a time and i understand that and i appreciate it. that said, howie, i do believe we underestimate the audience in believing that they aren't full of care and concern at that time. i believe that in the morning it is important for our audience to understand that we care too. we care specifically about them and what matters to them. and that i'm going to go after that every day, day in and day out. i'll have a smile on my face a lot of time because as you know we've been friends a long time. i take my job very seriously because i believe people deserve it. i do not take myself seriously at all so i'm happy to have a good time and in that way i'm blessed with kate and michaela. they have huge personalities and this common bond of smacking me around as often as they can. >> i'm in favor of that. chris cuomo, good luck on "new day." >> howie, thank you so much. after the break, john oliver takes over for jon stewart at

"the daily show." does it need more than injection of british air you decision. i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i'm still working. he's retired. i hope he's saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we're owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you're just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we'll help you get there.

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jon stewart started a three-month sabbatical as the king of fake news. with the bombshell of ed snowden's leaks about massive government surveillance, the new "daily show" presenter didn't lack for material. >> the media, they face a very difficult question, do they prioritize the legal and ethical implications of an unprecedented government surveillance program or do they go "us weekly" on the messenger. >> the 29-year-old high school dropout. he went to elementary and middle school in crofton, maryland. >> i think he got his g.e.d. >> he was living in hawaii with his girlfriend who it turns out is some sort of acrobat or gymnast. >> let's see if i was right. bottom, lo boom, look at that. >> what does oliver's performance tell us about the direction of "the daily show." ? i spoke wp james poniewozik in new york. james, welcome. >> thank you. >> you described the john oliver experiment as a little weird. but can weirdness actually work?

>> sure. i will say that it was actually a little weird in john oliver's own words. that's how he introduced himself sitting in the spot that jon stewart had been in for so long. you know, and i think that not only can weirdness work in this situation, but that "the daily show" could even use maybe even a little more weirdness over the summer. >> you're saying it's insufficiently weird? is that your critique? >> i think it's insufficiently different. i mean it's nothing against john oliver, who's been a great correspondent on the show. he's funny, he's political, he's in many ways a very good choice to sit in jon stewart's chair. >> and he's british and you say maybe more could be made of that? >> yeah, i think so. you know, i think that rather than having him try to do sort of a jon stewart imitation, deliver a lot of lines that you could hear coming from jon stewart, that maybe they could do a little more work with what makes him different and distinctive. for instance, he is british, not

american. that in the past that has given him even working because he needed to for his green card and so forth. i think that that could give him a bit of a different perspective on, say, world issues whereas the daily show tends to be dochl natured by u.s. politics. >> there has been chatter that after 14 years in the fake news chair, that maybe the jon stewart formula could use a little shaking up and this is a chance maybe to move the program in a different direction. what's your take on that? >> i don't know if i'd say that it's stale. i still think that the daily show is one of the funniest commentary shows on tv and jon stewart's become an institution at it. but i do think that will are times when there is not big news going organization not something

that jon will be particularly passionate about that the formula can drag. and the i would think that the writers can look at the summer as chance to -- hosting for 14 years at this point. so maybe when, you know, the boss comes back in a few months, it's a little fresher and they have a few more tool mistheir bag. >> i think stewart is a satirical genius especially when he skewers us in the media. there are those that ever since the rally for sanity in washington, maybe he has taken himself and the issues a little too seriously even while sprinkling lots of jokes around the presentation of them. >> i don't know if he takes himself too seriously. i do think he definitely takes himself more seriously than he used to in the sense that, you know, he took over back in 1999

and the show was -- tended to be more middle of the road and not -- not necessarily taking a strong personal points of view as it has come to. i think stewart has realized that he has a platform and people pay attention. and now when it comes to things like the -- >> he takes a stand. i have to ask you for a quick answer here. given john oliver's summertime fill-in status, could he have a bigger role our does he fade back to goofy british correspondent? >> i think he goes back to goofy british correspondent, but who knows when comedy central needs a third show. >> goofy correspondent is a living. james, thanks very much for joining us. >> thanks. immediate are a monitor straight ahead.

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i'm for the media monitor, our weekly look at the hits and errors in the news business.

the tampa bay times favored the 50 worst charities in america. they devote less than 4% of the money they raise to helping anyone and officials a lied about their guy nantszs, taken multiple salaries and in one case paid the president's son $18 million as a fund-raiser. the paperwork with the center for investigative reporting seemed you said with cnn which tell sized the findings. cbs news is investigating a sigh cyber attack on the computer of cheryl atkinson. i don't want to jump to any conclusions, but the attack took place late last year and coincided with atkinson's aggressive reporting on the attack of the american consulate in benghazi. atkinson says people should be disturb ed. i do feel this was an attempt to make me feel intimidated. it's the nature of the news business that when a big story

explodes, it then burns brightly for a while and recedes into history, but there is an intriguing new website that calls retro reports that hasmen. >> in the date 80s, she was a haas hold name as her tore risk story spread across the nation. >> we'll expose the facts in the crimes against black people. >> the video recounts how the story was exposed as a hoax in part by the times and includes a recent interview with sharp ton, now a former presidential candidate and msnbc host. >>ic i think a lot of the rhetoc

including mine went too far. >> the nonprofit retro reports provides some useful perspective in this era of instant news. finally scott pelley knows how to push back against the press. the cbs anchor was ticked off at the new york "post" page 6 for reporting that he had failed to mention a scoop by john miller on allegations that a number of state department officials were soliciting prostitutes because spelly was peeved or so it said that the story had been broken on the morning show. spelly said he just didn't have time on his broadcast and called the reporter and saying it's false. you wouldn't last ten seconds at cbs news. you called my publicist but not me? now, i don't believe scott pelley passed on the story, which was discussed on the next night's cbs evening news. but there is no question he was peeved when he called the paper to complain. scott, we're