a way to eat, you are looking at some real significant challenges to the environment and specifically to biodiversity. .. >> it's really taken off now. these are young guys who, you know, would have probably been gang members, actually, if they hadn't got together and do productive activities. and they created backpacks with

solar panels that are locally produce inside haiti so that kids can power up small light sources so that they can study at night. and they've been able to take that technology, and now there's, they're being used, the streetlights now in much of haiti are being provided through individual solar packs. this is something that would be kind of a relatively easy technology to employ but maybe would decrease some of the energy demands in the regions where we work in the developing world. and we ourselves are extremely -- what happens when your cell phone goes down? it's like your life is over. [laughter] i mean, i think we have to talk seriously about efficient energy and talk about scientific and technological solutions to improve our energy consumption. >> i thought you gave a great answer. i think the only thing i would totally reinforce is that i think the economic growth model that our country has pursued with increasing wealth and what have you is, actually, the biggest gains are by adjusting our own lifestyle.

i think that's what we really have to be looking at. >> yeah. and, um, coming to this usm question, i think you really get in trouble if you frame this as, um, a zero sum debate. because then what you get is quite legitimate pushback saying, well, you know, of course we're going to have cell phones, and of course we're going to build roads, and of course we're going to build dams if we need energy. and to understand that there is going to have to be -- there's no getting around progress from the developed countries on climate change. and that you're not going to talk anyone out of -- and i think your comment about choosing between the family and the tree, that's true at a national level as well. and that that actually has nothing to do with rich country/poor country. it has to do with is there a bigger incentive, is there a bigger political incentive than to provide electricity from a dam for your citizenry, and if you can't provide one, then

you're going to have a dam. and that's a basic, you know, sort of question about how willing we are as a global community to deal with climate in a way that changes the incentives. and that actually has really very little to do with how developed or undeveloped you are. >> okay. next question. yes. >> um, is this loud enough? am i -- oh. >> [inaudible] >> okay. i, obviously, am, you know, very pro-altruism, and stories like elizabeth, you know, are very important. but i question whether foreign aid treats the symptom rather than the cause. and i was just curious as to a lot of your responses to that. >> everybody hear the question? okay. so the question is, essentially, um, does foreign aid essentially treat the symptom rather than the cause. is that fair? okay. >> i mean, i think that there is a lot of validity to what you're saying. i think we often try to treat the symptoms rather than the

cause. but i think there's increasing understanding of the importance of things like economic disparity which actually are the root causes of some of the issues, gender inequality, for example. so i see in just, you know, the past couple of years a lot more focus on addressing some of those root causes. and i think especially as some of the developing countries gain leadership and take ownership for their own problems that there's a lot more focus on those root causes that we have seen in the past when donors really drove the aid agenda. i guess that'd be my -- >> so judith's analogy to community development in this country is a really great one because you, while you want to be conscious of the root causes and thinking about what you can do about them, in many ways your best long-term solution is empowering folks to go out and solve their own root causes. and that's -- and we, this is something that we really completely lose the string of because how are you, how do you help people empower themselves?

basic education, basic health, getting rid of conflict in their societies, education. and so when people say why do we care whether one person in zambia has a healthy baby or not o, it's those kinds of -- you know, that's a child that has the opportunity to be more empowered and go after root problems of his or her choice. but we very often forget to make that link about why it's worth, why it's worth putting band-aids on gaping wounds. >> i think, also, if you look at some of the development literature in terms of what motivates communities, um, often you'll see that it's kind of a combination of a crisis that will move local communities, and, you know, kind of a couple of inspired actors and kind of good political conditions or some openings. so i think this notion of kind of root cause to some extent you can almost, i mean, it sounds terrible to say, but there are many reasons why there's inequality, why there's poverty. i think you can address multiple

root causes, um, maybe even sometimes through getting rid of the symptoms. i mean, i've often -- we talk about aid, and sometimes i think cynically if we just gave all of the money that we're spending in foreign assistance to low income communities, you know, what would happen. i mean, certainly giving the money within certain contexts of training individuals and having them involved in strategic planning exercises. i mean, i think it could be, you know, a really revolutionary idea to get money directly into the hands of low income people which to some extent is, yes, just dealing with the symptoms. but if the symptoms are extreme poverty, to some extent the cash transfers are an example of help by encouraging healthy behavior and people to be responsible for themselves. you do get the money right into their hands. and they've proven to be very responsible about how they use the money. and part of the reason for that is we understand looking at the role of women in communities that, you know, you give those conditional cash transfers to women, and the women are the ones that go out and make sure that their families are healthy

and taken care of. >> and just sort of following in on that, i mean, research has shown the most effective interventions are if you want to identify one thing you could do, it'd be educating young girls. >> yep. [applause] >> yes, ma'am. >> oh. um, the other day i heard a program on ktnu, a man was discussing, i think he called it population growth literacy, and he talked about brazil actually trying to do this literacy and has had some progress with it. i remember, of course, from the '60s there was a whole population growth and, you know, it kind of blew up in our faces because it seemed like it was, um, repressive from our point. but i just wondered what your thoughts were on that. >> okay. so the question has to do with what are the panel's thoughts on

population literacy generally? is that fair enough? >> population growth. >> and population growth. literacy with respect to growth. >> i think carrie's last point was actually extremely relevant to this, that when women are given access to education, professional opportunities, population declines. and, um, it's just, it's happened everywhere. um, it's just kind of a fact. so i think, you know, population growth, literacy is a really interesting concept, but i think it also has an awful lot to do with gender empowerment and the role of women and the empowerment of women because when women are empowered, you will have control of fertility. again, looking at the example of -- >> we're going to leave this recording to go live to the east room of the white house for a press briefing by president obama on extending middle class tax cuts. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. everybody have a seat. have a seat. well, good afternoon, everybody.

>> good afternoon. >> i'm glad things have cooled off a little bit. i know folks were hot. [laughter] you know, we're here today to talk about taxes, something that everybody, obviously, cares deeply about. and can i've often said that -- and i've often said that our biggest challenge right now isn't just to reclaim all the jobs that we lost to the recession, it's to reclaim the security that so many middle class americans have lost over the past decade. our core mission as an administration and as a country has to be, yes, putting people back to work, but also rebuilding an economy where that work pays off. an economy in which everybody can have the confidence that if you work hard, you can get ahead. now, what's holding us back from meeting these challenges, it's not a lack of plans, it's not a

lack of ideas, it is a stalemate in this town, in washington, between two very different views about which direction we should go in as a country. and nowhere is that stalemate more pronounced than on the issue of taxes. many members of the other party believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth. i disagree. i think they're wrong. i believe our prosperity has always come from an economy that's built on a strong and growing middle class. one that can afford to buy the products that our businesses sell. a middle class that can own homes and send their kids to college and save enough to retire on. that's why i've cut middle class taxes every year that i've been

president. by $3600 for the typical middle class family. let me repeat. since i've been in office we've cut taxes for the typical middle class family by $3600. [applause] i wanted to repeat that because sometimes there's a little misinformation out there. [laughter] and folks get confused about it. moreover, we've tried it their way. it didn't work. at the beginning of the last decade, congress passed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest americans more than anybody else. and we were told that it would lead to more jobs and higher incomes for everybody, and that prosperity would start at the top but then trickle down.

and what happened? the wealthy got wealthier, but most americans struggled. instead of creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. instead of widespread prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall. and in just a few years, we went from record surpluses under bill clinton to record deficits that we are now still struggling to pay off today. so we don't need more top-down economics. we've tried that theory. we've seen what happens. we can't afford to go back to it. we need policies that grow and strengthen the middle class. policies that help create jobs, that make education and training more affordable, that encourage businesses to start up and create jobs right here in the united states. so that's why i believe it's time to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans -- folks like myself -- to expire.

[applause] and by the way, i might feel differently because it's not like i like to pay taxes. [laughter] i might feel differently if we were still in surplus. but we've got these huge deficits, and everybody agrees that we need to do something about these deficits and these debts. so the money we're spending on these tax cuts for the wealthy is a major driver of our deficit, a major contributor to our deficit costing us a trillion dollars over the next decade. by the way, these tax cuts for the wealthiest americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth. so we can't afford to keep that up. not right now. so i'm not proposing anything radical here. i just believe that anybody

making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under bill clinton. back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and plenty of millionaires to boot. and this is not just my opinion. the american people are with me on this. poll after poll shows that's the case. and there are plenty of patriotic and very successful, very wealthy americans who also agree because they know that by making that kind of contribution, they're making the country as a whole stronger. at the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle class families or small businesses, not when so many folks are just trying to get by, not when so many folks are still digging themselves out of the hole that was created by

this great recession that we had. and at a time when the recovery is still fragile. that's why i'm calling on congress to extend the tax cuts for the 98% of americans who make less than $250,000 for another year. ms. -- [applause] if congress doesn't do this, millions of american families -- including these good looking people behind me -- [laughter] could see their taxes go up by $2200 starting on january 1st of next year. that'd be a big blow to working families. and it would be a drag on the entire economy. now, we can already anticipate, we know what those who are

opposed to letting the high-end tax cuts will say. they'll say that we can't tax job creators, and they'll try to explain how this would be bad for small businesses. let me tell ya, folks who create most new jobs in america are america's small business owners. and i've cut taxes for small business owners 18 times. [applause] since i've been in office. [applause] i've also asked congress repeatedly to pass new tax cuts for entrepreneurs who hire new workers and raise their workers' wages. but here's the thing you have to remember: the proposal i make today would extend these tax cuts for 97% of all small business owners in america. in other words, 97% of small businesses fall under the

$250,000 threshold. [applause] so -- so this isn't about taxing job creators. this is about helping job creators. i want to give them relief. i want to give those 97% a sense of permanence. i believe we should be able to come together and get this done. while i disagree on extending tax cuts for the wealthy because we just can't afford them, i recognize that not everybody agrees with me on this. on the other hand, we all say we agree that we should extend the tax cuts for 98% of the american people. everybody says that. the republicans say they don't want to raise taxes on the middle class, i don't want to raise taxes on the middle class. so we should all agree to extend the tax cuts for the middle class. let's agree to do what we agree on. right?

[applause] that's what compromise is all about. let's not hold the vast majority of americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy. we can have that debate. [applause] we can have that debate, but let's not hold up working on the thing that we already agree on. in many ways the fate of the tax cut for the wealthiest americans will be decided by the outcome of the next election. my opponent will fight to keep them in place, i will fight to end them. but that argument shouldn't threaten you. it shouldn't threaten the 98% of americans who just want to know

that their taxes won't go up next year. middle class families and small business other thans, they deserve that guarantee. they deserve that certainty. it will be good for the economy, and it will be good for you. we should give you that certainty now. we should do it now. it will be good for you, it will be good for the economy as a whole. [applause] so my message to congress is this: pass a bill extending the tax cuts for the middle class. i will sign it tomorrow. pass it next week, i'll sign it next week. pass it next -- you get the idea. [laughter] as soon as that gets done, we can continue to have a debate about whether it's a good idea to also extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans.

i'll have one position, the other side will have another, and we'll have that debate. and the american people can listen to that debate. and then next year once the election's over, things have calmed down a little bit, you know, based on what the american people have said and how they've spoken during that election we'll be in a good position to decide how to reform our entire tax code. in a simple way that lowers rates and helps our economy grow and brings down our deficit. because that's something that we're going to have to do for the long term. but right now our top priority has to be giving middle class families and small businesses the security they deserve. you're the ones who are driving this recovery forward finish. [applause] you're the ones who are driving this recovery forward, and i

think it's time to widen the circle of opportunity and help more americans who work hard to get ahead. it's time that we learned the lessons of our past and laid the foundation for a better future. that's what i'm focused on every day, and i hope congress will join me in doing the right thing. so thank you very much, all, for being here. thank you. [applause] [applause] [cheers and applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> the president surrounding himself with a group of middle class americans -- >> the house and senate both gavel in at 2 eastern after a weeklong fourth of july break. the house will consider a number of bills today, but major bills are later this week along with a vote on repealing the health care law. the senate will consider a judicial nomination and start debate on small business taxes. you can see the house on c-span, the senate here on c-span2. the house rules committee meets today to talk about that legislation to repeal the health care law. the committee will set guidelines for debate later this week. c span 3 will have live coverage of today's meeting scheduled to start at 5 eastern. >> i don't mean to sound like i want to go crazy and, quote,

regulate the internet. on the other hand, i don't believe the internet should exist as a place outside the law. >> co-executive ed editor of "the wall street journal"'s online all things d, walt mossberg, on the future of personal technology and the relationships between technology makers and the federal government, tonight at 8 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2, with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events, and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our scheduled toes at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> now, a discussion on the impact of social media on news reporting and what defines professional journalism. a panel of social media editors and journalists from silicon valley sat down to talk ott --

at a stanford university symposium in mid may. yoel hear from the executive editor of yahoo! news and a strategist who uses twitter to cover the middle east. this panel is an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon and welcome t> the mcclatchy symposium. my name is jim bettinger, and i'll be the moderator of today's symposium, hash tag how social media are revolutionizing the news. the lecture series is sponsored by the department of communications at stanford. it honors -- it began in 1964, and it honors an aggressive and independent editor and executive with mcclatchy newspapers who was known for never giving in to entrenched viewpoints. carlos mcclatchy was a progressive sort, and i think he

pretty enthusiastically would endorse the subject of today's symposium, and i know he'd be impressed by the star quality of the participants. so let me introduce them. krishna bharat works for google news, aggregating news from morr than 50,000 sources with more ta than 70 editions posted in more than 30 languages. krishna was born in bangaloreuae and eventually got a ph.d. inano human/computer interaction from georgia tech. i'm also pleased to say that he's on the board of visitor of the knight fellowships. andy carvin is senior strategist on the npr social media desk. during the arab spring, a huge twitter audience came to rely on his messages and tweets for news and information developing in the uprisings. as co-founder of public media camp, he has helped npr and pbse

stations collaborate, work with techies and public media fans to collaborate on projects. before coming to npr, he was directer and editor of the digital divide network which worked to bridge the divide. susan mernit is co-founder, editor and publisher of oakland local, oakland local.com, a community news and training nonprofit that focuses on social justice issues.al, it combines reported stories with community media and diverse voices.l ju mernit has worked as ait consultant, a trainer and a coach, and she's consulted on the center for investigative reporting's california watch project. she is a former vp at aol and netscape and a former yahoo! senior director. and will tacy is executive editor of yahoo! news. tacy oversees the yahoo! newsroom of more than 50 journalists, editors and social teams with bureaus in new york, washington and sunnyvale.

he oversaw the staffing of yahoo!'s first politics bureau in washington, and he also manages yahoo!'s news partnership with abc news. before tacy came to yahoo! in 2010, he was editor at "newsweek".com, digital managing editor at the "minneapolis star tribune" and managing editor at "the new york times." a really outstanding group we have here today. i don'r t think i have to tell u that we're in the midst of a social media revolution. thi hundreds of millions of people use such social networking services as facebook, twitter and google plus twitter, and google plus. and not just to share to cat photos. >> not that there is anything wrong with that. >> by this time tomorrow, with facebook's first day of trading, mark zuckerberg will officially be a gazillionaire. [laughter] the premise is that the services have had a major impact on the collection, distillation, and

distribution of news and information. the project for excellence in journalism, in its state of the news media, said that social media are important but not overwhelming, at least not yet. that is a quote from the report. no more than 10% of digital news consumers follow news recommendations from facebook or twitter very often, our survey finds, and almost all of those who do are still going directly to news websites as well. but there are many other indications that social media are radically altering the news landscape. word of the shooting of rep gabrielle giffords and the killing of osama bin laden, not to mention the death of donna summer today, spread fire early on twitter and facebook. reporters now routinely use foral mto find sources breaking news situations and complicated stories. when journalists use these platforms, they create a

conversation around a running story or topic of interest, whether it is to hone their own stores or to engage their audience, or both. i think we have to say that something revolutionary is happening. that is what will be export today. let's get to it. we will dispense with former presentations, and have a q&a discussion. you noticed the cameras. c-span plans to broadcast the symposium sometime over memorial day weekend. it will also be available on stanford itunes. when he moved to audience questions, please use the microphone here. i'll begin with some basics. allow ask each participant to address this in question -- what are social media? what are the significant platforms? what are their impact on your news operation? i will begin with you. >> thank you, tim.

there are many platforms out there. there'll be more coming out. what is more important, in my opinion, is the people who use these platforms, who either produce the news or carry the news or distribute the news or are in the news. how they interact, that is the big focus here. in the case of googlers, -- google news, we have tried to increase diversity in news by bring together thousands of articles covering a story and organizing that in a compact form. initially, the way that was implemented was completely based on observing the publishing actions of publishers and stories they found interesting.

over time, we started looking at social signals, the actions of people on the networks, the commentary, and so forth. by integrating the google plus, our social network, we started writing stories from that. google + allows you to comment on news stories in googlers. recommendations from friends are surfaced. we also have hang outs on their -- and there, which allow people to post a panel. to get your laptops for of you are and have a conversation so by lowering the bar on having these conversations happen in realtime i think we're going to enrich, you know, the amount of information that is being presented to people. >> the other end of the panel, will, what's, how would you address that

question? >> i mean, first off, i would say, fundamentally agree with krishna. it is not the platform, it's the audience. also all media is social media. the only media not social is media no one consumes. i think social meet yaw platforms is different than social media and i think that is one of the things that we often get caught in we think of the platform as defining the interaction as opposed to the audience and the media defining the interaction. and, i think that i'm sure we'll talk about this, we in the news need yaw often think of the platform as a tool, a as mechanism to do our job and, i think in a lot of ways the news mead wrau has been -- media have been comfortable with social media platforms. they haven't changed the way

we do our jobs. they will and we'll probably not like them as nearly much as we like them today but i think the, the focus on the platform is really less interesting than the focus on the interaction and the focus on the way that the values that the audience brings to the consumption of media begin to overlap and layer and create something where the reason that they're consuming media and the way they're interacting and the way they want to distribute the media themselves and shape it becomes the story as much as the narrative we're trying to develop. >> focus so to some degree you're talking about interacting with with the audience interacting with yahoo!, that's different from the our traditional journalism perspective on these? >> to some degree yes but in some ways it is only because we can capture it. the interaction may not be any different. the difference we can track it. we know it.

but, yes, also i think that the degree signals we can capture and pay attention to and allow to influence what we're doing is fundamentally different. but, i do, i mean i think at some level we do have to think about what is the media consumption pattern and narrative we're trying to enable and what is the narrative and the pattern that the audience is looking for? you know, talking with somebody the other day about, the, ephithet from howard's end seems like every new media conference i go to says, just connect. just connect. there is another word in there, which is live a life not fragmented. that is in some way our challenge. to figure out how the fragmentation of the narrative becomes something more than what it has been.

>> i would take a slightly different view. i think part of what's happened today is really about inevitable and steady move toward mobile and portable personal devices. i'm a very intense relationship with my phone. at some point i will have the same relationship with a tablet or with a kindle fire. i think we have to remember part of what is happening that so much more information is now cloud-sourced. breaking photos. think about the plane landing at the hudson or a bombing. the public can send it on a mobile device. we're becoming always on, always networked. so the platforms that have been the most successful really are the ones with most accessible to people on mobile devices. i think we'll see a lot more investment from all platforms to work on tablets and on mobile devices because this is where we're really migrating. this is android. if you look at the android,

i'm fascinated now i'm going to an npr or "new york times" app. it is a web browser but it is actually set up as an app. so it is pointing me away from the web into these little silos of content that are really good for the provider. i think we have to think about social media and the ultimate platform as really being something portable and personal. that is really where we're going to see a real acceleration especially if there is more wireless broadband where people can send more and more digital media across the pipes and -- >> let me ask, can you elaborate what the implication of that is if we're, if you're not only cloud sourcing but mobilely sourcing and consuming information? >> well i think there are two implications the one is that we can upgrade immediate yawsy. the other is that we have greater risk of deception. there was a man who was in oakland who was training

every single occupied event and he was an occupier. on one hand it was fascinating to see his accounts of everything happening with the police in these occupy demonstrations. on the other hand someone was trying to present reliable, accurate, unbiased reporting i couldn't take his information as fact and yet he was the dominant --. so that is interesting position to be in. >> we're going to come back to this, this issue of veracity and vetting. what is your take on, what is social media and how -- >> to me social media is any platform, service, tool, whatever you like to call it that networks people together and gives them opportunities to engage each other, collaborate and create to one extent or

another. i wouldn't consider traditional forms of media like tv or radio, social in the sense that with a broadcast, a person doesn't have their own tower or satellite dish to immediately communicate back, not only to the content producer but everyone else who is watching or listening. closest to the next day when people got around the watercooler. that was the plat for. we didn't, there was nothing that afforded us the opportunity to have engagements after the fact let alone real-time engagement. so the term social media has been around five or six years. i think people who are in the space love to make up new terms, before that, people used web 2.0 a lot. before that you had people like tim burns who was one of the early developers of the web.

he liked to say the read write web. go back to the 1970s when people were creating the first e-mail list or bulletin board systems like usenet. they were crude systems and had limited audience because the internet was not ubiquitous. look at them now because they still exist in one form or another. people are engaging each other. they're all on basically a level playing field and things sometimes get created that way. i think there's a long history and tradition of social media existing within the internet space because the internet ultimately is about people who use it. >> so, help me understand, help us understand how social, we were talking a little bit earlier about sort of the earliest times where, you know, people would boast newspaper on

window fronts and so forth. what is different from that? what are the new platforms that allow people to do that they couldn't do before? >> well, it's funny. some of the practices we're doing now we think as relatively new have been around for a very long time. the very first independent newspaper published in the u.s. was in boston in the late 1600's. it was called public occurrences. it was a four-page broad sheet, a weekly paper. only three pages out of the four had print on them. the last one was blank. the reason for that was the publisher knew that he couldn't create a circulation that would cover the entire city of boston and that things happen over the course of the week. so he theorized that people would leave a copy at the local pub when they were done reading it and maybe jot down some notes the right there network journal i'll, cloud sourcing already existed. i have i have a sneaky feeling this guy simply

didn't come up with that. i bet if you look at the history of the publish aring in the britain in the 1600's you would find other examples of that. and so, the tools are different. they're more, the playing field is a lot more level obviously. it still took a guy publishing a broad sheet to give people the opportunity to do that but now pretty much anyone who has internet access and a modicum of internet literacy has the ability to be a community organizer, publisher or want to be a consumer and focus on those ideas. >> is there not anything wrong with that cat videos. >> i love cat videos and will until the day i die. >> can i add one thing. >> yes. >> coming down to the level some of the distinctions who does what activity, those distinctions are starting to disappear. used to be we had publisher,

consumer, and consumer would con sum and that -- consume. we have a middle layer where you're able to look at a lot of information, to say that subset is interesting especially to so-and-so and that has now come in. everybody does everything. in other words, there is a conversation with all the actors contributing to different degrees on along all of these dim enin shuns. even publishers are curious to look what other people are publishing. they're not just reacting to what audience is telling them but what other influences are saying. everybody is adding to the conversation by saying here is what resonates with me. here is what i'm confused about. here is what you should know and hear is the other thing you should look at. what is interesting to me is how this, the presence of these three or two different roles has, you know, created a certain dynamic and that's changed completely. it has become more of a

conversation. ask somebody a years ago what is journalism, they say, well with you pick up the paper and you read it. now they say there is some highly qualified people talking, others are listening and helping the connotation proceed and there is feedback loop. i think it is a completely different model. >> go ahead, susan. >> the other thing is ubiquitousness of it and decentralized nature of it that, you know, a broad sheet in boston in the 17th century, 17th century? 1680's. was only going to be available and conversation only existed where people picked up in the pub was left and people allowed into that pub. the level of playing field and diversity of the audience and the fact that and hopefully andy can talk

about this, that communities that build up, independent of necessarily of intent or action, can then tap into this new dynamic and shape a narrative and create that feedback loop. i think that is, that in some ways the most powerful nature. again i get back to it is not about the platform, it is about the people and the audience and what they're doing there. >> when we talk about feedback loops we need to be talking about many feedback loops because, i think, for a lot of journalists and for some news organizations they think of social media, we'll, we'll do the work way we've always done it, produce the story, stick it online and we'll have a comment thread below that. that is a feedback loop in one swens but honestly not that university did the from letters to the editor and other traditional mechanisms that have existed for people to let news organizations know-how they think.

with you have feedback through the entire process before a story occurs to a journalist where a journalist is working on. a citizen journalist or member of public creating something and platform of mainstream media to share it at a wider audience. you're looking at one big feedback loop but there are teen by loops into between. >> i remember the day google launched and there was automated curation system and was so radical and people debated could this be good enough? i think what we've seen is that things like blogging have disintermediated newspapers and publishers and, you know, the power of the press has become spread out but i think we also see a new role emerging more and more powerfully now the editor or the curator. so the curator is really displacing the editor. so you could say, andy during arab spring was a curator who was passing all these comments back and

forth that he was aggregating them, fascinated by pin stress. people i know who put incredible amount of energy into cure rating connections, right? think about people you know who are the expert on something. see what is interesting now, social media changed the whole publishing model, now they're having the role of the editor change where we don't look to the movie critic or the restaurant critic, we look to people who could be very hyperlocal or very niche. vaeg began food or someone in oakland doing oakland food and drink and those become our go-to resources. all these roles of owning control of information and being the authority keep breaking. i loaf one of the fact that one of the fashion experts is a 17-year-old fashion blogger. she is style rookie. this woman was very young

and became this giant authority. that's a huge sea change that we now can look to people who are distributed all over the globe who either have a certain passion or just assume a certain role as a facilitator that in the past was really restricted to people who were certified as experts. >> that is interesting you mentioned how curation relates to the editorial process. on the one hand the editorial process is also about where to direct the resources available to the publisher. so that will always remain in a traditional sense but yes, a lot of the, the responsibility on conveying certain pieces of news to the audience has been sort of delegated to the cloud at large, influences. what editors do get is a more efficient mechanism of deploying this thing and finding its way from the

network to the eyeballs to people who care about it because it is an active network. it is an active network of intelligent eyeballs that are channeling this gem about an artificial intelligence to the community that cares about it where the mainstream may not. so it is making it a little bit more efficient. >> part of it -- go ahead. >> i think it is a fallacy that a publisher should only publish and not cure rate beyond curate what they publish. people are coming to a news application and a news website, saying help me navigate. tell me what is happening right? it is not in, the user does not believe what they need to get is exclusively the content from this one publisher when there are 5,000 other publishers, right? sure you can turn to some other source like google news and yahoo! news and get the broad overview but that publisher can beyond giving their own content direct you to other gems online and

that is better starting point and a better vantage. >> some news organizations are fighting tooth and nail to keep the old model alive. there was a big controversy when sky news announced a new social media policy basically if you work for sky news, don't break news over twitter. don't retweet your competitors and talk to them and other restrictions that runs completely defense twitter culture and runs completely use of twitter within a journal listic tool. within a matter of weeks their best known internet personality on twitter a producer kneel mann resigned in protest. he couldn't do his job anymore because he wasn't able to engage people. they were so concerned about keeping content funnel solely focused on them it completely ignored the reality how everyone is sharing everything right now and we're all learning from each other because of it. >> another way to look at that is the incredible

popularity, and value people have in posting on open platforms like arianna huffington post or the salon where community invites comment. we oakland local do a stories from social media and have 40% of our content come in from community contributors. often our writing on facebook and we invite them to publish on oakland local and we can distribute the content through yahoo! news in partnerships with new american media. we can give them a much broader distribution than they would have in their own network. so we're very much an am any fire of interesting parts of the conversation that we find. i think that is very much the wave of the future. >> i think getting to what andy was talking about, for media companies there is something really important here to delve into where you find the value.

and the sky news, assumed the value was in the brand and the brand represents always what it represented as opposed to value is in your audience the value is in connection activity of your audience and the degree you engage your audience now, 24/7. that is fundamental shift in terms of the business proposition and you who you think about building value around your brand. >> i don't think it dilutes your brand to, in addition to doing your own original journalism, direct the audience who you care about to other things because they're going to bounce right back to you. >> no. i think what it does it challenges you to rethink what your brand is. if you thought your brand is a publication, a consumeable entity, then, you get led down this road. >> i would like to focus a little bit here on the use of social media, social media platforms particularly as a reporting tool and i'm,

andy, i am going to ask you to talk about how your coverage of arab spring started. i think we were talking a little earlier of an experiment. you weren't quite sure it was going to go and what you learned from it. talk about others as well. >> so a big part of my job at npr is to serve as guinea pig in residence. they give me the space to experiment with new tools and techniques regarding journalism innovation and collaboration with the public and for methods that work and seem to have legs i work with our reporters in our shows to expand upon them. and so i've been active on twitter for just over five years now and we had used it in a variety of ways during the 2008 election to fact check presidential debates and collect reports on voting problems and the like and so i was very comfortable with interacting with people on twitter to get information i knew nothing about. but because of work that i had done previously before coming to npr, i happen to

know a handful of bloggers from tunisia. i met some of them in person. others who were living in exile because the government, because the government repression i had also gotten to know through the global voices project which launched at harvard 2004 and 2005. i wouldn't say i was close with any of these guys but we kept in touch. i watched what they were doing on their blogs and on twitter and in late december of 2010 i started seeing them use the hashtag. at first my reaction do they mean the cute tourist town not too far from tunis. as i read a couple of messages i realized they were talking about this town in the middle of nowhere in south-central tunisia where a young man set himself on fire to protest his produce cart being taken away from him. and people who came out and in solidarity to protest his act or in support of his act,

a couple of people reported on cam are phones and managed to get them on youtube. those bloggers i had gotten to know because they were networked with each other and some were safe in europe they began cure rating everything they were finding. they would cross book to facebook, any network they could find to completely overwhelm the tunisian authorities. they would block youtube for example but not necessarily these others. in a country of 11 million people, two million were on facebook. so as the conversation started on twitter it very quickly spread like wildfire on facebook and having been to tunisia and having experienced the police state there i was completely fascinated by the notion of people getting away with protests. and so i kept watching it and kept tweeting about it watcg about it,twee --ting

and i remember i >> so you named it. >> funny, after the revolution happened i had a tunisia ann colleague come and visit washington and we got together and she said thank you for everything you did to help cover our revolution but next time let us name our own revolution. i said fair enough. >> a jasmine by any other name. >> exactly. but it wasn't until the final days of the revolution that the media really took it seriously. no one paid attention to tunisia. for anyone who did know about it, they thought about it as the place where "star wars" was filmed. but it suddenly became on the radar and protests began getting planned in different countries. so i started taking techniques i used in tunisia and expanded and improved upon them and it got to the point where my twitter followers essentially became my newsroom. rather than being in a studio as an anchor would

with producers left and right and researchers and earpiece someone talking give me the latest wire information or laptop telling me that a pundit here and eyewitness there, i was sitting on a park bench with my phone having dozens of twitter followers doing all those roles for me so i could essentially do rolling anchor coverage of these revolutions and also fact check and do a bunch of things coming out of it. >> that is more low-tech. but maybe, participating in journalism is now easier than ever. >> not only low-tech but also rather old school. the basic principles i applied to this, these are the kinds of things i think anyone who is a cub reporter or studying journalism for the first time it makes sense to them. if i have only one source on twitter, that is not good enough. if there are 10 people on the ground all saying they're getting shot at and i know some of them don't know each other, more likelihood that you have a story here. so it is kind of strange

when you pick apart the methods that i use, it is really grounded in very traditional reporting methods. >> i love the -- fact that this kernel of community they did before this. the global voices community is what formed that initial germ that. >> right. >> that spread. >> i had interacted with a lot of those folks over the years developing online communities from disasters, the tsunami and hurricane katrina and haiti earthquake. there was a critical mass of people around the world were basically on call if somebody big happened. combine that, people wanting to volunteer online and wanting to help each other with a certain subset of them also political activists in their home countries it played some type of role. i'm not going to argue these were social media revolutions. i hate it when they say that because people had to die

for these revolutions to succeed in some places but you can not say that social media didn't have a part. the kernel of some of these solutions began because of those type of human elements. >> this is what i wanted to ask you because andy was doing this from thousands of miles away. you're right on the ground in oakland. how does, how, and i've heard you take before about, you know, the value of crowd sourcing and pitfalls of crowd sourcing, is there a new kind of vetting or editing or curating that needs to be done to make sure that what your, what oakland local does is valuable and credible? >> absolutely. oakland local was started in 2009. we made a decision to start it soon after a young man named oscar grant was shot on a subway platform was

shot by a police officer and on cell phones. there were issues of accountability. we found ourselves in the middle of covering this just as we found ourselves in the middle of occupying oakland which has been one of the strongest occupy movements. for us we have always relied on professional reporters on our team to help validate what's happening. so whether it was the demonstrations surrounding the death of oscar grant and the trial. whether it was occupy oakland, we never relied only on the crowd to validate information for us. we've maintained small, mobile newsrooms where we've actually had people at an event coming in off the street, a few blocks away, being able to file stories and up load content, deliver photos, where these are reporters were able to vet information. and the fact that we were able to combine that with the kind of information we're verying from the crowd has given our coverage a

depth and a diversity that i think a lot of other coverage hasn't necessarily been able to get but we're very, very scrupulous about not taking what's reported in social media as fact. we will say, people are saying this or we're hearing this or, you know, this is what's being said in the crowd. we'll report it as something that is being discussed but we try to really stay away from anything that we don't know is fact, reporting as fact because people have to be a credible resource. we kind of sit between the very large mainstream media that often kind of takes like the expected line and then people are really angry, ad then people who are very angry and saying a lot of things they are feeling. we try to be in the middle and be a constructive, credible resource that is on the ground. we take that very seriously. we also tried to -- i think that

reflection is important. when an immediate event is over, we are assiduous about making sure the people who want to write off bads or statements -- op-eds or statements have the option to do so. we will post those on facebook. in places where there are huge digital divide issues, underserved communities -- people get trapped. people are good at facebook. there is a lot of incredible work on facebook. if we did not surface that, a lot of people on these networks may not see it. we work with them to help push some of their content so that people outside of their immediate communities can get a sense of what the thinking was. >> on yahoo.com use, yahoo news,

how you use social media? >> you look at it a couple of ways. it is the primary early warning system. it is what you look at to understand -- you are looking at a velocity. you are looking at what is taking off. what has gone from 0 to 60 in 30 minutes. in that way, it is purely a newsroom tool to indicate, hey, we need to start looking at this. during that in real time. the other thing is looking at how you can begin to look at multiple social media platforms and systems together into a narrative. i am not going to say that we have done that in a way that we found it satisfactory. that is the other interesting

thing we are trying to struggle with -- how you tell a story, how you creed in narrative, a dynamic narrative, not just take a bunch of tweets and publisher story. an article is not the story. collecting tweets is not the narrative. that is the thing we are looking to try and capture, particularly after a major event. >> you mentioned professional journalists. in a time when the social media platforms are becoming more ubiquitous and powerful, what does it mean to be a professional journalist? >> oakland local has a team of 15 people who work on a free- lance basis. we do not have any full-time

paid staff. we're producing a lot of content in a model that is there a different than what has been done before. we train our professional journalists to affirm the importance -- we train any community contributors, who like to rally around a certain topic, food, justice, things they are passionate about, we train them for professional journalism standards. we talk to them about being thorough and accurate. we really believe in thoroughness and accuracy and transparency. we do not -- having these community guidelines that go up into actual professional standards. we are trying to combine community voices with a high standard of telling a story that needs to be told.

people have really appreciated that. we have never gotten any negative feedback and people we work with. >> in my first job in newspapers, years ago, my editor was a great editor. he told me something i have never forgotten. remember, hundreds of people will read your story who will know more about your story than you do. it is understanding that our job is not to know -- our job is to try to find out as much as we can and convey it in the most responsible and accurate way and the most timely way. in recent that -- -- increasing that -- every story we work on, there are perhaps millions of people who know more than we do. our job is to connect those people with our audience. >> oakland local puts an

emphasis on working with people who live in oakland. we do not have reporters to drive home to a suburb. we prefer that our reporters covering an area live in that area. if you want to write about east oakland? it is even better if you live in some part of east oakland. we want nuanced coverage, -- it is coming in from the helicopter level. our staff has a much deeper understanding of the history, the contentious problems. they're able to bring that to the front. what you are talking about is totally right. we try to have a degree not only of respect, but of sensitivity to the fact that we are writing from a position in the community. there is no us and them. it his office -- all of us. >> as many of us in the valley

have often encountered, sometimes there are pieces about technology in mainstream journalism that are amazingly 90. you feel there be 100 people in a one-mile radius kuwait in much better. -- who could weigh in a much better. some of this information is not organized as much as other people's knowledge. sometimes you have to sink in weeks of work to produce something -- an investigative piece. that is not possible with social media. part of what social media is doing is that it is taking away stuff that you have to do because nobody is doing it. some of the on the street reporting that is now coming to you.

some of the curation that other people are not willing to do. it allows journalists to focus on something even more challenging, during the in-depth pieces. >> we have a journalism program. i will ask each of you to imagine that you are the director of the journalism program, and you need to think of one or two things that every journalism student needs to know about curating, aggregating, using these social media programs. what is important to know? >> they have the ability to be a community organizer, in the sense that, if you are going to interact with people online, you have to be prepared, on what level, to serve almost as a master of ceremonies, bringing people together to coast and

relinquishing some of the power associated with that. facilitating a conversation with everybody to upgrade the journals and your strive for. so most people can be taught how to take topics and call that curating. but it should be a lot more nuanced than that. if you are going to do this well, you want to tap directly into your community's subject matter expertise, your personal experience, etc. i would not be able to do what i have done over the last 15 or 16 months if it were not for the fact that a lot of people on twitter who know more about these countries than i ever could if i had studied them for the rest of my life. >> when i was a young reporter,

becoming a community organizer would be a huge paradigm shift. you worked in a news organization that is a pretty substantial establishment. how is the community organizing part of that? >> i am at somewhat of an aberration. part of my job is to experiment. that said, more and more reporters at npr are expanding their social graf, it is sometimes called, the space within the social media world of the people they know, how the fine people and called of resources, how they ideally get them to talk to each other. -- how they find people and cultivate sources. how they get them to talk to each other. they're expanding and diversifying their sources. how many talking heads do we see every single day on tv or on whatever medium just because we

are comfortable with our current rolodex? one of the greatest services social media provides is to not have to fall back on that same set of people. more diverse resources and will be better. i see things happening with reporters all the time. they do not have to have a mashable article written about what they have done, because it is so routine to talk to their twitter followers and get things going. >> one way to think about it as a community organizer -- you could just think of it as developing your sources. i think that, in a weird way, if you are talking about what skills a young student needs, tell them to go to a 12-year- old. to get 10-year-old son of to get

you to build a story -- that is difficult journalism. building sources is now how we develop our stores. there were times when developing sources meant you went to the bar where you know the cops went after work and you bought drinks. that is not how you develop sources now. >> i also think that a young journalist today, one thing that has changed is that trying to write in journalism-speak does not work. i believe in the value of research and reported stories. i am a huge fan of investigative reporting. but when i see people trying to copy the voice of "the new york times" in a small, local entity, i shake my head. it is important to recognize that you are writing for real people that you need to connect with.

the need to write with them -- for them in an accessible voice. i'm a huge -- i am a huge fan of "news day" which really brought the content of "the new york times" to a better -- to a more clear voice. they do not have the synonymists journalistic mantle of the fake journalist speak. there is a phony tone that journalist speak, just like in press releases. the role is to find out your own voice -- combine your own voice with a credible research that you need. to try not to play a role. journalists plan a row is over. -- role is over. that can be a hard thing to learn when people are so

admired. >> the style that they called "the voice from nowhere." >> the first and foremost, partially what susan is saying, if you are writing for a local audience, try to have a voice that -- do not underestimate what your audience once. part of that is going even further and going into the experience of the individual, creating an experience that so do not be afraid of technology. work shoulder to shoulder with technologists, computer scientists, designers, to build an experience that works for the audience you want to go after. all right?

then the role of news is that you are a guide, you are a community organizer. you're not an oracle, you're somebody who is walking with that person through the maze of information, helping them experience it in a way that works for them. so that's what you're trying to do. this is the experience you want to create. additionally, perhaps you also want to create original reporting that is going to be used worldwide because imagine in addition to the current audience, the rest of the world that may also draw from here. firstly, you have to do original journalism because there is way too much redundancy out there so focus on your assistant and try to figure out -- on your strengths and try to figure out that way. so trying to find a good market for what you are producing, not just for the audience you originally intend it for but

more broadly. there have been, you know, part technologist, part designer, part businessman the >> just to add to what susan said, it's the real important to not sacrifice your sense of humanity for the sense of seeming more professional. unfortunately, as some reporters or journalists in general become more successful, the more distant they seem from their communities, it can be very hard to relate to people who have become very, very successful and see their world in a somewhat elite way now, whereas there is so much to social media that's about authenticity and i go out of my way 0 to not just talk about journalism and what's going on in the news on my twitter account. i talk about going out and adopting a dog or my kids have the flu and they just threw up

on my computer or whatever. >> ew! >> ew, but that's what happens. part if -- of it is to remind them i'm not just a bought sending out tweets the one person just described the real banal stuff on twitter, people talking auppings with -- about what they had for lunch as a form much social grooming, like the great apes sitting around grooming each other. the reason you're doing that is you're investing in the relationship. it may not seem important at the time but when things hit the fan, they've got your back. so if it's a slow news day or weekend or whatever, i still keep talking to people. if they ask a question that has nothing to do with the job but i know the answer, i stop and take the time to answer it. it is reinforcing those bonds the >> abandon ummedsing that there

is not -- conflict between eath incidentic and professional is critical. i would say that the flip side to that is the ease with which you move from eath incidentic to sort of a journalism afirmation, that if you think about i am writing with a voice for an audience, the degree to which it begins to become a television form of journalism and that's sort of the bad side of what is a good development i think in news, to basically say no, our voice should be eath incidentic, should be accessible. but our voice should still be a journalistic voice. it should still be talking to a total audience and presenting the full story as opposed to potentially flipping into a we're just going to tell you what you want to hear or tell you what you know you're going to get from us day in and day out. >> i also think social media

has really reached out because of the crowd sourcing functions, what we think of as news. traditional news is all about conflict. going to cover crime, people fighting, people doing bad things, all that news at night that you can't sleep after you watch it. the social media has helped with more stories and issues than the traditional conflict models that were considered news up until fairly recently. i think of news as being stories of discovery, things that need to be brought to light and talked about, sort of a positive and negative. it can be an expose, it can be speaking truth to power, but there's a lot of news that people have shown they're very happy to have that doesn't fit that traditional conflict model and i think social media has made it more obvious that there are other ways to think of what news is and that people will consume that kind of information the >> we're going to open this up to questions from the audience

so if you would like to ask a question, please make your way to the microphone. while people are doing that, back to you, andy. tell the story about -- the hope story. the blogger who hasn't -- don't give away too much here. [laughter] >> i just did. >> you just did. that's ok. so there have been all sorts of crazy stories that have happened over the last year, especially related to the arab spring. one that came to light last june had to do with a blogerer, a syrian-american woman based in damascus who had been very active in online communities for five or six years, moved to damascus a few months before the revolution started and when the revel lution started she became an incredible voice for what was going on on the ground. news organizations began to interview her. the guardian, bbc, cnn, she became a bit of a celebrity in

the journalism world. then one day in june a relative of hers posted on her blog that she had been kidnapped by state security or something like that. immediately people began to mobilize. they began to put together facebook pages to support her cause, creating avenue tars for people to news solidarity. some organized protests at the syrian embassies. y was very -- was very interested in finding people who knew her to find a sense of how much danger she might truly be in. as i started asking around i started getting messages from my contacts in syria and they were saying well, i'm part of the local gay community here and i never heard of here. others would say i haven't met her. each would pass me onto someone else. i got to the point i was saying

does anyone know anyone who has met her in person? it final by -- finely got to the point where i contacted the reporter at the guardian who did the very first interview, interviewed her in person and he said what can you tell me about this person. what they told me is that the two of them had skyped through texting each other for a few days to get background information, then they agreed to meet in person at a cafe and if one or the other didn't show up within a certain period of time they would assume they had been compromised and regroup later. so the blogger sent a photo to the report r, said this is what i look like. you will find me here. the reporter showed up, waited and waited and waited and she wasn't there. so she went back and contacted her through the phone or whatever back channel they had and the blog said i was followed, they're following me more an more, i can't do this, let's drop the whole thing, i can't meet you much the reporter said that's ok, i think i've got enough

background material, i'm going to go file the story. the story was filed and the story said the interview had taken place in person which gave license to all the other organizations to interview her through email or texting or skype. then a serbian woman surfaced saying why the hell is this blogger using my photograph? and all the photos on the blogger's facebook page were stolen from this serbian woman's facebook account. so all of a sudden this became a mad dash online to figure out what on earth was on -- going on here. some people assumed that because she was gay and involved in revolutionary politics, she just had covered her tracks very, very well. others thought she was a moll plant -- mole planted by the security services, and a few people thought it was a hoax. but she had been on line for

six years. she was part of yahoo groups back to 004 and 2005. my twitter followers kept digging and digging, looking through tax records, property records, tracing i.p. addresses, the little code for any computer connected to the internet. after a week of this a couple bloggers final i -- finally decided they found who it was. his name was tom mcmaster and he was an american living in scotland and going to grad school there. for about 48 hours he said it wasn't him. but eventually a colleague of mine and i were able to look through some of his wife's photos on a social networking site that matched the meta-data, you know, the background material of the photos that the gay girl character had sent to her online girlfriend. she was dating someone online and that person never knew that she was a guy. but that ended up sealing it

and she finally -- he finally came oit and confessed the whole thing was a hoax and he had created the character five or six years ago because he wanted to have more eighth -- eath incidentic conversations from the -- from people in the middle east. why he changed the character from straight to gay and started posting on personal web sites around the world, that's a whole 'nother matter the >> ok. time for questions. quickly identify yourself. >> my name is janine and i covered much of the beginnings of the arab revolution for the "washington post." krishna, if only it were true about all social media leading to an exention of journalism and long term projects we would all be so much better off. andy, i agree with you that reporters using twitter and facebook to find leads is phenomenal. i was in bare ane -- bahrain when it all started and i found

that. i did it in saudi arabia, all these places like you did from washington. but what is happening in social media right now, i think it's the era of noise and i worry deeply about what will tralked -- talked about with the fragmentation and i'm not sure we as a society and public are better informed about issues because of this phenomenon. i think there is still a role and need for places like "the new york times" which has been repeatedly bashed today, for what jim was talking about, a trained journalist you can go to and rely on and more importantly flow -- knowing the difference between a trained, well researched article and a blog post by somebody who doesn't have that kind be training. i don't think younger readers like the students i teach today know the difference between these things. >> well, for the record i said the exact opposite. i said social media is not going to replace investigative journalism. that's going to take a

considerable amount of evident by a professional. that said, i do think there is going to be a way to find leads and sources and data online that could in sum be journalism. but i agree with you that one area where it's not going to replace traditional journalism. >> i'm pretty sewer shy -- pretty sure i agree with everything you said. there is always ail place for hard core journalism on the field. i find it funny when people say well, what you are doing had ultimately get rid of reporters on the ground. why do people assume that? why can't this be comple implementary to the kind of journalism that exists. no one is trying to destroy people's jobs or pull them out

of their bureaus or field offices around the country. the bigger issue is of people not being able to tell the difference between professional, vetted journalism and what other people are posting, that's not my faultd. that's a failure in media literacy in our society and i think it's important that more people who are involved in news become part of the conversation around media liltrassy because this is a trend that's been going on for well over a generation now. i'd like to think there are aspects of social media that could actually help correct part of it. sure, there will always be idiots geeting that george loony -- tweeting that george clooney has died yet again. but i don't worry about the noise. as some have said, it's not about information overload, it's filter failure. once you become more accustomed to sorting out what to pay attention to and what to ignore and who say better source and

who is not, things begin to come into focus. all this takes practice. it's a different form of literacy. most people won't necessarily get it overnight so we need to spend some time thinking about the implications of all that. >> i also think it's real important not to make assumptions about privilege. the "new york times" is a fantastic organization but it's been heavily representative of male reporters, though it's being led by a woman now and of people who are middle class and above and i'm very, very concerned that social media has offered as great a diversity of voices. i totally agree with that -- you that there is noise and that investigative journalism is very, very important, but i would tate -- hate to give all the power back to mainstream organizations because a lot of the people i mare -- hear from, i wouldn't hear from any more.

and i want to hear from those people. >> i think it's fair to ask the question whether the explosion of social media and the ways in which hts shaping the national narrative has made it better. i would say it hasn't made it worse and that the challenge for us in media is not to say how can we stop this? how can we build more walls? how can we build the gate when the wall has already fallen down? our challenge is to say ok, that's now the media face. that's the world our audience is living in. how do we use it to create the narrative that actually means something? what i find frustrating sometimes is that there is a tendency in media, particularly in certain parts of media, to play defense and to say no, no, we don't like this. we don't like the way it's changing. how can we stop it, how can we turn it back to what we were

comfortable with? as opposed to saying no, it really is about our audience. it's about what they're doing and how they're engaging ond our job is to engage them, provide them the information. and that's what we're here doing. our job is to be professional journalists, not to be newspaper reporters or to be broadcast reporters. and as soon as we begin fixating on the method that we knew when we started the job -- >> well, i'm not disagreeing with you, but one of the issues in professionalization is that the rise of i would say the rise of social media and news had come at the same time that there's been a huge loss of prism -- professional journalism jobs, something like 40,000 in the united states alone. one of president reasons the mainstream media was slow to

get on to tunisia is that there weren't many reporters there to see it. so i think the false notion that somehow social media will replace professional journalism, there is sometimes today that equation made. >> right. no, you hear it all the timend i think people who say that journalism is dying don't separate journalism from the platforms of -- and the economics of journalism. they're very different things. and so the reality is that social media has become a part of our world and certain aspect of journalism, certain types of stories within reporting require engaging people in the public sphere. you can't say that facebook and twitter and all these other spaces are not part of the public 12350er -- sphere. so i spend time on twitter because that's where some of my sources happen to be. i do the same thing on facebook and elsewhere.

when i'm able to meet them in person, i'm thrilled but i don't have the resources to get on a plane and be in tahrir square on a regular basis. when the fighting in libya started, none of us were allowed in the country the first few weeks. we had no choice but to rely on people on the ground who still had internet access and were able to share it. it was our job to vet it and figure out what was accurate and piece it all together. there will always be times we can't be where we want to be the i wish we could have a more nuances -- nuanced conference about this instead of assuming everything is black or white or good or bad. >> you have said these two things happen at the same time but correlation doesn't mean -- >> no -- what really happened is the internet took amay -- away the monopoly that media companies

had on -- to deliver information and commerce to the doorstep. that went away. you could get ads to consumers other ways. people could take it or leave it. now when you put news out, in the past they were forced to get your paper because it was the only one in town. so social media is in some sense allowing, could correct forsome of those problems. >> please direct your question to one particular -- >> i can direct my question directly to susan. based on something that you said about the phony tone of traditional journalist speak being overly objective no longer fitting with our culture. part of what we've been asking throughout the panel is what is a professional journalist and what is a professional

journalist's role? frankly i think the goaling of objectivity should always be paramount. it is an elusive goal, it is something that cannot be fully achieved. but if we don't train our professionals to at haste try to be objective, to try to use their abilities as filters of this new social media in objective ways, we're doomed. so i think part of what i'm asking is, do you really mean to though the baby out with the bath water and say objectivity, eh, that's yesteryear and we should go forward with more subjective journalism and what journalists should be doing is providing analysis from a subjective point of view? or did you mean actually objectivity needs to evolve? >> that's a great question because i agree with you 100%. i like to combine the idea of objectivity with the idea of transparency, which means we're

objective within the framework of who we are and ha we believe. as a mog person, anything i choose to feature as important is a reflection of my values and my interests. so on that level all of us have an agenda and the important thing for journalism today is for us to be transparent about what that is, to teach objectivity, those principles are totally essential. it's one of the things we want to hold onto but not to say because i'm a journalist, i'm objective, the high priest of objectivity, but to say i'm trying to be object've but here's where i'm coming from. >> i think there say fallacy that every component avenue -- of news media has to be objective for the consumer to get an objective viewpoint. sometimes the best arguments are made by people who feel passionately that one side of the argument is drefpblgt that's fine. you don't have to listen to

them directly. you can listen to the people -- person who is guiding you through the many facets the that's what happens in a court of law. you have attorneys come in who are pretty strong arguers. so the so-called objective reporting on climate change, we talked to these people and those people and it could be either way. part of it is the responsibility of the person interpreting the news is to say here's the strongest argument on both sides and guide you to that, not ride -- hiding any of them from view. social media plays that role. there are people there who have a reputation purely because they interpret the news and they look at many strong advocates and say timely i think this is what you need to believe. so i think it's actually creating an opportunity for those who want to gain respect in social networks by providing the objective viewpoint and i think there's something really important here, the distinction

between objectivity and balance. i'm sorry, but balance in everything is phony. you know, basically, you know, would dodd frank have prevented the j.p. morgan chase crater? either yes or no? there's not one says no, another says yes. that in my mind lazy reporting. so i think there is -- and authenticity and objectivity do not need to be, you know, mutually exclusive. but phony balance, which is where a lot of us, like you've only quoted democrats, you have to go quote republicans, that's not objectivity. >> i'm deb petersen. social media director at the news group which includes the "san jose mercury news." a comment first and then a question. a degree with andy. i caution because i think the

conversation does need to be a little more nuanced when we're talking about traditional media. i invite any of you to come to our news room and you won't recognize what it is compared to, say, two years ago. you know, we are on pinterest, we feet -- tweet, we're on facebook, tweet deck is running all day. we have a community engagement teem -- team, our news media in the morning starts digitally with the web site. so it's a different news room than it used to be and many news rooms are so it's not really kind of a -- i don't think it's as much a black and white conversation -- and it's very difficult to not talk about it in black and white terms. and you guys, it's great to hear you bringing all this up. our problem continues to be to monetize. so i would ask the tech company reps to give us some ideas for

that. i would love to see next year that to be p -- the topic the thank you. >> we'll let will and krishna answer nafment i'm a tech guy, but i'm an editor. as i keep getting lectured, i'm just a call center. >> oh! >> but no, i think that -- i think the one thing, and maybe krishna can provide better insight here, but at least for us, it is still fundamentally about the audience. and whenever someone sort of it looking for a silver bullet that, ooh, isn't this the new thing that's going to final by basically turn on this mythical ad spigot connected to a new platform, it's almost never there. and i think ha we found is in fact there's like a million silver b.b.'s and it's finding

the way you can monetize what we have always done, which is providing advertisers a way to connect with and access the audience and doing it in either as targeted and therefore high cpm or mass and therefore lower cpm as possible. as far as i have seen and hopefully there are smarter ad guys at i can't ooh han they, there is no silver bullet, no new magical monetization that's going to come down the pike tomorrow. >> so i agree with will. if there were a silver bullet we'd have seen it by now. we cannot change fundamentally when monday ol -- monopolies disappear so we've got to figure out what it's going to be that will pay the salaries of people who do substantial journalism. part of that is to walk away

from the idea that everybody covers the same thing. so if finally the publications that will succeed, and unfortunately for the ones that are going to actually focus on building something that is unique, has unique value and that causes people to prefer them over other options. that's one thing. secondly the experience is what is going to get monetized. it's not the individual units of reporting. we all understand that. that requires innovation. again, not everybody is going to succeed. the companies that are going to succeed are the ones who are going to have the best experience. where people say the only options available to me are i will use this service, it's something that exposes the entire world of news to me in a

manner that works for me, that adepths to me, that knows my interests. so here's where embracing the opportunity that the open web provides, that social media provides and at the same time trying to rise above the competition in terms of experience is going to allow to you command that massive audience that's going to help you pay your journalists. but i think there's going to be efficiencies that technology brings in in terms of how much it costs to do the reporting. there are example of the kind of equipment you need to buy to do journalism in the field. well, that's rapidly becoming cheaper. that's one example. and the technology being applied on the other side in monetization, making it more, you know, lucrative by not necessarily tethering the ads to the article in question, are you going to make the ad that

because it's about iraq or about what the user is likely to buy at this point? so being smarter about the way you make money and being efficient in the way you actually use your money to do journalism i think is going to drive down costs and increase revenue but ultimately it's the most innovative company that's going to succeed. there is a lot of innovation going on right now and i am hopeful some will try and distinguish themselves. >> i want to say while i think it's great for people to use social media and social media tools, using the toolss isn't going to make you successful with this new generation of business models. in oakland there are a lot of people that we would like to collaborate with who would really like to see us disappear because they see us as a theat so i'm kind of cynical about news entities that don't link out, don't have partnerships,

yet talk about how they're the next generation. npr and the atlantic are woth -- both fabulous examples of organizations that have reinvented themselves, started as legacy media but have really linked out, partnered, really been very open to supporting new entities. there is a lot of lip service from newspaper companies. they want to be community drinken but none of them has ever offered to do anything that would be beneficiary to us. that has to change. they have to walk the talk all the way. going halfway is nice. not enough. >> i'm john grakin. i'm not a reporter, i'm not a journalist. i'm an ex-engineer who has been accused of having fortran as

his native language. i'm not able to direct this to any single person the if i did, which i don't, tweet and plog and manage to get more than any own family to listen to what i am tweeting and plogging, can i declare myself to be a journalist and veil myself with the protections that have evolved over law protecting journalists and their sources? >> um why don't you, you probably have the most experience with the issue. >> there is a man who -- a woman who lost a very expensive lawsuit because the court ruled she was a blogger, not a journalist. so this is a very painful, controversial area. there are no universally held standards. people have the power to publish, to take product endorsements, to do things they

may think are professional but may not meet the standards of journalism. we worry about this all the time. we have insurance, libel insurance, and at oakland local we vet everything that isn't published as a community voices piece. there are things that can go up on the site that are just people's opinions. they have to follow terms of vfer guidelines around no slander, but i think you're raising a great point. it's a complete gray area, right? this is an area where we don't really have a set model yet. >> free speech can have conflicts with legal requirements, right? >> to get to krishna's point from earlier, it's a continuum and that's the challenging part. it's not just a gray area. it's that there are so many points along the continuum that, you know, at what point does the legal opinion stand?

add what -- at what point on the continuum? and how do you measure in each individual case where someone is on that continuum. i don't think it's any clearer. >> my sense of it is that there is a move from side to -- trying to decide who is a journalist, which is a personal status sort of question, to who is doing journalism, and protecting the act of doing journalism as opposed to the individual. but it is a very murky area of the law right now for all the reasons we've been talking about, who is a journalist? who is a professional? and so on. so we'll have to solve that one for next year's symposium. we're going to have to wrap up and i'm going to ask each of the participants to give us a quick to middling idea of what happens next in this realm of the impact of social media on

the news. crashe -- krishna, i'll start with you once again. ? i think it's a good tomorrowation i see in the next decade, traditional media realizing that in order to thrive they need to be part creator and part curator. and i think becoming the trusted guide that takes you through that journey is going to allow them to ultimately succeed. >> no doubt we're going to continue to be more networked. the internet is going to continue to be more affordable. new tools are going to make it easier for people to connect and contribute to public discourse which makes me all the more fearful for the people who are still left behind because we take -- it's easy to take for granted that we are connected with the public as a news organization, whereas in reality we're connected with the public that is online. there's a reason why you don't see people live tweeting from congo.

there are reasons you don't see people doing citizen journalism from certain neighborhoods in washington, d.c. and we ignore that at our peril. >> i think we're going to see more and more collaboration and that a lot of the collaborations are going to be not only between different kinds of organizations but more that are being done with news. i'm thinking about the kged youth radio collaboration in oakland on prostitution in a certain neighborhood in east oakland that won a pea body award. that wouldn't have happened five years ago. i think we're going to see more and more of people teaming up together to really create content they couldn't do otherwise with you -- but really bringing in communities of use we might not have looked to to be part of the team. ? i think what we're going to see and hopefully not in the next decade is the point at which

the social graph, the interest graph, the local graph all overhappen into some common interface and that media becomes less about this fragmented experience and more about a new sort of narrative paradigm. i do think that's the point at which social media becomes massively disruptive to the current media experience. on the one hand it's fascinating, wonderful and i hope we do it. on the other hand, watch out. >> will, susan, andy, krishna, thank you very much for your participation today. [applause] and thank you to the department of communications for sponsoring this and thank you to all of you for joining us here today. please join us for a reception right outside now. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

[inaudible conversations] >> house and senate gavel in in about 10 minutes at the weeklong fourth of july break. >> i don't mean to sound like i want to go crazy and quote regulate the internet on the other hand i don't think the

internet should exist as a place outside the law. >> the u.s. senate is about to gavel in after a weeklong fourth of july break and senators planned can continue debate on a bill providing businesses tax breaks. we talked a reporter who is following this week's senate action. >> niels lesniewski sin yearrl watch at congressional weekly. a been hearing about howob president obama is poised forama new fight on extending tax cuts. he plans to announce today from the white house that he wouldhom like to see those middle-class tax cuts for those make in under $250,000 extended for one year. how will congress under s only for

those with incomes of less than 50,000. the senate in fact, has also had votes on extending the tax cuts for those under $1 million, a plan pushed by new york democrat chuck schumer, and that similarly went nowhere, failed to get the 60 votes that are normally needed to overcome a filibuster in the senate. there's no reason to expect that will be any different this time. host: congress returns today after the july 4 break. we had journalists on talking about whether or not anything will actually get done this summer before they head out for campaign season. you expect to see happen in the coming weeks? like mostestly, people, i'm not terribly

optimistic. the signs are not pointing in the favor of getting a whole lot done between now and the election. certainly when they come back in september after the august break, they will have to deal with funding the government beyond september 30. the house has been working through appropriation bills. they're going to keep working through appropriation bills. but they haven't been doing that in the senate so far. and there's talk they may take one or two up before the end of september. but it doesn't look like there's going to be very much change in that regard either is we're looking forward to some sort of continuing resolution to keep callers. right before congress left for

the july 4 recess the supreme court upheld president obama's health care law. we heard our cries from republicans talking about repeals. what will we see this week? >> guest: this week the house will take up a bill that would repeal all of the health care components of the two pieces of president obama's health care law and that bill is expected to pass the house and is also to be expected to go nowhere once it reaches the senate where of of course majority leader harry reid and the democrats are in control. there may be a push by some senate republicans to get a vote on repeal or at least a vote on repeal of the provisions that were called into question by the supreme court about the tax penalty and chief justice roberts calling the mandate a tax, given some new fire to people trying to appeal back, although that similarly isn't

expected to go very far in the senate. >> host: let's get to the phones and hear what bill's essay. a democratic color in chicago, illinois. good morning, though. >> caller: hey. what i don't understand is how the republicans -- [inaudible] >> it again the senate will be gaveling in less than five minutes and we will have that life for you here is always on c-span2. >> i don't mean to sound like i want to go crazy and quote regulate the internet. on the other hand i don't believe the internet should exist as a place outside the law.

>> the senate convenes at 2:00, in about two minutes. a proposal for helping small

business this election-year by creating a tax break for each new hire and expanding tax exhibits for buying new equipment. this is a preliminary vote to advance the measure which would cost $26 billion over a decade. it set for tomorrow afternoon.

' the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray.

king of creation, your faithfulness reaches to the skies. may every nation on earth exalt you as king of kings and lord of lords. today, remind us of your strength and grace for you are mighty to save and gracious to all who seek your face. lord, move in our midst and shower our senators with wisdom and courage to unite in a common quest to solve the difficult issues of our times. protect this nation from

dangers see and unseen and continue to equip our brave military and civilian protectors with your full armor. we pray in your strong name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c, july 9, 2012. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable

richard blumenthal, a senator from the state of connecticut, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i now move to proceed to calendar number 3041, s. 2237. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar number 341, s. 2237, a bill to provide a temporary income tax credit for increased payroll and extend bonus depreciation for another year and for additional purposes. mr. reid: mr. president, there will be no roll call votes tod today. the first vote will be tomorrow at 12:00 noon on the confirmation of folks to become a district court judge. h.r. 4018 is at the desk due for its second reading. [inaudible] the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the second time. clesh h.r. 4018, an act to

improve the public safety officers benefits program. mr. reid: mr. president, i object to any further proceedings to this legislation now. the presiding officer: the objection having been heard, the measure will be placed on the calendar. mr. reid: mr. president, last month we got a lot done. it was incredibly productive. congress and president obama worked together to prevent interest rates from doubling for more than 7 million college students and we also worked to put 2.8 million americans back to work or create new jobs to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges, and other parts of our transportation system. we passed an f.d.a. bill which was so necessary to focus on why we have, among other things, why we have these shortages of lifesaving drugs. we also passed something that will allow the construction industry to go forward by

passing flood insurance for the entire county. we passed a farm bill that will strengthen the agriculture industry, supporting some 16 million jobs. we were able to accomplish this much last month because republicans and democrats worked together and compromised. rather than wasting time participating in political theater, we actually legislated. i'd hope to continue that productive process in this work period, characterized by cooperation between lawmakers on both sides of the capitol and between both chambers. unfortunately, we already know that our colleagues in the house are going to waste much of their short work period refighting very, very old battles. republicans indicated that they would support the ruling of the supreme court. they, in effect, said the

supreme court's going to decide this matter regarding the affordable health care. well, they've changed their tu tune. mitt romney has said he would nominate supreme court justices just like justice roberts. i wonder if he's saying that to his right-wing base today. but now that the court has upheld this landmark health care reform with a majority decision written by justice roberts, republicans refuse to admit the matter is settled. this week the house will vote -- mr. president, this is almost hard to comprehend -- for the 31st time to repeal health care reform. they've already voted 30 times. speaker boehner said, let's do it again. 31 times. 31 times, taking many, many hours, many, many days that should have been gone -- should have been spent toward creating jobs. congressional republicans have spent months trying to repeal a

law that's already saved lives and made people more safe in their -- as they look at health care in this country. so, mr. president, while house republicans hold a political show vote, the senate will take a different approach. we're going to continue to try to be productive, focus on jobs. while republicans are stuck in the past, we'll be addressing the most pressing issues facing this nation: creating jobs and securing the economy. last week's jobs report underscored the fact that congress must could more to strength addition must do more to strengthen the recovery. so the senate will immediately consider a package of commonsense tax cuts that will lower the cost of doing business for small business and pave the way for these small businesses to succeed. our legislation will cut taxes for small firms and invest in

new workers and equipment. the small business jobs and relief act will provide a 10% tax credit for companies that add up to $5 million to their payroll, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. businesses are eligible for a tax break if they hire new workers or if they raise the wages of hardworking employees already on their payroll. and because the credit is capped at $500,000, it is targeted to benefit small businesses the most. the legislation will also allow companies to write off the entire cost of purchases, such as new equipment. they'll be able to do it in the year the purchases are made instead of writing them off over long periods of time. more than 2 million companies could get a boost to their bottom line, creating hundreds of thousands of more jobs. proposals like these have garnered republican support in the past. i hope they'll receive the same bipartisan support again tomorrow. after our weekly caucus meetings

tomorrow, the senate will vote to end a republican filibuster and begin debate these tax cuts. democrats can't undertake the work of strengthening our economy alone. we'll need republican support, which is judge we proposed consensus tax cuts that should pass the senate overwhelmingly. it was good to see so many reasonable republicans willing to work with us last month to save college students money, rebuild the nation's infrastructure and protect american farmers. tomorrow republicans will have an opportunity to prove they're willing to continue to work with us to create middle-class jobs. mr. president, would the chair announce the business of the day. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, senators are permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. mr. reid: mr. president, i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

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mr. kyl: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. kyl: i ask unanimous consent further proceedings on the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: and that if i may address the senate as if in morning business for 20 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: thank you, mr. president. fairness has become one of the watch words in this year's political gates dwaits both at home and abroad. the term echoes throughout europe where angela merkel is under pressure to come up with billions in bailouts for

eurozone up countries. it is considered unfair by many even know germans have sacrificed to live within their means, for example, by forgoing wage increases to avoid the problems of their neighbors. here in the united states, president obama and his supporters have used fairness as a justification for various redistributionist policies including a massive tax hike, a government takeover of health care, complex financial regulations, and new government spending programs. the president and his supporters believe that the federal government should pursue policies that will result in economic equalities you quality. -- equality. but forced equality is inherently unfair. it necessarily relies on the wrong incentives that penalize success. more fundamentally it is based on a shallow materialistic

definition of fairness. aristotle wrote -- quote -- "the worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." end of quote. contrary to the goal president obama pursues, the key determine nanlt of lasting happiness and the success is not whether you have as much money as your neighbor regardless of the differences between you. rather, it is what american enterprise institute president arthur brooks called earned success, and meritocratic fairness. people are happiness when they they have the opportunity to succeed and earn their rewards. sometimes we take risks and succeed. sometimes we nail. -- fail. sometimes we defer gratification by saving our money. maybe our neighbor doesn't. some of us are better at making money than others.

some deliberately earn less to enjoy or pursue other things in life. decisions about families result in very different economic circumstances. when the government tries to equalize everyone or take all the trouble out of life, by taking care of our every need, it makes earned success and me meritocarattic harder to achieve. it eliminates the experiences that make us resourceful and resilient, the experiences that teach us to work harder or smarter for our rewards. those who believe in earned success and merittic owe carattic fairness believe the best way to promote these concepts is through the free enterprise system, a system in which opportunity is sacred and excellence is rewarded. we reject the notion that it is fair to impose interventionallist and

redistributionist policies to guarantee material equality. as brooks notes -- quote -- "for the overwhelming majority of americans fairness means rewarding merit, not spreading the wealth around." in his new book "the road to freedom" brooks asks some nument questions related to the future of earned success, the pursuit of happiness. first, will we see a growing bureaucracies or more entrepreneurship? second, will we be a culture of redistribution or a culture of aspiration? third, will we be a nation of takers or a nation of makers? these are serious questions that will be answered in the long run not in one day or one year, or in one session of congress. but for now i would like to focus on the short term. how do recent government policies help answer these questions about what is really

fair? how does government spending and the staggering debt that comes with it affect bureaucracy and entrepreneurship? how does a redistributionist tax policy affect the aspirations of job creators and how does it affect the so-called makers in american society? let's take these brooks tuestions one at a time. first, will we see a growing bureaucracy or entrepreneurship? we all know entrepreneurship requires opportunity and private investment, but a burdensome federal government reduces opportunity and it crowds out private investment. let's take a look at the growth of government under president obama. since his inauguration in january, 2009, the federal debt has increased by more than $5 trillion, and it's rapidly approaching $16 trillion in total. meanwhile, the federal budget

deficit has exceeded $1 trillion four years in a row. the highest deficit before president obama was less than half that amount. how did our deficit and debt skyrocket so quickly? well, for starters, president obama's economic policies have resulted in slower g.d.p. growth, which means less tax revenue flowing to the treasury and more americans requiring government assistance. so government income is down. second, the president has dramatically increased government spending. prior to the 2008 fiscal crisis, the 40-year average for federal outlays was less than 21% of our gross domestic product, but under president obama, spending soared above 25% of the g.d.p. in 2009 and it's remained above 24% since then. this new spending has grown the federal bureaucracy and it has increased the regulatory burden

on families and businesses. for example, the president's 2,700-page health spending law created or codified at least 159 new boards, bureaucracies and programs, along with thousands of new pages of government regulations and more than 20 new taxes. a recent bloomberg news report notes that the president's health care law imposes $813 million in taxes on middle-class families and job creators. according to the congressional budget office. in total, it has imposed $24 billion in new regulatory costs on the private sector and states, as well as almost $59 billion annual appreciating hours on the economy. the 2010 dodd-frank law is a similar story. it is still creating countless new rules and its direct compliance costs have already exceeded $7 billion.

indeed, according to the financial services roundtable, dodd-frank will force more than 26,000 employees to comply with the law. other obama initiatives have failed to pass the congress but likewise would have expanded the bureaucracy and funneled resources from the private sector to the government. these initiatives include cap-and-trade, the deceptively named employee free choice act and the more recent paycheck fairness act. we need to get back to basics, mr. president. as congressman ryan has said, we need to make it easier for people to employ their right to rise. that means leaving more money in the private sector and reducing the size of the washington bureaucracy. we can start by stopping tax hikes and bills like obamacare that suck needed resources out of the economy and give unaccountable regulators immense power. now let's consider brooks' second question.

will we be a culture of redistribution or a culture of aspiration? public policy has a direct impact on economic aspiration and economic mobility. america has traditionally been an aspirational society with high levels of mobility, although president obama has made class warfare a central campaign tactic. we don't have a class system here in america. we don't have an american airs stock reacy or -- aristocracy or noble bloodlines. with unemployment stuck above 8% now for more than -- well, 41 consecutive months and the obama administration's preference for redistributionist policies, there is real concern that america's culture of aspiration may gradually be replaced by a culture of redistribution. look at the tax issue.

president obama wants to increase the top marginal income tax rates in order to expand the entitlement state and promote what he calls greater fairness in society. but what about the economic consequences of taking more money from successful people as the economy continues to struggle? the joint committee on taxation has told us that allowing the top two marginal income tax rates to rise from 33% and 35% to 36% and 39.6% respectively will hit 53% of net positive business income, and just under a million business owners overall. raising marginal tax rates is no way to encourage aspiration or job creation. it certainly imposes a wet blanket on the kind of risk taking that has helped build america. it's merely redistribution under the guise of social justice. the president's approach to investment is also hostile to

aspiration and risk taking. he has endorsed raising the top capital gains rate from 15% to 23.8%. he also wants to raise the top rate on dividends to 24.4%. the so-called buffett tax is yet another method of hiking taxes on investment. all of these taxes on investment reduce the value of the asset by reducing the after-tax return. our private economy runs on business investment, which is highly sensitive to tax rates, especially on capital gains and dividends. some of those who prefer higher taxes have argued that if taxes don't go up, those in the top brackets will just invest and save more, but that won't do much for job creation and economic growth. that's factually incorrect. saving does not mean throwing your money under a mattress or burying it in your back yard. anyone who saves money either puts it in the bank where it is lent to someone, often a business so they can hire more

people, purchase equipment or invest in stocks and bonds, or the money is directly invested in a stock or a bond which provides capital for the same purpose. in other words, savings actually puts the money saved to work, providing capital or somebody to do something with it, and that creates economic growth. if that increment of income is instead taken from those who earned it and spent by the government, the effect on the economy will almost always be a net negative. if we want to encourage aspiration, innovation and the job creation that comes with those things, is it really a good idea to raise the capital gains rate by almost 59% and nearly triple taxes on dividends even though these profits have already been taxed once at the corporate level? the president and some congressional democrats think so, but i strongly disagree.

now here is brooks' third question. will we be a nation of takers or a nation of makers? many have lamented the decline of the manufacturing base in america. although the u.s. is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, there's no doubt that policies from washington have made it more difficult for manufacturers -- and those are the economy's foremost makers -- to compete in global markets. the list of these policies is long. let me just explain a few. first, the corporate tax rate. at over 39%, our combined corporate tax rate is now the highest in the industrialized world. other countries are cutting their corporate tax rates to encourage economic growth, but we're doing nothing on the tax front to follow their lead and attract more investment to the united states. is there any wonder jobs are moving overseas? if not, whose fault is it? a company trying to return a profit to its investors or the government which makes it

impossible to compete with foreign corporations? look at energy. manufacturers rely on cheap sources of energy to produce products cheaply, yet president obama has stood in the way of domestic production of energy such as the keystone x.l. pipeline and worked tirelessly to punitively raise taxes on the oil and gas industries. new regulations on coal-fired power plants, emissions of greenhouse gases and industrial boilers will also hurt our economy. simply put, domestic makers are being hurt by the president's antienergy and pro-regulatory agenda. is this fair? why should americans pay more than the real economic cost of available american energy? and is it fair that a few corporations make billions because the government mandates that we buy ethanol from them? just to cite one example. now let's turn to labor.

manufacturers are also being burdened by union-dictated rules, including from the national labor relations board like the ambush elections rule and new rules on the establishment of microunions within the workplace. with anticompetitive tax, energy and labor policy, it will be increasingly difficult for our country to compete as a nation of makers. these are precisely the kind of policies that encourage employers to move jobs overseas, which hurts american workers and the greater economy. and this is required in the name of fairness. we're also trending towards being a nation of taking. the government is the biggest taker, but a majority of americans now take much more than they contribute. in tax year 2009, 51% of americans paid zero federal income taxes, according to the joint committee on taxation. over half of americans.

and these citizens take much more than their fellow citizens in government benefits. look at food stamps, for example. as my friend, senator sessions, has pointed out, food stamp spending has quadrupled since 2001. it's doubled just since 2008. a program that began as a benefit for one in 50 americans is now received by one in seven, he says. spending on food stamp welfare has increased 100% since president obama took office. some 80% of all spending in the recently passed farm bill will go toward food stamps. in total, there are 69 means-tested federal welfare programs costing taxpayers $940 billion every year, including both federal programs and the state contributions to those programs. the number of americans living

off the wealth of makers keeps growing and growing. there are nearly twice as many government workers today as there are in the manufacturing sector, meaning that there are more government workers than people making things and paying their salaries. is that fair? as economist steven moore noted -- and i'm quoting -- this is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960 when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government, end of quote. growth of taxpayer-funded dependency is directly connected with the growth in the economy. the more we make as a nation, the more wealth we generate, and the less people that rely on welfare to survive. to get there, we need aggressive, pro-growth policies in place to encourage free enterprise and discourage a nation of taking. it is neither fair to the makers nor those who must rely on the government for the president to

impose policies that reduce economic growth, reduce job creation, reduce savings and investment and reduce opportunity and freedom. so, mr. president, in conclusion , free enterprise and meritocratic policies are consistent with our declaration, as thomas jefferson declared, a wise and frugal government shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. will america remain the country our founders envisioned? or will we become a country where fairness means equal outcomes for all, dictated by the government? will we make it easier or harder for people to earn their success? and will the american people be happier if allowed to pursue their dreams, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, or if the government tries to force equal economic outcomes?

which is more normal? which is more fair? which is more american? a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: mr. president, if the distinguished whip will remain on the floor for a second. as i was passing through listening to his speech, i wanted to add some meat to this bones on the business of pass-through income and the small businesses that will be affected dramatically by the president's announcement today. for 22 years, i ran a subchapter s corporation. a subchapter s corporation passes through its revenues to its investors who pay it at the ordinary income tax rate of an individual. $250,000 is not an inordinate number for somebody who have passed through to them in the ownership of a subchapter s corporation. i passed the money through and pay them back based on the investment they made in the company that i ran. when you raise the tax on the

individual rate, then for a sub-s corporation and limited liability corporation or a limited partnership, you have two decisions to make as the runner of that operation. do you reduce your retained earning investment in your company to maintain the return to your investors at the same level, or do you continue to wind your company down because you can't distribute at the rate you used to distribute? it's very important to understand that which ever decision you make makes a direct negative impact on future hiring in that company. as the leader has said, 53% of all pass-through income becomes semiconductorred to the higher tax rate. 53%, over half. that's american small business. so i want to commend the leader because he's hit the heart of the story. this is a tax on the one thing we need the most. that's reinvestment of earnings to hire more people to build

more businesses in america. this has the exact opposite effect on the middle class that the president described. the second thing i want to point out real quickly is america suffers today economically from the uncertainty of what's going to happen postelection. the president has made a recommendation would extend that uncertainty for another year. the last thing american business needs to have is the uncertainty of when the next shoe is going to drop in terms of taxation on the middle class or any class. so i commend the leader for coming to the story to he will it the story about american business. we are not here to try to shelter the rich. we are here to empower business, have nor employees in the united states of america and empower our economy. i commend the whip for his remarks on the fluor floor and the yield back and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask we proceed to a period of morning business with senators allowed to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to calendar number 436, s. 1379. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: a bill to amend

title 11, district of columbia official code to provide certain administrative authorities for the district of columbia courts, and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will proceed to the measure. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the committee-reported amendments be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i know of no further debate on this bill, mr. president. the presiding officer: the question is on the passage of the bill as amended. all those in favor say aye. opposed? the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the bill as amended is passed. mr. reid: thanks. mr. president, i ask that the motion to reconsider that i just made be laid on the table.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: s. 3364 was introduced earlier today by senator stabenow. i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 3364, a bill to provide an incentive for businesses to bring jobs back to america. mr. reid: mr. president, i ask for its second reading but object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the bill will be read the second time on the next legislative day. mr. reid: i now ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. on tuesday, july 10, following the pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the leaders be reserved for use later in the day, that the majority leader be recognized -- that's me -- and that the first hour be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or designees with the majority controlling the first half and republicans the final half. at 11:30 the senate proceed to executive session under the previous order.

i further ask, mr. president, the senate recess from 12:30 until 2:15 tomorrow for weekly caucus meetings. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: so, mr. president, the first vote will be at noon tomorrow and the confirmation of fowlkes. there will be an additional roll call vote at 2:25 tomorrow or thereabouts on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the small business jobs and tax relief act. mr. president, if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask the senate adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate will be adjourned until senate will be adjourned until

>> on the other hand, i don't believe the internet should exist as a place outside the law. >> co-executive editor of the "wall street journal's online, all things d, walt on the future of personal technology and the relationships between technology makers and the federal government tonight at 8 eastern on "the communicators" on c- c-span2.

>> president obama called on congress today to extend tax cuts for low and middle income earners while allowing taxes to increase for families who make more than $250,000 a year. about a dozen people the white house said would benefit from the tax cut extension stood behind the president. his comments are about 15 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] thank you. [applause] thank you very much. thank you. [applause] everybody, have a seat, have a seat. well, good afternoon, everybody. good afternoon. >> i'm glad things have cooled off a little bit. i know folks were hot. [laughter]

we're here today to talk about taxes, something that everybody obviously cares deeply about. i've often said that our biggest challenge right now is not just to reclaim all of the jobs we lost to the recession. it's to reclaim the security that so many middle class americans have lost over the past decade. our core mission as an administration and as a country has to be, yes, putting people back to work, but also rebuilding an economy where that work pays off, an economy where everybody has the confidence where if you work hard, you can get ahead. what's holding us back from meeting these challenges is not a lack of plans. it's not a lack of ideas. it is a stalemate in this town, in washington, between two very different views about which direction we should go in as a country, and nowhere is that

stalemate more pronounced than on the issue of taxes. many members of the other party believe that prosperity comes from the top down so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest americans that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth. i disagree. i think they are wrong. i believe our prosperity always comes from an economy that's built on a strong and growing middle class, one that can afford to buy the products that our businesses sell, a middle class that can own homes and send kids to college and save enough to retire on. that's why i've cut middle class taxes every year that i've been president. $3600 for the middle class family. let me repeat.

since i've been in oches, we cut taxes for the average middle class family by $3600. [applause] i wanted to repeat that because there's a little misinformation out there and folks get confused about it. moreover, we tried it there way. it didn't work. at the beginning of the last decade, congress passed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest americans more than anybody else, and we were told that it would lead to more jobs and higher incomes for everybody and prosperity starts at the top, but then trickles down. what happened? the wealthy got wealthier, but most americans struggled. instead of creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century.

instead of widespread prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall, and in just a few year, a went from record surpluses under bill clinton to record deficits that we are now still struggling to pay off today. we don't need more top-down economics. we've tried that theory. we've seen what happens. we can't afford to go back to it. we need policies that grow and strengthen the middle class, that grow and create jobs, make education and training more affordable, that encourage businesses to start up and create jobs right here in the united states. that's why i believe it's time to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, folks like myself, to expire. [applause]

by the way, i might feel differently because it's not like i like to pay taxes. [laughter] i might feel differently if we were still in surplus, but we've got a huge deficit, and everybody agrees we have to do something about the deficits and these debts so the money we're spending on these tax cuts for the wealthy is a major driver of our deficit, a major contributor to the deficit, costing us a trillion dollars over the next decade. by the way, these tax cuts for the wealthiest americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth. we can't afford to keep that up, not right now. i'm not proposing anything radical here. i just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we paid under bill clinton. back when our economy created

nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot, and this is not just my opinion. the american people are with me on this. poll after poll shows that's the case, and there are plenty of patriotic and very successful, very wealthy americans who also agree because they know that by making that kind of contribution, they are making the country as a whole stronger. at the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle class families or small businesses, not when so many folks are just trying to get by, not when so many folks are still digging themselves out of the hole that was created by this great recession that we had. in a time when the recovery is still fragile. that's why i'm calling on congress to extend the tax cuts

for the 98% of americans who make less than $250,000 for another year. [applause] if congress doesn't do this, millions of american families including these good looking people behind me could see their taxes go up by $2200, starting on january 1st of next year, that'd be a big blow to working families. it would be a drag on the entire economy. now, we can already say we know what those who are opposed to letting the high end tax cuts expire will say. they'll say that we can't tax job creators, and they'll try to

explain how this would be bad for small businesses. let me tell you, folks who create most new jobs in america are america's small business owners, and i've cut taxes for small business owners 18 times. [applause] they can pass new tax cuts who hire new workers and raise workers' wages. here's the thing you have to remember. the proposal i make today would extend these tax cuts for 97% of all small business owners in america. in other words, 97% of small businesses fall under the $250,000 threshold. so -- [applause] so this suspect about taxes job

creators, but helping job creators. i want to give them relief. i want to give those 97% a sense of permanence. i believe we should be able to come together each get this done. while i disagree on extending tax cuts for the wealthy because we just can't afford them, i recognize that not everybody agrees with me on this. on the other hand, we all say we agree we should extend tax cuts for 98% of the american people; right? everybody says that. the republicans say they don't want to raise taxes on the middle class. i don't want to raise taxes on the middle class, so we should all agree extend tax cuts for the middle class. let's agree to do what we agree on; right? [applause]

that's what compromise is all about. let's not hold the vast majority of americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy. we can have that debate. we can have that debate, but let's not hold up working on the things we already agree on. in many ways, the fate of the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans will be decided by the fate of the next upcoming election. my opponent fights to keep them in place. i will fight to end them, but that argument shouldn't threaten you. it shouldn't threaten the 98% of americans who just want to know their taxes will not go up next year. middle class families and small business owners deserve that guarantee. they deserve that certainty. it will be good for the economy

and it will be good for you. we should give you that certainty now. we should do it now. it will be good for you. it will be good for the economy as a whole. [applause] so my message to congress is this -- pass a bill extending the tax cuts for the middle class. i will sign it tomorrow. pass it next week, i'll sign it next week. pass it next -- well, you get the idea. [laughter] as soon as that gets done, we can continue to have a debate about whether it's a good idea to also extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans. i'll have one position. the other side will have another, and we'll have that debate. the american people can listen to that debate.

next year, once the election's over, things have calmed down a little bit, you know, based on what the american people have said and how they've spoken during that election, we'll be in ad good position to decide how to reform the entire tax code in a simple way that lowers rates and helps our economy grow, and brings down or deficit because that's something that we have to do for the long term. right now, our top priority has to be giving middle class families and small businesses the security they deserve. you're the ones who are driving this recovery forward. [applause] you're the ones who are driving this recovery forward, and i think it's time to widen the circle of opportunity and help more americans who are working hard to get ahead. it's time we learn the lessons of our past and lay the

foundation for a better future. that's what i'm focused on every day, and i hope congress joins me in doing the right thing so thank you all very much for being here. thank you. [applause] [applause] on this morning's "washington journal," paul bishop of the national association of realtors talked about trends in the u.s. housing market including new home construction and existing home sales. this is just over 40 minutes.

>> host: paul bishop is with the national association of realtors serving as vice president of research. good morning to you. >> guest: glad to be with you. >> host: where is the housing market right now compared to where it was a year ago? >> guest: well, compared to where it was a year ago, things are looking a little bit stronger. we've seen a higher level of sales in the markets so people are getting out and buying homes more than a year ago. prices appear to be stabilizing. the inventory of homes on the market, which is really the unique thing this year compared to a year ago, is really surprisingly low. that's one of the reasons we have state in prices. >> host: what are the challenges and struggles that people who want to buy or sell a home are facing right now? >> guest: well, a couple of the biggest challenges that most potential buyers face right now are simply confidence that the overall economy's going to continue to move forward. that applies probably more broadly now than a couple years ago given the weak recovery we are seeing, but fundamentally

for the buyer, it's able to get a mortgage at this point. certainly, if you have very good high credit scores, you probably have no difficulty getting a mortgage, but if you're not among the top tier borrowers in terms of credit, you may have difficulty that was not a factor a few years ago. >> host: the numbers of existing home sales according to the national association of realtors. may of 20 # 12, 4.55 million, and 4.62 million, and going back a year earlier to april of 2011, 4.20 million. >> guest: that really speaks to the modest recovery we see in the housing market to this point. sales are increasing. contract signings are stronger than they were a year ago as are contract closings, and so we're making progress, maybe not as quickly as we'd like in terms of the housing market and economy overall, but things are going the right direction at this point. >> host: if you want to talk with paul about housing issues,

numbers to call, democrats, 202 #-737-0001. republicans, 202-737-0002, and and -- you mentioned this a little bit about getting loans and such, but talk to us how interest rates are affecting the market as people are drawn to the market because of the low interest rates, doesn't always mean they get a loan so tell us about those two issues at play. >> guest: in more normal circumstances when you saw mortgage rates this low, you'd probably have many more people in the market. most of us have not seen mortgage rates in the 4% or even less range any time in our lifetime, and that's normally a strong factor in pushing the housing market forward. >> host: what's it at now? >> guest: the 30-year mortgage is under 4%, and 15-year rate is a few basis points less than that. we're looking at under 4% financing for mortgages. the fact what's holding back the

market to a large degree of lending is underwriting standards are tight, remain tight, and have been for a couple years. for those buyers who don't have pristine credit, it can be very difficult to get a mortgage, and so we estimate that if mortgage underwriting for more typical, then, say 2-5 years ago, we could see 15% more sales in the market than today. >> host: a front page story in "the washington post" this morning, hit hard by long term bust, and credit scores feared. the close sure of the market left is scar on the finances of black americans, one that not just wipedded out a generation of economic progress, but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades. at issue are the largely profoundly influential three credit scores who determine who buys a car, finance a college education, or own a home.

it's based on consumer of financial history and suffer when they fall behind on their bills. they tell stories about african-americans who purchased homes hit hard by the subprime bust, and here's a chart that shows that at the height of the housing bubble, african-americans were three times as likely as whites to get high rate mortgages. when the bubbles burst, blacks lost a larger sale of the home equity and net worth. you see how african-americans versus hispanics, versus whites got high rate loan, and then the home equity change, changes in the median income of equity from 2007 to 2009, air force africans taking a bigger hit there as well. >> yeah, that article paints, you know, a three o'clock of what we don't yet know about the ramifications of the fallout. we've been concentrating on the immediate impact in terms of foreclosures, but the long term ramifications we're starting to just understand at this point. the long term ramifications on

ability to borrow in the future, long term ability to accumulate wealth, given that home equity is a significant share of wealth for most households, and as at article points out, african-americans and other minority groups also had higher rate loans or subprime loans, and the fall imrowt from that is having an effect on those limiting their ability to purchase a home in the future as well. >> host: let's go to the phones an hear from tom in virginia, republicans' line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i am, by profession, myself, a real estate appraiser, and i've -- i've noticed that some improvements in the market myself, but what i've seen still as a major problem is that there is a great deal of market uncertainty in terms of value. properties have a widespread or neigheds have a --

neighborhoods have a widespread of value. the high end of the neighborhood and low end of the neighborhood are far apart whereas in the past, the neighborhood value ranges were tighter. there's a lot of, for lack of a better term, "chaos" in market uncertainty. it's a major issue. right now, appraisers, quite honestly, probably the most complex market we've seen in ages, and unfortunately, my industry right now is cut to the bones in terms of our fees and other issues concerning new requirements from the government to uad as one requirement where the appraiser form is far more complex to fill out, and then additional requirements for the appraiser to justify value. i know the realtors chief economist back in, i think october or november said, it was a non-scientific poll, apparently like 35% of realtors felt -- 35% of real estate deals

were impacted by, quote, "low appraisals," and i wanted your opinion on this. >> host: thank you, tom. >> guest: appraisals are the key to the transactions going forward, and the number that was mentioned a second ago, roughly a third of realtors, still consistent today, have seen at least one of their deals have some problems resulting from the appraisal, and that means, perhaps, the transaction was delayed or cancels because the appraisal came in in lower than the sale price, and there's a number of reasons for that. one of which it's hard to determine value right now. if your neighborhood doesn't have a lot of transactions, some may be short sales or foreclosures, then the question is what's the true value of the home given we don't have a lot to compare to in terms of a typical sale, and rightly so, i mean, appraisers have pressures,

regulatory and otherwise, and 5 lot of other additional constraints on the ability to conduct appraisals making their job more difficult in addition to the uncertainty in the market. >> host: democrat from texas, good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'm a former real estate appraiser and broker and investor now. i've been in the market in texas for 30 years, and we see a continuing cycle in swelling and bursting of the real estate bubble over and over again, and i would like for -- i'd like to know if you consider this a healthy plan in the real estate markets there's a swell and burst and swell and burst of the bubble. should congress intervene to take what is an industry of loan origination into the hands of some mortgage brokers, or should congress do anything to try to

even out this cycle or, you know, encourage it? is it a good thing? what should congress do, if anything, thank you. >> guest: the idea of booms and busts in the real estate like other secments of the economy is probably not a good thing overall. i mean, it's maybe encouraging on the way up when values rise, but, of course, there's fallout when values decline on the bust side so overall, it's probably a scenario to be avoided if possible. now, the next question is how do you avoid the scenario? that's a far more difficult question. you know, the -- one of the immediate thoughts is there's regulation that could be put in place, but i'm a little skeptical there's anything to be done at the federal level or state level to offset the cycle of boom and busts that the caller sees in texas because i'm not sure what that looks like, and we don't know what the

unintended consequences are because the real estate market is one in which the buyer and seller come together to agree on a price, and it's really, i guess, maybe presumptuous to get too far into the transaction to determine what's part of a boom and bust cycle before the fact when action could be taken. >> host: last caller was from texas. what other areas of the country are still struggling with the housing market? where are you seeing more successing? >> guest: well, the best way to think about struggling areas is where the economy is overall struggling at this point, and many of the areas that, you know, the midwest, still struggling to gain footing in terms of the economy and high unemployment rates in some areas. with the most success are areas that recovery or are recovering from the bust of a few years ago. as i mentioned earlier, inventory levels are low in some areas and that includes places in florida and california where investors stepped in and bought

the vacant properties. >> host: sue, independent caller, grand lake, michigan, good morning. >> caller: hi. i'm in northern michigan right now, and we got a good deal -- we have a cottage we bought this past year; however, we have a house down state, and we did -- we bout it at the prime, and we lost, oh, gosh, probably $100,000 on the house. will we see a recovery? some say it will be 30 years for this to come back. >> guest: yeah, that's a troubling question for a lot of current homeowners in terms of when prices come back to something consistent with what they invested in their ohm at this point. of course, each local market is different. some markets right now are exhibiting fairly solid increases in prices so those markets recover much more quickly, but given the apparently sizable amount of

equities that you no longer have in the home because prices decline, i can't give you a specific year or number of years, but certainly probably will be a few years assuming we have a solid recovery overall and prices increase in the locale where your home is located. >> host: washington, d.c. caller, republican, good morning. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my home. good program and comments. tom who talked about appraisals and formula for that, home sales for 11-12 are pretty much the same, but what about new home construction? i don't see new home construction being as a reduction in price as resale homes. can you comment on that, paul? >> guest: yeah. the new home side and in terms of construction and residential sales has been weak now for the past several years. you know, in the construction side, part of that is an artifact of the weak economy and recession we've just been

through, but also another part of that, especially for the smaller builders is the fact that it's very hard for small builders, not the national builders on wall street, but small builders who depend on local and regional banks to get money to start new developments and finance their construction projects, it's very hard for them to get loans as it is for a lot of other segments of the economy at this point. a lot of small builders are struggling, and, in fact, a lot of builders have gone out of the business overall. the new home market and single family construction is really still kind of bumping along the bottom. i'm not sure at this point what it takes to really turn that around significantly other than, you know, broad based increase in the jobs and the strength of the economy overall would allow more people to be out there buying homes, and, you know, at this point, the number of homes on the market in terms of existing homes is relatively low so at some point, you know, builders are going to have to be able to build more homes because

the demand is going to be there, but how soon that happens, we predicted that for a couple year, and how soon that happens, we can't say at this point. >> host: when the jobs numbers came out friday, thestreet.com looked at the interpretation, and the section call thed "as for the good news," they added jobs for the first time in five months, and it is small, but could rise because they are building homes, and spending on commercial construction is up. those are generally signs hiring increases in the months ahead. >> guest: we did see a little increase in construction employment in the last monthly jobs report, and, you know, we've been talking about single family construction to this point, but multifamily construction is gaining rather nicely and part of that is the fact that represents have been increasing, there's a strong demand for apartments and other types of multifamily units, and so that area of construction has been increasing nice at this

point. we'll see how long it lasts, but at the same time, represents are increasing so there's probably more room to run in terms of the multifamily construction. >> host: becky from ohio, democratic caller, good morning. >> caller: i'd like to ask him about the fraud that's been done against manufactured homeowners because a lot of us who are able to get a loan and -- but what they didn't tell us is this paper called a certificate of origin that is threaded to get a decent interest loan price, and then when that certificate of origins proves you own your home. when my husband died #, i paid off six figures. my home in south carolina, but that paper had been shredded, and my taxes have gone up. luckily, i timely got my

deership that's still in exist ens. it's hard to get the paperwork. i paid my house off. i can't use it as collateral. i can't get a decent price for it. all because of the, you know, this paper, and i was frontally led this my house was worth more than what it is, and i'd like to know what's going to be done about this kind of fraud that's been done to thousands of people. if you own a manufactured home, you're supposed to have the paper. if not, you have no proof you open your home. >> guest: i'm quite honestly not familiar with that circumstance, but from what's the caller described, it sounds like a significant problem and hurdle for a number of owners of manufactured homes. what i suggest is you follow-up and seek whatever legal advice is necessary to see if there's

action taken if there's a fraud that's taken place, but beyond that, i'm not familiar with the issue. >> host: talking real estate trends with paul bishop, vice president of the research at the national association of realtors leading the research divisions survey and marketing research activities including analysis of real estate business and policy issues. benny in maryland joining us on the independent line. hi. >> caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. it seems that the under lying span is quieter now than it was before, and doesn't that squeeze a lot of people that would be in the market to buy? also, i bought a house two years ago, a first time buyer. i have two kids, just out of college, masters, and paying back the student loans, but my

neighborhood is stable because a lot of people are paying off mortgages already, but they are still have renters. my other concern is as the market recovers, and the avisers when the houses go up, the property taxes go up. if the property taxes go up, it's going to put more squeeze on my income because my income is pretty much stable, not going up. i have student loans to pay, kids in day care. with higher property taxes to pay, that will really make a difficult to make payments on the home. i just want to hear your thoughts about that, thanks. >> guest: certainly. there's a number of things squeezing homeowners at this point. you mentioned, for example, paying back student loans. that's significant for a lot of, you know, current owners as well as those wanting to get in the market. local governments struggle

financially, and so they are trying to generate revenue and largely through property taxes at the local level to sustain services, and so they are squeezed, you know, homeowners are squeezed in that sense as well because of the need of local governments to fund the basic services. i guess there is no, again, no real answer or real solution to the issues that the caller raises. if the economy generates this, those problems would be mitigated. the factors will be felt by homeowners in all parts of the country. >> host: on twitter, the real estate boom bust cycle has a lot to do with buyers and sellers and more with the banks meaning mortgages to feed the subprime monster. what do you think about that? >> guest: well, what was certainly the case in the boom, in 2003-2005, the model used by

lenders, and still used by lenders to a large degree involves mortgage brokers and feeding this pipeline into the securitization process, and there were incentives at that point to generate mortgage loans, transactions, and push that through the pipeline so the various players in that securitization process could generate some fees. now, i think what we're sigh -- seeing now is re-evaluation of that. more processes coming in place at the mortgage level, mortgage broker level, and mortgage origination level and so forth. hopefully there's not a repeat of that, but the system in place several years ago, the incentives were not aligned to the best interest of homeowners. >> host: earl -- washington journal airs live every morning at 7 eastern on c-span. debate on a