a range of issues that we know are important for workers in communities whether it be health care, immigration, trade issues, the whole gamut. .. >> these are folks who've gone to school, have educational backgrounds, and can't find jobs; let alone people who grew up in poverty and continue to be pushed further into poverty, so

the way in which people are struggling is profound, and it's certainly inspired us at jobs of justice to say this is the moment. i was really so pleased to hear congressman louis talk about the need to build unity right now and president trumka talked about this. we're clear people are struggling, and we have to bring public sector workers, private sector workers, unemployed, immigrants, excluded people together now more than ever, defend and protect what we have, but we have to create what we need. we need a really transformative and bold agenda right now, and that's what we're aiming to do. >> one of the things more often asked as i travel around the country is what can ordinary people do to help? to a great extent, people feel like they are separate and a

part from their government that they are not really represented by their elected officials, and they feel their voices are not heard, and so they just have a tendency to give up. are there things that ordinary people can do, and if so, what do you recommend? >> i think ordinary people are the engine behind our movements. i mean, frankly, it's ordinary people's vision for what they want not future, it's the hope they carry, it's the love they carry for humanity, for one another, that frankly will make a difference in the kind of move. we build and the kind of long lasting changes that we make. if ordinary workers whether it's one of the 45,000 verizon workers who went on strike last week says enough is enough or one of the j1 students who said we're going to do a sit down strike in the factory and say enough is enough. those are ordinary people saying, you know, it's time to actually take action.

we have to understand each other's struggles and understand there's a collective struggle here. i'm inspired every single day by people like kathleen and workers who have taken risks. people are taking risks. those workers on strike took major risks to be on strike at a time when the economy is so bad, when it's so easy for employers and major public-private sector corporations like verizon, easy to say, well, forget it. there's other people who want jobs here, so it's important for us, for ordinary people to see that it's not just about fighting for what we have, but it's about pushing the envelope. we're not just trying to hold the line here, but striving to move the line. we can be a better society, and i think ordinary people know that, and they need to help us define what that society is. a jobs adjustments, we're doing

a lot of campaigns, and at some point hopefully we get to share some of that, but one of the most profound ones as we're doing -- working occupant the demographicships in this country. everyone knows in years to become we'll become a majority, people of a colored nation, but there's a huge shift in the age wage that's happening. we have a growing aging population. there's an opportunity for us to step in front of those demographic shifts right now and really think together about what kind of a society are we building? we're launching caring across generations campaign that looks at how do we transform the long-term care industry in the country and put front and center the question and value of care, and so what does that mean for people who need care? what's that mean for the workers who are actually without jobs, don't have rights in many

arenas, and for the many -- >> professor, these very serious problems american workers are facing began long before the so-called great depression. in fact, they go back to the 1970s. is there a way to summarize in this setting what happened to american workers during that period? >> yeah, yeah -- >> thank god he said yes. [laughter] >> i thought that's what you were going to ask. [laughter] we can look at at history of the last 30-40 years as a state of

erosion of the power of the american, the power of the american worker. we go back to the 60s, the early 70s, levels of economic inequality were lower, rates of unionization were much higher. union decline extended through the 1970, 1980s, and 1990s. in the 2000, economic inequality increased during that period as workers lost power, so now we find ourselves in a historically enormous recession, the largest since the great depression, and it coincides with the low point. the bargaining power of the immigrant worker and it's tempting to view the recession

as a theme that's just overwhelmed the labor market. there's a catastrophe in the financial sector, and in the home mortgage sector and that precipitated this enormous recession, but i think we have to see the depth of the recession and the slowness of the recovery as also related to this weakened bargaining power of the american worker. management is -- it's become much more add vert,

and there's simply very few strong organized voices now speaking up for the poor and working people, and, you know, this is the context in which we're having the political conversation that we're having now in washington which seems utterly detached from the social and economic reality. >> you mentioned inequality, an important issue, but it doesn't get much traction in our society, it's like infrastructure. it's one of those words where people's eyes glaze over, but could you explain a little bit about why ordinary americans should care about inequality and what this extreme inequality we're seeing now, why that's bad for the society as a whole? >> yeah, yeah. i think there are two things i'd emphasize.

one is as inequality has grown and over the last 15 years, a lot of the growth and up equality -- inequality has been driven by the very, very rapid rise of, you know, incomes of the very, very top of the distribution, and so there's an extraordinarily wealthy class of people now who lived experiences completely separate from the rest of american society, and it's this top of the distribution that is having an outsized influence on the political process, so i think that's one reason why we should really care about inequality. it's distorting and undermining the equality of democracy. >> they have more clout, more say, more access. >> exactly, exactly, and then

the other part of this is that as inequality has increased, economic up security has also increased, and so the risk of job loss, think about the household as an economic unit, risks of divorce and separation, because of underinsurance and uninsurance is increasing, people are more exposed to the risk of catastrophic health event so insecurities also increased as inequality increased, and literally all of this increase in security over the last 10 years is concentrated in the bottom third of the population, and so that's the other piece of the problem with inequality. people's lives are insecure, and abuse the lives are more insecure, it's harder to imagine a future for themselves and children. it's hard for them to make

investments in themselves and their children, and plan ahead. >> thank you. the -- sarita, if i could get back to you for a moment -- you're a big believer in what i feel are two important prongs to of the solution to the problem we're facing. talk about job creation a little bit. i mean, we have many millions of people out of work and that's before we ever get to the underemployed. you know, now, forget for a moment the sort of stalemated political process, but if we really had an opportunity to do something substantial, what would you like to see done in terms of job creation? >> well, i mean, if we can set aside the political climate we're in, we should all be pushing for a massive federal

jobs bill. i mean, that's the vision. that's what we need right now. we need to make sure that we're not only pushing for jobs, but we're pushing, what we like to say, for jobs with justice which means organizing collective bargaining rights have to be central to any kind of a massive jobs bill we push. we need to make sure that right now we're, again, paying attention to a where we think in the economy real job growth is possible. i know in our organization, we've been digging deep and saying, well, we know, retail continues to be growing, for example. these are jobs that are accessible in the community, and as you see major retailers like wal-mart expanding into urban centers, college campuses, and promising the creation of jobs, we need to not only be pushing for federal jobs, but would also be looking at segments of our economy like retail, like direct

care, like others and be pushing for the actual creation of jobs in those segments of our economy where we know there's that growth potential. we can't -- i feel we're at a moment now in history where we can't just be general about it. we can't just say we need a federal jobs bill, but we need to get specific. what kinds of jobs? which jobs? how do we ensure that we have a robust public sector in this country? devon, just continuing along those lines, 2 seems to me that we have -- not seems to me, but it's a fact that we have this enormous need in terms of the physical infrastructure in this country, the estimates are anywhere from $2-$4 trillion worth of infrastructure improvements that we need. this is at a time that the

construction industry is really taking it on the chin, and we have all kinds of manufacturing workers unemployed. it seems to me that somebody ought to be able to put two and two together. factory workers, construction workers, engineers who need jobs, $2-$4 trillion worth of work waiting for them. from your perspective, is that feasible? i mean, you know, can you imagine a situation where there's tremendous work being done on infrastructure, and then your folks begin to go to work. how would that work and, you know, obviously you like to see that happen, but do you think it's feasible? do you guys talk about it? >> well, we talk about it. i mean, in new york city, there's bloomberg signed $5 million worth of work. that helped a lot. >> he paid for that out of his private checking account. [laughter] >> well, even with that, there's

still 10%-15% unemployment in the building trades, and for painters, that number's even higher. i don't know if anyone here can imagine being out of work for a year, no more unemployment, health care coverage is gone, and guys just want to work. we just want to work. >> tell me about the painting. i mean, what do you paint, and i can imagine folks painting houses, buildings, bridges, you know, up in the sky, some of this stuff is like this person at 100 miles, you know, so we get carried away here, but tell me what the men and women in your union, what do they paint? >> my union's specifically, we're not only just painters, but painters, bridge painters, dry wall finishes, and we have hotel employees.

our apprentice program would be a good start for someone who is been unemployed, our apprentice program, training program trains younger kids, and even adults, older adults to join the building trades, and to have a trade because it propels you into the center of the middle class, and the tax on the unions isn't helping. >> right. we have attacks on unions and these budget talks you talked about and that sort of thing. if you could wave the magic wand and turn these things around, what are some specific things that you would like to see happen? is there or are there alternatives to these budget cuts? we already know how you're

fighting back with the unions, but talk about alternatives to the budget cuts. >> well, it's off the table of collective bargaining. i was on the committee most recently in cincinnati. six months into negotiations, they didn't think we were going far enough, so we got this thing that we called fondly the sea of red, and we found out this is our contract basically in senate bill five form, and, oh, then one about back door realized the attorneys who did this was the writer of the senate bill five, but we fought through that in cincinnati. we were not going to give up, and we were able to negotiate so that our workers now pay double than what they were paying in health care. they took a five year -- i mean, this is the fifth year -- we have a pay freeze, plus, we have been able to negotiate 50% of

student growth and achievement into the teacher evaluation system. we were able to do some things at the table talking through collective bargaining to make a difference. we are the ones that understand the work that we're doing, but we're also willing to do what needs to be done to keep things going. collective bargaining is the key to keeping things going. >> all right, and what -- do you think that that would have an effect on the budget cutting fight? in other words, what's your response to folks who say, look, gang, we're just out of money. you know, there's got to be pain somewhere, and this is where it's going to be. i happen to be a believer in share tax if there has to be pain, but that's when you have 1% at the top deciding that the pain should be shared by the 99% at the bottom, but -- >> if you could get rid of -- take all the public workers in

the state of ohio and say go away, it's not going to solve the budget crisis in ohio. breaking the backs of people is not going to solve it. putting people to work is the solution. >> paying taxes, pumping up the consumer economy -- >> everybody paying their fair share. >> that's right. >> that's what's going to do it. [applause] >> will you be entering the presidential party? [laughter] >> you're all for that. >> bruce, if i may call you bruce. i'm calling everybody else by first names, but professor i'm calling professor. old habits die hard. [laughter] i'd love to hear your thoughts -- well, first, on a couple things, but first on job creation. what would you like to see done,

and what do you think is feasible if those two things don't coincide. maybe they do. >> you know, what i would love to see done is direct federal job creation, and largely through investment and infrastructure because the need is so pressing, and it'll reap large economic rewards from that down the road. that's what i would love to see done, and i actually think that among economists, among the economic staff, in the congress, in the treasury, and the white

house, there's a lot of con consensus about the utility of that, and the real obstacle to it, of course, is political, and so what can feasibly be done, i think, at the moment, it seems there are enormous obstacles to any new spending despite the fact that the need for it is so profound at the moment, and so the kinds of things that are on the table that can make a difference are things like tax credits for job creation, payroll tax, holiday, perhaps even up employment benefit extension beyond 99 weeks or lower.

i think politically they may be a bridge too far, so i think i feel quite pessimistic unfortunately because the things we really need to do are along way from what seems politically feasible. i think what really needs to be done, and i think this whole panel has been talking about that is the politicalization of unemployment as a problem, and right now, the problem with unemployment is politicized among us, but it's not politicized among the congress or it seems the administration. it seems at the moment it's only important to the extent it's significant for 2012, for the

election which is completely disspiritting. >> i sadly agree with thaw that i'm possess mitt tick as well given what's going on in washington and the state legislatures around the country. you know, it just seems to me a couple things so obvious and i agree with you with direct job creation, but when people say we have no money, that's just not true. this is a fabulously wealthy country. first, let the damn tax bush cuts expire. >> that's right. [applause] and them bring the troops home. stop spending all this money -- [applause] on war warfare and begin to invest in building this country. this is a good place to start in terms of nation building.

katie, i'll ask you a question similar to what i asked sarita. you guys have had some experience in ohio and ordinary people just plunging into the fight, but tell us what ordinary peoples can do in a pretty specific sense. what are some things that might be helpful given the problems that we're facing. >> well, i think we have to communicate with each other number one. there's still people in disbelief across ohio that this is actually taking place, so i think number one, we have to communicate and let them now what little things # they can do. just on oppression, take a petition, take it around your neighborhood. you know, whatever hours you have, get it signed so that everybody has the right to vote. just simple things people can do. i mean, i'm seeing teachers stepping up every single day buying lunches for kids. i saw a teacher from my school

who the kid was homeless. she took him in so he could continue to go to school, so people every, every day people, can do whatever it takes to get through because we are one nation together, and it's what we have to. we have to fight for each and every person. >> are you -- [applause] >> are you surprised that the extent and attacks against teachers in this country? were you surprisedded or see that coming? >> well, i'm just really shocked about that, and i know it's this whole thing they don't think teachers aren't doing very well. well, there's challenges we had over the past years in education. we've been testing the kids to death instead of teaching the kids. [laughter] [applause] we've got to make sure what they are tested on is on appropriate, and i'm very pleased there's a

national campaign of common core standards that we'll be held to a high, rigorous standards for all children. if we build foundations strong, i think we'll be able to do very well, but attacking teachers, the people that you give your chirp today by day and, you know, they think the solution is getting rid of the teachers and bring in teach for america people who just want to teach a year or two and then leave -- [applause] that's not the way we want kids to be ready for the future, beready for the 21st ench sigh. we have -- century. we have to give them the tools and the teachers that can guide them there. >> thank you. these guys have been amazing. i'm going to -- [applause] yeah, i don't know whether to keep the moderator hat on or go to the journalist hat and pull out the notebook and interview

everybody. [laughter] we're going to go to a question and answer period, but i think that we're going to start it -- i can't find him -- there he is. he's with the economic policy institute, and we're going to start this segment by having him speak to an area where he's a great expert in the country, and it's the effects of these economic problems, the downturn, the recession, unemployment, communities of color in the united states. >> well, it's a great panel, and i'm really honored to be here. one thing that we should -- i mean, certainly, everyone is suffering tremendously by the great recession. that goes without saying. we should also remember that there continues to be significant racial disperties.

i mean, this year, the unemployment rate for whites is quite high. it's averaging 8.2%, but in 2007 before the recession started, the black unemployment rate averaged at 8.3%, so even in a good economic times, black america was in a recession in 2007. it's only gotten significantly worse. it's now 16%, so one, we certainly need everything that the panelists recommended. we need direct public sector job creation. we need serious infrastructure investments. we need aid to state and local governments so that our teachers are not being laid off. we need to shore up the safety net because people need it now more than ever. we need massive programs to put

11 million american workers back to work, but even those 11 million jobs will get us back to where we were in 2007, but even then, the black unemployment rate was twice the white unemployment rate. it was 1.5 times the white unemployment rates. native americans unemployment rate was close to the black unemployment rate, so even after we do the massive job creation, we need targets programs to reach these communities that face consistently high up employment, and we need another probably 3 million jobs that reach deep within african-american communities, la -- latino communities, native american communities to be sure everyone american who wants to work can work. the call from the 1963 march is relevant today. i just want to read a flier that

was a call for the 1963 march, and it said, "america faces a crisis. millions of citizens, black and white, are unemployed. thus we call all americans to join us in washington to demand a federal massive work and training program that puts all unemployed workers, back and white, back to work." this applies today 100%. the only thing you would change is you include latinos, asian-americans, and native americans, but it's 100% relevant today sadly. >> thank you very much, really appreciate that. [applause] and now if we have any questions from the floor.

>> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] my concern simply be this though -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] bush tax extension -- [inaudible] there's an argument for cutting services and -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] i urge us to take the lead today of the march, not only the march march -- [inaudible] thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, thank you. [applause] >> we also solicited questions

online. we can't get to many of them, but here's one who said how can we keep exporting our skilled and educated jobs and only create low paying jobs and expect to survive as a nation? i thought this was a pretty good question. bruce, how would you like to take a crack at that? what happens, if, in fact, the jobs created now are low wage jobs. what happens if that trend just grabs hold and becomes what we see for the foreseeable future? >> yeah, so i mean, there's behind the question i think is the right and compelling observation that would see a polarization of the american job market and a real hallowing out of the middle, and there's been a lot of employment growth in very low skilled, low paying

jobs, and there has been growth at the very top as well. normally, i think, when we talk about that sort of challenge, the answer to it is more us, more skills, more training, and that's fundamentally important, and we need to expand upestments there. i worry if that's our only focus for workers who are already out in the labor market, particularly older workers who are being laid off as they with respect in the past, and not able to look forward to long terms of employment with one employer anymore. i worry that those sorts of

workers are just being left out to policy discussion. if we're only talking about education and training and so i think we need a broader policy discussion that includes those people. i think organized labor has to be part of that discussion. how do you reinvigorate the institutional climate for organizing, intimidation, and workplaces in the face of organizing campaigns is just common place now. i think that has to be redressing that has to be a part of protecting our skilled work force. in addition to all the things that we need to do for education and training. >> thank you. i am going to keep things on schedule here which means that it is time to wrap it up.

it has been really great. one of the things i hope everyone will take away from our proceedings is the need, as you've heard from many people, including the initial speakers, and especially john louis is the need for all of us to tight back on behalf of america's working men and women and organize concerned americans, to turn up the heat on such crucial issues such as job creation, improve wages, and benefits, and a stronger safety net which we didn't spend a lot of time talking about today, but will at another time. this is the great and normal struggle of our time, but to win this fight on behalf of the working people takes a tremendous effort which is where i asked that question about what can ordinary people do because it's ordinary people who have to come in and help us make this fight. as dr. king said, human progress is neither automatic or

inverettble. -- inevitable. every step requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle. the tireless exertions and passionate concerns of individuals. i encourage you to step up and make that fight. thank you so much for coming today. this is a wonderful panel, and thank you, panelists. [applause] >> thank you so much. [applause] >> we were be starting the second pam. as they sit down, we have a 15 minute break to let you get water or coffee from the lobby, and then we'll bring you back in and talk more about jobs and justice. see you in about 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> now, actor writer and host speaks at the national press club about journalism in the u.s.. this is an hour. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, and welcome to the national press club. i'm a broadcast journalist with the associated press and 104th president of the national press crub. we're the world's leading professional organization for journalists committed to the future through programming and events like this and fostering a free press worldwide. for more information, we'd invite you to visit www.press.org and donate to programs offered to the public through the library, and you can find that information on the website as well. on behalf of the members worldwide, i'd like to welcome the speaker, and those of you attending today's event, our head table guests include guests of the speaker as well as working journal is who are club members, and if you hear applause in our audience, we

note members of the general public are attending, so it's not evidence of a lack of journalistic octoberivity. [laughter] i welcome the c-span audiences. our luncheons are produced through itunes, visit twitter using hash tag pound npc lunch. now it's time to introduce the head table guests, and i ask you to stand up as your name is announced beginning from your right. dana ritter, white house producer for cbn news, and the second baseman on the baseball team. >> [inaudible] >> i don't know if it's only the softball team in attendance today because mike public communications consultant and first baseman. we have matt friedman, one of my colleagues at the associated

press as an online video producer and a new member. welcome, matt. mark cannon, managing editor for managing safety communications. spencer joint who is harry's godson, freshman at georgetown university, and a guest of the speaker. >> john is an anchor reporter for western one metro networks. david corn, amist for msnbc and also a guest of the speaker. melissa, news hook media, chair of the speaker's committee. patty is a communications consul at that particular time and member who organized today's event. bill snider now teaching at george maison university, and also with third way, a washington think thank. tim young is a freelance journalist, and himself, actually a working comedian, chair of the national press

club's young member committee that he's leading very well. rachel ray, daily reviewer for the telegraph of london. and charlie clark, another new member, a senior correspondent with government executive magazine, and now how about a round of applause. [applause] those of you familiar with our speaker series here at the national press club probably now the format calls for this to run an hour in length. well, this is particularly difficult and challenges today for the simple reason that getting through a proper introduction of our speaker reviewing all accomplishments, accolades, and activities would take up the entire hour, but that would be not what you're here for. the guest is an actor known for among other things the character voices for the simpsons including mr. burns, smithers, and principal skinner, a regular cast member on saturday night

live, and fisher king, the truman show, the final tap, and the mighty wind among others, author, director, sadist, radio host, play wright, and a record label owner. a los angeles native beginning acting in his childhood on the jack benny program. it was then he got to know the great mel blank who did voices in his day as well. he appeared on the pilot of leave it to beaver and eventually morphed into eddy. [applause] a lot of applause on that. >> yeah. >> he's been writing about the cause and aftermath of the 2005 new orleans floods. this consumption and others, he's a regular contributor to huffington post and wrote a documentary called the big you think easy. i met him in a screening in town and we discussed having him here today.

before that, the stories titled crested city stories talking about the hurricane's aftermath online video were compelling. they are there. see those on the website at mydamchannel. he's focused on the news media's handling on the katrina story. i use the series to focus more on journalism. that's something we did just a week ago with vive van who, at the time was head of national public radio. [laughter] as we know now, she's since resigned. while some of the subjects today have serious themes, we are looking forward to enjoying the sense of multifaceted sense of humor, one of the many gifts the speaker is blessed with. please give a warm press club welcome to harry.

[applause] >> thank you very much. goo morning central time. i'm honored to be here today, in fact, just to get this out of the way at the top, i venture to say this whole occasion is excellent. [laughter] i do want to pledge to you unlike another recent guest at this podium, nothing i say today here will be contra digitted by one of my executives in two days in a video sting. [laughter] mainly because i have no executives. [laughter] i ripped off and talked about vivian. first, as a person from new orleans, my people go -- my heart goes out to the people of japan. ladies and gentlemen, as much as i was bewitched by comedy, i was

sector seduced by journalism. i remember at age 5 when my parents trusted me with scissors, i cut out the heads for all sections of the two papers we described to. the main criteria for which was whatever papers in l.a. were still publishing and were not the times. [laughter] when the moment came to be interviewed on tv, i confessed to my habit of making the parents take me to the out of town newsstand in hollywood whenever possible and for years our mailbox was filled with somedaylies from minnesota and other far flung locals. days late, but didn't seem to matter. when i entered college at 15, my first op was at the office of the student newspaper where i was a senior editor, thank you. [laughter] my only source of income at the publication is if we have the job of putting the paper to bed at night involving working in an old letter press print shop

where the entire staff was comprised of what we called deaf mutes. my chance of the editor and chief role was ruined by not giving aathe io tent di of a grad student whose life i ran on the page. i watched cbs reports, listened to bbc world service and the rivetting radio reporting on revolutions, riveted and moved by the slow dying out of the voices calling for help. i was and still am a news junky. this is all by way of explaning that what i'm about to say comes not from hatred of journalism, but love of it. i had zero nasty news stories written about me, still time, but up until new -- the only time in a tabloid regarding sex,

it was all benign, and all true. detames on request. i'm not here to bang the poor celebrity drum. i spent my youth around journalists. i like their smarts and dark sense of humor, and, yeah, you're right, he's 100 paragraphs of "but. i worked at the news bureau of l.a. news week. you may have noticed the news week listed my town of new orleans as america's number one dying city. i'm proud to report that new orleans has reciprocated honoring news week as the nation's most number one dying magazine. [laughter] back to the story. one day while working at news week, i got a call from the life and leisure editor in new york asking for examples of what he called rooftop living.

clearly, this fellow returned to his 53rd floor office after a lunch, stared out the window, noticed potted plants on rooftops, and sniffed out a trend. [laughter] trends are what people like to sniff out before being listed hourly on twitter. i called the l.a. traffic reporters, captain max, who told me the obvious. son, l.a. has plenty of land. nobody needs to put anything on their roof. there were a couple of exceptions including a guy named john who installed a swimming pool on the roof of his building. i interviewed him, wrote it up, and said this behavior was exceptional in l.a., and then went off to cover a space shot. a few days later back from jet propulsion labs, i got the full story from new york.

the paragraph with my quotes began. typically cutting edge, la-la land with rooftop living. in those days, it was one of their favorite words. la-la land was equally common. i called up a fact checker to remind her of my cautionary note. l.a., i said, was not filled with rooftop living. got it, she said. [laughter] following monday, the story appeared in the magazine, and la la land was still there. i used to tell this just out of simple amusement at the way a story conceived in new york was a template, and we reporters on the ground were quote machines to fill in the blanks. now this behavior has, if anything, spread to far more serious parts of the news hold than the life and leisure section, and with apologies, it

is beer jening there. i should point out though that the press release for the talk says i'm accusing the media of myth making. today, i'm saying something a bit different. myths are manufactured out of whole. what i call a template is based on facts, some facts. a par partial collection, the first dusting. it's then adopted as the narrative, the mental door's locked shut, and no further facts are allowed in. maybe you read peter moss' remarkable article in january reporting on the iconic story and image of the iraq war, the toppling of hussein's statue. what caught my attention about in journalism was recollections of reporters and photographers in baghdad who kept trying to sell new york editors and producers on the idea of turning around and looking away from the statue, seeing the crowd of

perhaps, 300 people in the squire watching u.s. marines doing most of the toppling. new york wanted none of it. the iconic image was the story, and any reporting and photography which undercut its salience was less than unwelcomed. here's moss, a quote, "a visual echo chamber developed and rather than finding news, editors urged them to report what was on tv." he quotes npr reporter in baghdad, and oral history pleshed by the columbia journalism review. they were getting the story wrong. there were so few people trying to pull down the statue, they can't do it themselves. many people stood hoping for the best, but they were not joyous. they quote a news photographer in baghdad, gary knight, talking with an editor on the satellite phone. the editor, watching the event, ask why he was not taking pictures. few iraqis were dpoffed, and the

ones who were, were doing so for the benefit of the photographers. it was a show. the editor told him, get off the phone and start taking pictures. the past few months, we've seen similar with the state department's leaks to wikileaks. it is the plain assertion that they dumped a quarter million cables into the public record. it's become a cliche, a travesty of a farce. those who count can attest, it's wildly counterfact. it's less than 5% of the cables provided to the website that's actually been published. your figures vary slightly, but that's at best a microdump, yet data dump is the template, and whether you admire or despite saasnge, your story will be included, and if not when you're finished with it, then when your editor or producer is. then there's the matter of

katrina. as noted earlier, i'm an adopted new orleans. when the big scarry spiral appeared on weather maps across the gulf of mexico, i was in language preparing to be in a comedy film for dvd now. got to do it. in every spare moment, and when you agent in a film, your moments are spare. i was glued to television, the internet, my own sources devouring news from new orleans, google earthing my home, calling friends to be sure they were safe. the day after the movie wrap, november 6, i flew into a town where the only vehicles were humvees, thens of thousands of refrigerators, and there was o two mile long city block wide mountain of flood debris on the median of the main boulevard in a once fashionable neighborhood. hot water was just restored to the french quarter, daily mail

service was months away. in the weeks that followed, the local newspapers and tv news broadcasts and radio talk shows were understandably focused on every detail for the city's near destruction, and so they were filled with, among other things, constantly updated, interim findings from two independent scientific investigations into the catastrophic flooding of new orleans. now, you probably remember the bold post-katrina proke proclamations that cnn, nbc and others were establishing bureaus in new orleans, and the people aassigned there were good folks i imagine, saw horror in a modern, well, almost modern american city. why, then, were the correspondents unwilling or unable to pass on what we were seeing in our local media confirmed beyond dispute when the two investigations released final reports, both

commongrounding that the flooding of new orleans was not a natural disas, but a manmade failure. the pulitzer people noticed they won two prizes for the coverage focusing on those findings, so answering my own question -- editors and producers in new york saw that ominous spiral. they saw the hurricane slam into mississippi where katrina did major storm damage. they saw the windows of the hyatt blown, and then they saw new orleans flood, and they saw, as everybody, except president bush did, the video of the crowds of the dome in the convention center. they put those first facts together, and a template was born. big storm, city below sea level, poor black victims. now, almost nobody who covered katrina was from or familiar with the peculiar geography of

new orleans. i realized that on day one when a cnn reporter said, i'm here in the french quarter, which then is now and was then a quarter mile away. i convention center and dome were a short drive from a major offramp of interstate 10. the flooded lake view and neighborhoods, the one majority white, others racially mixed were spread out over a confusing grid where parallelled streets intersect. ..

the result of katrina is quite different. quote, wet ankles. by the time the facts on the record, the strangers have moved on. correspondents in new orleans were busy covering cities in birmingham and miami, almost as lifting away lands bureau was downsized in move to a lower rate neighborhood. the template had hardened into a granite like loeb and editors and producers brains. there is one other facet in all this. in 2006, june of that year, i guess brian williams by despite his obvious concern for the city his viewers still didn't know why new orleans had flooded. he told me that, quote, we think

the emotional stories are more compelling for ibm, unquote. a bias towards sad stories is as old as blinkers are sardonic for an actress. [laughter] to tennessee at the template to rule for facts, even when taxes in the case that the statue toppling of the city fighting come from your own correspondents were or from imminent independent authorities , when the facts don't even require extensive investigations but merely paying attention to the public record. that tendency is only increasing in dozens of daily deadlines in ever tighter budgets. you can't stand the story for very long. when you come back, if everybody did for the fifth anniversary that's all, there is now corporate institutional ego involved in defending the template against the assault of new information. after all, the network's cable and broadcast practic time about

the bossiness that their katrina coverage. andersen cooper waved a finger and senator landrieu space. exactly how do you go about retracting a post? this would all be for ecg are farmed for these templates not so powerful in shaping public understanding of major events. the notion of the thousands of baghdad he toppling the statue served as the metaphor for an administration's claim that the invaders would be greeted as liberators by the time everyone realized the mistake, a little insurgency was going on. the template version of the new orleans story, a man-made disaster transformed and tripoli merchandise is the freak weather events happening down there in the wacky, corrupt town and mainly the amazing poor black people meant a rapid withering of political will to tackle the real problem before the creator

of the disaster, and the unreconstructed army corps of engineers had been handed $14 billion to do a bigger version if we are learning some of the same flaws. it's interesting to note in that context that no official engineer within the army corps suffered any if consequences, not even so much as a month docked pay for causing this disaster, but that the heads of the two independent investigations and a whistleblower inside the court have had very unpleasant consequences for standing up and be lonely truth tellers. as republicans used to say during the clinton trauma, and that's a good lesson for the children. and of coursecome and attend the fortune this country and loses coverage and the world. don't listen to bbc world introducing a reformat in new orleans police earlier this year, led with a sentence that said, hurricane katrina tours through new orleans. i sent them an e-mail of the factual weakness of the

language. two weeks later at bat on the domestic radio and mac intro, hurricane katrina, still tore through new orleans. it must've been off the rooftop living. [laughter] the good news about what i am saying is the usual debate about mainstreamed use coverage cannot practitioners be dismissed as moot. our political pressures on both sides. most analysts are vaguely liberal and most media owners are not so big of a conservative. the primer pervasive biases i suggest, those of logistics appearance of being and asking cabdrivers, what is the mood here? of templates for an entirely opposite sir sadler and far more intra- bull, politicized, after all, isn't every fact and it probably can't ever be. a brief digression. a few months ago, the state department talk to the "washington post" of coping in

afghanistan. he complained of an endemic attitude they are, what he called the culture of impunity. when i name a documentary about the flooding of new orleans, i found the u.s. army corps of engineers commotion because no meaningful congressional or outside outside, repeats the stakes are higher price point. the core operates in its own culture of impunity. now back to our topic. journalists don't know we shrink from criticizing their colleagues for a sense of calm mission, two words, judy miller. [laughter] but the sense of all mission filtering out facts that interfere with the narrative, the template they've adapted are rarely called up by colleagues. peter mycenae pro public eye to fund his reporting on the saddam statue. aren't the editors and producers who insisted on the news through repetition of the story is on tv is culpable for misleading the country about the war as judy

miller? and night to come over from the comedy world to tell the story of what really happened in new orleans. andersen cooper's still insists he's keeping a mosque. so where's the accountability? if i understand the system correctly, readers and viewers are supposed to do with dollars angry notes are superior sources of information. market forces at work. so that means the very people whom attend the of information is somehow supposed to know what they have been deprived of an enforced market discipline against the editors and producers responsible. you know what that sounds like to me? wiki culture of impunity. and now, i take out my scrubs and i reflect here. i'm a doctor and uneven play on mtv. i play tennis seemly greedy journalists, but that doesn't seem relevant. returning to the medical metaphor, maybe i can diagnose

correctly, i sure can't prescribe. if you ask me what i would suggest to solve the situation as outlined, let me point out except for certain lapses in magazine writing in documentary filmmaking, i chose to leave journalism several years ago. that was my solution to the problem. something tells me probably won't work systemwide. as to the larger situation, i do want to conclude a coach and reworked suggestion: release the hounds. thank you ferry match. [applause] [applause] >> thank you for that. a few questions for audience as well as a few that i've devised on my own and we hope to have a pleasant mix of those to come assorted transparency offered for you dare. early this morning i sent an

e-mail that alerted me about the "washington post" story, which sort of wasn't necessarily set up for today's speech, but it did put some things in context particularly with respect to a timeline. and it talks about you going to capitol hill to do the legislative piece i guess today's. can you talk about what that involves them but your hopes that they are and what kind of reception either you've had in the past been talking about as described decommissioning the army corps of engineers? >> decommissioning is which do with nuclear pants, not the federal agency. you need guys with masks to going in decommissioning. this is the first. i am not a lobbyist. i'm not a mac this. i'm a pacifist, not pacifist, passive taste. i like to sit home and watch tv. i have some people who are arranging meetings with me on that hill. we have explained in the movie,

thanks to those who have studied the core far more than i have come including nature lawsuits to work in this time, michael grunwald usually fed with cyprus greece in the post. the core is a creature of congress. the core is the way it is because congress likes it that way. pecora, in a civil works projects in this country, not its military projects is basically an earmark driven institution. so congressman appropriate for a specific project. coincidently in their district. in the core build status. the chorus now been hollowed out to the extent that they don't do most of their own work. so private contractors are engaged. so you have this sort of iron triangle of contractors who gives money to elect congressmen. they get core contracts and everybody's happy except recipients of the project. he's personally, i'm delighted to go to the hill and talk to

members, but personal opinion a guy from a comedy world, i don't have anything is going to change until serious effort is expended by the executive branches. >> sigrid documentary has been out when it come about five minutes? >> yeah, it was just shown for one night. >> said the substance of the material has been released to the public and now i guess he'll engage in a series of screenings around the country. what kind of traction do you feel that essentially this uses has been gaining? >> close to the vanishing point so far because of what i was talking about in my remarks, the desire -- the major media came to new orleans. we were there. come talk to us. we have an interesting story for you. the other side of which he been reporting. very few took the bait. brian very kindly made the remark in passing on the piano

at "meet the press" about the film, but didn't say much about what it contained. katie did nothing. diane did nothing. npr did nothing. pbs did a nice piece on me to tell. that's about it. so we are still trying to get attention. this is not a career move on my part. this is about changing the country's awareness of what happened to a major american city and also this is not a new orleans stories they put on the film. the court doesn't single out new orleans for special treatment. they do a little bit. the new orleans court district is worse than most. there are more than 100 cities in this country, where the court has levee systems that are enough. several know they are in trouble. dallas has been told that their levees are built on sand gave

sacramento, california is well known in the area that the levee system is not in the greatest of shape good and of course sacramento sits atop the entire water system. it's going to be a big story when that happens. i'd make her plane reservations now. >> someone here is asking, who are the reporters that you admire and respect who have covered northerns if there is one? they put it in plural. who and what news organizations are getting it right is the crush him. >> i think john schwartz at the times has done some good work in new orleans. kingbird go at the ap from time to time has done good stuff. march lasting and john mcquaid of "the times" are the guys who won the pulitzer's. that's the gold standard for me. there's also a local newspaper, weekly and new orleans that does

good work. those are mine. >> so you talked a little about them that movie you think to pick says congress isn't in the way you view it, set up to act as the appropriate intermediary for the american people and policing this problem. what about local and state officials in new orleans and louisiana? we hosted governor jindal here a couple years ago when he was certainly very vocal after the bp oil spill about steps he thought should be done. what is your view of how the locals view the problem and what should be done? >> he got some good tv time during bp, didn't he? the problem is locals can scream and shout, but the core has exclusive jurisdiction over this period was given up by the congress when congress mandated

the building of the system after hurricane betsy. the core has something else going for appeared in 1927 congress passed the act under which gives the core blanket immunity from any legal consequences of flood control projects that is built. that is why there has not been a race following the flooding of new orleans because in most cases, lawsuits have been thrown out because the court has blanket immunity. there is only one case it has proceeded. interestingly, there's been a little in the national press. i think both read about the verdict when he came down. a federal judge ruled that the court was criminally negligent by failing to maintain a navigation canal that it built the mississippi river gulf outlet which is responsible for the flooding of st. bernard parish and the lower ninth ward. that came to trial only because that was an allegation project

and was not covered by the flood control act. but i've wandered away from the question. >> it's all right. we have time. >> the responsiveness of locals. >> so they scream and shout. there's been a should say, given the amount of obloquy -- thank you very much, that has come new orleans way in the wake of the disaster, a remarkable amount of civic action in the post lead. in new orleans. people in new orleans reformed the levee districts. they refunded tax assessor's office. they reform the district attorney's office. he did a lot of the heavy lifting to reform their city government. that's what they could do. they could not make the core, just to take one example, impose a factor of safety for cushion on the urban levee system that was as high as the factor of

safety the core uses for rural dams. it is for one of our provinces. the core has a much lower factor of safety for levee system that is supposed to protect a major metropolitan area than atm in the middle of nowhere. nothing we can do about that from the local level. >> here is a specific question about the core. the questioner obviously knows more about this subject than i am able to interpret. what do you think of the coursework in channeling the mississippi river? >> you know, the channeling in the mississippi river is an almost classic course success story because the interns of the task they set for themselves, they accomplished it really well. the mississippi levees have never felt, at least in new orleans. they've been great in new orleans. it's done but they set out to do. it is a classic course success story and not there have been

untold, unintended negative consequences that the core has been either oblivious to relate to arrive at. for example, when you levee the mississippi river, you prevent it from flooding. well, that's a good thing. the flooding of the mississippi river distributed every spring floodwater and sentiment over the delta. building the coastal wetlands of louisiana, the most verdant and fertile home for seafood and other creatures of the environment in the entire north american content. when you love the river come you start the wetlands and they began shrinking and you have the first ingredient in the long-term slow-motion very enveloping southern louisiana. the oppression of the coastal wetlands. why is that important a factor if you like shrimp?

every mile of wetlands between the gulf of mexico and the city of new orleans bats down hurricane ferocity by a known quantity. the wind coming over water pick up energy as the winds go overland, they lose energy. what is the wetlands of furniture protections. >> the questioner asks, how has the community responded to the documentary? >> it wasn't made for new orleans. i assume the people in new orleans knew this stuff. so i was startled at this picture was supposed to play there for one night and i played four weeks in the major radio talk show host i saw him watching the movie the first night and he could take down. steam is coming out of his ears. he said to be on tomorrow for the whole three hours. everybody in the city has to see this movie. they did not know the story of the whistleblower. northerns media did not cover

her, but it was indeed today trypsin jobs. nobody had ever before put it together into a 90 minute package. and in a way i felt badly because last year was the first year but everybody around town autos as the post-katrina period. we've gotten over the katrina. and we're now in the new area. this city was almost levitating until the bp oils though. and now i come along and saved by the way, we are not as safe as we think we are. >> okay, so this person says, and this person is writing in the first person. i truly appreciate your informed opinion since stance on new orleans in media, but do you feel the more -- or let's say more or fewer celebrity should be voicing their opinions on issues of the day? i guess i tested the question if

you look at the news media in general, you could ask a broader question but do you think is fixated on entertainment? >> charlie sheen, charlie sheen, charlie sheen, charlie sheen, charlie sheen, charlie sheen, charlie sheen. [laughter] thank you. charlie sheen, charlie sheen -- we could go on that way for the rest of the hour. look, and very careful. i was scared when i made this documentary because the guy from the simpsons talking to me about engineering? what i say it's not my opinion. i have no opinion. i have no basis for forming an opinion. i go to the people in the movie in my life who know what they are talking about. the leaders of the investigations. john kerry, the author of the rising tide in the 1927 flood.

i pay attention to what they say. i try to distill it so i can understand it. when somebody asks me a question, it's basically what you get. the building i work fastest pass when i was going to college was the engineering building for god's sake, lest some didn't rub off. but the good news is these people that i mentioned who are in the film and in my life to some extent are really good communicators and teachers and they made it clear to me, neither comprehensive to me is that we could turn around. i am not an opinion either. i am a pastor through. as to whether celebrities, i think celebrities are like anybody else. this seems like they know what they're talking about, they should be in the public sphere and maybe have a moment of attention. if this crazy and out of control and doughnuts are talking about, they should get hours and hours of primetime coverage. [laughter] >> i did catch a radio-based and

it's something like his work interesting to hear crazy people than sane people. >> we didn't invent this. the english did. we are the same folks. >> for the next question is a follow up to the last one asks, are you concerned about any potential repercussions about taking a political stance i suppose under receptivity of the audience towards your entertainment work? >> well, the simpsons kind of design its own mayor. i don't think i am hurting it by doing this. i hope not. i try to make what i am doing in this context nonpolitical, in a sense nonpartisan because they think both parties bear responsibility to would have been to new orleans. the presidents of both parties have now clearly sent the signal that they are not going to lift

a finger to prevent what happened from happening again. so it is easy for me to say, you know, don't want to get mad at me because i'm not picking on you. i think one reason -- and i'm speculating here, so you can ignore this as comedic opinion. i think one reason this story about the roads besides the habit of mind that i pointed out in my talk hasn't gotten the traction it might have come as the very fact that both parties have their origin in the slaughter. neither side gets any political juice out of saying it their fault. and that is what makes our system go, both politically and journalistically. you can't get it a democratic and republican to argue on cable news that it is your fault, no

it's your fault because it spoke of their fault and they'd rather just talk about something else. >> and so, you are doing essentially to her with the now. tell a story that will be and how much until it is released on dvd. >> we are going around the country. i got to sit and see lee harvey oswald when he was arrested. so that's part of history. and is that the texas theater week in dallas and then we open up around the country throughout spring and early summer. "the big uneasy".com has a list of other places where the film is showing can win and leaders around the country. and then, we will make a dvd -- all those initials and it will be out on my and maybe even on cable if they've got room for it, although hbo said we've got new orleans.

>> okay, so obviously people want to talk about your creative work a little bit. by the talk about that. one person says you have said the simpsons has declined in quality. can you just address that? is that true? obviously some episodes are better than others. where does it stand out? >> that was a private communication that was leaked to "the new york post," owned by rupert murdoch who also owns the simpsons and it answer the salary renegotiation. [laughter] it's a wonderful show. i love being a part of it. >> how does fox tv we had to be knocked on the simpsons? >> you know, they love it. rupert wednesday. powerful people seem to love dehumanizing effects of

persuading the public that they have a sense of humor. a reminder that george w. bush joking about wmds at the the radio correspondent dinner. i personally, when i see powerful people showing off their sense of humor, i hide under the bed. but that is just me. fox's timer tick, rupert is kind of day i think they think it is great for business. >> at the 1992 republican national convention, president ben h.w. bush said we're going to keep trying to strengthen the american family could make them more like the waltons and less like the simpsons. 19 years later the simpsons have numerous books and college classes than his 22nd season now. i do think the simpsons reflect the american family where does that? >> i will take a question and move it a little bit to one side because of an observation. i feel better making an observation that in some

conclusion based on my limited knowledge of american families. when the simpsons started, we were roundly criticized by christian groups in particular. bart is a bad role model they said, as if the leek, carrot or in any show is a good role model. 15 years later, i played both -- does ned flanders to have christian characters on the show. total coincidence. i found myself being interviewed for cover stories and christian magazines, discovering after 15 years that this was the only showing american primetime television were a family regularly went to church and they worked out christians as member of the cast. what that told me was they took an awful long time for certain people to discover the actual shape of the elephant.

>> the questioner says, my son embrace the philosophy of bart simpson in the sixth grade. he still increases at age 28. [laughter] we don't know if he is still at home or not. >> sounds like he is. >> why do you contribute unmarketable longevity? >> well, i think you sent him out. well, first of all, in all honesty, the fabulous, fabulous acting -- seriously, i will mention two factors that if they don't get recognized often enough. number one, i would invite you to look for half a second, if you can at any of the major or

minor animated shows on television in the last 20 years. and i think maybe two of them visually tell you and a half second would show they are. i would think of ren & stimpy and simpsons. i am curious that ratings genius that he couldn't draw very well. he says that in cells. and he adopted this very iconic style. he chose the color yellow, which was the closest he could count/. and he just chose a drawing style, a visual style for the show but is immediately recognizable granted on first and every site. secondly and more significantly i think, i cannot very well known, when fox first but "the simpson" on, fox was a fledgling network tuesday the lease.

your congressman and uhf networks. you had to detach a coat hanger to improve reception. and so, it was important to have legitimacy of having well-known hollywood talent aboard. and jim brooks had a wonderful movie career. and so, yet the leverage to be about to say, will do the show. no network interference. no creative interference by the network. and so for 22, now 23 years, there has never been a time as far as i know, where the network has told, couldn't mr. burns be of little less evil? g rating a little bit? that doesn't happen with us. and a culture of the supposedly and emulates access, other television networks would try this little technique. i remember four or five years ago, abc was having a down.

and programming chief of abc was speaking to advertisers at the up for a lunch in. talking about the new fall schedule. we have a great slate of shows and we have a whole new layer of networks who ensure -- i go great, that will do well. so much for emulating success. >> as a writer yourself, you have attempted to work on the scripts, or have you? >> no and no. i have been tempted, but the television writing process is not conducive to me, to the way like today. i like to rate with one or two shows in mutually selected collaborators. the television process dictates to collaborate with 16 people they've never met before in the room with a lot of cold pizza. something that has your name on it will probably two thirds have been written by somebody else. it works great for the show, but

i just don't. >> a question about kent brockman on "the simpson." >> kent brockman on the house. who did you base them on? your mind a little bit of howard beale, the anchorman in the network. but those are your head when you do this? >> well, what goes through your head is supposed to be what goes to the characters had. in the case of kent brockman, it's nothing. [laughter] too cheap, too easy. i kind of base 10 -- we were talking before. we started here about mark's last name in years past on a number of people with similar names. they had the brothers. i guess a little bit of one of the hamrick rubbed off on old kent. it seems to me there's a little bit of hamrick in all of us.

>> well. >> god bless you out. >> with all the projects you've worked on in your career, which could be found to be the most rewarding? >> sure, you don't speak financially. this is a spinal tap. [applause] it was four guys sitting around, thinking up an idea of banging on doors all over hollywood, getting a succession of the rejection, finding one fluke that allowed the film to get made in a company that didn't want to release. we just keep hearing guillotines slam right behind us as we escape the platform. getting it out there, having it become adopted and beloved by generations of audiences, having the same people who told us

know, we don't want to make your movie. the same individuals come running up after his eight years later and offer us money to make a sequel. and getting to say no to them -- [laughter] >> i think everybody loves the movie. did you not see him letterman or for a signature that that is why people ask you to do most of the line from that movie is supposed to something else? >> a sort of different. people ask about the spinal tap, "the simpson" company radio show. i think the good thing about having a very curvier as it keeps you on your toes at the audience. people can't talk to you, you can't plan their head would dare going to say. it's not the same thing over and over again. the other reworded spinal tap is we've been able to play nationwide and worldwide and don't let anyone ever tell you it is not fun to play music

loud. [laughter] >> someone asked, did she write the songs on either mighty wind or spinal tap? >> michael mccain and i wrote these songs. we all wrote the songs. rob reiner, michael and myself were altogether writing songs for that movie. that was part of the fun. i mean, that was a movie we got to make start to finish, you totally had me process, all involved in every facet, beginning to end. as opposed to being part of an industrial process, which some big budget movies are, being part of a handmade process is what i love best. >> so i had to ask because they set it up in an introduction. didn't know blank plays a role in coming up with your characters? >> publicly by osmosis. he had a son the same age as me.

and so it took a fatherly interest. i should point out in modern america, not a fatherly interest as an the catholic church fatherly interest. just a benignly paternal interest. but it was never a matter puri said here's how a few bugs and here's how i do porky. and never god to that level. it was just being a genius about that. something rubbed off the gas. >> okay, stay here. we are almost out of time. a couple housekeeping matters. i'd like to remind you about her upcoming luncheon speakers. the next one will go from humorous to date two days there is a postfix. they'll be the commissioner of the irs. we'll make sure you're out of the building. >> april 19, ted turner and steve pickens will discuss alternative energy, solar projects against the nation.

mr. pickens who addresses crusade to reduce the nation's dependence on opec, which he regards as a threat to the u.s. economy and national security. >> asked him both for money. we could use it. >> our tradition here for every guest speaker come at us are truly took away saint thank you is to present you with a traditional npc coffee mug. thank you very much. [applause] and our final question of the day. that is the talk about his kent brockman were here with us today, how would he have reported on your speech? >> since instar ignores that most people want to hear about. details at 11:00. [applause]

>> thank you all for coming today. i like to thank national press club staff, including the library and broadcast center for helping to organize today's event. here's a reminder you can find more information on our website. if you'd like to get a copy of today's program, check it out at www.press.org. thank you and we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> this week on "the communicators," to critics of president obama's proposal deducing cyberthreats against the u.s. marc rotenberg of the electronic trade information center and larry clinton of the internet security alliance. this is part 3 of a month-long series on cybersecurity. >> host: and this is week three of "the communicators" theories on cybersecurity. this week we talk with interest groups who have a stake in cybersecurity issues. first up, marc rotenberg of the electronic privacy information center. he's the executive director there who want to talk to in the privacy concerns from the white house cybersecurity proposals. mr. rotenberg, when you look at what the white house has

released in the past few months earlier this summer, where do your concerns late? >> guest: let me begin by saying, peter, a lot of the white bias is done on the proposals is very good. there's a lot of different agencies they need to be consulted in the white house has done a good job of court meeting across several different agencies. a key issue for many americans, which is how to ensure security in cyberspace. that having been said commanders will privacy and civil liberty issues here because the white house is also claiming for new authority for the government to collect information on how people use the internet as well as the new authority to intercept private communications. and we understand why they may want to do that, do we think with these types of the dvds i look that closely, the need for a clear legal standards really becomes apparent. i would begin by saying that i think one of the key privacy

concerns is when the government takes these powers, they have to be very clear, legal reasons and clear accountability and oversight. >> host: in response to what the white house has released, and you said there should be legal standards, not voluntary guidelines. guidelines. >> guest: this is a key point because what the white house is trying to do is to address privacy and civil liberties concerns. they hear a lot about this and they are genuinely recognizing that these are important issues. at the same time, they seem to be a bit reluctant to take the type of meaningful steps we would like them to take. so for example, you could update the federal wiretap law. it has been 25 years since there've been significant amendments to that act. people used to medication technologies in new ways and the white house could see in conjunction with their cybersecurity efforts, we want to update a lot to make sure provides the same kind of protection we try to establish why five years ago. you probably need new types of

oversight. maybe the government collecting new information in new ways. those kinds of concrete proposals on the privacy and civil liberties are still missing. >> host: finally come before we get our guest reporter involved, mr. rotenberg county tech about the new authority to white house calls for. could you give an example of that? >> guest: to department of homeland security to secure a security techniques, which they call first intrusion detection and intrusion prevention. i think the name for the project is einstein three. maybe lucian einstein for soon. what they try to do is identify specific activity on the internet that looks luscious. they want to have better tools to identify the activity and preventive. that technique also gives the government new ways to capture information online. our obvious question is how else might that technique be used? i would say before we go, the

other point to make an office as we have just recently seen how governments can use these kinds of authorities in ways that cause us concern. this is not just about china and its firewall that blocks access to internet websites or even egypt, where of course they suspended access to the internet for a period of time. now we have the prime minister of great britain talking about limiting access to social network services anything here in the united states, apparently the transit authority within the disk at cisco bay area was able to turn on cell phone towers because they were concerned about political process. they think we need to recognize the significance of some of the recent developments when were talking about this particular policy which is probably a bit abstract to some of your viewers. >> host: gautham nagesh is a reporter with the hill newspaper. >> guest: you touched on this briefly, the internet able to shut down by portions of the

internet, obviously hot topic in a protest in the middle east and now the violence in london. this doesn't seem to specifically address whether or not the president can intercede. however, the white house consistently maintained the president does have the authority to take action and private networks under a 1941, i believe, provision of the air. his epic have any reaction to that? >> this is one of those debates people in washington love. the heading for this is the internet kill switch. the big concern people had when they first looked at some of the proposals for cybersecurity. it was one of the legislative proposals on the somehow, somehow the president to go to the basement of the white house and flipped the switch to be a position. i think realistically, that couldn't happen for lots and lots of reasons. the internet is not designed in a way to centralize that type of

control. it was interesting when it happened in egypt last year. i was mostly because there were four access points they made it possible for the egyptian government to do that. i don't think there would have been in the u.s. which your question goes to, which is an interesting point is that type of authorities that the president have any genuine cyberwarfare scenario. so in that sense, some of the other debates taking place right now but when does the president need to go to congress? what can he do on his own authority? the white house does need to think about those issues because we found ourselves in a cyberwar scenario. the president would have to make some decisions, particularly the internet as part of the battlefield. >> host: i think a lot of >> host: i think a lot of people wonder at home if we reduce the unfortunate that doesn't appear to be the case, but events similar to a pc in london right now where even the san francisco transit authority. is there something under the

cybersecurity authority tickertape base? to the federal government shut down portions of a social media site if they felt it was used to instill violence? >> would be difficult to do, but we do have recent experience in the united states is a bit of a warning you might say. and that is surrounding wikileaks. when the u.s. government again to express can learn about wikileaks activity and u.s. secretary of state clinton and senator lieberman both talking about the problem there, they were also talking about companies that were providing cloud-based services to wikileaks, enabling support, direct it towards wikileaks. we actually began through the freedom of information act to export the question, with the u.s. government putting a little pressure on these firms to back off support for an organization they believe is controversial? i think there are ways this could happen.

i don't think would be quite so dramatic as i said before is cutting off access to the internet. there's other ways to accomplish similar goals. >> host: switching views a little bit, this is proposals seem consistent with their previous actions to collecting data online and off? very privacy advocates to criticize the administration is pushing to increase by enforcement's ability to access consumer individual data. >> guest: i think the proposal does not go as far as it should go. i think that is the view that is generally held the privacy and consumer user community. consumer user community. the white house could be doing more to promote specific legislation. the white house talks about self-regulation, which is another way they hope the problem will solve itself. i don't think most people have experienced identity theft or bad about the recent incidences

of security breaches have the problem of solving itself. so we would like to see them do more to the extent it has been consistent in not setting out a legislative agenda. i guess that's true, but not so i guess that's true, but not so good for us. >> host: so, marc rotenberg when you when you reach a white house proposals and see the references to private industry and public-private partnerships, does that concern you? just go here with the white house is trying to do is manage the relationship with the privacy or anyway that will maintain private sector support. so for example, private sector has said they don't want a legislative mandate. they don't want the government to take over some critical infrastructure they are responsible for. the white house and the department of homeland security is concerned that some of those networks, for example, remotely electronic goods or gas supply, much of yesterday is now tied into the internet.

do you begin to think about scenarios where those become vulnerabilities. and the white house has some responsibility to safeguard the critical functions. so what they try to the very is that we want to work with you. we need you to provide us information. we will provide you with information. information. for the user perspective, that creates the risk because now you may have data about user activity moving back and forth between the private company in the government without any kind of real independent oversight. and that relationship, we've said there has to be consideration of the user. >> host: today addressed penalties for privacy breaches? >> guest: debut, but in the way we do not support because part of the agreement on proposals to get the information from the private dirt over to dhs is to immunize the private sector companies disclosing to

customers about their users from any liability. if you are a user or customer on these companies is not the subject of criminal investigations and you may wonder why your data ended up at the department of homeland security. the only real way you would have to affect change in the pet this would probably be to bring a lawsuit. some of the white house immunizes those countries, which is vitally similar to a president bush did around the patriot act amendments, when the lawsuits were going forward charging violations of wiretap law. it's basically the internet users rights that are being ignored. >> host: this is "the communicators" program. we are in the third week on a series of cybersecurity issues. this week we are talking with marc rotenberg of the electronic privacy information center. gautham nagesh as their guest reporter. >> host: thanks, peter. he spoke about some of these companies and electric grid, we

heard this mentioned this will include financial services firms, internet service providers. that latter category in particular would probably raise privacy concerns for consumers given that what's dhs has been a good, it's not clear whether they would be able to use it for other purposes. >> guest: i think the white house could be an distinctiveness theory is correct, to say what they put in their report is the goal of ensuring the main information they gather will only be used for purposes consistent with cybersecurity mandate. and we agree with that. but with hc that set out clearly in the legislation and not create a situation, which oftentimes happens in government, where they get the information for one purpose and say we could also use the information because without this data for other purposes. it is criminal investigation, tax collection, who knows what it might be.

other purposes may seem pretty other purposes may seem pretty reasonable at the time. when you open the gates in this way and enable this data flow from the private sector to the government, it's really the interest of the individual user rate think need to be safeguarded and we have to do that through legislation. >> host: what kind of legislation we talk about specifically? would you like to see warrants necessary terms of using data? >> guest: as a general matter, we think you need judicial approval before you enter some private communications in the united states. that is on the wiretaps for us. we have exceptions, but she want the exceptions do occur around the edges in special circumstances. you don't want the core principle of judicial review before there is an intercept taking place to be replaced by new core principle that says the government routinely gets access to see if there's anything we need to know about. that could easily happen over

time. i think some of the language in a legislative proposal is not tightened up a bit. >> host: mr. rotenberg, you have endorsed her epic has endorsed senator leahy's data private security act of 2011. why are you in favor of this legislation? >> guest: what senator leahy is trained to do is strength in data breach verification. this an interesting development. disagree it is a requirement placed on companies to tell their customers with information about them has been wrongfully disclosed. they may not be quite as satisfying as knowing their information is always protect good, do what we are an increasingly is the is in the user data gets out there, there are new opportunities for financial fraud. of course the company takes a bit of a hit when you can see it

didn't follow adequate security practices. so senator leahy, to his privacy legislation is trying to strengthen the data breach notification requirements, including penalties and what you think would be very good. another issue, which he has addressed and others on the hill as well is moving to the floor and the privacy world is the notion of data minimization, recognizing its oftentimes difficult to protect information being collect it. i think of you an expert community and privacy community is companies seem to think about comments is such a good idea to collect so much information about individuals? do you really need social security numbers on your customers if you don't have text reporting? do need to keep financial information? should the information you keep the routinely encrypted? is there also topics that senator leahy and others have put that. >> host: is senator leahy's legislation similar to wed senator bob lomax legislation?

>> guest: i think it is a good starting point, but i don't think it goes as far as congressman rush's bill from the last congress. one of the accomplishments was to recognize the significant role of the information industry plays in this particular area and they need anything to establish some new privacy safeguards for the industry. but congresswoman bono mack thought was at this point she wanted to focus on the security side without looking at the privacy issues. our view is privacy issues need to be the same time. >> host: final question, mr. sub three. >> host: we have seen between a private set tourism industry dinghies to be as little data kept as possible. on the other hand, law enforcement and the house of bill, which under the purpose of cutting out -- i was at the

hearing where he testified that. can you speak to that tension? the white house appears to be more sympathetic to law enforcement sneed kabila to access information. >> guest: i don't know what the outcome will be, but having studied the history of love, one of the accomplishments and original privacy legislation was to say to one person quite explicitly, you really should only collect the information necessary and related to the criminal investigation you are pursuing. it is the case that currently in federal wire tap their minimization procedures and other legal obligations that it's not gathered. that's not the change. i don't see a reason to make that change at this time. >> host: marc rotenberg is the executive of the privacy

information center. how is epic funded? to >> guest: i've been struggling with that issue for a long time. we don't take money from the private sector we don't take money from the government commits we basically get contributions from individual donors, some at litigation we pursue. we are a modest group, but we think it's an important issue. certainly it's an issue a lot of people are concerned about. >> host: previously served to patrick leahy, former chair of the public interest registry, which management is the.org domain. most interestingly, he is a three-time chess champ dan for washington d.c. mr. rotenberg, we appreciate your being on the "the communicators." we'll be right back with larry clinton of the internet security a license. now on your screen as larry clinton, president and ceo of the internet security alliance. mr. clinton, for to start by finding out what the isp pays. >> guest: the internet

security alliance was created back in 2000 it represents virtually every aspect of our nation's critical infrastructure , aviation, banking, two indications, financial services, if better. our mission statement is to take advanced technology and blend it with public policy and economics to create a sustainable system of cybersecurity. so we are a security organization and represent our company security interests. >> host: when you look at the sabre security proposal put out by the white house, was too generous reaction? would you support it? what concerns do? >> guest: during number of things in the administration's proposal that have broad support drifting such as providing cybersecurity education, developing a much better system within the government to manage their own cybersecurity research and development on next-generation items.

.. is a model for working between the presidents, the administration and the private sector. >> host: why are you disappointed? what specifically disappoints you? >> guest: well, so i attended a conference a month or so ago out of george mason university and one of the head white house staff for cybersecurity was giving the keynote address, and at the end of the address he was asked, so give us the future.

what would all this mean? he said that he believed that by 2012, we will have solved all the cybersecurity problems from 2005. and i thought that was a pretty accurate and candid view of what the administrations proposal does. they are fighting the last war. the model that they are using for dealing with the private sector is largely antiquated. it doesn't really recognize the movement that we have in terms of data moving largely out of the control of individual enterprises and now moving to the cloud. it doesn't really appreciate the advanced nature of some of the really serious threats that we are dealing with, things we call the abt, the advanced persistent threat. it is a very sophisticated source of attacks, often nation centered. instead it takes sort of a punitive sarbanes-oxley kind of

approach to the private sector that we think really creates the wrong incentives and what we really need is a positive and gauge meant with their government partners as opposed to a punitive name and shame model. that is not going to provide the source of investments that we really need nor to create a sustainable system of cybersecurity. >> host:>> host: and in fact a e from the internet security alliance when the proposals first came out, it would be much better if companies were proactively incented so that they wanted to find cyber attackers. if you are subject to some of these name and shame penalties, i think that would be a mistake. what would be proactively incenting a company? >> guest: ironically when president obama released his cyberspace policy review, which was in march, i am sorry, in may of 2009, he and his own document cited a number of these things. so we are talking about using

liability incentives. we are talking about using procurement incentives. the president at that time, in 2009, suggested we needed to provide tax incentives. we think that we can also use the streamlined regulation. we can do an awful lot more to bring the insurance industry into the cybersecurity equation. what we need to do is get organizations to invest more in cybersecurity to go a step that is frankly beyond what is demanded by their corporate commercial interests and reach a security level that is the national interest in those are different things. >> host: gautham nagesh of "the hill" newspaper company. >> guest: you spoke about the private sector's reaction. the white house has taken great pains to catch this proposal not as a regulatory model but a collaborative.

we have heard criticism such as from melissa hathaway that there is not enough private sector input. how does the isaf you -- were your firms contacted? how much information do they have in the formulation of this plan? >> guest: unfortunately we had virtually no direct involvement in the development of the administration's current regulatory proposal and by the way the title is cybersecurity regulatory framework of critical infrastructure so there is really no doubt that they have proposed here developing a fairly extensive regulatory structure and again that is precisely the opposite of what the president himself promised when he released the cyberspace policy review back in 2009, where he said that they were not going to adopt a regulatory -- a regulated posture. the private sector from everything i know had no input into the development of this

proposal quite different frankly been the development of cyberspace policy review or previously the national infrastructure protection plan which all created sort of partnership models. in fact the private sector went to great pains to put together a very detailed white paper, bringing together the users, the providers, civil liberties, community on day 33 page detailed paper, builds on the national infrastructure protection plan and the cyberspace policy review to try to advance the ball moving forward and we presented that to the administration and we got a one-hour meeting and we asked to see their plans. you show us yours and we will show you ours. and we never heard back from them. we didn't see the administrations proposal until the senate to congress. >> guest: now the administration proposal gives dhs the authority to enforce whatever security standards

which they say will be developed in consultation with industry. as you say there are threatened penalties, they're saying not criminal sanctions necessarily bad as you say name and shame. they're going to publish the results of a security audit in order to incentivize companies. i take it that is not an enforcement mechanism that the ish can get behind. >> guest: it is the wrong sort of incentive. you need to understand what we are dealing with here with these modern attacks, going back to the notion that we are not dealing with 2005 cybersecurity. we are dealing with in many instances these very sophisticated attacks. i mentioned before the advanced persistent threat. these guys are pros. this is their day job. these are not kids in basements. this is not what we are talking about. these guys are very sophisticated, very well organized, very well funded. they're probably state-supported.

so for a corporation to be going up against essentially a nation-state that is attempting to attack them, it is similar to adopt dick clarke, analogy, similar to the pentagon going to u.s. steel during world war ii and saying we think the germans may attack you in pennsylvania and you guys should buy some antiaircraft weaponry and maybe some fighter planes. it is entirely the wrong model. these modern attacks are designed to be stealthy. annealed face attackers publicize their attacks. now they go in there and they hide. the ideas that you don't know that you have been attacked, so what the administration's proposal does is provide an incentive not to look. we need to provide incentives for corporations to be redoubling their efforts to find these very very sophisticated attacks and if corporations feel that they are, if they find the attack, they are going to be put up on a web site and get a bunch

of negative publicity. their stock prices going to go down. not only do they not have an incentive to look for these incentive attacks but we provide an incentive for war warren entities to attack these entities hoping they get discovered and their stock rises go down. these are entirely the wrong incentives. this is a punitive model where we are trying to blame the victims of the attack. what we need is a constructive model where the government tries to find things it can do to encourage and insist american companies to provide the right incentives so that we are enhancing our cybersecurity systems, not laming people when china is successful attacking. >> host: but larry clinton don't consumers have the right to know if their personal information from sony or whatever has been attacked? don't they have a right to know that information has been exploited? >> guest: we are talking about two different things here. with respect to sort of consumer

breach notification laws, we do support those certainly and in fact i would be an element of the administration's proposal where we have proposed that we have a national breach notification law, so you now on the personal side which marc was talking about before we would probably be in agreement that i'm not talking about loss of social security numbers. i'm talking about the really serious problems that we have of national secrets, corporate intellectual property, the potential for serious destruction of our nation's critical infrastructure. those are the sorts of attacks we need to go and and root out. even if we are going to just confine yourself to the consumer interest, egg and, what we should be doing is providing the incentives for companies to go find these attacks, not for them to turn a blind eye to them and that is what it is going to turn out to be in the pragmatic world

if the result of doing an investigation of your system is your stock price is going to go down. is really going to be hard rush to get boards of directors to fund those sorts of things and we want them to fund those sorts of things. >> guest: i've spoken to cybersecurity experts who will tell you that almost everything of importance has been stolen from american companies on line and if we do want a lot of critical infrastructure firms to take them seriously some form of maybe not unitive but enforcement mechanism is needed beyond incentives. how would the white house insure adequate urgency for these firms given that it is widely accepted that the default data security is not widely acceptable? >> guest: it was created specifically to advocate for enhanced cybersecurity so we have been doing, we have been advocating for this sort of activity on the part of congress and the administration for over a decade. it is just a form of activity that we are differing on. we are open to debate. i don't think the

administration's proposal really does anything that i can see to enhance cybersecurity. but i think that there are things that we could do, so there are a thousand ways you could divide up cyber attacks. let's divided up into two different areas which i think is useful. one, there are kind of asic attacks. basic attacks can be very devastating but when i say basic they are kind of the traditional things we are familiar with, distributed denial of service and those kinds of things. we know tons about how to prevent those basic attacks. in fact there has been consistent research by the academic community, the private sector and the government, all agreeing that simply adopted standards or practices and technologies that we are to have, we could stop between 85 and 95% of those attacks and the reason we don't do it is the reason corporations are doing a lot of things, cost.

so we have to find ways to make those investments economically viable for the enterprise. we need to be protecting their systems. that is one thing we can do and we have suggested. if you use liability, insurance, streamlined regulations, a range of things that the government can do to provide those incentives are go that would address the vast majority of problems. on the other hand we have these older sophisticated attacks that i was talking about before. one of the characteristics of these attacks is the bad guys are going to get in. that is what persistent refers to. they are so persistent, they are going to get in your system. you really have no perimeter defense so what that means is that we have to alter the model away from perimeter defense to a different strategy. however, we have ways to do this and we have proposed these rules

to the government. for example, we don't have a lot of control over the attackers when they are out there in the wild as we like to say. the interbred -- interbred us to fast. if they want to get and they are going to get them but we have a lot more control when they are inside our system. so, if you do really good internal analysis, you can find them when they are in your network and most cyber attacks, the sort we are talking about, the sophisticated ones are not successful when they break in. they are successful when they break back out. so if you lock the basic in the vault so fault so to speak so it gets a good look at your money he really thwart the attacks of we can come up with ways to find the web site that they are sending the data back out to and block that unauthorized outbound traffic, even when they succeed in getting inside, the mechanism that we actually have used and

companies have used is pretty successful, it is really cost-benefit it. what we need to do is develop a new sort of structure where we leverage the companies that really do this well, the raytheon's, the boeings. the guys to do this well will invest in this kind of step. flowers.com will never invest in this kind of stuff but if we can share the information with the sophisticated people about this are not derived sites, we can actually create a different model of security for these older sophisticated attacks so what we are advocating is several things. one, to deal with these basic attacks. we have to deal with the core issue which is economics. and it is not that we don't know how to handle security. it is that we don't want to buy security. i will guess that you two like

most people didn't ask about the security of the smartphones that you bought. you probably asked how much does it cost in what can you do? everybody does. we have to deal with that economic issue and then with these older sophisticated things we have to get the ultrasophisticated companies which we have and leverage their ability so that they will share that information more broadly and a lot of them are willing to do this. we have proposals and we would love to have a really good constructive engagement where we can involve the sophisticated, enhanced strategies to deal with a sophisticated, enhanced sort of threats. >> host: final question. >> guest: does sound when you talk about these ultrasophisticated ataxia may be indicating that perhaps more intelligence or military involvement is necessary because obviously there are calls for that and that is viewed as the alternative to the dhs proposed model which is that the intelligence agencies would still have a lot of involvement. is that what you are companies

are relying on than they are dealing with these more sophisticated attacks? >> guest: not at all. obviously we are dealing with defense companies and i mentioned a couple of defense can't denise. they are not the only ones. sophisticated banks and others have and assist -- so there a number of other companies. so what we are talking about really is something that is built on the private sector, collaborating with each other and then sharing more broadly with the broad private sector. would there be intelligence agencies involved? i don't envision it. the big problem and cybersecurity with good regard to information sharing is trust. and the reason we don't have the trust now is that the intelligence community doesn't want to give up source data because they are afraid it will get out of the bad guys and and and frankly that is a pretty reasonable thing. and the private sector doesn't want to give up proprietary data

because they are afraid it is going to get out to competitors. the model i just described, circumvents all of those problems. we are not talking about anymore giving up source data. most companies don't care who is doing the attack. most companies don't care about that. they just want the attacks.so simply by changing the model of this sort of information we are sharing, we can stop this without getting much more involvement from the intelligence community etc. and i'm offering this just as an example. what i'm saying is and we are dealing with the basic attacks, we need to be incentivizing and want these companies to want to do it, to try regulatory model that they are resistant to doing it. and the other hand with the sophisticated attacks we need to involve our thinking about defense and strategies in a variety of different ways one of which i have shared with you but i don't think that this necessitates this sort of broad

involvement of our military structure in our critical infrastructure. i think the united states would be opposed to that. >> host: larry clinton is a presidency you of internet security alliance. gautham nagesh. gentleman thank you. next week the conclusion of our series on cybersecurity. we have three cybersecurity experts talking about some of the threats that the u.s. basis. allen paller, catherine lotrionte at georgetown university and jim lewis of csis. we will see you next week. spain our discussion on the work of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. this is part of "washington journal"'s weeklong series on the weather. it is 40 minutes. >> host: today we areare co t ntinuing ourin series, looking at whether in the governmentsvii role in providing weather services.

tuesday we looked at this disaster relief and preparedness. relief and prepare. wednesday, climatology yesterday noaa. what is no a's mission? what do they do? guest: noaa's mission is very broad. we use science to provide information about oceans and atmosphere, things like navigation charts, the weather forecast. the national weather service is part of noaa. we also use science to provide warnings about pending disasters -- tsunamis, or hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, as he weighs, those kinds of things. and we have a very important responsibilities to use science

to manage oceans and coasts and keep them healthy. we manage the fisheries, for example. we do all of that because the ocean and the atmosphere or an integrated unit. one affects the other. everything and no way a starts with signs. the services -- we provide -- think at -- everything at noaa starts with the science. the services we provide a promotes safety and allow businesses to thrive and grow. we do all of that would stick to the arts satellites in space, planes and in the air, -- state of the art satellite and space, plant and the air, ships in the water, computers, lots of wonderful partners, and we do that for less than a nickel a day for americans. the best bargain in the country. host: 12,800 employees. you are contained within the commerce department.

why the increase? guest: 1 to the important things we do is build and operate satellites that allow us to do many of the good things i talked about. there is a request in the president's budget for $1.7 billion to build and then fly at a very important series of satellites that provide information that enables us to do many of these things. we have a current satellite that is in space doing that, but it has a finite life span. they are vitally important to doing the kinds of forecasts and disaster warnings. disaster warnings. host: administrator, levchen lu, what we are watching to weather,

are we seeing images from noaa satellites? guest: you are indeed. the images you see on your tv screen are provided by noaa to everyone. this is one of functions that we do. all of those swirly pictures of clouds, those are satellite images. host: are those provided free of charge to the weather channel or local news? guest: they are. host: what is the philosophy behind that? guest: we believe the basic function of government is to provide essential services to save lives and property, the kinds of warnings we do in daily weather forecasts. that same information also enables businesses like the weather channel or accuweather to take that information and add value to it, bells and whistles, and provide additional information. the core, basic information is a function of government.

host: when you break down at the at national oceanic and atmospheric administration atmospheric administration offices, there is ase -- correct? guest: correct. host: r. they equal in size? guest: no, the satellite division is approximately $2 billion. the fisheries division and weather are about $1 billion. the rest are in the remainder of the budget. host: the national weather service, is that what most people associated with it? guest: actually, many people in the different parts of noaa. as i travel around the country, many people are most familiar

with the weather service because everybody relies on whether information what they don't often know is that it is noaa that is providing the information that they receive on their smartphones or tv screens or the radio. all of that information is coming, basically come from an l.a. 8. i have had a number of people say, "what do i need your weather satellites? i have fill in the blank --" weather channel or whatever. in reality, it is an owl a that is providing that information -- it is noaa that is providing that information did the research done allows us to provide services like weather forecasts and warnings. forecasts and warnings. host: administrator lubchenco , you referred to the economic benefits noaa provides the country. could you be more specific? guest: if you consider how

dependent the aviation industry is on whether, when we had hurricane irene up the east coast recently, flights were canceled, so, too, were trains and other. those transportation systems, including ones on the ocean, are dependent on weather information. we penetrate pretty much all aspects of the economy. that is a single and example and there are many more. host: if you could talk about oceans. guest: before i got oceans, still staying on weather, the dependence on the weather enterprise, the private weather enterprise that has grown up around the basic information we provide is worth about $1 billion. that created new jobs and unable new business opportunity -- and enabled new business

opportunity. on the oceanside, fisheries are equally important and provide nearly 2 million jobs in this country and considerable economic benefits. host: our guest is noaa administrator jane lubchenco. this part of our weeklong series looking at government and weather and what the government does predicting weather, etc.. today we are focusing on noaa. if you would like to send an e- mail, you can send it to journal-spa journal at c-span.org or send an eight-week. twitter.com/c-span wj and in fact we have gotten this tweet here

from is noaa the only government agency with public satellites that do what you do -- i mean, such as these images? el nino, la nina coming through. is noaa the only place to get this information? guest: no, some of our sister agencies p fly satellites and provide nicely complemented information. noaa's satellites are focused on taking environmental dat to understand change and the oceans, sea level rise, those kinds of things. there are multiple sources of the satellite imagery. host: hurricanes -- we often hear about the hurricane hunter aircraft. are those noaa aircraft?

guest: they are noaa planes, and or by the air force and they flights to the hurricane, so did once operated by noaa. they gather data that are vital to understanding how intense the storm is, how well it is structured, and therefore, enable scientists to plug the information into models and do forecasts about where it is the storm likely to go, how big is it likely to be, how intense is it going to be, etc. information from inside the storm is vitally important. we also have another airplane, g-4, that flies above and around of the storm hit both of those

drop instruments into the store and take data on temperature, precipitation and pressure, and so we have a way of characterizing what the storm looks like. because of those instruments and because of our past investment in research over the last couple of decades, we've been able to get better and better and better at forecasting where the store is -- where the storm is going to go. we have increase the accuracy of the track very significantly and saw that in no uncertain terms with irene. on tuesday, four days before irene hit landfall, we predicted pretty much exactly where she ended up going. the thing we've not got in as good at yet and are working very hard on is increasing the accuracy of the predictions about the intensity of the storm -- how much energy is in that

storm, and therefore, what the winds are going to be and how much storm surge there will be, but the rain is going to be. we are in year four of a 10- year big research push to better understand the intensity of storms like irene, hurricanes in particular. those airplanes you asked about a minute ago have special instruments that record doppler radar as the plane is flying through the storm. that information is allowing scientists to better understand this very complex dynamics outside, inside, right in the middle of the hurricane. we believe that with sustained investment and research, we are going to be getting better and better at predicting intensity like we have done it in predicting the track. host: have you had the pleasure of going up in one of those planes?

guest: not yet, but i look forward to it. host: first call for noaa and mr. jim lubchenco is from gold beach, oregon. caller: good morning, jane. web site. of the noaa we have a lot of fishermen out here, and they really rely on your information, and it is reliable and that is really good -- host: john, can you explain, how the fishermen rely on noaa information? caller: well, they mead advanced idea of what the weather conditions are going to be out, because they go out early in the morning and they need a good idea what to expect, you know, what is going to get th -- what is going to be out there. guest: john, thanks for the culprit fishermen rely heavily on the forecast -- really

appreciate -- thanks for the call. fishermen rely heavily on the forecast and i appreciate your drawing attention to that. having information about what that sea state is and what the weather is going to be helps fishermen stay as safe as possible. the same is true for maritime commerce, the big ships that delivered so much of our goods by water, are also dependent on weather forecast from noaa. i would like to point out that the polar orbiting satellite we talked about earlier, for which there is a significant increase in the budget request for the next fiscal year, is in fact critical to being able to do the maritime forecasts. esat satellite orbits the poll

and sees a different swath of the earth it every time it goes around, as to what is happening in the ocean, way far away from the land. host: administrator lubchenco talked about noaa's role in hurricane irene. is there some overlap with fema in response? guest: no, it is not overlap, but it is a very tight coupling. noaa does have responsibility before, during and after a storm like a hurricane. at the beginning of the season, we do provide an outlook that gives us a sense of, given the ocean and atmosphere dynamics, what is the season likely to be.

is it going to be normal, above normal, below normal? once we detect is from developing, early, early on, before it comes a hurricane, we start to run our models and use satellites to get information. once it is clear that we are going to have a service -- a serious storm, we work with fema and other and agency managers so that -- other emergency managers so that they in turn can prepare communities. fema is absolutely critical in taking our information and getting it out. if there are going to be significant evaluations, for example, which we saw on some parts of the coast for irene, it takes time to do that. having advanced knowledge that the storm is coming and some sense of how strong she is going to be is vitally important to doing those evaluations, at this

stage and emergency materials -- to stagin emergency materials for fema and emergency managers. we work in a tightly coupled, synergistic fashion. host: fort myers, florida, you are on the air. caller: first of all, living on a barrier island, i would like to thank you very much for the job noaa does. the other thing is, argued the agency that would also get data from -- are you the agency that would also get data from sunlight or solar, wind for wind turbines, and possibly gulf stream data for turbines to be put out to sea in the gulf stream? guest: the short answer is yes. we provide information about wind forecasts and about solar

gradients, and that is now becoming more and more important as we are seeing increased focus on renewable energy. as it turns out, we are trying to do a better job of getting information that is relevant to where the turbines are, the all the tickets they our. we have a new effort that is designed to do exactly that, to be able to provide information to the private sector so that they can maximize both of the placement and the utilization of wind, for example, or solar energy. host: earthquake here in virginia if you weeks ago -- a few weeks ago -- guest: pretty amazing. the u.s. geological service, part of the department of the interior, has responsibility for monitoring earth?

. they are part of an international seismic network. when an earthquake is detected, noaa has access to information instantaneously, regardless of where the earthquake happened. we immediately start running our models to ask a question, well they're likely be a tsunami as a result of the earthquake? that is the role of the plate. we use information about how strong the earthquake was -- that is the role that we play. we use information about how strong the earthquake was and we provide the critical information. for example, the earthquake that happened in japan -- our forecast for tsunamis were issued nine minutes after the earthquake. they enabled americans in alaska, washington, oregon, california and it is of the islands -- and the pacific

islands to know that it was going to be a tsunami and how strong it would be and when it might arrive. that is our role in the aftermath of an earthquake. host: what is your ph.d. from harvard in? guest: marine ecology. host: when you were an undergraduate at colorado college, were you interested in these types of things? guest: i grew up in colorado and my family did a lot of outdoor the things, hiking, fishing, whenever this season. i loved science. i love pretty much everything. but my major in college was biology. that was particularly intriguing to me. between my junior and senior years in college, i had the opportunity to go to massachusetts and spend the summer there and take classes in marine biology and i thought, wow, this is really cool, i loved it, i want more. it has been oceans ever since.

host: next call for noaa administrator lubchenco comes from oklahoma city. hi, scott. caller: hi. appreciate your show. i am interested in weather prediction as well, and i think it is too important a job to lead to the federal government. article 1, section 8 of the u.s. constitution, every congressman has sworn to uphold, forbids them from setting up anything that has anything to do -- i mean, there are 17 hours there, not one of them has to do with predicting whether or anything like that, which was added to file thi-- which was in the founders time as well as today. host: too important to leave to the power of government, administrator lubchenco. guest: i think it is too important not to have it to save

lives and property. the private sector has the opportunity to add value to that, create new products, and thrive. as i mentioned earlier, that private weather sector enterprise is about $1 billion. it is a nice synergy between what the government does and what the private sector is able to do that benefits from the basic core information that is so important. you should not have to buy information about the weather to be safe. host: a tweet in to you, administrator. any comment -- guest: i am not sure what that is referring to -- host: water flow or anything like that?

guest: i am not sure what that means. host: all right, we will leave that alone. good morning, mary. caller: i'm calling about the reports from noaa during storms. frequently, local news stations go to noaa for updates. that used to be this very telegenic it died down in florida -- telegenic guy down in florida that it is great reports and these maps and everything, and i never he retired last year with a year before. -- last year or the year before. -- last year or the year before. now thae noaa reviews, i don't know where they are coming out of, and the guy that is doing it, i cannot understand it, i cannot read the map. the feed is not good, or not as

good as it used to be. i'm wondering what is going on. i'm wondering what is going on. host: let's get a response lubchenco. guest: mary, thanks for the feedback. we are trying to get better. i am not sure who the personalities are of whom you are speaking, but we provide the core information that local meteorologists on tv stations and what not present to the public. most of the core information we have is on our website, and that is actually a great source of information. the national weather service is part of -- or their website has, at during irene, 52 million hits per hour. that was weather.gov. that is a great source of information if you would like more than what you are getting it now. host: weather.gov got 52 million

-- guest: hits per hour during irene, a new record for us. host: we got a call from oklahoma in a while back. lots of tornadoes in oklahoma. what is noaa's role in that? guest: tornadoes are a big challenge, because they are so localized and can be so incredibly destructive, as we saw this year. saw this year. noaa forecasts tornado warnings, and we have gotten better and better third time -- through time in getting a more advanced morning. that is still a matter of minutes in terms of where a tornado with touchdown. however, thanks to our polar orbiting weather satellite, during the very severe tornadoes

we had this last few months ago, we were able to give a five-day heads up to emergency managers that conditions at developing, tornadoes are going to be really severe, get ready. two days out, we said this is the area that is likely to be affected, and then the day off, we would be able to say, ok, it is going to touch down here, going to touch down here. those tornadoes were devastating. some of them had really, really awful consequences. but all of the emergency managers with whom i have spoken has said it would have been much, much worse had we not had the heads of information. now, one of the things that noaa does is track the number of weather-related disasters that have been each year. we keep track of how many have happened each year that are at least $1 billion in damage.

the previous record was 2008, where we had a lot of hurricanes. as of now, as of irene, we have broken that record. we have 10 at least $1 billion defense to date this year. quite a few of those were tornadoes. but we also had floods, we had droughts, wildfires, and now irene. and we stock most of the rest of -- and we still have most of the rest of hurricane season to go. hurricane season runs through the end of november. the peak is typically september and october. and october. our predictions in june -- may, actually -- word that this would be in the above normal year for hurricane activity. . she keep a sharp eye on -- everybody should keep a sharp

eye on the weather outlook, disaster warnings. we have seen with irene how important it is to be prepared and follow instructions. we have a tropical storm that just became a hurricane this morning, katia, out in the atlantic. it is too early to know exactly where she will go yet. we are attacking her and you can get information on her at weather.gov. there are likely to be otherwise development -- other ones developing behind her, possibly in the gulf. it is smart to just pay attention guest g. host: if katia is already out there, how far in advance to you know this? could it be a week? how far out to you see? guest: she started way on the other side of the atlantic off the coast of africa, where a lot

of hurricanes are spine. some of them develop into nothing and just sort of dissipate. others develop into a full-blown hurricane. we track them from the very early days before they are even a tropical storm. we do that with our satellite, we watch them, cross. we watch them come across. if the tracks suggest they are close to u.s. territory, we send out the hurricane hunter plans to get additional information so that we canhone the forecast in the warnings. if you look at path of many of those hurricanes, they often come across the atlantic in a westerly and northwesterly direction . irene turned northward, and our

models and did exactly -- that -- predicted exactly that. as the administrator at fema pointed out a few days ago, a decade ago, our hurricane track decade ago, our hurricane track forecasts were not as good as they are today and we probably would have had to evacuate most of a florida for irene. but in fact, because our track said no, it is not going to hit florida, it will hit north carolina, that was spot on and it's a unnecessary evacuation's -- it saved a lot of unnecessary evacuations as well as a lot of disruption. improved warnings is what we improved warnings is what we constantly strive for. host: an email for you, administrator. "are more volunteers needed?"

guest: that will be a great question for the head of the thtional weather service who is going to be on the showeo tomorrow. s, we do use volunteerd if you have a chance to ask jack, a great trait if not, we can provide more information if you send me an e-mail. host: we will put that aside and say that for tomorrow. california, eloise. caller: i am interested in stopping a hurricane while it is still a tropical storm, an article one, section a, speaks of a navy and an army, so under that aspect, you do fall under the constitution. guest: [laughter] thank you for that. there is so much power in a tropical storm that it is inconceivable how one could even conceive of stopping it. our job is to understand that

there are very real forces of nature, and our task is to understand how they works so we can get out of harm's way and that is what we do with our forecasts. host: roanoke, virginia. hi, gerald, you are on with jane lubchenco as "washington journal" looks at weather and government. caller: this is so good to hear a doctor who was educated and well versed in weather. she was talking about wind turbines. we are spending this tax money on these wind turbines bro. i heard on a national broadcast three weeks ago that three of these large projects have now been shot down. here in the roanoke area, they planning to install 54 in the mountain area that can be seen from the blue ridge parkway for 20 miles away.

the blue ridge parkway in this mountainous area here is very beautiful and attracts many visitors. the wind now is not even blowing. it has not belong here for at least three days. -- has not blown here for least three days. i cannot even see a leaf twitching. these wind turbines have to be restarted when the when it does not blow. and they have to have electricity, or they have a draf -- have to have gasoline -- host: what would you like to the administrator to respond to? guest: to the wind turbines and the fact that these are inefficient. guest: thanks, jerrel. one of the challenges with wind energy is the intermittent nature of the wind, and that is

what you described. that is why is so important to have information about what the typical winter is like at a particular -- typical wind is like a particular place so that one can place this in the right spots. even if they are in the right spots, and thought has been given to how to accommodate the intermittent nature. nonetheless, many of the places nonetheless, many of the places where they are, i think, are providing a good wind energy that is not polluting. they have to be designed properly. the department of energy has the department of energy has primary responsibility for those and is working closely with the department of interior as well as noaa. noaa's role in that is to provide information about the winds that enable others to do their jobs.

host: very quickly, a couple of tweets. guest: i believe that everyone i have spoken to appreciates some aspect of noaa. one of my challenges is to represent the diversity of what we do and interconnected nature of it. i believe that noaa brings a significant benefit to the nation, and in communicating that, we will be able to sustain all the important things that we do. there are very significant downward pressure is on everybody's budget, and we attempt to live within our means and address the deficit, as i believe we need to. guest: noaa does not have satellites that sitting around ready to be launched.

we build them and then fly them. we build them and then fly them. host: does noaa have official or non-official opinion on global warming? guest: noaa is the science agency and we track to provide records about temperature, it changes in precipitation, changes in storms and other things. the evidence is very strong that we have seen significant warming over the last century, since the 19th century. we are seeing increases in temperatures and about 1.5- degree fahrenheit. we are also seeing increases in extreme storms, extreme precipitation events. more flights, more droughts. all that is consistent -- more floods, more droughts. all that is consistent with the predictions that have been made about climate change.

we track records, provide information, we use the information to inform people's activities around to the nation. activities around to the nation. host: in fact, dr. lubchenco served on the national academy of science's study on policy implications of global warming during the george h.w. bush administration. she served from 1977 to 2009 as a professor at oregon state university and prior to that taught at harvard for a couple of years. chris tweets -- would you like to address that? guest: noaa played a very important role in responding to the deepwater horizon oil spill, as we do to other oil spill. that is one of our responsibilities. we provide a lot of the scientific information that enables the response, whether it is weather or oceanographic models that say where the oil

will gold. we have responsibility for protecting wildlife and habitat. we are in the process of assessing the damage and then we will help with the restoration. all that is integrated and underpinned by the science that we do. i believe that we did a very, very good job of our part in the oil spill. it was a disaster, it was highly unfortunate, it went on for too long, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned from it. but i am exceptionally proud of the role that noaa played in that event. not a single piece of seafood that was tainted made it into the markets. we closed fisheries in anticipation of with the oil was going to be and worked closely with fishermen to open up areas as soon as it was safe. we continue to test seafood from that. our models about where the oil would go and what would you have

been spot on. -- and what would you have been -- and what would you have been spot on. there was a lot of miscommunication during the event, lessons learned, but we've been pretty much vindicated with what we did. i'm proud of our folks. host: jane lubchenco is the administrator of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. the website is noaa.gov. if you want to follow them on twitter,

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