do not do that kind of thing. >> we're going further here, but it may be you're wound up. i'm suggesting they are all celebrities. i'm not discerning any sympathy at all because they sell that privacy for money. .. last people who should be protected buy privacy laws or those who are the most deserving all of the celebrity because i have the benefit of experience on both sides of the coin, the reality is in then going to

those ordinary people of the public i consider myself very fortunate and others do not expect and that they use the media to promote themselves in that brand brand, but they do not like the top. you just cannot have it both ways. >> by your attitude to use the bbc, the party new-line which for many, is that an invitation by the bcc which is regarded very seriously and in the matted of shame, is that an attitude which you have toward material times? >> yes. >> all of that hearing is available and are video library at c-span.org. end more from the inquiry tonight with actor hugh grant's recent testimony before the inquiry hearing. thursday night testimony from

actress cnn miller and friday author j. k. reilly and former news of the world editor, paul mcmullen all this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. and coming up on a c-span2, harvey levine, creator of the celebrity news site tmz dot com. at 6:00 p.m. eastern a conversation with performer, monologuist mike deasy, and at 7:00 p.m. caroled busey who won the 2011 pulitzer prize for breaking news photography. >> with the iowa caucus and new hampshire primary next month this dispensaries the contenders to expect a 14 and he ran for president and lost but have a long-lasting impact of american politics. here is our lineup. tonight when jennings bryant. thursday by time socialist candid.

charles evans hughes. and then on saturday three-time governor of new york. the contenders every that as in the scent on c-span. >> harvey levin, creative and is a key producer of celebrity news site tmz.com and tmz tv says the television will become a radically different business in the next five years. at a recent national press club speech to he said all me it will combine elements of tv in the engine that. traditional broadcasters need to change the distribution methods in order to adapt. this is an hour. >> good fd then look into the national press club. i am mark herrmann of the associated press. on the 100 forth presence. we are the world's leading to partial organization for journalists admitted to our

professions feature such our programming while working to foster a free press around the world. from our president of the national press club we invite you to look at our website. donate to programs offered to the public for our national journalism library. on behalf of our members worldwide i like to welcome our speaker as well as all those of the hearts and in today's event, our head table includes guess about speaker as well as working journalists or our club members. if you hear applause, we of the members of the general public are attending, so it's of necessarily evidence of a lack of journalistic objectivity. i would also like to our c-span and public radio audiences. our lunches are also featured an our member produced weekly part

cast available for free download of itunes. you can also follow on twitter. after our guests speech includes we will have q&a and i was as many questions as temperaments. now is time to reduce our head table. our journalist presence is not employed or signify an endorsement of any speaker. ask each of you to a stand up briefly as our name is announced that we will begin from your right. they freelance photojournalist and coordinator of our member volunteer photographer chair. thank you for that. mats mall is one of my colleagues to what the associated press radio, radio producer. it is good to have him here. myron bell kind is an adjunct professor at the george washington school of media and public affairs and our npc treasure. the washington bureau chief and white house correspondent with american urban radio network. and less president for

communications with the association of american publishers and the guests are speaker. nice to have you here. slipover the podium for just a moment. for speaker committee chair. this may be her last luncheon here today. thank you for all the wonderful work you have done this year. let's skip over the speaker. the wall street journal, and she is a member of the committee and a co or answer of today's event. thank you for that. the executive producer and a guest of the speaker. nice to have you here as well. a reporter with the los angeles times. this is a long list of titles. former nbc president, washington bureau chief with deceasing chronicle and also the president of our national journalism message. any member of the club, editor of the washingtonian magazine.

at the end of the perfect touch the end of the table professor at georgetown university and all-around good guy. please give him a round of applause. well, those of us are in the trade now that no good reporter and maybe even some bad ones, no good report released a dispute. we really don't like it will we are beaten by an internet site that focuses on the literary and thriving entertainment industry. all of the war began on the story about the death of pop idol michael jackson. as well though, the aftermath continues to unfold in a california courtroom where jackson's doctor is being tried for involuntary manslaughter. tmz stock was celebrity gossip and its founder, ca join the of

the michael jackson story, like so many other events have become part of our nation's culture as well as a reflection of it. that success of his venture is proof that americans want their lives in lohan. our guest feed of better way. katie was lost and two dozen five and within seven months begin the number one entertainment news said in the world. in 2007 newsweek called take to the break del blog. the new york times has called harvey the man who may represent the future of celebrity journalism. the first operation to have broken such celebrity stories as low gibson's wild anti-semitic tirade after his dui arrest, that john edwards sex scandal, and the details of tiger woods downfall that began with a seemingly minor on the accident of the ceiling. the initial public accounts of tigers run in with the neighbors treated not make any sense.

they were right. [laughter] by the timing was all over the gulf legend was divorced from his wife and many of his bosses and is no longer the world's number one golfer. the scant evidence transcend celebrity gossip and flowing to business and political issues. grow from a celebrity videos center "said into a live web stream program, a tv show that is syndicated daily by fox broadcasting and as of this summer a radio program on sunland radio. tmz has broken ground polloi that news is bad taste with an emphasis on speed. last year a study by the new york times named tmz the tenth most popular new site. according to the website rankings concern their rank above pbs, bloomberg, politico,

and npr. our guest has had a fascinating journey, which continues to unfold, and we're thankful that it brought him here today. he goes rig from last your city of chicago law school. he was also a working journalist in the trenches and spent more than a decade as an investigative reporter for kcbs in los angeles and covered many high-profile court cases. he received nine emmy awards for his reporting and was a columnist of the l.a. times and radio talk-show host. he created and produced the syndicated series liberty justice and help bring this to be shows like the people's court and moral court. he has come here today to talk about the tmz empire, why tmz and tmz wannabes are so successful and what it means for the future of journalism. the issues could not be more timely. journalism enterprises of all kinds of charge to the handle on the question what is the right model and the delays. our guest speaker appears to have hit on something to say the

least. we're pleased he has exhibited our invitation to speak. we have had a number of top like journalists alone. tom brokaw will be here in just a few days. please give a warm and national press club welcome to mr. harvey levin. [applause] [applause] >> i bet he won't talk about let's lohan. so i'm going to change up what i plan on talking to you about because something happened that was pretty interesting. i spoke to students at georgia washington university and then media. what i noticed was they were -- they looked depressed. they really looked depressed.

when they started speaking i realized, you know, they felt that the job market was weak, their future was uncertain. they did not really have a vision for the future. they were scared. and it really kind of shocked me because it sounded to me like there were learning about problems with of learning and resolutions and not learned about how you can take an industry in trouble and carve out a niche that will make you successful and make the industry more healthy. so the over live from all of this is the toby, and you always love hearing this just before you go on, the there was a debate on whether there would have led me there along the profs. they thought, you know, tmz covers celebrity journalism, and

that really doesn't rise to the standard of what you folks should be learning. to end with all due respect, that does relate to what i wanted to touch you folks about because i think that there was a big disconnect today when i had this little talk with the students because i think that was some of the professors were missing and is so important to, it is up the subject matter that is covered that is really important but houses covered. we are in news operation that uses the same skills, the same standards that i used as a working journalist at various is operations. we are extremely aggressive, but we figured out a way of doing where i think the aberration is

relevant to what is going on today. and that, to me, is what is important. i don't so much want to talk of celebrity news but the delivery system because that is what is relevant and important. i do think that the delivery system in media generally right now is still and let think that there is a good chance the love people here will be put out of work if the people who run this delivery system don't change it and don't say is its privilege. but i think it can be a changed. that is why what spend a little time talking about before we open up for questions. there have been radical changes in the last 30 years, really let's talk ten, a radical changes in the budget policy, consumer tastes, and i don't think that has been reflected in the media.

if you look at broadcast journalism right now there is a kind of standard way of preventing -- presenting news is been going on for four decades. you have an acre throwing to a reporter who usually repeats part of with the anchor said to them throws to a package that has very predictably some track, some sound, track, some sound, track, some sound, and then the reporter comes back, says kabyle the actor says thank you and you move on to the next. that is the whole of -- the way it has been done for 40 years. i think the people is so rooted in what they have done when they have some excess that it big we need to hold on to this excess rather than to evolve with lotus

going on technologically and what is going on in terms of consumer case. was watching. again, to start to use this as an example because i am -- my head is sometimes all over the place, xylitol acropolis in nassau. of was to be ready this warrior was was a very early. cnn had a show called csn soon news. i looked. but, they're trying to attract the euro audience. they had a guy there who was john. he was wearing a sweater vest, but everything else was the same. he was looking into the camera, reading, because what talking about the same stories that everybody else was talking about and you know, in my head i don't know why, it reminded me a job in a ramsey, that it was like

dressing up is kid to be something that the news director once and to be when that is not authentically who he is. that is not the way he should have been presented. if you're really trying to attract young people, do it in the voice of young people, do with a different delivery. it was exactly the same thing, but the guy was wearing a sweater rather than a coat. it doesn't cut it. the fact is, young people are not interested in traditional media for the most part anymore because it doesn't speak to them it is giving -- the audience is getting older and older, so when young people aren't coming in the old people are getting older is know what happens in the end. i mean, is inevitable. so when you look at what happens with the dynamics of the audience then the question is,

what are people doing to attract those young people, regenerate interest in what is really important which is the news. and i said the news it can be politics, it can be city governments, it can be celebrity, what do you do to attract those people? and then the question is, how do you reinvent yourself? that brings me to newspapers and magazines. you know, you look at newspapers and magazines, which have had a story run for 100 years and have served a useful function. but to all you know, when newspapers started, magazines started there was no such thing as video. there was no such thing as a photo gallery. technologically there are so many things that have evolved. there are so many ways the people can get their news. what is the magic of holding a piece of paper up in the air

when you read? how mean, what is it that drives professors and others to sing the praises of newspapers still when it is not the future? i know that sounds harsh, but that doesn't mean that these shares have tumbled. means they have to reinvent themselves and reinvent themselves, perhaps, online, but not in a way it is being done now in many cases. right now what is happening is that of line when this paper can be on two platforms, online and paper. they compete with each other, and they are not complementary. the break the story in the newspaper, line? there are lots of strows going on within listed organizations right now on how to do this, but at a point you have to choose. yet there is something about

newspapers, this holy grail that people talked about the we just have to preserve. why? what is it about paper? it is not even a politically correct a war. what is it about paper that makes us so rooted in the past? and what is it that forces people to shut down when they talk about how to of of of what is going on today? would i have notice is that there has been a resistance to going on to the web because people say it is just too fast. if you go on to the web then there is not enough time and you will be inaccurate and there will be a rush to publish. that is a cop out. i mean, to say we're not going to evolve this way because we are afraid we will be inaccurate is just a cop out. the web does not force you to publish before you're ready to publish. it gives you the technology,

devices to do with when you are ready. use a step that -- you still set the standards and decide when to pull the trigger. it's your decision. the web is an enabler. it does not force you to do what you don't want to do. again, i always get this, that the web is bad because it is too urgent. fuel loses been around 24 hours for three decades. it is not like to divorce our's is anything new, but there are these devices now that let you recreate and let you recast in a way that can make everybody more relevant, more timely and yet i think it is met with some resistance still. we publish, there are stories republished that we publish in minutes we get them. then there are stories that take a lot longer. republish the story today, an interesting story, but nbc. they are kind of secretly trying

to get the case he had the interview. the way they're doing it is they have a producer that has made contact with literary agents trying to score a book deal for casey anthony, tried to get her front-end money. the representation is, if we did a book deal for casey anthony we will get a 1-hour prime-time special on nbc. this producer, this quietly shopping this around. well, we had this story -- we get the tips on this story last tuesday, and we published this morning. i wanted to get jose on the record because i knew he knew about it. we did not accomplish that until yesterday. so it felt like it was worth the wait to make sure we got that. that took six days to get the story. it is an important story and a good story, but, again, it took six days. then again their things that we

get that we publish immediately. when michael jackson died hello we didn't publish the story until we were 100 percent sure. then we waited all little longer still. so it does not force you to do what you don't want to do. i think that is just a really important point or. and i do want to mention one other story, the mel gibson dui story. a lot of people say for what we do, you know, this is still just covering, you know, celebrities. you know, for better or so the celebrities are important in our culture. people are interested in that. and i do think that the kind of disdain that some people have for covering kind of reflects and disconnect with the case of

the american public. you may not like it that people interested, but they are. and when you looked at what we give people in journalism, to me it is not the front page of the new york times. it is more like a magazine. people are interested in all sorts of things. i cover celebrity journalism. you know, my favorite thing to read his books on their ramekin. i am not a one-dimensional guy, and i don't the many people are that the only like one thing. i think that there is a diet up there were people could be intensely interested in all sorts of things. and it serves a function that people want. that is what i care about right now. i am really looking of my audience when we, in our business model, a look at what my audience wants, not what i want to. look. i am way older than my target

demo. it's one of the reasons i like having your people in my office. i listen to them. very egalitarian in that sense. i cannot pretend to know. it is up this kind of top-down where people at the top give these peaks. you cover this. you cover that. we have a very open office bullpen where everybody throws out ideas, and i could not possibly tell you about urban music, could not possibly tell you but sports the way other people in my office can tell you about sports. we cover all of this. you know, i think to open yourself up and to understand taste is so critical to stay relevant. it is as important as technology , and that the the people need to open themselves up more. rather than have disdain for it there has got to be some exceptions because ultimately we are in business. we are all in business, and if

we don't run our business well we don't survive well. so i think there has got to be a balance there, but i think you have to pay some homage to the fact that it is a business. two other things i want to talk about. one is, you know, we spend a lot of time obviously working on the web and the television show. but to niihau this will the clubs within five years and this is going to be a radically different business. i don't think that the web is going to look the way it looks, television well, i think there will be a merger of the two. i no there will be a merger of the two commendable have qualities of both but will look like neither. that is where my head is right now. just as i am saying i think that the delivery system has gone stale, generally in traditional media i don't want to fall victim to that. i think that at least my effort

is being spent on the plan to come and we are experiencing with something that we call tmz live that we run every day, and it is trying to blend those two elements, but it is just another example of everything changes. to stay relevant, to capture an audience and to keep an audience and to grow an audience, if you get some measure of success, however i hold that? everybody in this room has had it. the question is what you do with it. ruyter try to maintain it. at the wheel and a technological world where you cannot maintain. you just cannot maintain. you grow or die. and somehow i think that is the reality, and that they were told the students was you'll look so depressed. rather than looking at this as,

oh, my god of it's going to be so hard to get the job, there will be a lot of people ran the studios and networks and magazines and newspapers that are looking for the answers. they don't know, and if you have an answer, if you have the sensibility of somebody going to attract the young audience they will listen to you. this is opporunity, revolution, and opporunity to quickly make your mark. don't be depressed. think about a vision for what you want to do. don't just plug into what exists, but you have to think about that. and all tell you, we had a measure of success, but el always looking for those people to come and say, you're doing this wrong, you could be doing is better because every day i walked into my office, walked in scared. i mean that. i am scared every morning when i walk into the office. i have this feeling in my stomach. over going to get the by storyteller produce this well

enough? what is happening to the business? there are a million questions. i run scared, but i don't run still looking at others. a run scared myself. and, you know, i don't know whether the works for other people. it actually works for me because it is genuine. i don't think i can never rest on what we have achieved had just in terms of audience and what not. i know that if we don't keep which he had the what i said the beginning will be of us, and i don't want that to happen. i am more than happy to take questions. >> thank you very much. how about a round of applause? >> they keep for that inspiring speech. i have to tell you first of all of the and people. i couldn't agree more.

ahead and a portuguese writer but the sum of blog recently. the young journalist out there and, indeed, perhaps the ones that aren't so young all have a tremendous opportunity, and it is unfortunate that so many people need to only see the negative and obviously your enterprise has been the beneficiary of the changed. and there are positive things. let's talk a little bit about the entertainment industry and some of the special things you do. the will have an informal q&a. let me ask you, in terms of the market the you are serving, and that could be defined in the number of different ways, but obviously entertainment news is the heart of that, are we now in a culture where entertainment news is more popular than ever before? body except the market for entertainment news at this point in our history and culture? >> i think it as -- i think

there has been a real interesting that in the last five or six years, but for reasons. when you look at traditional media and the way they covered hollywood, the media did not choose stories, the publicist said. the traditional media was always based on getting interviews with stars. publicists were smart enough to say, we can leverage this. we can dictate what traditional media and entertainment dozen don't do. they would go to shows, magazines and say, look, you want cellosolve colleges this story. it did not matter of the strongest for naught. they would do the story because there once the person. conversely if the polls is new that a show headwind of the stories of the publicists and not one of the polis would call

and say to what you do the story and you'll never did any of my clients, and it worked. it worked for years, decades. everything was false that was coming up. everybody played the game. nobody broke rank. you know, if we do anything fundamentally different when we created tmz it was that we decided we were not point to do any interviews with stars. the reason is foolish to change the balance of power. recall all the publicists and said, look, this came about do this, don't do that, we're not point to play. we're going to do on this stories. we will be fair, honest, and accurate, and we want to work with you, but you cannot tell us what to do and what not to do. some jumped on board and others did not. it took time. they're all on board now. they realized they had to change. what has done now, the the

stories of the last five years to become more authentic and people are saying, oh, god, this is totally different than this type of managed, phony, celebrity machine. and that think when they have seen, you know, that's true hollywood, the good and the bad, it has become more interesting to them. i think that is why there is this kind of spike in the interests in journalism because it was all the same, there was a sense of was a real, and nothing that has been blown up some of. i think it is just more authentic. you know, the swearing somebody asked me the same thing. in russia when everybody had greatcoats and that of a sudden the get command in the ever read cut, green coat, and the bluecoat. it opened up this whole rainbow that i don't they existed before, and i think the audience has responded. >> this sow as a lot of the old

way of doing business being done you see some of the product out there, news product, and it is all of the next thing from the celebrity is going to be the best version of the product ever of course five days from now we will never run to the product. >> absolutely. absolutely. it is not like everybody. what i think this happens, though, is some of the traditional entertainment media has become schizophrenic. what they will do is they realize that they have to be more real, so it will do some of those stories and then go back to being supplicants and go back suddenly the problem with that is then they lose their identity . who are they? and if they are -- they're doing both ends of the spectrum. they'll whip slowing the audience and that the their kind of losing their brand. >> an attorney who has been watching. aegis knockers to me, why isn't

there more transparency in the reporting of entertainment news to the extent that the "washington post" has an ombudsman, npr has an ombudsman column isn't there really anybody highlighting some of these transactions? >> such as? >> well, you know, very favorable coverage just because you get access to a celebrity. in other words, the emphasis of the pieces this product is coming down the pipe. the emphasis is entirely on the product. if you're really going to write a story. for me the more interesting stories are what we did today with nbc and casey anthony because it is doing to the back door where you can't go in the front. that can lead to me, is a lack of transparency, and that is a really interesting story. doing stories about, that is kind of phony, the reason i am not that interested is i don't think the audience can next to that stuff anymore either.

a think there are people doing those stories, but i don't think the audience cares. i think they see the truth, and when they start to see, these are the real story is the way there a percentage, authentic, i think that the other stories feel false, so it does not matter as much as the organizations that percent think the matter. >> you earlier talked about how you like lincoln and the of the part. do you worry that our culture focuses too much on this material overall? a great market for you to be serving. york area audience with wants, but do you worry that in the marketplace sometimes you're missing the big picture? our number of four september 11 to could not help but watch an hours recovered about carry conduct on cnn and then they exchanged for the worse in a big

way. i sometimes wonder that as a culture in the country asking questions whether as a nation and as a people we sometimes have our eyes on the wrong thing. >> we do, but i don't think it is limited to celebrity. i think about monica lewinsky. i mean, i don't think it'll hurt, but, you know, my recollection is that all three anchors at the time peter jennings, dan rather, and tom brokaw were in cuba covering the pope with this story broke, and when they found out what she did to him in the oval office there were on the first jet that smoked out of cuba. and at the cuban boat visit culpable visit was historic. and, i mean, but nobody can tell me that the amount of coverage about my ability was not directly tied to cigar's and dresses and all that.

it was not tied to a constitutional crisis. i know what it was about. they know what it was about. they wrapped it in the constitutional paper, but it was not about that at all. i mean, i think everybody's guilty of it, but i think to say it is endemic to celebrity is that's. >> what kind of stories work best for you? obviously you have been very good at breaking certain kinds of stories : of the stories you really like to have an aerospace the other part of that is what will you not touch? severity of competition, a factory,. >> i like balance. the tv show is different. the tv show is a committee take of hollywood. this serves a very different function. the website, we have 13 stories.

i am looking all that law and whether we have balance. once an important, photos, video, something like, ironic. i want that balance on the base. it is 71 thing. i always want balance. we have tried to do, how are audiences but even -- evenly between men and women. we tried to give people enough. i think that is what is really important to me. as for what we will do, we reject stories all day long. all along. we will reject the we know other people do. the michael phelps one story, we

had that three months before it broke. it felt wrong to me. i mean, it felt like he was set up, the circumstances just felt wrong, and they put the picture of an office. i knew it would eventually break. just to show people, these the things we will do. i remember not too long ago recovered the courts. we are aggressive and the courts. we get these documents and the british peers case in her conservatorship. there was information in there that was really personal and i think a hurtful to her children. i looked at this and the person that the court called me up and said this is a mistake. they never knew, clearly never meant to have this public. they should have been sealed. it was just circle.

i am not saying we are the tiflis and yell. here are aggressive reporters, that fell wrong. i call upon lawyer and just said, you could not have been for this to the public. she three top and set to local my god. this is a mistake. she called the judge and is to leave it to seal that tomorrow we have the only copy. all day long, we have debates all day long the what to put up but not to put up. the one everyone participating. you also learn who is coming up. people who could eventually become producers. we debate of the law of this is the point when you become a big

operation plausible sending lots of things and tips. this is a constant thing. i had a number of people ask me in person before we came here, the dark -- ground rules regarding paper content or not? talk generally about how your process works talked about the staff, the ground rules. >> i will gladly buy video from anybody in this room who has some good video. i have no problem with that. have no problem buying photos. it is funny because he will talk frontis. you pay for things. yes. we pay for videos and photos. absolutely. you have to think about the logic behind paying for not. if i buy a video does not change

the video. it is objective. if somebody shoots it and that in the business as somebody says would you like this for your business we want to charges something. i looked at it and there is value, will buy it. and i will save there is no difference, and surely the people in your work of local news. and they're is a fire and the house and the love the night or crash in the freeway, there are stairs up there all night long shoes things. they go to the new stations in the morning and say i have a video of this crash, this fire. do you want to buy it. is the same thing. it has been going on forever, and i have no problem with it and will absolutely by photos and video. interviews the different. live interviews it is our

objective, and the new offer somebody money for an interview you're basically saying to them, well, you will pay me that much money, i'd better make this a really good story and are incentivizing the person to shave the truth, even lied to make it worth there while. if they know that their stores will be worth acts if they tell the right story or three times tax if they embellish, well, they are going for the money. you don't know that they're not telling the truth. that is a problem with paying for interviews. what has happened with a lot of traditional media is the figured out -- they think they figured out a way what they thought they did appear around the rich is fair enough to pay for the interview. we will pager jackson a hundred thousand dollars from a high school yearbook picture of michael jackson. they're not paid for the interview. right. that is a with a gun around for a long time. we do this story. refund of that of the networks

were courting jose bias and that he was down in a bar talking to mike garrett is about how much money this was worth. we did a story about discipline months ago. two days after we did the story they cannot answer the will longer pay for photos and video connected to an interview, which at those kind of an interesting and revealing statement. but it was that kind of backed away doing it which i think is the real problem. the video, and the objective, absolutely. in terms of staff, you know, it is like any other staff. we have, you know, aggressive journalists and managers. a lot of my staff have been strangely ground up. the was never the intention. we always love to get the mix. it has been more training staff from the ground up. his work for us because they have the sensibility and understand the sensibility of

who we are, where we go, what the brand is. they need to be managed to muddle we have really good managers quit since the ilo member of a law enforcement team : i have a fact that i think he does would really like to run. it will close to $5,000. >> you can't. i will save we have numerous law enforcement context, numerous law enforcement context. i mean, look. i was a reporter for many years l.a. much of this happens and l.a. and i was a reporter in l.a. had developed a lot of sources in, you know, police departments, lawyers, judges, all sorts of people. and those people just did not evaporate. at the same time i have a staff that has been remarkable. they have a work ethic and they have created their own niches where they have found their own sources.

you know, apparition is very egalitarian. when we have morning meetings everyone is in the morning meeting. and we did the mill gives the story the person who first found out was that harvey levin who was a french who was a waiter who saw the red lights. had i not make him feel included in the process he never would have broken the russell story. so this is a very egalitarian thing. everybody is kind of developing their own contacts. a very kevin bacon like city. we have a lot of sources. justice. what i tell my staff is that that is the word that is the difference between success and failure. people trust you. if they think you will be fair with them there will come back, and if they don't trust you, if you do something where they say you have done something that has made me not trust you anymore, it will damage is gravely. trust is the biggest thing, and

we have less and less. >> you just give us a little bit of the dna. what is the dna and how you broke the michael jackson death? >> of trying to think of how much to say. part of that was we made a phone call. the biggest part of the michael jackson story was not what we found out he was dead. that had the biggest splash obviously, but for us in terms of chasing the story the initial story was an ambulance with his house. he had doctors all the time. we knew that. when he died that was a huge they will but the biggest story that changed it that made us understand the urgency was we found out that he was in full cardiac arrest. we found that out -- on not going to say how, we made a certain phone call that anybody

could it made, that anybody. we found out that information. that changed everything. from there with several working resources because we knew how desperate it was. that was a was that lots and lots of people started mickey -- could have made. >> what is the most ridiculous or hilarious video of a celebrity the above list? >> it is one of those things were every day things happen. you know, it is like this a bathtub. i call the best knowledge. the totals above water and that he pull the plug and a new philippine in the next day. i can remember from one to the next because of all kinds of

plants together. >> rephrase the question another way. anything to you actually ran along those lines? >> this was not a shocking photo. it was just the way we deal with it. my staff is creative. they push the envelope sometimes with and not a born stories. and sometimes it can become big stars themselves. jennifer love hewitt at one. have gained some weight. there was some photographs of her that clearly showed that. somebody who was a very clever guy, and i will win this on myself, because it's just did not register.

resistance. but he wrote a story. it was to census. the headline, for those of you your room air with her movie seven this will be to argue against it. for those of you who are not this will simeon, the headline was i know what you a the summer . we were severely criticized for that. did this big cover story on weight. i regret. >> you talked earlier about how a lot of people don't get what they need to be doing, but as you look up there what do you see where they do it? new enterprises doing more, old enterprises doing something new?

>> i think that people have this sense that the internet is this huge player. it is how to harness it and what to do with it. i mean, i've -- there are lots -- i read politico all the time and again during a really good job. there are others that are doing a really good job. the new york times's figure out the web better than most. the l.a. times has a good website where it is somewhat complementary, although there are still issues. to me i think people are struggling and the internet, and that the that is good, that the need to figure that out. tv is more problematic. i think that the problem with tv is i don't think people realize how broken the delivery system this and that, you know, jim and i were talking last night. you don't need the middlemen as much anymore. and i mean, that may sound a

loaded threatening, but the nation of makers and reporters who kind of front these stories, i'm not sure if it is as compelling as the people who actually get the stories. they may not look as good, but i don't think it matters. i think that the authenticity of seeing people, especially in broadcast media, seeing people who really on the story and have the story. they don't have to present them with tracks, a sound contract was out, but they can present them in a different way. when we do our tv show i not tried to use that as a shocking example, whenever look of the camera. we just have a meeting. there are real meetings commodity meetings. there are funny, but there are real. i don't think they have to be funny. there are ways of presenting things that can be fundamentally different and fresh that can convey the same information baby in a more compelling and treadway then may attract an

audience that is kind of left because they're bored. acting that in some ways broadcast does not understand the problem as much as -- be. >> you talked about being gay and how difficult it was to keep that a secret and so you didn't and the lager. can you talk about those pressures and celebrating it must've felt? if i'm not working never leave the house. i've had been that way for three years where i literally, i just was panicked when i would got.

and it was apparent there was this kind of irrational panic that made no sense. it's this kind of sat on itself. finally one day i just thought to myself, i am running my life. this is great. i have here show at the time. i am the station where i also was a reporter. are miserable. this is just awful, and it is solid want to make a declaration , but still you know, if the news director really hates it to muster them. i will do some deals. this is ridiculous. it was kind of the tipping point. there was a turning point for me . at up to myself, that's it. it was just one day. unbending nothing happened. nothing happened. it was the same. and then i realize i can't believe it. a building's of my head and

increase areas. i create a clear warm my head when this up that all but one of my many flaws. i think added that with that. it was nothing. that said i do think there are areas in the country where it is a huge problem still, and i think that it is a liability in terms of career for people who come out and i think there's still a lack of tolerance. a think their is a long way to go. i have been pretty lucky. in. >> they were all kinds of rumors, maybe more than rumor that tmz would have a presence in washington that would be substantial. whatever happened with that? >> it is going to happen someday . it is my passion. of want to do that more than anything. the only thing stopping us right now as we have so much going on back in l.a. between the website

and the tv show and mobile. we have lost a bus tour, which, by the way, is so much fun. if you ever come to l.a., it is so much fun. it is a show, but there are some great things we're doing. i realize it will require me to be here for a while. and i want to do that, and i am going to do that. the reason i want to do it is because i really believe that so much of the media that covers politics is really covering it for inside the beltway and there are millions of people of there who want to like politics, want to be interested, and they feel badly that they're not, but is not adjustable to them, boring to them, too complicated for them, and they cannot find an entry level. what i want to do is make tmz dca personality-based side, not

because it will be the most import material but it will edges people to politics of a level they can relate to, on a personal level. i will tell you quickly that we did this in the face of way. i don't know if she does follow this of all. the joke would food raychem did jody brenner of washington d.c., and we fountain out walking to a boat and into the gym i think a cameraman, you were the cameramen he did that. his press secretary called me and said, how dare you. you're right to call me up and a few days and apologize. we got this video on cnn and fox is in the nbc station in chicago and peoria. the bottom line is we did bust c5 a series of stories are

personality driven. i went to dinner with and not too long ago and he said before we go let's come to my office because and during this telephonic town hall. we usually get like 50 to 100 people. he had like 12,000 people on the phone, and he will be very open about this. he said, tmz did more for me to get people interested in m. now i can talk about what i am interested in and there will actually listen. i think that there is a way of getting a lot of people involved in politics, on that personality level, and then we will do other things, but that is what i want to do. we will eventually do it. >> do you want to give us a time when? >> you know, i could die first. i don't know. you know, there is a lot of pressure right now just with all the things is going on in l.a., and, you know, the problem with any business is if you try and

do too much faith to pulp -- fall apart. >> what but next year. >> we are going to do politics next year. i just another we will be a will to do tmz as a formal site. >> very good. if you could stand by for a second of will make some announcements in the move would get to the last question and a little presentation here. ..

because we are aware of the branding you have on your tv show. typically we get a coffee mug but we are aware the you don't use a coffee mug. it is a national press club travel mug. [applause] >> i may use this on the show. >> we think would be a great launching point for the next publication or website to have the national press club logo. >> thank you. >> we are glad to have you here today, harvey. it's been an interesting question and answer period as well as your speech. we are going to ask a final question and that is is there one particular celebrity from the past that it would have liked to have covered or gotten to know yourself? either currently alive or from the past. that is the top of the sheep celeb i would like the opportunity to get to know. >> the person i wish i would have gotten to know and the person i wish i could have done

something with, steve jobs. i think steve jobs may be the most influential person in our lifetime. he blows me away. i cannot believe his vision. he is a historic figure. what he did is he changed everything about our world as profoundly as the airplane did. he changed everything about our world and it wasn't just one thing that he did. she did thing after thing after thing. and i just -- i've never read about anybody or seen anything with anybody with that kind of provision in our lifetime. i think he was a remarkable -- i cannot wait for this book. i cannot wait for this book to come out. >> thank you very much. how about a round of applause for our guest speaker today. [applause]

i'd like to thank the national press club staff including the library and broadcast center for organizing today's event and if you want more information about the club or would like a copy of today's program please check out our web site, www.press.org. thank you. and we are adjourned. ♪ this week on q&a, performer like his one-man show featured such issues as the economy, the war, life in new york, steve jobs and the american theater. c-span: mike daisey can you explain when you for a living? >> guest: i think i can to beat on me story teller. i tell stories for a living on stage in front of people and i tell them extemporaneously. so i tell them the same way as

this conversation that we are having is, where you have probably prepared a little and i know so i will deal to answer but we are making it as we go along. that's what i do. i tell stories in rooms with people. c-span: how long have you been doing it? >> guest: in one sense all my life in terms of it being a career about 15 years. c-span: i saw you at the volley mammoth theatre in washington a couple weeks ago and as i watched you i said i want to know more because you're talking about a couple, steve jobs and china. what is this show you just wrapped up in washington? >> guest: it's called the agony and the ecstasy of steve jobs, and it's about the two-story is really principally in intertwined. one is the story of apple, steve jobs' rise and fall and rise and what apple means in the culture

today, with these devices mean in our lives, and then the over stream of the story is where these devices come from. i went to china and investigated how the army and the conditions under which they are made. c-span: where did you get the idea to do this? >> guest: you know, i talk about this in the show and it's really true. all of my monologues come out of my obsessions. they sprang out but i have in collision with one another and one day i was surfing the web endlessly and i read this article on a macintosh news site and in the article talked about how a person have gotten an iphone in on the iphone it wasn't a blank white factory, it had pictures from inside the factory that hadn't been he raced and i looked at those pictures and became obsessed with them because i started to think about the fact the i didn't know, even though i think about these machines all the time i didn't actually know how they were made.

it seemed very strange because i know how to put them apart and back together. i think about electronics of the time but i didn't actually know how they were made and that's what started it. c-span: let's show a little clip so people can get a sense of what -- first of all it is a one-man show. is it always one man? >> guest: it is, yes. c-span: so you have been sitting on stages for 15 years by yourself talking? >> guest: well i never feel -- [laughter] i never feel lonely because it's actually told in this case with the audience. it's very much life composed and so it feels very communal. but guess i'm the only one on the stage, that's true. c-span: before we show this there any difference between performing in washington and any other city? >> guest: no, not in the fundamentals. we can talk endlessly about the specifics and people like to treat it's true that they are a very political audience and things resonate different in different cities but i've performed in india, australia,

the u.k., all over america and audiences are human beings and fundamentally, you know, if he can connect with humans it's the same everywhere. c-span: this is a clip from the current program about the agony and the ecstasy of steve jobs. >> guest: yes. >> the enemies of this future reflects sacrifice steve jobs is never afraid. [inaudible] it was the ipod. it was the ipod but it was mini. [laughter] today the ipod mini is no more. no! don't take it away, steve. what are you doing? i give you the ipod nano.

[laughter] the nano is smaller than the mini. yay! [laughter] it's everything i wanted! i'm going to lose it even faster now. [laughter] c-span: what do you get in that clip there and what do you think of steve jobs? >> guest: welcome in that clip, you know, talking very specifically about the fact that he does something that almost no other ceos but actually do. he has an incredible ability to actually cancel something, to get rid of things, to throw out the past and move forward with the future. people have a hard time doing that in all our lives. and i think part of this ruthlessness is because he's able to detach that way. he's very good at realizing that a certain thing is yesterday. and even before the market is ready for if he's willing to move on to the next thing. and the sort of captures a lot

of what i think of steve jobs. i really admire him a lot. he's been responsible for three fundamental shift in the metaphor that we used to see the world in technology. and no one else has been responsible for even one so it's remarkable. it's a remarkable thing. at the same time, i think that he is a very difficult person to work for it to be associated with. i think that he's really challenging, you know. and i think he sits in a tremendous position of power where he is that apple right now. he's built this corporate armature around himself. and it's my fervent wish, you know, that he would open his eyes and recognize the conditions that are in the factories in china, and acknowledge them and work toward change. and of all the people and technology, i actually think he's the one that's most likely to actually try and do something like that, because he's always been a maverick.

c-span: i want to get into that. but you have a steve wozniak and messrs. crounse one night. who is he and what did he have to say about this when he saw you do this? >> guest: steve wozniak is the co-founder of apple so he and steve jobs founded it together years and years ago and he still has a tremendous amount of apple stock and is still officially in employee. steve wozniak salles the show ain't told "the new york times" that he was changed, that he would never be the same again. and he wept after seeing the show. and we met for dinner coming and shia by are determined to try to keep raising awareness under the conditions under which these devices are made. people don't really understand that workers literally work themselves to death making the devices, that the conditions are not the son john and robot factory but instead thousands

and thousands of cubans and people yet in many cases children make all of our electronics. and so, trying to make that real people so that we actually start to care about it is a tall order. c-span: would do to get the idea of going to the foxconn factory in shenzhen, china? >> guest: when i started to find out about how the devices are made you come to grips quickly. a company that has almost no public awareness in america they make over 50% of our electronics. like last year foxconn made 52% of the world's electronics. so many companies that you think of, like dell and nokia of all these different companies, they all actively subcontract all their work out to foxconn so there's really one company that's making everything and they have production lines where one line will be making your nokia products and right next to it will be the samsung products. even though they are marketed differently they are being made right next to each other by

thousands and thousands of people. as soon as i discovered that and really started to read about the reports available on the web of the conditions of the factories, foxconn is an especially brutal company. and i -- it became clear that i was not actually going to be able to figure out what was really going on until i saw it for myself. and so i decided to. c-span: when did you go there? >> guest: i went there in may and june of last year, 2010. c-span: how did you go there? >> guest: i flew into hong kong and i have a chinese visa and i crossed the border and went to shenzhen, which is actually only about authority minute drive north of hong kong, which is amazing because shenzhen is the city where almost all of our devices are made in the world. shenzhen is a city of 40 million people. and it's only 40 minutes north of hong kong. almost no one in america has ever heard the name of this city

even though almost everything in their house that's electronic came from that place. there's a remarkable disconnect in our consciousness about that. about where our things actually come from. it was for me. i had no idea until i dug into it. c-span: how did you get from shenzhen to hong kong? >> guest: i got there two different ways. i took a bus up ones and then i actually, you know i had to shuttle back and forth to do other projects in hong kong and meet with activist groups and take the subway. you can take the subway from shenzhen to the end of the subway system above-ground. like in the station there's actually a transfer point for the passport and you get on the subway so it's amazing to go somewhere where all our things are made. we're in the american journalist could fly to hong kong with any chinese visa and take the subway to the door of the factories and then began asking people about the conditions.

and yet, that story has not actually been told in our press. c-span: did you go with anybody? >> guest: i went with my wife and director who basically acted as sort of back up. it really wasn't clear to me what was going to happen when i did this. and so, you know, not to be dramatic about it but she would stay behind the hotel and the supposition was like i will check in with you at this time. if i don't check in, start calling people, start making noise. i went -- i found a translator true friends of friends and so i read with translator since i don't speak mandarin. c-span: when you got your visa from china under what circumstances did they give it to you? what did they think you were going to do? >> guest: i didn't actually have to say what i was going to do but i had to say what my profession was which was teacher which is true. i do teach as well. c-span: and did you contact foxconn and did they let you in

the factory? >> guest: i did not contact foxconn. c-span: why not? >> guest: it was very clear the was not going to lead in the wary of the only place i saw that leading is them have a picture of me that would cause more problems when i got to the factory. when i first got to hong kong, i worked with a fixer who worked with the bbc to try to get connections to other factories throughout the special economic zone to try to do something officially. aboveboard. and that was hopeless. it led nowhere and was very, very clear as the days went on that this was not going to work at all. edify followed the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement for journalism in china are very clear. no one there is incentivized to let anyone talk to you about anything because you're just going to tell a terrible story of the things they know are wrong. so, they are not going to let any one day and they are very clear about not letting people in. if you are a journalist in the

deal to a journalism organization, generally your organization will require you to get a journalism visa at which point the chinese government tracks you very closely the whole time you are there and you still can't tell the story. c-span: here is a clip of you talking about china in your monologue. >> we've to think about where stuff comes from. china. [laughter] in a generalized way. china. there are dragons there. [laughter] china. c-span: explain the china nothing. you do that a lot when you talk about china. what are you getting that? >> guest: this is just the slightest gesture to sort of capture something that life and we all know is true, which is that we are terrified of and fetishize china. we do both. we don't want to address china. we don't want to think about the

implications of china. we are terrified that they are larger than us. we are terrified of the economic relationship we are in with china. many of us don't know the particulars. we know it's scary. we don't like to think about it. at the same time we said the fetishize china. businesses adore china. they talk about china as a great new opening like a great new markets, like china is where -- it's like the wild west. i spoke to businessmen who make a living going back and forth between hong kong and mainland china and the fortune talking about it, like where it feels like the wild west and fortunes can be won in this grand expanse. what is and talked about in the positive view or the uneasy view is the fact that it's a fascist country run by thugs. no one wants to talk about that part. but it's true. c-span: a big surprise to me is it is a taiwanese company. >> guest: yeah. c-span: a 60 billion-dollar year taiwanese company in mainland

china. >> guest: yes. and that's part of the conditions that are in place of the factory. the relationship between the taiwanese and the mainland chinese, you know, is -- it's not good to say the least. so i think the fact that the company comes from taiwan again makes it easier for the people running the company and people with the supervisory put position to treat the workers as subhuman. it makes it easier for them to work that way. c-span: do you usable products yourself? >> guest: i do. one of the reasons i did the show -- one of the central reasons i've been an apple user my entire life. they've defined my entire life with technology. i love apple products. c-span: you're into the foxconn contract that has come ne please? >> guest: 430,000. c-span: how many buildings? >> guest: i don't even know that the stretch to the horizon. when you try to drive around the factory it's so large that it's like trying to circumnavigate or

circumambulate a city. its huge. c-span: and then what did you do once you got there? >> guest: i did the things i had told all these journalists i was going to do. they were really clear that this was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard. i went to the main gate. and i stood there with my translator. and then i just talked to anybody who wanted to talk to me who came out of the gates, just, the workers. c-span: how many talk to you? >> guest: hundreds. i talked to hundreds of workers. c-span: how long were you there? >> guest: i was there for hours and hours and hours, and i went back multiple times. and each time i spoke with hundreds of workers. c-span: how did you capture what they said? did you write it down or did you record it? >> guest: boe, captured it with my hearing and my mind. i may montale -- monologist. it's my job.

c-span: what do you begin to hear from them? >> guest: well you know it's really fascinating, the patterns. we talked a lot about the things you would expect we're they came from, how long they'd been working at foxconn and within the factory. we heard a lot about the mighty shock of what it's like to work in the factory. and the stories start to come out of people to get i mean i was critically struck and i think this was a very -- this was a surprise to me. i didn't know how things worked on the ground. i would ask them what seemed like every innocuous question, which was, if you could change anything at foxconn, would you change? and people would react as though ab had flowed into their faces. they'd be like "rr" did say something to my translator. and he would say she says he never thought of that before. and that's what happened every time i asked that question for me. there was a really eliminating moment that you are dealing with a very different landscape.

you're dealing with a country that has a fascist government, that looks down its people. they are locked down in terms of their freedoms and what they are allowed to think. and then coming you are in posing an incredible degree of corporatism. corporations have been invited and have been given free rein to cultural landscape. they are given very pliable workers. people are not -- people wonder how could they have such poor working conditions. but we are working hand in hand with the government of china to ensure that people don't ask these questions. when they open up the special economic zone, when they created it, we could have exported only our jobs but our values, you know. i'm not even talking about -- i'm not talking about anything extreme. i'm talking about things like a workweek that has won its. i'm talking about people having the appropriate breaks, so they don't actually dhaka on the production line. and we choose not to do that. our corporations choose not to.

c-span: in your play or in your monologue, you talk about suicides. and i got on the web and found that -- and you can tell us how many there were -- but they are all around 20-years-old. >> guest: yes. many of the workers are quite young. they fight hard to get those jobs. you know, they are some of the best jobs in china. people will struggle to get out of the villages to come to the south of china to the sort of economic honeypot that we've created in the south of the country. and so the perversity of that is that they are drawn to these jobs. and then, some of these people are the brightest people. like a different world those same people, some of them would be doctors and lawyers and civil servants. and instead they go to the south of the country. they all get degrees in electrical engineering and then they make our stuff. and fundamentally, that soaks up the kind of people, you know, china's smart.

china knows. trouble comes from student protests. trouble comes when people have too much time on their hands. and so, it's very much clear to me that the corporation's work hand-in-hand with of the chinese government. like it sits their like an enormous heat sink on the computer soaking up all the people who might otherwise cause trouble and give them a place to be. send them back to the place of their alleged they are simply worked hard enough that they don't have time to think about these things. c-span: how many suicides in 2010? >> guest: i believe there were 13 or 14 in 2010. it's a little blurry. the numbers shift depending which article you read. and it depends on what's really interesting to me the number of suicides in 2010 actually it may be in 2009 or 2008 and it actually goes all the back to when people started reporting back with back in 2005 which is interesting than in 2010 there

happened to be a cluster of them. what's even more interesting is the associated press happened to run a single story about the fact that people were climbing up the roads and throwing themselves off, week after week in the same way at their workplace. because of that one article, a certain degree of the western press suddenly rose up of all of these issues. but they didn't go very deeply. they just looked at the fact there were suicides and they were like why are there suicides? foxconn said well, we are going to pay them more. the pay rate never materialized by the way. they promised to pay them 30% more, which i always think is fascinating. if the employer can afford to raise the salaries of all there employees by 30% overnight, to me this sounds like something or you might have been under paying people. c-span: how much did you learn that they were paying them? >> guest: they were paying them -- i believe the median salary when i arrived was

something around 107 or $114 a month. something like that which doesn't sound like very much to us. but to be honest, you know, the thrust of my investigation into the thrust of the peace that created is called a concern with the more they are paid. that's actually a good way to the theory of china in terms of what you need and commensurate with what your expenses are. with the need is intractably more money. with the need is humane working conditions. they need that recognition that they are human beings. that's actually more important in their wages be increased, is the symbol respect that workers should have who are craftsman, who make things, so that they can have a life. c-span: does steve jobs though this? and has he seen your play or your monologue? >> guest: i think he knows this. c-span: i know when you go to the theater you ask people to give you -- >> guest: yes. c-span: -- you give the people we e-mail address. >> guest: i do, i do.

steve jobs had this very long-running policy that he responds to e-mails, sometimes to the and so, yes. i give his e-mail address, and i tell people to write about their experiences here in the theater. and if they have questions, you know, ask them. asked apple to be opened with them. and he's responded to a large number of people who have written to him about this. and a number of those people have forwarded his responses to me. and so, i know he is aware of the show. he has not seen it. but i know that his principal response ase -- well, basically it's like, i don't think mike appreciate the complexities of the situation. which, you know, i think is a fight response. it would actually indicate some degree -- that it be the recognizing that there was a situation. and then, you know, if someone from apple wanted to talk about the complexities of 12-year-olds putting together a electronics, i'd be happy to listen to that conversation.

c-span: i found the list of companies that use foxconn. >> guest: yes. c-span: apple, amazon, intel, cisco, hewlett-packard, dell, microsoft and vizio -- american companies. then sam's song, so would be, -- sony come acer and nokia. why didn't you give up your apples stuff if this bother you that much? >> guest: if i had given up -- there are no wicked humanity electronics today. i mean there are none. in the electronics not made by foxconn are still by and large produced in the special economic zone when other factories and conditions that are the same or even worse. so, you know, if i get rid of my electronics to buy more electronics and then i've perpetuated the problem. also i think it cuts to the

heart of what this monologue is trying to address which is these devices have been a part of our consciousness. the change us in the way we relate to the old. i can't just opt out of my culture. like, there is a valuable way where one can live with water. you could just live in a year on the side of the amount of committed and i would have no impact on anything. i would be among your keating atm paced perhaps but i can't live that way because i believe and communicating with people and so, i need my tools to do it. it's complex. but that's what life is. it's very complex. so i'm trying to live ethically. c-span: where did you grow up in the united states? >> guest: far more their main which is of the canadian border. it's actually a the end of the u.s. rte. one to read it in this in the name. there is a sign and the road ends. c-span: what did your parents to? >> guest: my mother was a meat cutter. and my father works for the

veterans of penetration, counseling in those days, the guilaume veterans. and then today he is very, very busy counseling veterans from all of our many wars. c-span: selective? >> guest: still active. he was planning on retiring but there is so much work he actually thinks that he is ever -- he doesn't know when he's going to retire. c-span: how long did you live in fort kent? >> guest: i lived in fort kent until i was 13 or 14 and then we moved down to central maine which is still incredibly cold, incredibly remote but compared to 410 did is like a tropical vacation. c-span: when did you first perform? >> guest: that's a good question. i think -- will the first performance which is when i was six or seven. i would give an astronomy demonstration. i had built a shoe box with a light on one in the and i would put constellations and i would shine the light. but i bring it up because i was

actually production. i did charge people tickets. i would make him sit in the room and then i would sort of like called forth like some sort of miniature bar none. but after that i started doing the theater and high school. and really it was in conjunction with speech and debate. i was a very avid speech and the date person putative i think that's informed all of my work. ..

i would literally you know -- and i really do believe that we conflate sometimes the writing is and the thinking and you don't actually need to write to thing. thinking actually happens in our minds and if you actually think about thinking, which is hard, you are not actually thinking in sentences in that linear way. there is a different thing going on and i love the way in debates, it's oral. i love the way the thought hovers in the mind and then it's expressed and things are grappled with in the air and everyone loves that. c-span: where did you go to college? >> guest: i went to colby college in maine. i got a scholarship that allowed me to go and it's one of those microeyes so i was very much like the guy from maine. it almost everyone there is from outside of maine. it lives in its own bubble in

the heart of maine. c-span: was it your grades that got you in there or was that your s.a.t. or your performance? >> guest: my grades were good, but not exceptional. my s.a.t.'s were good but i think it was, i think it was my essays actually. i think the essays played a lot in getting me in. i don't know. i'm glad that they let me in. i really am. c-span: you did a monologue on, and i'm going to run a little bit of it, on golf. you talk about gold. >> guest: this is probably the last cargo. c-span: how many monologues have you done in your professional career? >> guest: 16. c-span:. c-span: in that was just a couple of years ago. what was it about? >> guest: two things. is about my trip to the island in the south pacific where people worshiped the object of america. they have a celebration one day

here where they are at the base of an arresting volcano and they tell the history of america as they know it to be in theater and song. c-span: fiction? >> guest: why went to the island, so it's about the people and their lack of an economic system like this island, on this island many of the people to not use money or believe in currency so it's that whole story of how their worship works and then it is paired with a story of the international financial collapse. c-span: here is a little bit from that. >> you can march right down to the treasury and you can walk in there and exchange it for gold. you walk in and say -- i demand my gold. [laughter] and they say, oh my god. another libertarian.

[laughter] it's too late. [laughter] hold out your hand. there you go. [laughter] get out of here. get out of here. c-span: what year was that done? >> guest: i guess that was in 2009. c-span: and how long did you perform this? >> guest: about a year, year and a half. they stay in rotating repertory so i lasted that monologue in january this year. c-span: one of the reasons we brand that is you use a lot of language and all of your performances and especially the one that i saw. why? >> guest: well if i don't speak in english we are going to have a problem. i always love the conflation of language. i assume you mean adult

language. c-span: yeah, the four-letter word. >> guest: i use it because it expresses the full range of the words available to me. i don't actually have a naturally limiting factors that cause me not to use certain parts of my speech because fundamentally i am not a puritan. so i use all of my language. c-span: the reason i bring it up is because you had a strange experience in the middle of one of your monologues one time, where people got up and left. where was this and when was it? >> guest: this was in cambridge at american repertory theatre in 2007. c-span: what were the circumstances? >> guest: well apparently a christian group came and saw the show, and didn't choose to be aware. they were like a school group, but although they had been informed that there was adult

language and adult situations, they didn't heed that warning. and so the teachers decided to sort of panic after i began speaking, and so they left en masse but as they left, one of the adult chaperones actually chose to destroy the outline. i use these outlines while i am doing the show. they are sort of a replaceable because i'm a can by hand and he came and poured water and destroy the outline as he was exiting. c-span: i'm going to show the clip and a little bit eco-'s watching you and this clip at first you think this is part of the show. i mean, you look -- >> guest: i was very surprised you know. it was a theater of maybe 350 people to have 80 or 90 people all rise at once and if the surprising thing. c-span: are you sure that they

didn't plan this in advance? >> guest: i am pretty sure. i mean, i got in touch with them afterwards and i spoke with a person who destroyed my outline. c-span: the person we see on the state pouring the water in your script. let's watch it in you can explain the rest of it. >> and new york. [laughter] >> that's the craziest thing i have ever seen. >> what do you want to do with this? >> i don't know.

hey do any of you people who are leaving want to stay and talk about this or are you going to run out like cowards? c-span: now that is a long 9-minute little piece of video that is on youtube if you want to see the whole thing. you talk more about it. what happened? what was your personal reaction? >> guest: it was really painful. it is hard to express. i think a lot of people would understand. to be open on stage, to be open and telling a story especially a story where you are telling the story each night, invoking emotional -- so it's really painful to have people you know literally destroy your work. and that was one of the reasons

i had to track them down. this is the part of the story that always galls me, that i had to track them down because in the clip the whole thing is on line and by the end of it i restart the show. one of the reasons i was able to restart the show was it's a school group. this was completely crazy, but of course, one of the parents, not the parent who did the stupid thing, but one of the other ones i am sure had left a note in the lobby at the box office saying, oh we are so sorry. we would all be glad to talk about this. there was nothing. i couldn't believe it. i really thought, of course you wouldn't just do this and leave but in fact they did. in fact, the group actually wanted a refund and they did not want to contact me. actually had a track them down. c-span: how long had they stayed? guest: oh like 15 minutes. c-span: they were reacting

specifically to the four-letter words? >> guest: yeah. c-span: and you say -- >> guest: if they stay longer they would would have been upset political things as well as suspect. c-span: what happened when he talked to the fellow that dump the water on your script? >> guest: it was depressing. c-span: where was he from? >> guest: he was from a small town in california. that is where the whole group was from. i was in the boston area for an oral competition and this is what they chose to take the students to that night that they didn't research very well. and when i talk to them, it was a good call. he was apologetic and he admitted that he had anger management issues that he was working on. i appreciated that, you know. and he talked about how his feelings honestly was that he has children. he had two daughters at that time. i believe they were like 12 and

16. he was terrified. i remember this so vividly. he was saying to me he was just terrified about the future, terrified about the kind of world they were going to be in. i thought it was fascinating because you know their actions, the fact that they took them in this way, the fact that he felt this way. i felt terrified to too, like i felt like i could actually empathize with that feeling. i just don't know if i would agree with the way in which he is addressing it or if the same thing that terrifies both of us. c-span: you said to him and he wrote this out. i founded on found it on your blog i believe. that at one point you said i was raised catholic, and you he said he changed his demeanor on the phone when you said that. what was the change? >> guest: while the change was, it really upset me at the time. i remember that. what happened was he saw me

differently. i said that in that was a code word for the fact that i was christian, and so as soon as i was a member of his religion, sort of extended religion, he began to talk to me in a much more open way. and i don't know, it really upset me because i could feel how -- i hadn't actually gotten his respect before like when i said this thing and then suddenly it was as if no now, now we can actually. >> as equals but, that really got me, the fact that after all this had happened. we are talking so we can apologize. we still can't have an honest conversation, and less we happen to worship the same god. c-span: you then told him you were a liberal atheist? >> guest: i did. i wanted him to understand that. c-span: what was his reaction to that? >> guest: not much reaction at all. i don't think he was a prize probably you know. c-span: if you listen to all this and it comes through that

you are part journalist, part activist, are you political? >> guest: yeah, of course i am. c-span: how would you define your political beliefs? >> guest: i don't know. i mean i think my political beliefs are defined by the a.j. live in. i think if i look at the arc of my work over the last five to 10 years, i believe our age right now is an age we are moving from an age of nations into an age of corporations of corporatism so most of my work is about that transition. i mean i think in another age, 30 or 40 years ago, it would be fruitful to sort of the lack well, believe in socialism and you know i believe in capitalism. but i feel like that debate has ended for my age and my time. instead the debate is about the corporations and their rights, rice, which right now seems inexorable and the amount of power is staggering. a lot of my work is in

relationship to that and a lot of my critical work is about what does it mean that we created these entities and gave them the rights of individuals, of men? and then they -- and can't be changed to any one country, can't be held to account and in many ways we serve them. literally we work for for the men under them. for me, that form sort of the core of my belief system that this is actually a war, a war going on right now being fought over what it will mean to be a human being and a world where corporations are this powerful and getting more powerful. c-span: other than than that episode we saw back in 2007, do you ever find yourself confronted by people in the corporate world or any world politically, as you do your monologues? >> guest: yes, i do sometimes. c-span: do they get in your face? >> guest: sometimes, depends.

c-span: when does that happen? does that happen the middle of the show? >> guest: the thing is you are trying to create this construct and the confrontation can be very dramatic because everyone doesn't know what is going to happen and we all kind of love that when the theater breaks in the middle. at the same time we can't actually achieve catharsis him and get where we are going to go if you are constantly interrupted by people so what i do to sort of a mealy a-pac, create a middle ground is i go to the lobby after every show. i feel like because the issues of the shows are so charged and political, i feel like a sort of my obligation. when i'm onstage, it's a little bit like greek theatre, the classic form of theater and you're wearing a mask in representing things and by being on stage, i have this power. i owe it to people to take off the mask come even though i'm just playing myself, the same person, go to the lobby so we can actually talk to one another as human beings.

generally, confrontations happened there or in in the matter of modern age, people send anonymous e-mails. c-span: have you had any confrontations with politicians in washington? the many times you have been here? >> guest: a few. by politicians you know, i believe the other functionary of some functionary but never an elected official, not yet anyway. but i have had, did another monologue called if you see something, say something, which is about the department of homeland security and its history and then also the rise of the ella terry industrial complex, when i have people who are affiliated with and have interest in defense contractors, really upset about the implications that their industry exist to create a kind of american empire. c-span: so often in washington a

lot of these theaters are underwritten by some of these big corporations. >> guest: yes, they are. c-span: have ever had any kickback on that were you warned allowed to appear somewhere because the underwriter didn't want you to? >> guest: you know it's interesting that it's it is true they are underwritten and generally, i am proud about the american theater. there's a lot that is wrong with the american theater. i'm really proud the most of the places i have worked, i have worked hard to ensure some degree of separation between their programming and their underwriting. i have really tried to do that. where i have experienced a pushback is i actually do monologue about the american theater called how theater failed america. that really did know, sometimes you say things and they hit you where you eat, and so there were a number of theaters across america that found it to close to the bone when talking about the problems endemic to the theater so i will not be working

with them any more. c-span: let's go to another monologue and it will connect your father in present day and some of what you alluded to earlier. we can watch the sea can tell us where it came from. >> all they want to talk about is iraq because he's afraid we are going to go to war in iraq. my dad works as a therapist for the veterans administration and he knows, he knows that when the government is done with those kids he is going to see them. he is going to see them next. he is really really worried about that. and it's funny because when i was a kid growing up in maine, my friends, you know their father sometimes would lose their jobs at the mills. that happens and every time the family went to -- and i really got worried, what would happen if my father lost his job? i really worried about that and i noticed you know that all the veterans, my mother said -- my father said there were all

vietnam veterans and they were getting older. i got worried, what's going to happen if my father runs out of veterans and i actually asked him, actually asked him. actually said what is going to happen if you run out of veterans? i will never forget, i will never forget. he laughed and said,. [laughter] oh michael, that is never going to happen. c-span: where's that from? >> guest: that is from a monologue called in visible summer which is about in part, the history of the new york subway system and then it's also about my neighborhood in brooklyn before and after 9/11 and then it's about the changes in my life and my family's life ended my country in the gears that followed 9/11. c-span: where were you on 9/11?

>> guest: i was in lower manhattan. c-span: what impacted all of that have on you? >> guest: it had a huge impact on me. i was one of the people that walked out of the city over the bridge, and i felt like the world was ending, and it had a very deep impact on me. one of the things i think that changed in me is you know, i have always been a bit of a, always been a bit of a iconoclast in terms of my political beliefs and in the years that followed 9/11 i found myself, you know i think, i think i didn't reckon with the amount of rage i felt about that attack. i was very angry. i was very very angry and very isolated. my wife was in seattle when it happened so when she joined the new york after the skies opened up, there was this gulf between us because she hadn't actually been here. she would never have fully

understood, and i should have resolved those feelings. instead i think i nurture them a little bit, you know. sometimes it's hard to actually let go of anger. there's a comfort to it, and a lot of that monologue was the fact that i supported the iraq war. i found myself you know, persuaded by the arguments that many people were persuaded by at the time. and in the monologue really reckons with the fallout of that and how especially as an artist in the arts community to admit afterwards you supported the iraq war. and to speak in a candid, open -- open way about why you gave your support and how you withdrew your support. because you know today, no one, artist or not, will ever admit that they supported that war in any way. there is an incredible silence, but i remember there being a lot of other people that i had

conversations with, where each step along the path seems so reasonable. every step seems so reasonable and they think it's important for us to actually remember that. because the past is not made up of people acting in an insane manner. everything seems reasonable when you're walking down that road. so the monologue is about those things. c-span: try to gather the fort kent maine upbringing moving to central maine, going to call the i saw somewhere where kobe had a big impact on you. >> guest: oh yes, huge impact on me. c-span: how big is colby college by the way? >> guest: is small, 1700 students in waterville maine. it could have been on another planet as far as i was concerned. my whole life had been divined by a growing up in maine so it is only a colby that i was really put in contact with the power structures of our culture. i did not understand, didn't

understand what wealth was until i went to colby and i didn't really understand that there are people in the world with a lot more money. i had not spent a lot of time around them you know. the spectrum in my small town, and the people that had less money and people who had more money but not, nothing like in a quantum way. i didn't really understand what it meant to be living in new york city, you you know, where i live today. i think about my life today. i couldn't have conceived this like when i was growing up in my small-town. colby was that bridge. it was this place where i encounter these ideas for the first time and then had to grapple with things like where's the point of this new life? if things are possible, it's my job to find them a job where i can make enough money to make these things real for me, or is my calling to find a calling and do something else? and that was fun for me at

colby. that war over what i had hoped to do. c-span: before we run out of time i want to make sure i ask you, you really going to do a 24 hour monologue? >> guest: i am. c-span: where? >> guest: it will happen twice. it will happen once on the west coast in portland, oregon in september and it will happen once on the east coast in new york city at under the radar festival in january. c-span: what are you going to talk about? >> guest: everything. it's called all the hours in a day, and the show was about a huge number of topics. it's an earnest attempts to create a gigantic story that actually compels people's interest, kind of like scheherazade, like the gold actually can make it compelling enough that people stay longer than they thought they ever would. and it's about many things, but in part it's an attempt to create a working definition of the american national character as having a strong streak of

puritanism running right through the heart of it which on its positive side gives us our work ethic and on its negative side gives us repression. around that is a streak of anarchism and it's really an attempt to reconcile those things to sort of create a kind of chart of what it means to be an american over this immensely huge story. so it's like 12, 13 or 14, i'm still working on it, braided stories that we back and forth to tell the the strike ended mosaic. c-span: you talk for -- >> guest: there will be a little break here and there but they are actually more for the audience than me. because people are going to need to eat. we are going to provide food in different ways. is like one gigantic experience with this really crazy but earnest attempt to say, if you want, you can come in at the beginning and you can stay all

the way through and we will take care of you. c-span: what will it cost you? >> guest: i don't know yet. i am hoping it will cost less than you would expect. that is what i'm hoping. c-span: how big will the theater be? >> guest: we are working on that too. pretty large. we are looking at six, 700 seat. c-span: by the way here's a clip where you are talking about cheese. >> guest: oh yeah. >> at the party is as the cheese. [laughter] there is the a yellow cheese and a white cheese and the -- [laughter] [inaudible] [applause] they line their pockets.

this will last for five weeks. [laughter] [inaudible] they sit in the darkness, eating their cheese. [laughter] this is so worth not having children. [laughter] c-span: is this part of what made some of the people in the theater mad? >> guest: yes, yes. it was true because in the american theater you know, it's glamorous in some ways talking about the labor conditions in china. you have the assad is -- of saying it's all the way in china but you know i work in the theater and the truth is, actors in the american theater are paid reprehensibly. they are paid unbelievably low wages. c-span: if we take it back to

the beginning we are talking about steve jobs and apple. have any journalists along the way proved you about what you saw at foxconn? >> guest: yes, couple of them have. there've been a number of articles written because of your time at foxconn. >> guest: you know, it's hard to know. i agitated with "wired magazine" to do something, but i'm not sure "wired magazine" and i were aligned sword is in the program meant to be honest they did a cover story about the foxconn suicides that was pathetic. it was a pathetic story. they sent people over with the pr firm from foxconn. they were guided around. the reporter didn't talk to a single worker and then they flew back and wrote a puff piece. so, so far, no one has actually gone over and sourced the original journal. c-span: all the people you talk

to outside the gates, who do you remember the most? >> guest: i remember this, there was one girl. i talk about her in the show actually. there was one girl who was explaining to me how she'd cleaned the phones by hand, thousands and thousands of them so i showed her my iphone. i handed her my iphone. i actually have a picture of her holding my iphone. and then i said to her, maybe you might have cleaned this iphone. we will never know. and incredibly quickly, as soon as i said that, she rubbed it on her pants and then she said they are, have cleaned it a second time. and it was that conversation. i was talking to her and i said how old are you? she said i'm 13. i said oh. c-span: if somebody wants to get ahold of your, all your work and everything what is the web site? >> guest: it's my name, mike daisey.com.

and e before the y. c-span: we are out of time. mike daisey thank you very much. >> guest: hey, thanks for having me. for dvd copy of this program called 1-877-662-7726. for tree transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at at q&a.org. q&a programs are available at c-span podcast. this week on q&a, carol guzy

four-time pulitzer prize-winning photographer for "the washington post." c-span: carol guzy can you remember the first time you thought about being a photographer? >> guest: oh it's like it was yesterday. i had gone to nursing school at stanford community college and a little town of dust in pennsylvania and nursing didn't feel quite right and an old boyfriend gave me a camera just to play with. i took a darkroom class in the first time that black-and-white trent came up in the trait was the most magical moment i've ever experienced and it was clearly my thing. i pretty much decided at that point i was it is going to take the risk to try to go study photography. c-span: you have one for pulitzer prizes. how often does that happen in the history of journalism? >> guest: never as far as i have hurt. this is the first. c-span: what is it like? you just won one. what is it like running and how is important is it to somebody

in your profession? >> guest: is such a prestigious honor but it's always bitter street because it tends, the story is like the asian earthquake where you can't solve it personally because it is such a horrible disaster that your work is being honored for, so it is kind of a catch-22 situation. c-span: let's look at the video of you getting the award. you don't get the award of "the washington post" newsroom but the announcement of it and her two colleagues. >> "the washington post" wins a pulitzer prize for breaking news photography. [applause] many of you will remember the scene on the news last year in january 12. we received word of a massive earthquake in haiti.

we only have the sketchiest information but we have is understanding that every time a tragedy strikes haiti, the u.s. gets involved as it has for generation upon generation. the newspaper as you know and their web site and photo galleries ran millions of -- >> there is a haitian proverb pasted to my refrigerator that says when you visit haiti it will break your heart and when ubb won't take out all the pieces. i wept for haiti 1000 times since my first trip into valley a but is nothing compared to the profound sorrow the haitian heart has to endure every day, especially especially during this latest devastating tragedy. >> i haven't prepared his speech, but i would like to thank everyone in this newsroom and the editors that worked with me on this. >> this is pretty amazing. two hours of sleep was a lot because carroll was always out there working, and he felt guilty for sleeping. so, we just kept plugging away

and under incredible circumstances. it is a privilege to share this with carol and ricky. thank you. c-span: how do you work together when you are on you know, a scene like haiti with three of you? >> guest: well, ricky actually went later to cover the follow-up aftermath stories and nikki and i were down there together. it was really hard. there were no communications basically and my cell phone didn't even work. we kind of cross paths occasionally at the hotels and it was so chaotic that we were pretty much off in our own direction a lot of times, trying to just collaborate with the reporter and get the pictures back and say hello. c-span: how many times have you been to haiti? >> guest: i couldn't even count how many times. i started my work at the "miami herald." used yeasted cumbre, was the first job i had and i covered a haiti neighborhood in miami and i became interested in the story

of haiti and i started going -- empower for over a decade. it was almost like an obsession or a mission. i don't know what word you want to use but i relentlessly covered haiti. c-span: 1980 to 1988 miami carroll, 1988 to now "washington post." let's look of the photographs and i know

and, this picture breaks my heart probably more than any in the whole package. c-span: did you have to ask them if you could take their picture like that? >> guest: in haiti, people seemed, in my experience in haiti, people were so open to

photographs and journalism and there doesn't seem to be the same sort of restrictions or wearing of the press that press that you would experience in washington. and did a situation like this, i think residents were really concerned about getting the word out in the need was so great that i think they realize that we had a role that was really important to their welfare. c-span: a picture of the seat. this woman, dead. >> guest: yeah. just that one little high heel on and off. you can't look at these pictures without crying actually. c-span: did you take them? >> guest: yeah that is my picture to just and it just kind of speaks to the moment that time stopped for everyone and people were going about their daily lives in pretty little high heels, probably who knows, maybe she was walking and carrying her child. and then, the earth trembled and life was halted forever.

this is my picture as well. is the first day we were there. there were school children, still in their uniforms crushed in their desks. this young lady came and started weeping and my translator said she was saying, i can see my brother. >> that i can pull him out. she threw herself on the rubble and wailed. is hard to imagine, it's one thing being killed instantly i think but for the folks left behind, the loss is so tremendous. it is unimaginable. and this was that, this was a few weeks afterwards i believe after the earthquake where rest group groups and international aid groups were coming in to help the sick and hungry and injured. c-span: this was 2008? >> guest: no, this was the temp. this is nikki's picture. this is another wrenching

picture. the innocent so that little child, battered, bruised and battered. i don't know that anyone could look at that are not be moved by it. c-span: how do you do it when you're confronted with this? what do you do with your mind when you are taking these pictures? >> guest: i think for me, i think every photographer is different, but i think the camera is a shield many times. it helps you with any sort of rescuer or firefighter anyone who has to confront these kinds of situations regularly, you have to do your job. you have to take the pictures and transport them back so i think the shield helps during the time. afterwards there is a delayed reaction. c-span: i have read you are shy. >> guest: yeah i am. i hide behind the camera so this is very comfortable -- uncomfortable. this picture was taken weeks after as well when they were still pulling bodies out of the rubble. those bodies were already

decomposing. and life had to move on, but life meant you were still smelling the stench of death everywhere and bodies lying in the streets. c-span: the one thing, we had not been there and looked at her from afar, you just mentioned the smell. is that something you never forget? >> guest: you never forget it. it gets in your nostrils and it never goes away. is something you can't photograph and part of this whole horrendous experience. just the ash in the air and the smell of bodies. c-span: have all of these pictures been published? you take him in the pictures to get to one that is published? >> guest: michael says i shoot movies. back in the day we call that film. now my digital cards but i shoot an awful lot of pictures. i don't want to hesitate because i believe the moment is everything in a picture so i take the pictures. c-span: what about this moment? >> guest: that actually ran on

the front page of the post. that is the same school where the little girl was crushed at her desk that i was talking about before. this young man, these are haitian survivors that were going and trying to reach a teacher that was trapped, who was alive and eventually our driver gave him a car jack, they caught chat -- jack to the car and it was how they ended up saving the teacher. it generated a lot of discussion for readers because they felt, some people felt it was too harsh perhaps. i'm not sure the words they would use in the paper, but i think there is a danger in a sense of reality sometimes especially when the tragedy is so devastating like this earthquake was where 300,000 people die. i think this is pretty representative of what -- the disaster. c-span: when somebody like you goes into a country like this,

where do you stay and how do you get food when the people there can't even get it? >> guest: well, we had been to haiti so many times. we knew where they had it. first we weren't quite sure we drove -- drove to the dominican republic and drove overland to port-au-prince and we were assured was told standing. the hotel was flat and that we have heard from a haitian photographer, and daniel morelmurrell, who lived there. he was there the time and he said the hotel will still standing so we went there and a lot of people state stayed there stay there for another hotel down the street. they provided food for the journalist. c-span: how prepared are you with transmission gear, to get stuff back? [laughter] >> guest: it was technical hell actually on top of you know just a bearing witness to this awful catastrophe and the note -- emotional toll and the

physically demanding work that is everything. all maya quid mid-crash. to cell phones, laptops, the blackberry they sent me. nothing worked for me, but i had a colleague who selflessly, he works for herbert and we traveled around together. without him there wouldn't have been one picture in the paper because it was pretty amazing that nothing worked. so he really saved me in that way. c-span: it seems that would be a tense moment if a colleague wouldn't give up one of their cameras. >> guest: my cameras work. that was the only thing that worked. he helps me get the pictures back to the paper and that was the most important thing. it was useless just to take them at the same. c-span: have you ever been in a situation where nothing worked at all and you could not get a picture out? >> guest: i've had cameras crash and i usually like to take back up because we are so

dependent on technical pieces of equipment unfortunately. c-span: we are going to move beyond haiti to some of your other winnings and some of your other photographs. we have some video here, shots of the berlin wall and the check is the bokiok in 1989. the music, do you put on this? >> guest: it's just music, it's in my collection of cds when i used to do presentations to photo students. i think it adds another dimension to make it more powerful when you watch pictures with music. c-span: would you have been shooting film at this time? >> guest: yes. c-span: let's watch. ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ c-span: what were the circumstances that had you there at that time? >> guest: before the wall fell, i had been there. our instincts were that something big was happening. and i have been covering the story for a little while. i fortunately came back to rest at that time and pretty soon after that we heard word that the wall was coming down. by go where had you been?

>> guest: in germany. c-span:c-span: and he came back? >> guest: we came back here and then we immediately went right back up as soon as we can get there for this monumentally historical event. it is one of those times where you put the camera down and you really realize for a second that you were witnessing such amazing history. c-span: there is a photo of you right here on this screen. explain that one. c-span: that was the first chunk of the wall was being taken out that day and i was trying to take the church. they found me to be a little humorous in that photo but before that or after, i'm not sure which, i had been in this amazingly crushing crowd of everyone trying to see the wall, the first piece of of the wall officially being lifted up. i couldn't see. i am pretty sure everyone was taller and i looked around that

i saw a really tall, sturdy tripod looking at me. i tapped him on the shoulder and i said, can i please look over your shoulder so i can take a picture? i have no idea what his name was. c-span: here are some photos from kosovo and albania, in 1999? ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

c-span: do people notice you taking pictures of them in those moments? >> guest: it depends on the story. it's much different depending on the story. kosovo, it's such a dramatic, intense situation that people are going through. i think you know, they don't notice you as much, but again in the situation people, people were actually begging us to document and recorded because the ethnic cleansing one of those situations you wish never again was reality and clearly it's not. in our world. so they really wanted to document it. c-span: what were the circumstances that take you to that area of the world and 99? >> guest: post michael williamson, lucia perkin tonight to cover from different parts. i was in albania where the refugees were coming across the border to the camps and actually one of the pictures in their of there of the little baby going

through the barbed wire was probably generated almost more reaction from readers than just about any picture i had taken. c-span: why that picture? i saw the print. >> guest: i don't know. for some reason that resonates with people. maybe it is the innocence in the same picture that juxtaposition something. it really affects people in an emotional level. c-span: what she think at the time he took the picture? >> guest: it was one of those wow moments. it was a positive thing. the family had just come through the border and for some reason i think we ought to follow our instincts and usually when you don't you are wrong but i had this gut instinct that something was going to happen. this fence was a seen a lot of for reunion so my friend and i, tom hearst, he was from the seattle times at that time. we were just standing and waiting because this family was looking for the rest of their family members. they didn't know they had died or had been killed and when they came it was the scene of joy. not only that but they had a lot

of children back and forth and it was just this tearful wonderful reunion. c-span: where was it? >> guest: it was in, the border crossing was in albania and they have the camps set up right there. c-span: what is the country on the other side of that? >> guest: kosovo, coming from kosovo. c-span: have you ever had a situation where somebody says they have seen you take a picture and they come up to and say i don't want that? >> guest: all the time, yeah. it happens frequently and i believe we need to respect people's wishes. they have the right not to be photographed as well. c-span: so you don't use it? >> guest: well usually not. we try to be sensitive. it depends again on what the situation is that we try to be sensitive and get names if we can so that people know the pictures will be in the paper. if someone doesn't want the picture used on do you know, we don't use it. what kind of bothers me sometimes are people that,, who have nothing to do with the

story. you are to have the trust of your subject in your doing a story and it may be a sensitive issue, what they want three photographs by someone else has decided he shouldn't be taking their picture. that gets disconcerting because it is hard to explain to someone else that you know, that is their right also to be photographed so it should be their decision. c-span: 1986 was your first pulitzer when you were at the my hammy harold for mudslide in colombia? 1995 with "the washington post," u.s. intervention in haiti, first time. 2000, the "washington post" with the kosovo refugees and 2011 photography in haiti that was out earlier with "the washington post." here are some photos about katrina and animals. explain this. >> guest: i was sent to cover the hurricane initially, and a few weeks after-the-fact i

started a story on the animals, the abandoned animals that had, actually i shouldn't say abandon. a lot of people were forced to leave their animals but i had done a story of people who shelters would allow people to take their pets and they were forced to make this horrible decision. you are welcome to the shelter but for folks that love their animals that much, the same thing happened in katrina only on a much grander scale. we did a small story in the post and then took a leave of absence to do kind of a larger project on this issue. i was hoping to do a book although that didn't come about. it was about six months with people from all over the country who donated their time he came down and try to find these people's pets. it was quite, quite emotional like most of our stories. for some reason the animals, if i show a slideshow to photographers, this is the one they cry about inevitably,

always. i guess because they are so innocent and so lost. c-span: how many pets do you have? >> guest: i have three dogs, cat and the crazy cockatoo bird. reich do what is that picture? >> guest: it is pawprints in the muck that was left after the hurricane. c-span: i notice a lot of your shots are from above looking down on things. >> guest: i think we try to look for different angles, no matter what it is and provide visual variety in the packets especially when you do long photo stories like i do. but the animals also come at was the story just on the animals. a lot of these people is not -- lost not only their home and sometimes loved ones in their community and their jobs, but the last thing they had left to hold onto was their pet. it was really important for the residents to get back with their animals. c-span: how often do these folks do you take pictures of come to you and want a copy? >> guest: a lot of times.

i'm really bad at giving people pictures. these pictures i took on my own but mostly i work for the post so they have copyrights and we have to go to "the washington post" to give them the pictures. c-span: did you have a favorite among all of these? >> guest: it is always hard to say what a favorite picture is. you are so close to images. i have you no memories of taking all these. thisthis is again a picture that generated a lot of feedback from people that seemed so touched by this dog who looks, sitting there almost with dignity stuff just waiting for someone to come and save him. i went back afterwards trying to find out if someone did eventually get this dog because there were rescue people coming all around where we were in the vote. i had to continue on with the rescue group but they had radioed for the animal people to come get him so i'm hoping he

was rescued. it is hard to look at something and photograph it and leave, you know and not know, not be able to jump in the water and just grab him myself. c-span: how much training did you get on how to take a photo? >> guest: i went to school at the art institute of fort lauderdale. it was a two-year photography program. i had one photojournalism class amid all the other kinds of photography that they had taught him and then i did an internship with the "miami herald." that is how i got the job. c-span: when did you give up the idea being a nurse? >> guest: immediately as soon as i entered nursing school. i realized it was almost too hands-on for me. i was afraid i would would made mistakes and i would hurt someone. i just didn't feel that it was the right niche. this was a far better niche but i think nursing school teaches you a certain level of compassion and empathy that carries over into this kind of

work. c-span: when i went through all of your photographs before we talked, i noticed one copy somewhere where he said you had a meltdown in 2002 or something like that. is that something you can tell us more about and does it have anything to do with seeing all this tragedy? >> guest: absolutely. it was triggered by a bad romantic rake up. it was the boyfriend which was probably the catalyst and i have been covering kosovo at the time. i was at the point of complete exhaustion. once the floodgates opened, it was post-traumatic stress, no question, depression but a lot of, a lot of the images, a lot of the wailing women and dead children and gutters. it's like everything came back to me like so vividly and i think it's because i just was so frenetic lee going from one story to another and working and working for so many years.

i never processed the emotional toll and i am pretty sensitive and general. like i said the camera can be a shield and i think it can, can hold back your own emotions for a while but your human. you can see all these horrible things without feeling it. i had a pretty good meltdown. >> host: what do you do now if you are going from story to story. you know that you are sensitive. do you build in any downtime or some way to get away from it? >> guest: i am trying. i learned a little more coping mechanisms and did some therapy and i don't cover the same stories i used to then. there was a lot of international disasters and complex situations. i haven't covered that particularly except haiti now recently but it's been more long-term future projects at home. but they can be pretty emotional too on a different level.

i don't know. i'm obviously coping better than i was at that moment in time years ago, but it's still -- now i realize i have to deal with that at the moment and not let it build up. >> host: . c-span: your editor comes to you and says one of two jobs. i want you to go to the 1996 democratic convention or i want you to go down and to haiti and to the aftermath of the earthquake. what happens to you when you hear either one of those? >> guest: i get a choice for one thing. [laughter] but the great thing about being a journalist is the variety and that we get to experience so many parts of the human condition that so many different levels. haiti has been part of my heart for so long that i could never -- it's like i hadn't been traveling for a long time because my mother has been ill with alzheimer's when the earthquake happened in haiti.

c-span: here it is, the 96 shoot, the democratic convention. ♪ ♪ ♪ ..

but whenever i convert a picture to black-and-white i think of it as a different kind of power, hard to explain. it affects people on a more visceral lovell and there is no distraction and a color different situations that distract you from the harmony of the story. c-span: wendi you will get a photograph and say it's just what i wanted? >> guest: probably never. if you ask any of my editors, i'm pretty hard on myself in that way. i always missed -- i always mess more than i get, moments-why is. and i feel like it's such a responsibility to tell these stories like to get pretty hard missing it. but, like i said, once in awhile there are moments when you step back and just because you were

there and you saw it you hope it's sharp. c-span: forget the well for a moment but when you look at photograph when you say that's what i was trying to do not that was the greatest photograph in history but the composition included what? >> guest: i think composition, the artistic expression of the photography almost becomes second nature when you work in this long as a journalist but i try to do is tell a story, with visuals instead of words i basically writing paragraphs they just happen to be with images. so for me it's hard to get it in one photograph because in such a storyteller, so i try to get a lot of different pieces whether it is little details, whether the motion is to do a complete package of everything in. c-span: before we look at the sierra leone photos, said another. where is this? what year was it? why did you do this? >> guest: ziara lenone -- it was 2000 -- i'm so bad with

years. it was right after katrina -- c-span: sue 2006? >> guest: he lepsius 2006. it must have been 2006. i had just done a story on the war and duties who came to d.c. for prosthetic limbs and it was like a four year the trip that i followed back with mostly children and financially godfather -- got mother to one of the children. the invited me to go back on the first trip to ziara lenone so i'd been on a personal trip with her. a week later they asked me to go back and do this story on maternal mortality, which is a really important issue, and i think it is under reported. i think in sierra leone it's like one in eight women died in childbirth. it's horrendous. and for a lot of avoidable reasons, you know. c-span: what's that? >> guest: that's jamella. she arrived in a taxi at the

hospital, maternity hospital in freetown. i think that was her and brought her in. and she was just screaming in pain. and she eventually died. i followed her through a c-section. they did an emergency c-section of the hospital, but she didn't make it. she bled to death right in front of me. c-span: this so? >> guest: again, the same hospital. we spent some time in the rural areas trying to do this story. i went with kevin sullivan, who was the writer. and we decided better to spend -- better to go to the hospital where the women were actually coming, seeking help. and this was the biggest hospital in freetown. and they were losing so many women, right and left. this is jamella, too. that was her first and final look at her baby was born before she died. c-span: why did they let you in the room? >> guest: we had obviously

talked to the verdict of the hospital, and they knew we were there to do this story. and they definitely wanted world attention to be brought on that issue and that's -- it's kind of a hidden in the shadows of other global health issues. c-span: what's that contraption? >> guest: that is again -- they had nothing. in order to elevate the bed, you know, because she was hemorrhaging they needed to elevate the bed and they couldn't like we would, crank it up or automatically. they had to play left chairs and schools and whenever they could find to elevate her. c-span: this is one of the best hospitals in sierra leone? >> guest: absolutely. probably in general but for maternity it is the maternity hospital. c-span: what are the conditions, cleanliness and all that? >> guest: it was horrible. it was muskego ridden. this is adama. she also died. i'm still in contact with her family actually. the nurses were so -- they were so grateful for the mosquito

spray that i brought, because even though the nurses have to sleep under tents because the miskitos were so bad. and it was just -- the water didn't -- the toilets didn't flush. i mean, there were bodies of babies that had died, just piled up in the next room, right next to the women that were screaming and labor. c-span: those are dead babies. >> guest: yes. a child mortality is just horrendous there. c-span: all this was published? >> guest: yes. c-span: you've got the vultures of the top. did you see that right away? >> guest: yeah. i mean it's obviously symbolic. c-span: how often does the audience that sees your work get this, the subtleties that you have in some of the photographs? the you get any sense of that? >> guest: yeah, i get a lot of readers response, especially now with email that it so easy. people used to actually take time to write letters about pictures that affected them.

but, you know, get e-mails and messages from readers saying how touched and moved they were or angry, whatever the situation may be the they were so affected by an image and, you know, it compelled to do this, that or the other. it's better good. c-span: we are going to look at a video from the sierra leone war victims. explain this. what are we going to see? >> guest: this is probably what i was talking about in my little mamuna and the group that came up for prosthetics. they were supposed to just come. when the war was raging in sierra leone, one of the forms of intimidation i suppose the rebels used was imputation of civilians. stephen young children, as young as mamuna -- she was four when she came here to get her limbs -- it ended up that she, her grandmother was carrying her and it shot through her so she lost her lamb. most had been amputated by the rebels. it was pretty horrific. they were going to bring them

here to new york. a doctor was going to know donate the limbs and they were going to send them back and kind of rotate kids in and out but they realized they couldn't send kids back because they had been given so much media attention and the had brand new limbs that would bring attention to them in the camps and they were afraid the rebels would target them yet again and everyone felt and love with them. city became almost an extended family that lived in s.i. for years until they were all eventually adopted. c-span: the war was over what in sierra leone? >> guest: blood dimond is basically. the war is always over power in one form or another but, you know, it was a lot of control of the diamond mines and, you know, in that way with the rebels were seeking to gain power. c-span: and what was the point of cutting off limbs of little kids? >> guest: as far as i can tell, just to intimidate the civilian population to -- i don't know. i think people go crazy in war situations sometimes. and they would use drugs to take

kids also and indoctrinate them into -- you know, become child soldiers. and they would tell them to go ask the president to get them a new arm, you know. c-span: let's watch. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ somewhere over the rainbow ♪ the skies are blue ♪ and the dreams ♪ that you dare to dream ♪ no really do come true

c-span: what happens to these young kids when they come in the united states and are all about it, do you go back and check on them later? and you talk about your friend here? how do they get along in our society? >> guest: the obviously had to assimilate into the american society. they were so grateful. they live in refugee camps, and duty camps in ziara lenone. so they were thrilled just to be able to -- i remember they would eat really fast when they first got here because they couldn't believe they would be able to have this whole field to themselves and they were afraid it wouldn't come again. a lot of them didn't speak english when they first came. i started hanging around with them. they named me yema because carroll was too hard to remember. yema is an african demand to this day they still call me yemma. they wouldn't know me if you called me carl. but i try to keep in touch with one girl named mariama. she's a beautiful dancer. she lives in michigan with her

mother, and i talked to them all the time and, you know, my god child lives with the mcshane family in d.c., who is amazing. so ultimately their lives became much better, you know. c-span: how is her english? >> guest: fabulous now. i mean, they are just a little americans now. so i mean -- at the time i remember them trying to learn english. it was really difficult for them. c-span: there's a high school in washington that had a rough history, ballou high school and you did a feature on a young man named john thomas. who is he? where is he? >> guest: he was a student who was trying to, you know, better himself. it was -- his friend had been shot at the school, and it is a big news story. it happened just after we had started falling john because he was trying to pull himself up out of, you know, the situation that a lot of people, his friends, have found themselves

in coming you know, with drugs and the st. issues, violence. and i just got an e-mail, actually, a couple of weeks ago from one of his mentor's saying how wonderful he's doing and he strawy to give back now to kids and teach them, you know, there are different avenues to take them with a lot of kids get caught up in an inner cities -- c-span: where is he now? >> guest: he went to school -- and i can't remember which school it was -- but he ended up going to the first and his family to go to college. and he was a great basketball player and i'm not sure if he's back from the sea now. i haven't had time yet to contact him because they thought we should we follow the story, which i think we don't do enough of. i think we present a lot of issues or let people get to know someone and then we never follow up and say this is what happened to them. c-span: what year did you do this? do you remember? >> guest: there you go with the years again. [laughter] i can't remember the year i was born. c-span: let's watch. i can find it here.

let's watch the video where john thomas voices it over. >> my name is john thomas. i grew up in southeast washington. when i was younger i didn't have any guidance. and i was like a threat to society. i wanted to get what i see other kids had. i did whatever it took to get it. i seen a lot of my friends got killed. and a lot of friends locked up. and i see and i didn't want to go that way but i felt like i ain't no other choice. i stole cars, stealing from stores, went to jail twice. i wasn't focused on school, and i wasn't going to school every day. i was seeing a lot of friends dropping out and not graduating and i was walking the same road they was walking. when i was young i used to always play basketball outside. then i started coming up playing every day and it became part of life. every day i woke up and wanted to play. i didn't want to be in jail. i didn't want to get killed out

on these streets. i wanted to be successful in life, which means i had to work hard to get what i want. my dream was to make it to the nba or to start my own business when i got out of college. when i came to ballou, i went to my teachers. and i did extra work to get the grades and play basketball because i wanted to play ball. and when i got on the team i was still kind of messing up, making bad decisions. and then i met renaldo, who was this coach. he stayed on my back, making me go to study hall and making sure i had my homework and stuff done. and i seen that all i need to meet my dreams was to finish high school and keep going with my education. c-span: how did you find thomas? >> guest: the reporter actually did. it was an assignment from the post. and i tend to many times, you know, it was not supposed to be as involved as it became by literally would go to school with him every day, and he's amazingly accepted me into his

life, you know, allowed me to document this. the school was pretty troubled at the time because like i said they just had a shooting there and a lot of issues going on. so i think he recognized what an important message his story would tell it offers some hope and inspiration. c-span: have you ever tried to adopt any of these kids? >> guest: i kind of have an extended family in haiti. there's kids that used to hang us to be cut out with us all the time when we would photograph. he was so heartbreaking because the need was so great and they got the point where i could take as many pictures as i possibly can, but our people really going to see it? is it really went to change? but i still believe that you can make a difference with photographs. but the only way that i could stay sane and still continue to cover he was to pick one family and say okay i can't begin difference for this whole country, but i can make a difference to one family.

so i have a couple kids that are now grown and i've sort of health through their whole lives. danny and crystal. at one point i thought about adopting them but my life was so, you know, i was single and roaming all over the place. and it was not a stable environment either. and they have a grandmother who shockingly is still alive. people don't live to be old in haiti often. but she's taken great care of them. c-span: you were married for ten years. did you have children? >> guest: seven years, never had kids. except my furry ones. dogs over the years. c-span: and carried to a upi photographer that you married to the commit over the years? >> guest: he is to be upi and then he went to the efp. c-span: what impact did your father dying at a young age -- what age were you -- did it have on you? >> guest: tremendous impact to i think it colored my whole world. i was six when he died. the only thing i remember is my mom telling me when he was gone. i shut down for years and years.

i wouldn't talk about him. no one would talk about him. i first visited his grave when i was in my 20s. and i just think that being such a fragile little vulnerable young child, to have that kind of intense loss it just ripped my heart out. and i would probably be a different person -- whether better or worse i don't know -- if he would have lived. c-span: how did he die? >> guest: he had cirrhosis of the liver. he is to work in a textile factory, and they think he used to blow his nose and the die is was coming out of his nose and they get me have been related to that because he wasn't a drinker. he died at a young age, 51. c-span: brothers and sisters? >> guest: i have a sister, half-sister really which is my sister joan. she was 14 years older than me. had a different father. and she was kind of grown and out of the house by the time i was old enough to remember. we got closer as i got older and stopped traveling a little bit. then my mom got sick with

alzheimer's and i spent a lot more time over the past ten years in pennsylvania so it became much closer now in our adult. c-span: and your mom did what in her life? >> guest: she worked in a sewing machine factory. she had a really hard life. my dad died, and she didn't remarry until i was 18. and all that time she was pretty much my mother and father and she worked in the sewing machine factory and a restaurant, you know, multiple jobs. we didn't have a car when i was a kid. she used to trudge up the hill with all her groceries and she did the best she could. it's tough and then she gets alzheimer's on top of it. c-span: what year did she get alzheimer's? >> guest: it's been over ten years. it's a long sort of slow and withering in that horrible cruel disease. it's really tough. c-span: how will this she? >> guest: she's 94. but when the pulitzer happened -- i don't know if i can talk about it -- that i went in the

bathroom and i called the nursing home and i said can you yell in her year because we can't even weaker up any more she is in a bad stage. but i wanted her to be the first person i told. i said can you just yell in her year and tell her i won a pulitzer today because she would have been proud. c-span: the four pulitzer's that you have one, do they all have the seamen had on you? >> guest: it's so -- and solemn professional. see, i can't deal with loss now either. the pulitzers are amazing because it's such an honor to be recognized by your peers. but i think even more importantly, it shines a light on those stories. as i said, after the headlines are gone, people come to world attention move somewhere else, and these people are living in their reality long after the headlines are over. so, i think, just to have this award happen and people say haiti, yes. there's still a great need there. there's still suffering there. i think that kind of gives the

picture and the story is a good life and people are remembered. c-span: going to go we back 1986 the mud slide in columbia. can you give us the background on that? >> guest: that was when i was very young and working at the miami herald, pretty much just starting out. and they had asked michael to cover it. they wanted a second photographer because it was such a massive tragic event they had asked a different photographer. he didn't want to this hunting season so he turned it down and asked me to go and i was pretty inexperienced at times i was surprised he even asked me to do it. but michael and i flew down on learjet because it was -- we didn't know how we were going to get in and it kind of drew strauss what was going to go overland to try to get to the site and then we eventually met up there and tried to cover the story and the was the days you had to actually build a darkroom

and transmit pictures. and it was one of -- again, a hard story emotionally and physically to cover. c-span: here's columbia, 1986. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

c-span: the helmke people died in that mud slide? >> guest: 25,000. over 25,000. it covered the whole town of armero. that's what i said when they announced this pulitzer. i said i was going to allow myself one moment of joy because life can change so fast and be forever altered. the earth can trumbull, the mud can come and, you know, out of nowhere in your life is over. your loved ones are lost. so, as hard as it is to look at those tragedies, i think it makes us all realize how fleeting these moments are. c-span: where were you on 9/11? >> guest: i was at home and my arlington. and they had actually -- my friend, karen ballard, she's a photographer as well -- she was living in d.c.. she called me and said carol qtr

on the television. oh my god. which it was already on, and i saw what had happened in new york and about evin and afterword post called me and said pac we are sending multiple photographers to try to get into new york. we all get the magnitude of it pretty much immediately. but as i was packing i heard the plane hit the pentagon. i live that close to the pentagon. my house shook and i actually thought we were being bombed. and i called them and i said you want me to head to the pentagon instead and they still kept me going to new york. c-span: here's some of your work. ♪ ♪ spend all your time waiting ♪ for another day ♪ for a data will make it okay

♪ there must be some reason ♪ but i don't understand ♪ why i'm here and you were taken away ♪ ♪ no way of knowing ♪ you didn't stand a chance ♪ if you can hear me ♪ i want you to know i would gladly have taken your place ♪ ♪ in the arms of the angel ♪ far away from here ♪ in your peaceful surrender

♪ you stand tall in the face of fear ♪ ♪ i will never forget you ♪ i salute you, my dear friend ♪ in the arms of the angel ♪ we shall meet someday again c-span: you know, we are about done but i can hear some of our viewers, those that stuck with it, saying all right, why did you do that to me, you know, meaning me, why did i bring all of this in one hour? what do you say to yourself? why do you do this? there's not much joy in the last hour. >> guest: yes, but i think we all have to remember that there are other people suffering, and there are those in need that we can't forget. i mean, i think images and stories, you know, put an exclamation on their existence

and their reality. and some of us are much more fortunate than others. and we can't possibly forget that, because i think a social conscience is imperative in had not only our society in america, but just as a world community needs to remember that we are all interconnected, and what affect some one affects us all. c-span: in the last 30 years of your professional career, what happened to the photographer? are there more of them? less of them? what kind of resources are there -- a place like the "washington post" putting into photography? >> guest: well, fortunately the post still has resources that we are, you know, we're still covering stories. but lost half our photography staff to buyouts. and it's been a hard time for journalism in general. and i think there's a lot of images being thrown at people, but they're not vetted. you know, they come over facebook or from people over the

scene, which in one way i think it's good. because there's more is out there viewing events in our world. but at the same time, i think it's -- you know, it's kind of a great loss to society and democracy to have professional photojournalist send journalists losing their jobs who told stories in a different way, perhaps, from a different perspective. c-span: winner of the most recent photography collector. and we've got to get your two colleagues and again that were with you on this one. who are those to? >> guest: its nikie kahn and ricky carioti. i wish there were here because this is a team effort. moly than the editors. and everyone works together in an organization put together to create this work. c-span: but somehow, somewhere you've won four pulitzers with others over the last many years. by the way what's the name cuzy?

>> guest: russian origin. it's probably been shortened from some long russian name way back when. c-span: carol guzy, thank you so much for joining us. >> guest: thank you so much. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ka qaeda ♪ ♪