president of the united faculty of miami-dade college. [applause] >> what a pleasure to wish each of you a good afternoon. i am professor and on today i had the honor of representing the united faculty of my everyday college. it is an organization of over 500 professors and different disciplinary as some of whom are actually published authors. we invite you to stop by the faculty published works booth in section a of the street fair to view our work. u.s. and d.c. a have provided a green box is for you to dispose your name tag and lanyards on your way out. on the final day of the book fair we invite you to go ahead and put your name tag in the green boxes as we celebrate the

green fairy that. we have long supported the fair as volunteers because we are greatly appreciative of all that they have done. along with our colleagues at the florida center for the literary arts. they have done much to do. they have done much to enrich the learning environment at the college. this year we are very proud to sponsor the best selling author of the book, the breakthrough. gwen ifill is the moderator and managing editor and senior correspondent for the news hour with jim lehrer. she has covered six presidential campaigns and she moderated the vice presidential debate during the presidential elections in 2004, and 2008. gwen ifill says she has always known she wanted to be a journalist, and we are pleased that she was able to achieve her dream. because what she does as a public broadcaster allows us to access the very important issues

facing our community and the nation as a whole. her book, "the breakthrough," offers insight on the new path to power for future leaders. she is here to tell us more about that important work. may i present gwen ifill. [applause] >> thank you. it's so great to see you all. sold out. i am so impressed. [laughter] >> listen, i am thrilled to be here. i have to tell you, i love talking about this book but i love even more hearing your questions. so i'm going to chat for a while, just a little chit chat and going to ask you to come to the microphone. in fact, there is one microphone here for you and i'm, this is

how i learned and this is how i figured, people is my business, think they know it all. i know you're shocked to hear that but it turned out i don't know that much at all. that's one of the reasons i started out writing this book. i was approached by a publisher to write a book by barack obama and i said he will never be president. [laughter] >> what a waste of time. which is why i am not a pundit, you see. so i said to them instead, you know, there's a bigger story here. there is a story about a whole generation of obama's, and he is not just one, whether he was elected president or not, at this point he was a senator. there were a lot of other people i've come across throughout my entire career who were not exactly like him but were doing things that appear to have really fought for them to do. they had walked through the doors, their peers had open for the.

i realize as i traced through the article by career that i had encountered them. i had encountered this many, many times. i want to start by telling you how i came to do this in the larger sense of how i came to really tell the story. if i can find it. is the very first page, so how hard can this be? i don't have to cover race riots by telephone. they didn't pay me enough in my first newspaper job to venture onto the grounds of south boston high school where bricks were being thrown. instead i would telephone the headmaster each and every day and ask them to relate to me the number of broken chairs in the cafeteria. a white colleague would then be dispatched to the scene and would really untrimmed relay back to me what the details were. i spent 30 years in journalism since then, older than i look, chronicling stories just like that, places where truth and consequences collide, rub up against each other and shared history's course. none of that prepared me for

2008, and the astonishing rise of barack obama. it is to hickok was what no black man has before, but it went further than that. simply as an exercise in politics obama rewrote the textbook. is a competent was one of transformed how race and politics intersect in our society. obama is the leading edge of that change but his success is merely a ripple in the pond that grows deeper every day. i thought this will not be hard. i have a plan. i'm going to profile for people. i was expected to work for a living covering this election which meant i would would squeeze this book and about everything else i was doing so i thought i would do for profiles. i selected barack obama naturally but also patrick leben selected the first african-american governor of africamassachusetts. who was a four year-old member of congress from alabama, who,

talk about audacity of hope is currently burning for governor of alabama. [applause] >> in my lifetime, it should be said george wallace was governor of alabama. so i thought i'm just not old enough to think this was interesting. [laughter] >> and a fourth person i profile is cory booker who is a young mayor of newark, new jersey. one of these things that they all have in common is they all tried to do this once before, at least, and been told no. they were told they were it was their turn and i thought to myself what does this mean, who are these people, who told them they could do this? barack obama had run in congress and had been defeated before he was elected to the senate. the same thing was true of cory booker when he first ran for mayor. the interesting thing is before i talk to them and the more i talk to other people into the kind of work they did, they

started pointing me to other people i hadn't thought of, hadn't met like the mayor of philadelphia. the mayor of iowa city, iowa, who knew? the mayor of columbus and buffalo and all kinds of places where in order to get elected as an african-american you have to get a majority of white book. so this means they were not people who were elected from terribly drawn districts which were made to increase diversity of representation, these were people who are actually finding ways to persuade people with whom they didn't have as much in common to vote for them. so i thought to myself they shouldn't be here. at what is the theme? one thing i came across was the generational one. it turns out that a lot of these young people, youngish, some of them were in the early '50s but he was the oldest of them. a lot of them came of age at a time when the parents were very engaged in the world around them. duval patrick's mother took him to hear martin luther king's speech when he was a youngster in chicago. barack obama of course grew up all over the dog on place.

and eventually landed back in came to understand as he writes ugly in his own book, as he writes in "dreams from my father," and when you begin to get to the bottom of it you begin to think there is something they did. one of the things they did was recognize their parents walk through a lot of doors that they got to glide through. they realize their parents sat down at lunch counters and picketed but by the time they came of age there were no more lunch counters. times have changed. goals had changed. jesse jackson should said was one of the people who knocked down the door. people don't give him enough credit for what he accomplished in his second run for president. he won 13 contests that your new is the last candidate standing before michael dukakis won the nomination. there was something interesting about having covered him and watched what he did and why someone election night watch barack obama win which is an entirely different conversation. i talk to both reverend jackson

and to president obama while i was working on this book about their relationship. there were a couple of things said during the campaign that weren't always, but it turns out that these things are more complicated than was he jealous of barack. it was so much more complicated than that. read a little bit to you about what president obama told me that he had with jesse jackson. he said something that's very accurate, obama told the. he said barack, we have to break the door down which means sometimes you are not polite. you get bloodied up a little bit. you get scars. you haven't had to go through that and that is a good thing. that's part of what we went through. i don't expect you to have the same battle scars that i did. so i met all these people who didn't have the same battle scars as their parent. i'm a 20 year old who is now a state representative in south carolina's father, yet he is now

in congress in the statehouse in south carolina thinking about running for governor some day. when he traveled the back roads of the state he doesn't see white or black. he sees housing. he sees that as his goal, how does he serve his people and not necessarily define himself stricken by race. there are also philosophical differences which have sprung up between older generation and the current generation. one of them is that among them, is his idea of how events changed. when you came of age in the '60s, marching with how you came to change, or that you thought you did. court challenges, that's how civil rights laws got past. so comes back to jesse jackson because his son is now a member of congress. along the way i realize what we now had was a legacy which was building up your members of congress whose children were now taking their seats or broadening out. jesse jackson senior never held

elective office. so i went to talk to him and he said to me, he believes there's a continuum of black politics. but while the father thinks back to the ark of the movement that started in the '50s, the sun is more focused on saving like sins of their fathers. there is a movement in the black community towards unaccountable leadership he said to me. the paradigm for the unaccountable leaders has radically shifted. i considered very respectfully, as this is for the record he said, my father to be a part of the unaccountable leadership. even though i completely believe in and trust his mission and his motives for that which he does, but, he continued, the press conference, television visibility, lack of follow-through, everything is a civil right issue is profoundly unaccountable to the masses of people into history. now i was a little taken back

because he clearly came with something on his mind that he needed to share. [laughter] >> so i had to go reverend jackson, i have a question for you. and i asked him about what his son had to say. the elder jackson is keenly aware of his sons up hocrisy. [laughter] >> he said, i encouraged in our house vigorous debate. and there is no punishment for different point of view. we have different roles, jackson seen is the educated, jackson junior is a negotiator. i would love to spend thanksgiving at their table. [laughter] >> the other thing i found that a lot of these candidates had in mind was that they were, they came of age at a time when people were asking a couple of interesting questions. people would ask argue, is he black enough? and why people would generally say he seems a little too black. now for black people i kept thinking what are they talking

about, are you talking about skin color, tone or the way he speaks? michael nutter, the mayor of philadelphia wants to know, do they want me to wear might have packwood, might jeans lower, what are they talking about? i discovered when white people said he too black, there was discomfort like the jeremiah wright episode. so i kept digging trying to figure out what did it mean. it took me to the night of the south carolina primary. you will remember at this point barack obama had won in new hampshire, i mean iowa and lost early in new hampshire. really in order to survive he was going to have to win in south carolina. it seems like an interesting thing to try because he was running against hillary clinton, but the one. on the night that he won the south carolina primary his supporters could barely contain themselves housing back from a surprise defeat two weeks before and after the double victory throw the multiracial crowd gathered that night in the heart of the south. when their candidate appeared on

stage, they took up a chant, race doesn't matter, race doesn't matter. they shouted it and it spread throughout the room. standing at the foot of the stage in the ballroom just blocks from the state capital was obama's african-american pollster. he was watching in astonishment. he said to me after the election 3ñpñ3ñst3ñrt3ñpñ

it turns out this wasn't about conflict. this was are you on my site. black look at black achievers who came out of nowhere and they were being embraced by white people, they said wait a second. are you still going to represent me, or are you going to represent my interests? when white voters or any voters of any other color looked at another candidate who is not like him and said they are only speaking to black issues or they seem to be aligned with radical tides energy needed to are they speaking to the? which goes to the very fundamental rule of politics which is in or to get elected, you had to convince the majority of people you're asking to vote for you that you will represent them. that you understand where they're coming from and what it is that they need. this is public unless i first learned covering jesse jackson's campaign in 1988 when i win and cover for a short time pat roberts campaign. you would think pat roberts, jesse jackson, both preachers

but other than that maybe that so much. [laughter] >> but i went into these audiences and i discovered that people who came to see them had more in common than they had different, other than skin color. they all wanted to speak to them, to speak for them. they felt the families were falling apart. they wanted someone to speak for middle-class values. black folk and white focus of the had a lot in common and i thought maybe we all have common than we admit. and raise and our conflict about race in this country get in the way. so i learned a lot. i talk to people who kept telling me new things. among the things they told me which i thought was very interesting was that we in our community and in a community, when i see community i made multiracial he. we are not good at handing over the torch to the next level of folks were coming through. once you get that power it kind of feels good to. someone else comes knocking and says i would like a little bit of that, please. and you can't say just a minute.

i will get back to you. net of these breakthrough candidates were waiting for anybody to get back to the. they were saying, i want to speak to this now. now. a great example of his once i talked to a guy who is now the youngest had ever of the naacp. benjamin jealous. 36 result when he got elected, basically 100 year old organizations last year but he had always been involved in lots of different kinds of activities. he was a 20 year-old organizer for the afl-cio when he went to attend the 1993 march on washington for jobs with justice and peace because an anniversary march of the anniversary. he got there and discovered an interesting thing. there were two stages. where martin luther king had delivered the i have a dream speech, and then what the others called the key stage which was action on the ground of the washington monument. that is where young people were.

everybody said was talking about time to pass the torch. type to pass the torch. this didn't sit well with me. so he doesn't do the words of the older speakers were there, including civil rights activist. he had gotten wind of the discontent and he was speaking on the main stage. julian bond said to them, if you perceive that i have a torch that represents power, and you want it, you shouldn't be asking for it. you should snatch it. so now we have a spectacle of folks who are snatching power. and what happens once they get into? that's when i began to write to update the book to add it afterward after barack obama was in office for someone's. i thought to myself, you know, there's so much happening. this is not about race that something is always happening. it never seems to end. that's good and it is bad because what keeps happening so often in this conflict, as i travel the country talking about this people often say to me why

do you even have to talk about the fact that he is black? he is just an american. and aren't we post-racial now? and i really -- i wrestled with this because i did not believe we are post-racial but not for the reasons people would assume. not because there's always another conflict around the corner but but because it is possible to consider race as a positive. when i wake up every morning i discovered that indeed i am still black. [laughter] >> i do not drive. i do not go oh boo-hoo, what a shame, what a burden. because i kind of like it. and i like in a way that i would like other people to understand what, that is part of who i am, part of the find me culturally and into monday of the way. i don't expect to be patronized but we have to have a way to discuss with each other. people want to talk about it. they want to say the things that you usually don't leave the dining room table because everyone is unnerved by.

a guy asked me once in maryland, he said you know, it seems to me that fellow barack obama is very well spoken and so are you. so if author people were well spoken, -- [laughter] -- wouldn't your problems be over? and i said well are all your people well spoken? [applause] >> now, i try not to like her people's feelings when i say these things, but the truth is that we had to climb out of some of our preconceptions about who we are. and if we can do that without trying to erase race, i think what can be a more mature and more reasonable society. without being, one of the things after watching barack obama handled this indelicately his first several months in office i realize he really wasn't talking about race that much that he wasn't asked about it that much. he got the when people brought

it up. i got okay, i can understand because once again a politician wants to remind you how much he is like you, not how much unlike he is. but i also watch other signs. their first performance at the white house program was earth wind and fire. they had earth wind and fire for the coveted and then they have stevie wonder for the white house. then he moved out the little bust of winston churchill in the oval office and replace it with martin luther king jr. without much comment. i thought that interesting. is so a pic if you watch carefully what they're doing they are not getting up there and knocking the door down but they are sending messages. they are reaching out to schoolchildren in the district of columbia which happens to be the majority black. these are the images you see. i asked him if his ultimate purpose that i have been dying to ask this. his answer was this. absolutely. [laughter] >> look, i don't just have it

bust of martin luther king's, i have an original to grand a friend gave me on the march on washington. i think it is important to remember the incredible battles that were thought to allow me to occupy that office. i don't think that michelle has any qualms about letting people know where she is from, he said. the more we are delivering messages without beating people over the head, the more the culture as a whole, not just black folk, but white folk as well, are going to be engaged in a shift in perceptions that is healthy for the country. keep in mind, that term without beating people over the head. it almost tells you all you need to know about barack obama when it comes to getting was really difficult subjects, especially socially difficult subjects. and it certainly is his role about how he talks about race. he comes under some criticism sometimes from supporters of the black community. he says he doesn't plan to stop.

he considers, well he is president he comes at a lot of criticism. that comes with a job but i don't feel bad about. that's what happens when asked to become president. his role, the role of all of these others who are breaking through, the role of all these others who are taking advantage of things that didn't exist, i know it is true for me as well, for the parents when they came up. is responsibly, challenge but it is a challenge for us as much as it is for them. we have to look at our world differently. on that note, i would like to stop to take your questions because i am really anxious for them. thank you. [applause] >> hi. so good to see you. i'm always wary of the first person to. [laughter]

>> this is where my support with. however, i'm in with children at an elementary school that is predominantly black. there is not one black male teacher in that school. the principle is, but there is not one. there is not one volunteer male -- blackmail and that school. there is not one mentor, as i mentor children, in that school. >> and your question is? >> my question is, where are the young -- the young man that you're talking about, coming to make sure that the generation, the next generation comes along and follows through on the gains of what people went through with

the civil rights movement? >> thank you for your question. i have to bet i am not a sociologist. i am probably not equipped to give you the complete answer you would like to hear because i'd only answer to your questions. i would hazard a guess there are people in this room who pinpointed a lot of african-american men who are working very hard on behalf of their communities. they may not be in a school where you are. i know, i cannot speak to my personal experience and my personal experience i know a lot of folks who are taking interest in their communities. they are inspired by the success of african americans like barack obama but it doesn't mean it is universal and doesn't mean it is enough. that's my best answer i can give you, sorry. yes? >> hi. my name is mary. glad to meet you. i think it should go without saying that you are one of the premier news journalist of our times at this moment in history. [applause] >> thank you.

>> you're welcome. >> you really think i am queen latifah, don't you? [laughter] >> no. >> just checking. >> no. i followed your career for over 20 years at nbc news that i was really sad when he left nbc news for pbs. >> i wasn't. >> when your book came out and they start talking much about before you moderated, how did you feel about the people were saying, unicom is saying that you would be biased when you're the moderator? >> there's actually a story. i was really, i ignored it. partly because i've been to that rodeo before. i have moderate the 2004 debate, and i knew that it's one of the hardest things you'll ever do. i do spend a lot of time focusing and there are people whose full-time jobs leading up to the debate is to mess with the mind of the rest. and this happen before the

edwards cheney debate but not if the faculty as happened in this case. the good news for me in this case is, good and bad is that a couple things happened that i was rented by a great group of people who can't be cut off from a lot of the stuff that was circulating in the air. i knew and the people around me knew that i had not, finish writing the book and in fact it was not a book solely about barack obama. the characterization of what the book was going to be was an accurate, that by publisher called and said is that true you have written a book about barack obama because that's not what we discussed. i do when the book comes out i will be vindicated in me that people are saying mean things. i wasn't aware of most of it because i'm so completely focused on the debate. and just before the debate which in retrospect was a blessing, my office, i slipped and fell and broke her ankle. it should be said i slipped on a pair of biographies of the two

candidates that were on the steps. [laughter] >> and i will not say which one i slipped on. but you can guess. [laughter] >> i was so caught up in the idea that i did know if i was going to be able to walk on stage. they had to build an elevator to get into the stage. they had to put a box of me to put my foot up. i had to have surgery. i couldn't take pain medication because they would say i was on drugs. [laughter] >> so i had a lot of things on my mind. frankly, the best thing that happened that night was washington university in saint louis where the debate was held on range to have two other football players help me get on stage. [laughter] >> their names were buck and tim. [laughter] >> so you know where i'm coming here. it was the best part of the night. and i chose to focus on those things, and yes my ankle is now completely better. but it was -- it allowed me to stay focused completely on what was in front of and not a lot of

the dust that was being kicked up around it. and sure enough the moment the debate was over, everyone stop talking about it. people who have not read the book said he wrote a controversial book. i said really? did you read this book because it does not what they say. it's a lesson i pass on to student i talked to which is it doesn't matter what they say. tt

if i am laughing or point are saying what? you are listening to me that i don't want you to listen to me. i don't want you to care what i think. i want to be a facilitator for youth are you can get answers to your questions. that's the way i feel about my job on the news hour and a washington week, which is i am a passive or. sometimes you let some personality show but not opinions. because i learned that people read a lot into everything. the night sarah palin when the nomination at the republican convention, people the next day on youtube showed a picture of me saying i was found which proved that, what, prove my feet hurt parts i don't know. which they did. but i'm guessing that people always overinterpret what you mean and what you say. so i really have learned how to just be straight down the middle and tried to get as much information as possible without getting into a. >> you do excellent in that.

>> thank you. [applause] >> and my other question is, says president obama has become president -- >> i'm letting you getting away with the second question because of time. >> what change have you seen in the way the old line black leadership do business? >> i haven't seen a lot yet. and i don't know the election of a single black president would completely change the way people do business overnight. i think everybody is to try to figure stuff out. al sharpton figured out a long time ago that if he let people know he was endorsing barack obama it would hurt barack obama. he told as much. as a result he gets in the white house a lot. he gets invited in. he talked about education with newt gingrich. he is like okay. people who are critical are not getting invited in. you have to figure a different way of working the system perhaps and sometimes it is effective and sometimes not. maybe it is important that there is a loyal opposition or just

loyal opposition. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> hi. i have another generational question. i realized the election we just had was tiny on the blimp of things, but what we did see was the young people of all colors and race and ethnicities that were so much better for barack, were on their hands. what do you see coming down for 2010 in terms of engaging the change agent who got us where we are right now? >> if i were a democrat and who is running for office, i would be a little nervous about what we saw in these elections, except they are not representative of barack. 2010 the term elections perhaps more so, i do think it without anything at 2009 is barack obama was not on the ballot. barack obama was such a personally engaging character

and personality. a lot of people got and vote for him. it didn't translate into anything else. even when he campaigned on other people's behalf that if i was a member of congress and i was running for reelection and i realized that the president's presence did not help me, i would be a little bit less likely to go out and vote for health care reform. so to that degree there may be some direct effect on whether he has coattails or not. we don't know whether his appeal right now extends beyond him. we don't know the. that will be tested next year. will also be tested is what they've gotten done. in the next year. whether the economy has bounced back, whether we are on our way out or continue to build up in afghanistan. peoples personal comfort levels are going to come to bear and this will be i think 2010 is definitely going to be something you can say is a statement on this president and how well he is doing. >> but beyond his presidency to date, what about the generation piece do you feel, are you

picking up that young people are still paying attention, care about any things, -- >> they are still paying attention but you have to speak to them and go to where they are. they will not come to where you are. i often have people say to me i only watch jon stewart. and i said i like jon stewart. if you watch him and me, your complete. [laughter] >> but even more so, more important, who do you think jon stewart watches quick he gets his information from somewhere. and he gets it as it happens from us as close as. that is a different point which is we keep thinking, we keep imagining that our children and young people are going to come to look at politics and public service the way we did. know, they are not and they will use technology and other ways of reaching out as ways of expressing their interest and engagement. i think that people in the older generations have to remember

that they have to speak to them, not just at them. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> hi. do you think that, do you think that the commercial mainstream media was reluctant to talk about race early on in the early months of the contest? and do you think that if it were, that it helped obama? >> i think we talk about race a lot but we always talk about it. we love when there was a fight. what bill clinton said those things in south carolina, we love talking about race then but we don't know your and maybe because it's not always relevant. i mean, i find one of my favorite things is when they try to identify someone ago by

saying it's the guy in a blue blazer and a white jacket and white sneakers did and i say you mean the blackeye? [laughter] >> yes. i mean, there is some sort of notion that somehow there's something incorrect about it which is the part we need to get past that we have to decide when it is appropriate, when it is relevant to talk about race and when it is just not. we are not very good at it yet. we are getting better. >> hi. >> hi. i'm in the media also. it's called kisses and i'm going to give you a few kisses here. they are little characters. that you can't see their eyes. my question is i would like to know if you would help me, if you would help me with something that is the tear to my heart. my cartoons i was the first woman, the youngest, if i'd been

blackeye would cover every story. they were calling me the next disney, the next stupid but after seven years of being published, i was on a tour and i went to japan, all over. but i went to taiwan uninvited my first three-dimensional -- >> i'm going to have asked for a question. i understand it but you have to ask a question. >> the question is i want to help child labor. when i went there, i devoted all of my life to doing this now. all of my products, i don't even take a salary that everything is going to charity to help and child labor. and it is a huge problem because american consumers are one of the worst -- >> thank you. thank you so much for your speech.

>> can i give you a kiss? >> you can do whatever. by all means. thank you. next question. >> hi. i just wanted to say it's an honor and pleasure just sitting here listening to you. you spoke at my graduation a couple of months ago. >> where? >> georgetown. >> go hoyas. >> go hoyas. so my question for you is i will be honest, i haven't found a chance to read your book yet, but just hearing what you said so far you have look at the perspectives of blackmails. i don't know if you continue the time to look at baby how does affects females. >> excellent question and. >> just wondering. >> i don't know if i have the answer. when i start doing as i don't have any women. i had to find the women. and i started looking and asking experts who are and i got the name of the few people.

the truth is they weren't as many african-american women as i thought. so i had to get to the bottom of why, and i couple of questions. the mayor of atlanta who was maybe in her late '50s when she got elected mayor but she has worked for the previous two mayors as write-in person that she had been terrific. but i asked her why didn't she runs in and she said i don't know. i was waiting to be asked. i talk to the people said i just don't like asking for money. or alternatively, we are prioritizing the things we choose to do in our lives. most women i know are doing that every single day and they are choosing to devote themselves to the families, doing public service of the ways. or they don't choose elective office as the path. the truth is there are african americans, now ran for statewide tourney general is an example. but you know there are things that you give up if you choose. as she points out very candidly that she doesn't have kids and

she is not married and that explains in part why she didn't devote herself for this pic in order to break through you have to be focused in the way that women often don't have the luxury to be. so that is part of the reason why you don't see as many women doing this. and that when you do, nancy pelosi and hillary clinton, there are people have already raised their children, already have done their lives instead of all of one's. men don't have the same sorts of choices that they have to make. so that is what the sort i came up with. along the way there are other bits and pieces came up and there are folks who are out there that i did think about it a lot, trying to do how to get that. that's the best i could come up with. >> made for a future book perhaps? >> absolute. if i ever recover from this one. thank you. [applause] >> hi. >> good afternoon. i would like to get your opinion since you are such a great

journalist, your opinion about journalism today, state of journalism and the media today. >> well, it's been better. [laughter] >> when i left newspapers i thought if i filled the newspapers, newspapers, i would go back to print. not so much. newspaper goes everyday and everyday i feel eyes is a bit of me. i always wanted a print reporter. i only came into television because tim rusted debris to do it full-time and promised to support and it. he was a great mentor and friend. as we look at the business now, it bothers me in a couple of different levels. it is the economic piece, but there is also how we editorially execute what we do. there so much information out there and so little news. and we often as consumers confuse the two. part of what we have to do now, responsibility is so much more

on us that we have to figure a way to say okay, i know this is where, this information is but let me take it another step. don't stop at wikipedia when you log on. maybe start there but not in there. and that is something that used to be trusting and say brinkley will tell us everything we need to know. as the longer the case. we have to change our minds about what it means. but everybody with the time and doesn't do what i do. so you have to be more discerning in the kinds of information that you consume and what you do with it. and the last levit about this is my ginza is that people now use news and information as a way of confirming the conclusions they've already reached. instead of for information that

helps them decide what it is they want to do. i like to think i'm on the island you the information and you decide, not here is what you believe. that concerns me. >> thank you. >> thank you. [laughter] smack i only have a few more minutes so i will snap to these questions. >> i am one of those people who gets their news from the news out and the daily show as well. but i was wondering what your opinion was on the white house's position that the recent talk about kind of sideline fox news? >> the white house, the three of you who don't know this, was very, but there's a reason you all know and i will tell you. the white house is very critical of fox news and went so far as white house officials saying they are not really a news organization. which i have to say i don't buy into that. as they say some of my best friends work for fox. but you have to draw the line between opinion and street is that sometimes there is a blur.

i think, my theory, based on just watching the way that language issues in these kinds of debates, is that fox news, the white house was attacking fox news. they were attacking us. for instance, someone asked me early today don't you think acorn is a big deal. i said bigger than what? bigger than afghanistan, but event health care reform was sure it is a story but was it that big of a story. it becomes the bigger story when we, mainstream media, cable news was not that many people watch. but we spend a lot of time writing about it and echoing what they do. for better and worse. so i think that is really what that shot across the bow was about. it was more aimed at those of us who they are trying to shame into not writing or paying attention. with that said i don't necessarily buy into the idea of any government telling us what

music should be or who should be asking the questions are how. [applause] >> so i'm not really enamored with that but i think that was what they were mentioning. thanks. >> good afternoon. and welcome to miami. >> thank you. >> okay. i have a challenge for you as someone who was an immediate. you mentioned the jeremiah by situation. i usually start off friday evenings with washington week, followed by bill moore's journal. bill moyer had reverend wright on. >> i saw the. >> and he did the entire, he showed the entire piece from both sermons. and why is it that the media continues to focus on the soundbite which takes things out of context? >> i used to say that. when i watched that same special and i had been to trinity church

on more than one occasion that it is a perfectly fine congregation of middle-class people who are just trying to love the lord there i have no problem with the. i also understand there were a couple of clips in this loop that may jeremiah wright looks bad, bad. but it should be saved did not hurt his cause because he continued. he didn't stop there. he didn't want to do national press club i did more of it. and he went to a meeting in detroit that he came out and mention any update in in the book and said other inflammatory things that he knows, he perfectly know are inflammatory. by the time the president-elect, he was even a nominee, by the time the president now gave his speech in philadelphia, he also had given barack obama, i meant jeremiah wright a pastor finally had to realize that jeremiah wright didn't really mean him any good and that if you tap jeremiah wright on the chart right now he was to say the president does what he has to

and i do i have to do. that doesn't mean the president will link arms with you anymore. politics and electioneering and public service, so much about appearances and when you're introducing herself as someone that people feel that you're kind of alienated. u.s.a. funny name, have a darker skin, never heard of you, don't know who you went to two years ago. anything contained or defined to you or whether it is fair or whether it is unfair. so that is what brought kabbalah did the stiff arm. going to appear to have a quick follow-up. >> but it is more so soundbite over the full story. pbs has the luxury where they will expand beyond 15 seconds of something. that then the country is fixed to say on. >> and i completely. it is a beautiful thing to work for pbs. i never have to cover. it is wonderful. [applause] >> it's great. but i also understand that

people form their impressions by a combination of things and it is not, and most people, is other people have the luxury of sitting down and say i think i would just listen to his whole speech and decide for myself. it is what it is. and if you're a politician you cope with reality but not the way you wish you got to be. i have more people died and i had to wind up. >> one of the people close document to personality that comes through and i was thinking about, can you tell people about the history makers? >> thank you. the history makers pick one of my favorite things. there's a group called history makers based in chicago which has created an online archive of african-americans that over the years they have collected lots and lots and lots of interviews with people who tell you to interest my stories so they will not be lost in history. i started working when they were inviting once a year to do that big dealer program where you get dressed up and interview somebody famous. so now i have to say just a few

weeks ago i was in chicago in doing smokey robinson, thank you very much. [applause] >> lacerated ariza one month before she died. it is something i wish i dreamed of because it is really aside from the stars that i get to meet and pretend they are my best friends, it also is a way of doing an extension of what it is what i do which is tell our story very well. thank you for a much. [applause] g outside