if he leads you to do the things he will regret. so what happens at the end of the day what the police will do. arrest us, we are nowhere to be seen. arrest shoppers who are having fun with the borrowed -- [inaudible] and then they arrest the picture of two policeman dragging him to the police car was, of course, the cover page of a few newspapers. needless to say, it's happening as we speak around the world. even in most oppressed society, you can google the thing called pop goon, and you will find a very cool puppet show of assad and his guys which is driving him crazy. and it is produced in syria, even throughout the cold war looking very much like spitting image or i don't know what the american version of this. ..

you can see everybodies having fun. there's somebody post on the youtube, and then tomorrow somebody sees this in the kremlin and calls the cleave of police -- the chief of police, say we indiana to stop this. so next day they apply for the protest. they had a written ban from a local police chief saying that the protest of 100 soldiers 50 boys, 10 cars, is banned because

not citizen is of russia. they're made in china. the frequent humor like the political satire is very old. but at the same time you want to use the humor is the humor as a political activism and it's about the time somebody with ph.d helps us with coin this new term, so we have the hawk tivism and we need to have locktivism, which is intentionally flaming of the situation. most of all, the people who spent much time in -- we talk about the people in democracies, they start believing their image they're getting on the tv and billboards and newspapers, and they start taking themselves seriously, and if you mock them, they're very likely to do

something stupid, and you know which we'll use as a platform for mocking them even more. >> in north korea, you kind of feel like this -- [inaudible] -- can't suppress a negative opinion. so what would you do to start a movement there, like a -- as you were talking about songs. and do you see any sort of hope for a successful movement there? and what would -- [inaudible] >> well, i'm -- we work with some exileed north koreans.

to pick the battle you can win, bread and butter issue. the real problem is people are starving. so when you look at what you will use to coin in the movement, start with a small group of people, pick bread and butter issue. second, they're getting information about what is happening around fastly. ten years ago tv's were forbidden. now we have information with millions of phones smuggled from china. when you look at the homes they all have this dvd player, and what are they looking? the movies. novellas from south korea, this type of sitcom and stuff like that. so they crave for more food and they crave to be dressed and behave like the people who live in south korea. so when you look at these level,

you look at their cravings and build movement around bread and butter issues rather than ideology. don't bother. ideology is cool but can it feed us? and you look at these bread and butter issues because this where is the possibility for modern modernization, and then you look at the communication tools. now with the cell phones there, you probably look at some kind of the online communication, but you also look at the history and the tradition, like in south africa, and see whether this will be the music or this is going to be something else, drama, maybe? who knows. but there is always a space for this. the real problem with north korea is that you're face as system with a very weak leader on top of a very old military system, which used to run for years. so, probably the internal breaks are there, which is something you need to exploit from them very much. but starting a bread and butter

issue movement there and talking about the things like, most of this cases you really not talking about the political issues. there is a group of brave women in zimbabwe's second biggest town, and they understood very early in the protest if they demonstrate and protest and occupy build, they will get arrested, wipe out. they're just women in zimbabwe so it's easy to deal with them. then they start educating people to build their own nonpolitical issues. so, this village protest because of the dictatorship, this village will protest because they don't have access to the clean water. so what the government will do, we want access to the clean water. the government comes and beats mother, because she wants access to the clean water for her kids, this is going to outrage the

people. if they get any positive response from the ghost, for example, access to the clean water, they will encourage others to build around this issue. this very much like the 2008 earthquake and the schools that fell down in china and the whole protest against the corrupted politicians. the situation we have a very hard suppression, thinking about bread and butter and nonpolitical issues, and this where is you use the same tools for modernization, but you're talking about wish of people to have a sewer system as opposed to having their waste on the street. and you will find a lot of people ready to deal with this stuff, and you will find that the probable -- the problem its the most totalitarian government -- the reason i -- i think kim jong-uns of the world are dinosaurs.

they're dying because these harsh dictatorships from orwell's 1984 are not delivering. the reason this is not a viable system is because 30% of the people are starving. so the more they can squeeze people in political ideology and the special space but they can't see that. same like that in iran. the roads are bad in iran. the country has a lot of oil and it into should be spread out but the roads are bad. so the common people have a little political space to build a movement about the tangible bread and butter issue. the whole arab spring was started bay vendor setting himself on fire because he couldn't sell food, and because his dignity was destroyed by being beaten bay fee money police ma'am, but the whole thing started as bread and butter issues.

you mobilize people. but when you start bread and butter issue protest and the country have 25% of the people unemployed, then you can grow numbers tremendously fast, once you grow numbers you become a movement, and once you become a movement, you can try to change with the government or negotiate with the government. deps on your strategy. start small, focus, build around local nonpolitical issues, which is where you learn the technology of nonviolent struggle. then you achieve a little victory. then the people start joining because the people who join the things which are successful. and if you are branded well and know how to communicate, you have a movement, and then see how the government will deal with it, because the more oppressive government is, the less space for use of the suppression. because they already are using

every single way of censorship, and they're, after 30 years, i don't find them very flexible in dealing with the new ways of protesting. the more closed the system, the more oppressive regime, the less flexible. really flexible regimes are not the most -- when you look at the really flexible regimes who learned fast, like the one in venezuela or russia, they're not north koreas them real problem with north korea, once they're there, they're cemented in their own little thing. so whatever they do, the people consider it will be the weakness. so, whatever small victory is, it's bigger the a -- in a place like north korea. [applause] >> if you have any interest in anything surrounding people

power, this is my e-mail. i would be happy to deal with you guys. thanks so much for listening and being patient for this almost hour and a half. thank you for bringing me here. [inaudible conversations]

>> i don't know that mr. reagan, if somehow he could join us, if he would say, yes, sequestration would happen on his watch. i think there would have been an effort toward the bipartisanship. i think american politics today has migrated from an nfl atmosphere to hunger games. [laughter] >> nfl, you do everything possible to be victorious. you outthink, outplay, and outhit your opponent. but even in the nfl an athlete will reach down and lift their opponent back up in hunger games you make sure your opponent never, ever is capable of getting up again. we need to remember that we are

still americans. and ought to be working together for this country, not just the parties. stanford university professor thursday said public opinion on climate change has remained relatively stable over the last two decades with a significant majority of americans saying it is happening and is caused by humans. he also found majority support in every state for that position. the prefer's remarks are part of an event hosted by the environmental and energy study institute in washington and also talks about the impact of superstorm sandy on how the

public views climate change. this is just over an hour. >> good afternoon everyone. welcome to our briefing this afternoon. the environmental and energy study institute is very excited about having organized and hosting this briefing this afternoon on public perceptions about global warming and government involved in this issue. we are also very, very pleased that we have had wonderful support in terms of sponsorship for the briefing from congresswoman diane begets office from colorado, and to open our briefing witha few remarks is eleanor bastion who is with representative begets office.

>> hi everyone. i'll keep this very brief. i just want to welcome all of you only behalf of the congresswoman, we're excited to cooperate with eesi on the briefing today, and i think as we have thistle set for two weeks and make our -- we can think more deeply and with a little more time about the challenges ahead of news terms of climate change in colorado, over the last couple years we have had two really severe narl resource challenges, one is the pine and bark beetle infestation and then the wildfires. so that has brought to the forefront the day-to-day challenges that climate change is exacerbating. so, just thanks so much to the professor, and without further adieu. >> thanks so much, eleanor. and it has been really

interesting as we have watched over the course of the last few years, and in particular this last year, as we have seen such an incredible uptick in the number of extreme weather events which created such hardship across so much of our country, and has really put climate change on the map in so much more media coverage, so many more conversations, and discussions here on capitol hill. this afternoon, we are very, very privileged to hear from professor john kosnic who is the professor in humanities and social sciences at stanford university, and senior fellow with the institute for the environment. this afternoon he is going to talk us through a lot of his work and analysis that comes out of a very rich history and experience that he brings. he will be highlighting the

results of analysis of public opinion polls on climate change that have been conducted over the last 20 years. he will be looking at results of new surveys documenting change over time, and public perceptions, and the causes of the trends he has seen. he'll also be providing this information on state-by-state breakdowns of public opinion as well as looking at analysis of global warming on voting and the 2012 election, and the is also going to talk a little bit about public support, about government action aimed at both mitigating and also in terms of new work he has just completed with regard to adapting to climate change. how do we become more resilient? what are people's views on this? what are we seeing. he has been studying american political attitudes for 30

years. he is a world recognized expert, and we have been privileged to have worked with him a few other times in terms of his speaking and bringing information about these really important issues to a policy audience. john? >> thank you very much, carol. and thank you all for coming. it's a privilege to be back in this building. i want to think esi for the invitation to present and thank you for taking time to hear a new story about where americans are in their thinking about climate change and looking at the future on this issue. you can see here on the screen, if you can make out the screen, the cosponsors of our research over the years include my universities, including stanford university, news media organizations, federal government agencies, and the work that i'll tell you about is on funding from all of those

various sources. today is a buffet where you're going to get little tastes of discussions of a variety of issues, in particular six of them. we'll begin by talking about how americans' core beliefs about climate change have been changing, and i'll talk about a very large metta analysis that looked at many, many polls to put that in context. then we'll talk about state-by-state breakdowns of opinion. we'll talk about americans' perceptions of what americans think to see how well we understand our opinions on this issue. we'll look rat -- look at voting in the 2012 election and the impact of superstorm sandy on these things. so let's begin with the fundamentals. do americans think the planet has been warming? do they think warming is caused by humans? do they think it's a threat? i'm going to show you our series over many years, using this

question. you may have heard about the idea that the world's temperature may have been going up slowly over the past 100 years. what is your personal opinion on this? do you think this has probably been happening or do you think is probably has not been happening? if you think for a moment about your impression of american public opinion, what numbers would you expect to be saying probably happening? these are the results. so, starting in 1997, we saw 79% saying -- this number went up to a peak in 2007 of 84%, up, down, and very recently, it's back up again. these are huge numbers, of course, and as you can see, they contradict any claims that americans have turned away from this issue in large numbers. they still believe warms has been happening. this finding is not unique to us. want to talk for a moment about a report put out by the strategy team, which is a group of

psychologists in columbus, ohio, called assessing american public opinion data about climate change, and i want to show you a mall excerpts excerpt of this. they did an analysis of survey questions, doing vine difficult representative national sampling of americans over a long period. they got the original data forecast as many of the surveys as they could to commute their own statistics, and'll show you one piece of their result, the measurement of beliefs about the existence of warming. and here it is. so, each dot is a survey number. down across the bottom are the years from 1986 to 2012. the percent of americans measured to be indicating that they thought the planet had been warming. and you can see first of all there's tremendous distribution of these dots across a large

range. if you want to find a survey that reports 45% believing this, you can, or 90%, you can. so you've might look at the numbers and say, how could surveys be reliable? how can they be believable if they produce such a wide range of results? that's the wrong conclusion to reach. the important thing i want to show you is that our number at 75% right now is kind of in the middle of this pack here. we're not unusually high or not unusually low. why is it there would be that discenturies the reason is because survey question phrasing matters. so now what i'm going to do is show to you another table from the strategy team's report. this one connects the dots that were produced by the same question. even if you ask by different organizations. and if you look here, what you

can see here, for example, is a line at the top of question asked by the gallup organization, and when we connect these dots, you can see that they are quite consistent over time. here's another question asked at the bottom by nbc news and the wall street journal. these numbers also fairly consistent over time. you can see all of them show a small decline in this time region and then they all are disrupted in the last couple of years, some going up, some going down. the important point i want to make is when you look carefully at these data, you see two things. one is that our numbers are not unusual. they're in about this range with others. and, secondly, there has been no dramatic falloff in public belief in this issue. it's not like the public has turned away. now, let me go back for a quick second. if you look at our numbers you'll see this increase from 75 to 83, then drops to 73 and increase back to 78.

you mike think that is random measurement error but it's not that. let me show you what's going on. this graph divides the american public into two parts. the blue line at the top between 2006 and 2012 is people who report high trust in climate scientists. these people show remarkable civility of their views over -- remarkable stability of their views because the message hasn't changed much. this red line is the beliefs of people who are low in trust in natural scientists, and you can see they're the folks who show a sharp drop in 2009 and increase and then drop again. and what i wanted to illustrate for you is that this red line correlates in its movements almost perfectly with the green line, and the green line is its average world temperature the year before the survey number.

so, what is happening? the low trust people say i can't figure out if the planet is warming by listening to scientist, i have to figure it out another way. and they do that by looking at newspaper, headlines, television, radio, when you know there's tremendous publicity for the fact that 2010 was the warmest year in history, 2008 was the coolers year in a ten--year period and so on. so there's no surprise here this number drops a lot among the no-trust people because they're aware the prior year's temperature for the world as a whole was unusually low. the natural scientist would say this is the last thing to do. don't pay attention to last year's temperature in order to infer warming or cooling over 100 years, but that's what these folks feel they have no choice but to do. so, what we can predict is, as world temperatures go up and down as we know will from year to year, their opinions will vacillate as well, but to see a

decline like this, even a sizeable among them, doesn't mean we're rung -- running off the cliff. let me show you more evidence of there's not cliff running. 'this is a question about human action: if the earth's temperature has been gradually warming over the last 100 years do how to think it's caused mostly be people things have done, natural causes, or be both. the that number started at 80% in 2006, remains at at 77% toni when we put these together the planet has been warming and it's been caused the humans. the joint number started off at 70%. it's at 62% today. it's been relatively stable in these recent years. some people define climate change as this conjunction and that you get a sense of it. we did ask people, do you think if the earth temperature increase biz five degrees fahrenheit over the next 75

years would this be good, bad, or neither good nor bad. that number holds steady as well. 60% and today 53%. no dramatic change. okay,. >> these are the believes people express. you might express a belief but not hold that belief will a great deal of certainty, and if you think about books like merchants of doubt, that have been proposing the possibility that there have been campaigns to convince americans that we don't know about these things, to reduce their certainty, then you might imagine we would see a drop in confidence in these opinions. over time we do not see that. here's the percent of people when we asked them how sure are you about when the the planet has been warming, the percentage of people at the top, extremely or very sure, has actually increased slightly after being quite steady over the time period. there's no evidence that people are less confident in their

views. and i thought i would just show you here the percent of the nation who are extremely or very sure that the planet hat not been warming. these are the passionate skeptics. they right now they are 5%. asking people, do you think the federal government should do more than it's doing now, less, or about what it's doing now, on this issue? you can see in the late 90s, about half of the country thought the government should do more. starting in 2006 those numbers were higher at the end of the bush administration. during the obama years they have been holding steady at about 16%. okay. that brings us to the end of part one. here's what i hope you got from that. first of all, large and in some cases huge majorities endorsing the existence, causes, and threat of climate change, and no real significant movement, either in our surveys or anybody else's, ours are not outliars.

different organizations get different results depending on wording. part two, when i've been to the hill in the past and shared results of century surveys with representatives in the house and the newscast. one of the messages i got over and over was these national surveys you have been doing are lovely but they don't help me because i need to know about my state or my district. and that was a horrifying revelation because i thought i was in the business of helping the government. but i realized that aand my colleagues were making news but we weren't really providing the information that legislators need. and after a series of those conversations i was in the taxi going to the airport very sad, and i realized, i can actually address this issue. because i've done many surveys over a period of 15 years, each one with a sample of at least a thousand respondents, and if i stack up all those surveys i have many house of people who i

can slice up into the states from which they comey you see there's been almost no movement in these opinions over the time to put them together and generate other portrait of the country...

now, if you looknb closely you will sqí that some of these];3 numbers are on the lower÷ú end in theç 60s and some are onç the higher end. particular wherever thismy is right here, oklahoma.ç it. the number there ia 85%÷ú believingnb in thsv existence of warmrcg. that one of the largestç numbers in this tabld> also, new÷ú york atç 81%. is anotherç high number as÷%l-. the÷ú lower numbers areç, not,! texas is at 80.ç but there is.zv the range÷ú is isç fairly ,-)aother states

would be bad and i circled the two states here that, in this graph, the only two, where, a majority say it would not be bad. either they say would be neither good nor bad or they say it would be good. those two states, utah and nevada as you can see are just barely under 50%. the rest are on the other side.

would global warming be a highly serious problem? the smallest number we have in this graph is 52%. the largest number in the low 80s. notice for example, colorado at 87. so i'm showing you a lot by in a sense it is simple take home from each one. here is another one. should the federal government do more with climate change or do less or more what it is doing now? utah, bare majority of the people don't support government action. majorities in all rest of the states do support increased government action. should the federal government limit greenhouse gas emissions by businesses? this question you see a lot more gray states. we haven't asked this question in as many surveys and we are more limited. a very large number in colorado, 84%. up near the max. lowest number 70%.

that is remarkable statement. you can't get 70% favoring government restricting admissions without getting republicans and democrats and independents favoring it which is the case. a question we never asked in enough surveys to cover a lot of states but this movement from 52% at a low, up to 78%. not a single state on the skeptical side. increasing federal taxes on gasoline. let me just tell you how the question is worded. do you think the federal government should increase taxes on gasoline in order to cause people to use less of it? so, many economists have recommended this as a good policy. if you want people to use less, just jack up the price. but imagine if people, somebody said to you, would you mind if i reach in your wallet, take out money. i'm not going to tell you what i will do it with it

and purpose is to manipulate your behavior. doesn't sound so good. we couldn't find a single state where majority favor it. this is very unpopular. we asked a series questions about federal policy requiring with mandates or providing tax breaks to companies, use for example, utilities to produce more electricity with water, win and solar power. smallest majority is 67%. there is not a single state where a majority is opposed to this. interestingly colorado at a big number. texas as well. requiring or offering tax breaks to car companies to build all-electric cars. the low is 55% in favor. the high is 81%. requiring or offering tax breaks for power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. the smallest majority, 55, up to 81. you get the idea. so i'm not going to go through all of these but i

think this is perhaps one of the most interesting once. this is the percent of people who say the issue of climate change is extremely important to them personally. this is the group of people who we refer to as the climate change issue public. the peel who are passionate. they wake up every morning today is another opportunity to influence government on climate change. these are the people who vote based on the issue. and so you can see, in what states the largest concentrations are. so the maximum here is 24%. some of the darker states are new mexico, california, nevada, kentucky. but there is a presence in every state. of people voting based on this issue. okay. that's the end of that part. so take-home messages? the greenness i showed you in part one remarkably evenly distributed across the country. there is variation but there is no state where there is a pocket of skepticism that outhe is weighs majority on

the green side. maybe that is news to you. i think it might be. i don't know of any other source of data that would tell what states think individually about this issue. for people working in this building this would be useful information presumably to think about your constituents. now, if, legislators are in touch with their constituents already, there is no news here. but it occurred to me there might not be that connection between legislators and their con at this time cents because of -- constituents because of conversations i had. how well do americans understand what americans think on this issue? i have shown you what our measurement have suggested, if we were to ask people what would americans think what we we get? tell you results from a telephone survey last summer random digit dialing to land lines and cell phones so the country is represented here and we asked this people abbreviated version of our existence question.

what is your personal opinion. do you think the world's temperature is going up slowly over past 100 years. now i would like to ask you about other americans opinions on the issue of glornl warming. what percent of american adults would believe the global temperature is growing over past 100 years? we are seeking to how people are close to the number. about 75 i showed you earlier. turns out there is research in psychology when you ask for percentage estimates like this a chunk of people who say 50%, really do mean, half the country. but another chunk of those people are saying, i don't know. this is, coin flip. could be either way. i don't know. so what we did was to follow up with those people and ask them, did you say 50% because you think about half of american adults believe that? or did you say 50% because you're not sure how many american adults believe that? >> and then among the people who chose the latter option we asked them if you were to

guess how many american adults believe that the world's temperature has been going up slowly over the past one years? and we made it a little easier for them by giving them five choices and when we put these numbers all together we, i will show you results in a moment. we followed up with exactly the same questions about american adults who call themselves republicans and american adults who call themselves democrats. so we're asking what percent of those two groups do you think hold this belief? let me first of all remind you of americans own beliefs and breakdown by party. so all americans, as i showed you. 73% think the planet has been warming. when we split it by democrats, independents and republicans we see this. on the right happened side a majority of republicans 57% believe the planet is warming. 71% of independents and 86% democrats. this is partisan gap i call it 29 percentage points between these two bars.

what about americans perception, how close do they come to those numbers? first of all they don't say 73%. on average they say 56%. in other words, on average, people perceive the country to be about evenly split on this issue. and we asked then about democrats. that number is only 64%, much lower than i showed you a moment ago. and when we asked about republicans that number is much lower than i showed you before, only 44%. here the partisan gap now, only 20%. so i'm going to put these two next to each other in a second but i want you to see the partisan gap people perceive is only 2/3 the size what actually exists. what i'm doing is putting all these bars next to each other to see how much people are underestimating the greenness of the country as a whole, the greenness of democrats and greenness of republicans. on one hand they're

underestimating greenness and at the same time they're underestimating partisan division. what about perception of democrats divided up? so you might imagine that since democrats are democrats, they might know their group better than independents or republicans would. but that's not true. it turns out basically everybody gets it about equally wrong. the right answer is way up here. but all americans are averaging 64. democrats themselves slightly more accurate 68. these numbers are essentially flat. so it's not the case people know their own group better than the other group. same thing is true in perceptions by republicans. so, i told you already, that 44%, excuse me, perceptions of republicans. 44% on average americans believe that republicans favor this. and it turns out across these three groups, whether you're asking democrats or independents or republicans they all get it wrong by the same amount. this number is considerably higher. each group is

underestimating. so again, no evidence that a party knows its own members better than members of another party. so the conclusion to take from this part is, the country really doesn't know how green it truly is. is that a barrier for legislators, if legislators share that misunderstanding? i don't know if they do. i never done a survey of legislatores or their staffs. but if that misperception in the general public is shared here, then that might be an explanation for decisions on policy making. okay, now, the next chapter is on the 2012 presidential election. we have done a series of studies looking at the 2008 presidential election, and the 2010 congressional elections, using variety of different methods to assess the impact of climate change opinions on voting. and the theory we bring to this, has back to what i said earlier on issue

publics. in political science what we know, if you take any one issue like gun control or abortion, the vast majority of americans do not feel strongly about it and do not use it as a basis for voting even if there has been a ton of news coverage about that issue recently. people tend to vote based on issues they do care about and people care about a variety of different issues, each one attracting the passions of a relatively small segment of the country. in this case, i showed you the sizes of the issue publics in the various states. they're in general sort of in the 10% range these days. some as large as 20. some as small as two. the hypothesis we would ever is among those passionate people in 2012, votes might have moved in toward a particular candidate, as a result of those individuals preferences. so on most issues that have longstanding controversy behind them, gun control, abortion, race relations and others on those policy

issues the issue public, the passionate people, are typically about evenly split. about as many people favoring strong gun drel control laws. but climate control is different. we amaze see over time, 90% of the passionate people on the issue are on the green side. what that says is, if our theory is right and a candidate stakes out a green position on climate, the vast majority of those passionate people will be attracted in the direction of that candidate. if instead, a candidate expresses skepticism about climate, that may lead people away from that candidate. now you know that during the 2012 campaign especially in at the very end, barack obama was explicit in his belief in existence of climate change and need to address it. mitt romney had been over a period of time skeptical about it. and opposed government action in some ways. so you can imagine that sets up the possibility that issue public members would

be attracted to the president as a result. so we asked a ceres of questions. this is one of the studies we've done. i only have time for the one. this was done in june 2012. random digit dial telephone survey a representative of americans called on land lines and cell phones. we asked people first for their own opinion, how much you think the u.s. government should do about global warming? a great deal, quite a bit, some, a little or nothing. then we asked about how much government do you think, excuse me, how much government action does barack obama want on global warming and how much government action does mitt romney want on global warming? and lastly, how much do you think the u.s. government is doing now to deal with global warming? and what we we do we take answers to these questions and put them into high-tech predictable analysis predicting answers to this question. if the presidential election were being held today and candidates were barack obama, the democrat and mitt romney, the republican for whom would you vote.

these names are in parentheses because each respondent is randomly designed to hear obama's name first and romney second or romney's name first and obama second to control for order effect. we allowed people to volunteer to someone else or would not vote at all. the statistical analysis includes as predictors the proximity to the candidate of the voter on what should be done about warming. that is, which candidate are you closer to? are you closer to obama or are you closer to romney and by how much? and we controlled for party identification, liberal conservative ideology and a variety of demographics and we estimate this model using a series of different statistical techniques including multinominal progression and these are both legitimate techniques. turns out we get the same results either way. we use issue congruent measures those into the literature. there is disagreement from political scientists how to

compute the statistics so we did all of them. get same story from every registered voter and i don't ask you to understand this. i want you to look at the very top row and see a series of coefficients. this is measures using one method. measures using a second method. measures using a third method. these negative coefficients with asterisks tell you the following story. the greener the voter was on climate, the more government action he or she wanted in this case, more likely that person was to vote for mr. obama. less likely that person was to vote for mr. romney. the let's likely that person was to vote for somebody else. and less like i that person was to not vote at all. so in other words, the idea is, by being green it a peers mr. obama not only took votes away from other candidates but he actually inspired people to vote who would not other wise have voted.

now in this graph which i also don't expect to you understand we add for the statistical interactions and in this case between passion and issue congruence on climate, and if you look across this row you see a lot of asterisks with negative coefficients. what that means, the effect i just showed you is concentrated only among the voters who are passionate about the issue, makes sense, right? people who don't care about it don't use voting as basis to vote but these folks do. this is a bit of evidence of the validity of our findings. okay. so that, end of that part. now we come to the last part. what is the takeaway from the last part? candidates in this particular race gained by being green on climate and lost by being skeptical. finally the impact of superstorm sandy. you know that the community concern about climate change in recent years moved toward frequent discussions of extreme weather events. in some organizations there

is the presumption that if we willlous straight for americans that -- illustrate for americans that storms happen more frequently and more severe, sandy being example of it, and if we have floods and droughts in other locations more extreme weather events this will have impact on people's thinking about climate change. we investigated this. let me tell you how and tell you the hypotheses and our findings. when something like sandy happens and it looks like there might be the potential for it to have impact on public opinion, people like me usually are just frustrated and disappointed and sad because it is easy to do the survey afterwards to find out what people think and you just sit around saying, oh, if i only done a survey before, then i could compare the before to the after. so amazingly enough we were involved in a project not inspired by sandy. begun many months before where we had a long questionnaire about climate change that was being

fielded right before and right after sandy hit by six different survey companies and so we had thousands of interviews done coins end alley to allow to bracket this event. these are all internet surveys. i want to be clear with you. these a nonprobability samples. so there are many companies in the country providing internet data to academics to businesses and they're not taking random samples. country. what they do they put out ads would you like to do surveys for a little money. sign up here. then these samples are, people who sign up are then invited to do surveys. this is a project evaluating that data method. but, what we know is that the methods were constant across this time period. so we can look at these groups to see if there is change. now the demographics of these groups depart from the country in some ways. so we did a standard mathematical procedure of weighting which ad justs the demographics to look like the country.

when sandy hit the u.s. three survey firms had been interviewing for a while and within the days after sandy, three other survey firms began to collect data. all of the interviewing i will show you was done before the election. so there were 2070 interviews done before sandy and 2891 done afterwards. we're using what we technically discontinuity design and controlling for demographics and differences between the survey companies. let's talk about hypotheses. what impact might sandy have had how americans think about this issue? well, one possibility, some people have voiced is that perhaps seeing this severe storm would convince skeptics that global warming has actually been happening. so you could think for a minute. would that be a logical reaction to a severe storm? maybe? secondly, maybe seeing a severe storm would convince people that global warming

is causing more storms? but would it really? i mean it's a storm. did we see from this storm that global warming caused it? maybe. maybe not. is it possible that sandy caused people to believe that global warming is more serious problem? well, if they didn't know that there are serious storms like this and they see how serious it is, maybe that would be news if they link it to climate change. let let's see i'm sorry, this is going, there we go, one more, sorry. did it lead people to believe that government should take more action on the issue? maybe. let's find out. so here are the first results. this is the question of do you think the planet has been warming gradually over the last 100 years? would a severe storm convince you that's true? turns out it didn't.

these bars going downward with negative numbers on them indicate to you reductions in the percent of people who believed this afterwards as compared to before. here is the country as a whole. there is nonsignificant 4% drop here, okay? that is not a real change in this number. we divided it by democrats. nonsignificant 2% drop. republicans nonsignificant no drop. independents a 6% drop which is not significant. that is not real. the only instance in which we find a statistically significant drop is among people in states where sandy hit. and there the people who actually experienced the damage afterwards were less likely to say the planet's been warming over last 100 years. you will notice there is not a single statistically significant upward pointing bar here. sandy did not increase the endorsement of existence of climate change in the past. interestingly though, when we asked people, do you think the planet will warm

gradually in the future if nothing is done to prevent it? there's again, no change for the country as a whole. a negative 2% for the country as a whole. no significant differences across here, oh, except, look over here. these are people who said they don't think climate change has been happening in the past. among those people who you might call the skeptics, there is in fact a 17% increase in the percent of them who think that warming will happen in the future if unchecked. does it matter? guess what? this is a tiny group of people. it is about 20% of the country. this is less than 20% of 20%. and that's why this number doesn't even notably go up. there are nonsignificant decreases in other groups. the net result of this event

for the country as a whole is no change despite that 1 7%age point increase. is it a fluke? shows up in other measures as well not significant here. will, 15, excuse me five degree fahrenheit warming in the future be bad? no change at all. we watch ad serious storm and it does not for the country at all change the proportion of people who say it would be bad. you can see there are no asterisks here. there is a 12 percentage point increase but nonsignificant among the nonbelievers. i can not reject the hypothesis that is zero from these data. but we see a significant change here. let me get there. the question here will global warming be a nationally serious problem in the future? no net change. a significant decrease for democrats. again, we see a 16 percentage point increase among the skeptics. so 16% of 20% coupled with everybody else equals nothing happening for the

country as a whole. will global warming be a globally serious problem? again, no net change for the country but that group of skeptics, see an increase. but remember, i've got to tell you an important thing about the wording of these questions. these folks here, who have said to us, i don't think it's happening, when we asked them, this question, do you think it will be a globally serious problem, we begin it by saying, assuming it is happening, because otherwise we can't ask the question, right? they can't say how serious something you don't think exists would be. we have to say assuming it is happening. they say, yeah, if it is happening i guess i think it is more sear us but i don't think it's happening. there you have it. okay. one more example. is global warming causing more storms? only that group shows a significant increase, 1 7% to 20%.

no net increase for the country as a whole. here is striking finding. should the federal government take substantial effort to address climate change. look at significant downward bars. after the storm hit the country was less supportive of government mitigation efforts. and the drop the biggest among democrats and independence. there is actually increase among republicans. among the people who were in the sandy affected states, the largest decrease of 13 percentage points. so, if there is a notable change, it is a sense in which maybe this is new york and new jersey and connecticut's problem, it is not the country's problem. and the last up with i want to show you is the size of the issue public, the amount of personal importance people attach to the issue. wow, a 7 percentage point

drop from before to after. so we have the drop being concentrated among democrats, among people distracted otherwise by sandy and among people who believe in climate change. so if anything this would suggest that people were transformed from thinking about this issue in a way they no longer attached the significance to it that would lead them to vote on this basis. putting all at that together, pretty hard to say that those who believe an event like this will push the country in a green direction can see support for it. okay. so let me summarize. effects of sandy. at first glance seems that sandy led skeptics to endorse existence and threat of global warming but these people think it is not actually happening, the survey question begins. assuming it is happening. so therefore, their increase is likely to be inconsequential. among people that believe global warming as been happening, sandy did not increase perceived seriousness and did not increase perceptions that

global warming was causing storms. most importantly sandy inspired desire for less federal action and reduction in the personal importance of the issue. for those who believe extreme weather is the ticket to americans recognizing the seriousness of this problem, you can't look at these data to see support for that. okay. so this brings us to the end of our smorg gas boring buffet. i hope yourom the updates. i hope you have a sense that the country is and remains remarkably engrew on this issue according to many measures. that greenness varies from state to state but we could not find a single state which a majority is skeptical on this issue. no doubt however to the extent that lodgetores want to pay attention to their constituents views, some legislators are getting a stronger green signal than others. it would be a way to look at these maps as a way to help your members think about

their constituents. . . >> that's the end of our display. we can do questions. >> just please identify yourself when you ask your question. >> that was a lot of material. any questions or comments?

>> so, the u.s. nationalized -- [inaudible] >> the question was in the random digit dialing, i assume that most of the responses came from urban areas, and so does that affect how you might weigh answers? they have different -- folks who live in some -- urban areas, some rural areas. what would you predict from your -- assuming you can predict anything from your survey, or

expect the pattern to be based hone responses? >> does everybody understand why i'm smiling? the last time i went to the airport i was sad because i didn't have state level data. now i'm sad because i don't have congressional district data. i can only do so much for you. i'm on the outside. so, you're raising a really interesting question. is there geographic variability and you're proposing urban responsibility dents are different from rural respondents. that's a reasonable hypothesis, and i cannot answer that question. i do not have data that allow me to past up the states into distributions. i could compare people who live in highly dense urban areas to people in more sparse ural areas, and now that you asked me, we'll do it, and next time i come back i'll tell you the answer. that might be a handle toward moving you understanding the

distinctions between congressional districts. but in a tiny way i'm a step ahead of you. we're planning to do congressional district surveys. not a lot. but we'll start to find whether there are those kinds of pockets. thank you. >> why do you think americans were less likely to believe in climate change after the hurricane? it's understandable why they'd be less likely for government regulation, but why would they not believe in climate change of the hurricane? >> you're assuming that there's a hint of that. let's look back here. has global warming been happening? that negative four on the left side is not a real change for the country. but you're right the people in the sandy-affected states did

drop. and when we look at the future, there is no movement downward in the vast majority of the group. so your question is reasonable. why did that drop happen? i have no answer to it but i'm willing to speculate in this case as long as you realize it's a complete speculation, wild guess. one possibility is that in situations like that, when you're right in the center of the action, there is nonstop news coverage about this issue. and when there's nonstop news coverage -- assuming you got electricity and you can watch it or hear it or read it -- the question is, how do you fill 24/7 with a hurricane? and one of the ways you fill 24/7 with a hurricane issue suspect, is bringing in natural scientists to talk about it. one of the messages i predict was probably prominent was scientist being asked, was this caused by climate change? and then same, don't notice. can't tell you for any single

storm it was caused by climate change. these storm happens. climate change we believe will make them more frequent and severe, but i can't tell you this one is a result of that. and you hear that message, maybe that creates some degree of -- but just my guess. someone in the back? if you put your hand up and she sees you. >> thank you. want to ask you a question. did you thought about matching media coverage of climate change -- [inaudible] >> yes. i love that question, too. in fact, a team of four stanford students last summer took that exact project on. they drew random samples of news coverage, newspaper stories, television stories, over the 15-year period of our survey, because you can't read every story but you can draw a

representative sample. each story, they answer 39 questions about the story. they did statistical analysis to look at the way the media coverage predicted the kind of changed i showed you earlier. the answer is, for the vast majority, it did not. that movement up and down in the content of media coverage was actually remarkably small. you may notice there's a stereo type of media coverage a decade ago, that striving to be balanced. that there was an attempt at covering the green side of the scientific point of view as well at the skeptical side, and at some point news reporters realized they didn't need to do that anymore they could abandon that desire for balance and just settle on one side. we found almost no evidence of that. the news coverage was leaning on the green side of the issue throughout the time period but

there were small changes in the number of skeptical stories, and those changes were the only ones that we saw related to public opinion. so, in other words, skeptical news stories were very e.r.a. but when they doubled in size from 5% to 10%, that was coincidental with a smile -- small drop in public opinion. some hypothesis was there war so many green stories it was old news. today it's about butterflies, yesterday about bears, the day before about ice. they're the same store over and over again. there's nothing new about that. and a skeptical story? that's unusual. and that stands out, and when it doubles in size, it is notable, even if it's small number. so it did look like the small numbers might have been consequential but in very small ways. the numbers are quite stable over time.

[inaudible] >> now you're shifting from the content of the stories to the number of stories, and you're absolutely right that in 2007, there were a colassal number of news stories about climate change, never been anywhere near that since thence. there's a hypothesis in political science to the if the media are dominated by an issue, americans will think that's though the most important issue facing the country. that did not happen for this issue. even in 2007, nobody in america was saying, climate change is the most important problem facing the country today. which is our measure. now, that's not the only measure of belief in the phenomenon or support for federal action or even priorities because the work of sam larsen, who was an

undergraduate at stanford and works in washington, showed if you ask this question: what will be the most important problem facing the world in the future, global warming is number one along with the environment. so that makes clear it's a priority for people but not the most important problem facing the country today. maybe we should move to the other side. >> dave, metro resources. nice to meet you. my question is about the republican response post sandy to two of the future-oriented questions, and a belief -- i believe you showed a general question about whether it will happen in the future, had a drop in republican belief, and then what seek to contradict -- the next one was will it be globally

serious, and you have an increase in republican belief. >> that's not a drop. it looks like a control it says minus nine but there's no asterisk, so i cannot reject the hypothesis that is zero and i don't want you to reject that hypothesis either. let's look at the other one no asterisk. so i wouldn't make logical sense except they're really both zero. thank you. shall we shift over? >> shift to the left. >> my name is kristine driscoll and i have a consulting firm, green energies. i want to ask you about your use of language in the study or when you're talking about this. all the climate scientist say that climate change is a herer theory the same way that gravity is a theory but when you hear people talk about it, we hear the word belief, and suggests something that is not grounded in science, more o a faithful interpretation of science.

so, do you think the use of the word belief colors people's sons? and also if you can talk about maybe other language we could you or the kind of languages -- the kind of language that politicians use when they talk about climate change. >> thank you. so, let me go back here. let's see if you might be referring to this. can you -- see the talking rivers. so, this says, what's your personal opinion? doesn't use the word belief. i use that word. you said that is -- when you think about that, if you think about climate change not as something you can eave a belief about, it's a scientifically proven fact. so met abc you question this way. i'm a scientist. i don't think there's any such thing as a scientifically proven fact. we use the method to measure and understand the phenomena we study at any moment. we're doing the best we took

understand it. i have lived through many examples where literature said x and sometime later we discovered the methods we were using was misleading and therefore not x is right. so i believe in science but i also believe the scientific process involves sometimes changes of understanding. at one time we thought the sun revolved around the earth, and then we learned the opposite. so i'm not here to tell you anything about science is a proven fact, and i understand not everybody agrees with that, but that's as a science difference, that's -- science -- scientist, that's my humble view. but we would unambiguously say a question like this ills measuring a belief. it's the perception of the world the individual holds. now, we could rephrase that. we could call it their agreement with scientists or we could call it agreement with the truth, or something of that sort, but for us as psychologists, we tend to

say, here's a question, the planets may have been warming gradually or not, and any individual could say yes or no, and we would call that a belief. so, am i being responsive to your question? >> yes. >> great. thank you. >> i'm anna, and my question is in your surveys do you make distinction between global warming or global climate change or used interchangeably? >> thank you. love the question. we published a paper analyzing data from dozens of countries including the united states looking at whether people assign different meaning to global warming, climate change, or global climate change, and your two are two out of the three the

short-and-we found no notable differences at all in people's reaction to them and the seriousness they a attach to the phenomenon newscast. you -- phenomena. the scientific community called it global warming and then shifted to climate change. i tend to think's that as two separate hypotheses, one is has the earth been warming or not? and secondly, what is the effect of the warming if it's been occurring in terms of climb -- climate. i would personally view them as separate phenomena. a survey researcher i believe over the years the terms are enter changeable in american's thinking now but there could be misunderstanding in the sense that the phrase, global warming, sounds like the world getting hotter.

that's the concept we're after here. i feel a little safer using that any surveys to target that one element of what i'm asking about. but my concern is that although we have seen no evidence for it, if we were to use climate change and people mr. newfoundland that to mean weather change, we're getting way off track. so i guess i feel like global warming is a more specific and clear reference to the phenomena of interest, and that's why i lean that way. but if you question is, what difference does it make? as for as we can tell, not much. who has the microphone? >> james with the carbon tech center. i noticed you had a question about policy preferences, and you asked about gap and trade, whether it was a positive response, and then you had a gasoline tax. have you polled on a revenue neutral carbon tax where 100% of

the revenue would be returned either to a tax shift or direct distribution of revenue? >> it depends how you want to define cash bop tax -- carbon tax. we'll be developing a new question on carbon tax for our new upcoming survey work. but i can tell you we have explored exactly the issue you mentioned under the more complex rubric of cap and trade. so it's permits and auctioning and all that other baggage. we found that mid-60s% of people favored a cap and trade system when it was described either as auctioning or selling permits to companies allowing trading and allowing offsets. so we wanted to explore what might be holding that 65% back. in other words, why were people not necessarily accepting this statement. and -- this policy. so we tried different ways of

describing what would happen to the revenue. so we said auction it off? government would get money from companies. what if the money were used to support research to protect the environment? that didn't help. what if the money were used to help poor people? no. that didn't help. what if the money were returned equally to all american households? ah, now that's sounding better to people. in fact it increased favoring of the policy by 10 percentage points. so it looks like a -- i don't know if it's revenue neutral but it's a cap and dividend. that has been more appealing to americans. so we'll have the answer for you sometime soon when we do our next survey, where we will have a more simple carbon tax description we'll pursue but we haven't done it yet.

>> my name is adam. i appreciate use of a more significant way of doing things. i can understand why you wouldn't do state level. that's you'd lieu all statistic cal relevance. have you considered doing regional differences, for example, the pacific inert and the new -- pacific northwest, ad the new england area. >> you can do six effects for state, for regions and at that witness do is make these effects more significant, not less significant. we brant break it down because we don't have enough cases. but you can certainly look at --

if you had a big enough sample, whether that coe efficient and the regression equation gets bigger in the greener states in the map is showed you. that's rome interesting question. and we have not been in a position to do it yet. but some day when we have gigantic budget wes will. >> anymore questions? i want to thank everyone for a being here and thank professor for sharing all of this information. there will be video up on eesis web site so you will be able to get this information to look at it again, trying to digest it. i'm sure if you have other followup questions, please contact us or contact the professor, or we'll help get you connected. thank you very-very much for being here. i think this was very, very

interesting. fascinating. and we look forward to that next survey. thanks very much. [applause] >> here is what ahead today:

>> if you're results orient, it's miserable. when you want to solve problems, face your constituents or the country, it's miserable. that's the bottom line. unfortunately the process has changed in the united states senate. it's no longer reconciling differences. it's either side has a position, generally it's reflected as a party position. once that fails. if neither side has the vote, they don't move to try to

resolve those differences. they become irreconcilable. the question is, how you get past those differences. and that is a fundamental problem that occurred in the united states senate. and you have more and more new lawmakers in both the house and the senate. in fact there are 43 new senators since 2008, and then you have the 2014 election could be over 50%. so many who have nod been part of a legislative body and are not familiar how to make a law. i always threaten to go to the floor of the united states senate, you know, school house rock, how a bill becomes law, and remind everybody how it works. it's true, we don't have amendment process. we don't have a committee process. everything has broken down. so i came to the sad conclusion that the fight needs to be taken on the outside, and that's why this is so appropriate, to engage the public to demand change and to reward those who are willing to engage in

consensus-building and compromise, and penalize those who don't. >> a discussion on the current political simple in haiti and the effects of the earthquake. panellesss include the former ambassador to the u.s., raymond joseph, the crisis group, mark snyder, and former associated press correspondent and editor, jonathan kaatz. robert mcgwire the program directer as george washington university moderated the and you 20 minute discussion. >> good evening and welcome to all of you and to viewers who have tuned in via c-span to the gorge washington university and

the elliott school of international affairs for this evening's event. it's entitled, big trucks, pop star politics and consensus building, the politics of consensus in haiti. i'm at the elliott school of international attempt studies program. i also serve as the director of the school's latin american and hemispheric studies program this. evening's event is cosponsored by the latin american and the global international studies and its cultural and globe affairs research and policy program. this evening's event marks the debut of a special initiative undertaken by a new unit within the institute of global and international studies. the well-hemisphere working group and its brand new web site

initiative called, focus on haiti.org. allow me this opportunity to thank me who colleagues in arms for putting together this important position on haiti. scott freeman and meg pierce. we'll officially launch the web site by may. over the past three years, the carbine nation -- caribbean nation of haiti was experience add series of major events. a little more than three years ago in 2010, it was struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, which we all know about. in late 2010 early 2011 an election was held,, which yieldd a new president, a political

novice, known as a singer and performer. over the past two years, following her inauguration, haiti has struggled with political tension between the new president and the opposition parliament. as it has also had to deal with the continuation of earthquake recovery toward the road of social and economic development. of late it has also been coping with the prospect of a judicial process involving onclaude due valle, who consideredded to return to haiti in early 2011. and now haiti is in the midst of a difficult process of trying to move forward toward long overdue election of a third of its senate and all of its mayors and community governing bodies. concurrently the vast majority of haiti's ten million citizens, 80% of whom find a way to survive on two dollars a day or

less, continue to struggle to keep their heads above water. although haiti has not occupied the front pages of of the washington post since the earthquake, it may be edging in that direction. as tension over rising costs of living, stalled political process, and up met post earthquake recovery and development expectations remain unfilled. tonight's panel discussion features three speakers deeply engaged with haiti. they'll share their re felixs on the topic based on experiences and recent writings. let me introduce enemy the order the the which they will peek. our first speaker is mark l. schneider. mark honed the international crisis group, or icg, multinational nongovernmental conflict representation organization in the spring of 2001, a senior vice president. his areas of expertise include

post conflict reconstruction and nation building, u.s. foreign policy in the 21st under, and latin america and caribbean issues. mark is director of the u.s. peace corps from 18991 to 2001, and as the assistant administrator of the u.s. agency for international development for latin america and the caribbean. mark will base his comments from the recently published report on haiti by the international crisis group, entitled, governing haiti, time for national consensus, and mark has kindly brought copies of the report which are available on the table by the door. >> sadly, however, mark will have to depart around 6:30 so he can meet his personal commitments for passover. mark will be followed by raymond a.juvet, or joseph as americans would say.

ray has distinguished himself in a broad spectrum of roles, including theologian ex-diplomat, writer, lecturers, and social activist. from 2004 to 2010 he was the haiti ambassador to the united states. from 18990 to 1991 he was the charge of fairs in washington and haiti's representative to the organization of american states. currently a researcher and lecturer, ray has founded a nonprofit environmental organization, registered in maryland, whose web site is replant haiti.org, and ray has brought some pamphlets and prosures on the -- brochures on the organization available at the door. following ambassador will the jonathan much katz.

jonathan katz is the author of in uincome entitled, the big truck that went by. how the world came to save haiti and left behind a dollars. and copies of the book are available in the back of the room. a former "associated press" correspondent and editor, he was the lope full-time news correspondent stationed in haiti during the earthquake. among other reporting accolades, katz was hairedded the 2010 medal for courage in journalism, national headliners and society of professional journalists award, and finally recognition by the michael kelly award for the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. he was also the 2011 jay anthony lucas work in process award winner and a 2013 barnes & noble discovery great new writer selectee for his book "the big truck that went by."

of course i stole from that book, the big truck, in the title of this evening's panel. each panelist will speak for no more than 15 minutes. after all the panelists have spoken, will moderate a discussion session during which time we will field questions from you. at 6:50. we'll wrap up the discussion and turn the program over to meg who will give the brief presentation on the focus on haiti web site. before we begin, please allow me this occasion to remind you to silence or turn off your cell phone. thank you. mark? >> thank you, bob. and let me express my appreciation to the elliott school for this opportunity to

participate in this distinguished panel on big truck pop star politician the consensus building. the politics of developing haiti. even more i want to thank bob for educating me on haiti's reality over about the past 20 years. yesterday we were on a panel on haiti as well which has the title, can election save haiti? the answer we all shared was, no. elections cannot save haiti. but, as i said then and i'll say again tonight, the failure to hold elections will doom haiti to permanent failed state status. elections which were due in november of 2011, for a third of the country's senate, for all of its 140 mayoral positions in the country, and for local

assemblies, has not been held. without those elections, unfortunately, successful development is at risk and in fact will not take place. because in the absence of decent government, legitimate government, in the absence of a rule of law, haiti will not be able to maintain international support and will not be able to pursue the transformation that was called for after the devastating earthquake that occurred three years ago. even today, three years after the earthquake, 300,000 continue to be living in displaced camps around the capitol city. and over the course of the last year, a significant number of those displaced persons have been forcibly evict from those camps. although the government's

initially of the president michelle carried out several successful efforts to move people from the displaced camps to some organized housing, the reality is that still far too many remain in the displaced status. at the donor's meeting that took place in new york at the time three months after the earthquake, which i attended as an observer, some $5.3 billion was pledged over the following 18 months. $10 billion was pledged for the following ten years. to try and respond to the critical needs for reconstruction, and transformation. private individuals, or sort of private, like former president bill clinton, really did make evidents to get private sector investment coming to haiti. and over the course of the next several years, there were new initiatives. however, the reality is that

today, after $3 billion has been spent, the situation in haiti remains one in which the countries on the list of 187 done trophies the u.n., u.n. development program, human development index, haiti is 161. and over the course of the last year, it actually fell three spots on that human development index. haiti has the highest levels of infant child and maternal mortality and the lowers lid lit was si -- literacy. and unfortunately the introduction of cholera has added to the mr. mistry of the poorest haitians. near 8,000 dead from 660,000 sickened, and no end in site. -- no end in sight. if you want to to the what i think should have happened, the united nations should have

apologized because even if there's no legal proof the nepalese contingent housed near the area where the first evidence of cholera occurred, it's clear from every study, every study, that there was inadequate management of human waste and san -- sanitation in that camp. in addition, the international community should have supported and still support a rural vaccination campaign because that's where the most -- the poorest haitians and those with least access to health services live. finally, it does not have to accept legal responsibility -- pass me water -- in order to provide compensation for the families of the 8,000 victims. the former u.n. representative

for human rights in haiti, was forced to resign last thursday. made the same point. the united nations and donors should provide compensation to the victims. and finally, the u.n. should make greater efforts to ensure that a $10 billion investment program that has been put together by the pan american health organization, the world health organization, to establish clean water system and sanitation system in haiti over the next decade. needs to be funded. now, throughout this period, what haiti has not had is a functioning, effective government. there's been too much corruption, too little respect for the rule of law. too much narrow personalistic partisanship and an absence of any semblance of national consensus. and those facts undercore why haiti's salvation will not come

simply by holding the 16 month overdue election. however, until the election is held, the government will remain in gridlock, and in the absence of clarity of whether there will be a constitutional government, new private investment is going to hesitate to make long-term commitments, and there's a danger, particularly if the elections for the current ten members missing from the 30-member parliament, is not held, and the next election, which is also due this november, for the second third of the country's senate, is not held, there's every indication that the executive branch might tend to decide it should rule by decree because the parliament is no longer fully formed. if that occurs i can assure everyone that the international commitment to haiti's recovery

is likely to wither, and the president hope afford successful presidency, will be buried. amid the failure of haiti's elite political and economic to reach any consensus on meeting the nation's monumental challenges, the first of which is to hold these elections. that's why the international crisis group published the report that bob mentioned, governing haiti, time for national consensus, which tracks the failure of will over recent years by a broad spectrum of haiti's national leaders to reach some common view of basic minimums in every area of the country's development needs. beginning with governance. and the most recent triumph of partisan over national interests was the failure of president mar telly, parliamentary leader0s of 0 all parties and the business community, which is behind a lot of the parties that exist, to

implement the governance agreement that was signed on christmas eve with the facilitation of an ad hoc religious group, ecumenical group, religion for peace. that pact would have sidestepped what was essence lay catch-22 situation. where the absence of a third of the senators stymied the legislature being able to name three members to a permanent council. instead, there was an agreement for transitory electoral college reached in the christmas eve agreement. the problem is now three months have passed and the agreement as not been implemented. this past week saw the first sign of movement. the legislature sent three new names to the president to be appointed. the president now has to ask the judiciary to name its own members and he has to name his

own executive branch members med they all have to be sworn in at the moment, that has not occurred. they also have to be credible. they have to be accepted to the broad spectrum of haiti's political class, and haiti's population. the secretary general in his report to the security council just a few weeks ago concluded in the report that the original members named by the president last july to what was going to be a permanent electoral council, were widely considered illegitimate. that cannot be repeated. so, haiti still has no members for the electoral body, has no electoral calendar and no electoral law. local government remains undermined because the mayors, whose term also ran out a year

ago, -- the mayors in 140 communes, the local assemblies which, again, whose terms ran out, currently executive branch named new people and appointed them to those -- to 129 of 140 communes. entirely unsuspensional. -- unconstitutional. the constitution calls for mayors to be elected, not be appointed. when i was in haiti in december i spoke to the technical people who put together the elections, once you have a law in place, and they said it will take six months once you have a law, calendar, and a credible electoral council, so we're still looking at a significant amount of time before elections can be held. let me just note that the lack of decision on hold these

elections reflects haiti's zero sum game political culture that prefers destruction of the opposition to any form of compromise. and for development to take place, there must be a national consensus on moving forward on governance and then on the key issues that haiti faces. crisis group noted -- and when i was in haiti everyone said the same thing. there's deficit of confidence and an discussion of haiti citizen from any real say about their future. and that really must change. now, the content of the national accord has to be the issues that have plagued haiti for decades, and the president roz --'s proposed five es are an example. employment, education,

environment, energy, and the rule of law. i added an a yesterday, which is in our report as well, and that is accountability through transparency in each of these areas. by government, for the people. now, there may be distinct views on what should be done in each area, but that's precisely what a national accord process does, and bob has noted that at the community level there already is a significant amount of consensus about what has to be done and those voices need be heard in forming a national consensus and a national governability pact. the private sector, shy add, particularly the elite, must recognize as well their own responsibility to help shape that national consensus, and must include their paying all their taxes in order to provide the state with reresources it needs to fund basic health, education, and infrastructure.

you know, haiti remains a country of great contrasts. families who live in the estates and those who live in the gullies alongside the roads leading up to the estates. the contrast is also, as i said in the investment of $3 billion the last three yearsing are yet haiti has dropped three spots on the human development index. another contrast relates to citizen security. haiti now has 66 -- 6,684 military troops and 2,614 police in the u.n. peace-keeping mission and has 2,000 in the national haitian police force. over there's been a 33% increase in homicide in the last three months month 2012 compared to 2011. kidnappings are up by a

third,raise rose from 33 a month to 40 a month in 2012. the report from the secretary general also noted -- i want to emfew f -- emphasize this -- over the course of the past year the president's government has fired seven of the chief prosecutors for the west department, which is port-au-prince, and also has removed two inspector generals to the police force. those are key roles in trying to move the country towards greater transparency, greater justice, and greater responsible government. and the international community needs to demand that there is progress with respect to justice reform. let me note one thing finally because i know my time is up in the last session of the security council, march 20th, they agreed, everyone, that haiti has to quit stalling and hold these

elections. it was undermine bid the door donors refusing to attend a government called donor's conference last wednesday until there's a credible electoral body, electoral calendar and electoral law. for haiti to succeed by moving up the humidity development index it -- human development election it will need a national consensus on public policies aimed to improve the life of hays sans through economic growth, energy balance with environmental protection, education that extends quality as well as access, and the rule of law. that guarantees justice for all haitians. thank you. [applause]

>> good evening. it's pleasure to be here again with my fellow colleagues here who are with me yesterday and it's really a pleasure for me to be here at the invitation of a friend of a long time, professor bob. thank you very much. i'm also feeling sort of at home here, having spent six years from 2004 to 2010 here, and i see at least one haitian in the room. there have been others. thank you very much for being here. when the earthquake happened, in 2010, i made one remark.

i said, that the earthquake has taught us a lesson. haiti should decentralize. because the earthquake hit only one-fifth of haiti's land mass but caused economic damage over about 80% of the gdp. also, it caused nearly 300,000 deaths. why that? because we had put all of our eggs, so to speak in one basket. port-au-prince. and i said back then, we should rebuild but we should not rebuild the republic of port-au-prince, but the republic of haiti. and i encouraged back then that

the aid to the people who were displaced and who went back to the countryside, to the other cities, i had suggested, in fact urged, that the aid be distributed there. but that is not what happened. most of the aid, if not all of it, was distributed in port-au-prince. so, the people came back, and more came back with them, and so today, port-au-prince is more populated than before. there are no statistics, official statistics of that. however, just have to look around and see all the shanty

towns that are springing up all over. well, has there been any progress? what has happened since 2010? you heard mr. schneider talk about all the money, the 5,000 -- five billion promised back in march 31, 2010. i was there, too. when i heard that. and the 10 billion over a decade. and a lot of us are asking, what has happened? i contend that something has happened. a few things have been done. and they said, you know, 1.5 million.

today we only have 300,000, and they say that's progress. not good enough for me. 300,000 still on the tents. three years later? where are our priorities? i tell you why i ask about the priorities. that's what i think is the problem in what happened in haiti. while 300,000 on the tents also, a new paved road costing $10 million connect the a town in the mountains about 25 miles in the east of port-au-prince. this new paved road connects the town with a little village.

and what is that village? there is a hotel, a development there, beautiful place. i was there last year. but to get up there, spent two hours last year, in a four-by-four, with a few friends, and at that time i said, this road needs to be rebuilt. or built. well, the road has been built. as i told you, costing $10 million. 300,000 people are still on the tents. but why do i bring this? the road leads to this beautiful area where you think you are in switzerland. that place belongs to the in-laws of the minister of

tourism. and the criticism on the internet is saying, is this the new or the old corruption? i'm somewhat conflicted about this. because right now, i can get to the town in 15 minutes. but there's still 300,000 people on the tends. -- under tents. i contend that what is happening in haiti right now is because people in high places, in leadership, do not understand the priorities. or they are not paying attention to the priorities. a major priority as mark

schneider said, was the old holding of the elections because if the elections are held, a lot of things will happen in haiti. we'll have legitimate people ruling the place, and the international community will be more inclined to support and investors that haiti are calling for will feel more inclined to come in. so, while we cannot rule the elections -- hold the elections, although the united states is putting up money for it, they have money to do other things for their own interests. i say that haiti needs to look k at its pry sorts, and i'm putting the emphasis on the elections because mr. schneider,

don't know whether you know what happened yesterday. the town of haiti -- i'm quite sure you heard that -- a little town by a shantytown, near port port-au-prince, the people rioted yesterday, and they rioted because the central government was going to change the leadership by putting their own people as mayors to run the area there. so people got shot. had to be evacuated to hospitals. others got wounded. real major trouble. as mr. schneider said, if the elections are not held this year, and we keep having interim executive agents instead of elected mayors and local

officials, we will have big trouble. and started -- the situation in haiti will be ugly, and we will not know how it will get. that's the reason, again, i'm calling on the government and i'm supporting others who say, let's have the elections right away. there's another priority. for me. in haiti. the priority of saving the country. saving the land. if you look at the literature, haiti only has two% right now,

and i contend if we do not start a major reforestation campaign right now, haiti will become a desert soon. well, the president, january 1st, addressed the nation, said that 2013 is the year of the environment. the carnival, haitian carnival, something they won't miss at all, is february of this year. was dubbed the carnival of the environment. and the president has a very catchy slogan. one haitian, one tree. but i ask you to take a look at

the government budget, and i will ask you to read -- i'll read to you, you can take a look at it -- it's mefhaiti.gouv.ht. i repeat again. mefhaiti.gouv.ht. and refer to the place that says, next documents, and you will see what the priorities of the government are. with all these things about reforestation this year, and how the environment got the

equivalent of $150,000. take a look. i don't have time to break it down. but if you look, that's what you will find. and that make me think of the most interesting and most popular song this year for the carnival. the song was, -- in creole, means orally. talking about it. just saying it. why do they say that? because this go, i say, is very prolific in putting out information. everything, everything. but it's all -- i say i would like to see them put their money where their mouth is. ...

i'm going to steal your book. the book i wrote. my name is jonathan katz. i was in ap correspondent in

haiti until 2011 and i'm very honored to be here. thank you for the invitation. i'm honored to be on the panel. i want to talk about "the big truck that went by." let's talk about big trucks first. my book and this is for visual aid. "the big truck that went by: how the world came to save haiti and left behind a disaster." and the title meaning is not always altogether clear to people who wal want might risk n the bookshelf. i want to explain what i meant by big truck and what it means in the title. i picked up a few things in haiti living there for three in f. years. one of them is that everything can have two meanings if not more. the title has three. what it refers to is most literally the earthquake itself the way earthquake struck there wasn't a distinct memory of

earthquakes in haiti, even though port-au-prince have actually been destroyed by earthquakes in its infancy. the most recent have been 1770. a long time ago eric holder in many ways than the modern language. there just wasn't a good ocular word for what i just happen. so people were looking for other ways to describe it. one of the early names they came up with, the big truck that went by. and the reason was because that was the sound many of us including me who lived through the earthquake heard. the reason we thought we heard that sound is because we were so used to on every other day in port-au-prince hearing the rumblings of these big 18 wheeler semi's going down the unpaved or wish they had never been paid because they were sort of left in clumps streets delivering basic services. haiti is in many ways sort of a libertarian paradise.

everything has been privatized. you can't rely on the state for anything. and so if you want to make sure that you have a church in as you probably have a big generator. powered by fuel that is delivered on a big truck. if you want of water, it's delivered on a big truck. when her relatives coming from the countryside their delivered on a big truck but when food comes in imported from outside, everything comes amid a big truck. because the construction was really shoddy, when they would go buy it would rumble. so i am sitting on my bed on the second part of "the associated press" house, thought that heard a big truck on january 12 when i shall i was hearing the first wave of the earthquake. it was a little strange because the truck was coming from the wrong direction. water truck she's a cold up there in the afternoon but the sound was coming from over there. and within a couple seconds i realized my mistake.

the more immediate meaning of the title, excuse me, that most people would have outside of haiti just walking by on the shelf is the evocation of the image of the big eight trucks that came in the aftermath of the earthquake. and one of the ultimate points that i make is that really in many ways those big toxic and atwood with the same as the big trucks going by for. because despite rhetoric to the contrary, despite a lot of promises that were made otherwise, we ended up making the same mistakes after the earthquake that had been made for decades before. as best as i can tell those mistakes are continuing to this day. so that's what we're talking about. it's an important thing to keep in mind because it seems completely unfathomable as it is often brought up given the promise of all the money that was pledged at a donors conference and all the money

that we know was spent on immediate humanitarian relief after the earthquake, all the effort, the fundraising. i'm sure a lot of people in this room work directly part of it whether delivering on the ground or trying to raise money and awareness back here in the states. how is it possible that all these years later things haven't gotten better? the fact that things overall, the vital signs of haiti haven't gotten better is not -- you can put cocoa beverage one. some of them are symbolic. 300,000 people still living under tarps and tense. basically a symbolic number. nobody knows how many there were in the first place after the earthquake. no -- the government didn't have the capacity to count. now we know that there's roughly maybe 300,000 people who are living under these tarps and tense but that doesn't explain anything about what people are living under the starts and tense before have gone the. most of them have come back to homes that were reconstructed or

repaired whenever dems in first place for the just another money to pay rent and so nobody they've got their rental subsidy so they can go back and let internet. those houses are in the exact same condition, if not worse, as they were on the afternoon of january 12, 2010 when it all fell down. other people have gone we don't know where they have gone. some people are living in may be homeless and candidates in other parts of the city that haven't been found or can't be counted or quantified. the reason why people leave the camps there. sometimes it's because they have been forced evictions. recently not only in the report, former independent expert for united nations but also the secretary-general's own report delivers security council this is been raised as a major issue. i know knows the people i can but probably in the tens of thousands at a minimum have been forced to leave his and cam at either at the but if a policeman's rifle or the threat

of one coming soon. which doesn't say much for reconstruction for filling between those put out after the earthquake for building a better. and again i think the ambassador raised a very good point which is priorities. that in many ways part of the reason why this is happening is because the priorities haven't changed and the priorities are not necessarily focus on trying to put everybody into a safe house. there's been a lot of emphasis put on, for instance, investing in environment export industry for haiti. a lot of money has been spent building and industrial park north of haiti where the anchor tenant is a south korean textile manufacture who is there because they're going to benefit from a series of laws that of a of laws that are passed by the u.s.

congress dating back to the reagan administration a more recent ones pushed through with help of former president bush junior. to allow garments that are assembled in haiti to be exported duty-free to the tourney. there's a big hope and a lot of sectors by which basically i love the haitians who on the garment factories, politicians and the united states, retailers and training to benefit from these products coming in inexpensively or as an alternative for chiefly coming in from china because the shipping costs are much lower. they are coming directly from haiti. but it's not necessarily the prior id of the vast majority. one of the reasons why these parties have not changed is that it's easier to keep doing things the way that we've always done them. it's easier to go around the government instead of going through it. as hillary clinton said, hillary clinton had said at the

conference in new york in marc march 2010, this was essential, that we need to stop these old ways of business and move money through these national systems so they can strengthen haiti's capacity to deal with its own crises and face future disasters and rebuild from the ones at that point was very recent. that didn't happen. it's easy to keep doing things the way we been doing. one every other things we've been doing for a very, very long time is frankly not really listening to people in haiti. this is true in many countries all over the world. but in haiti it's very stark. one of the principal illustrations of this came after the quake and the way that humanitarian aid was done. the humanitarian cluster system as it was called, met in a guarded compound of the united nations, surrounded by high

walls and white and blue helmets, rifles together some are able to slip past all that into any meeting as an ordinary haitians would do what was going on because the meeting was being held in english. going back to this idea of decentralization which is but a dream in haiti for decades, the earthquake was the worst way it could have come about but it actually did have an effect in that direction because 1000 people spontaneous decentralized to the countryside. but because the they didn't follow them and the responders were not aware of the migration was happening, it wasn't taken advantage of and basically everybody moved back. i will talk about one more thing that came out of this. and that was one pop star politician, sean penn came to haiti about

\90{l1}s{l0}\'90{l1}s{l0} after the earthquake with a brand-new non-government or position. and it was in many ways through this process of the humanity and clustered means he was able to rise to power. to put it simply, he had a recognizable face, commanding voice. in the how to talk to our room. he was able to get peoples attention effectively and with people coming and going, with constant turning, very hard to see that some ngos would get the priority of the thing that they were asking for, and sean penn was consistently there and he was consistently listen to andy was able to impart rise to prominence through the cluster system, which again was no fault of his. and building off of that, and again this is not only sean penn. is a trip everybody who worked in haiti who comes in as a foreign with relatively infinite

wealth an infinite power compared to the vast majority of people who lived in the country but it's very easy to we did become a bowl in a china shop or all of a sudden take on formal responsibility then you probably deserve and the first place. i'm talking myself as well. i was a correspondent. had a tremendous audience come and whose word i was basically able to go where i want more or less and do what i wanted more of us. i had a considerable amount of power. infinitely good for sean penn who very quickly became essentially the mayor of a count of 40-60,000 people because his ngo took over essentially from the u.s. military the responsibilities for one of the larger tent cities in port-au-prince. he was there and was in many ways responsible although the a lot of different things at play, for moving about 7000 people out

to a remote desert of port-au-prince, far from services in a place where frankly very quickly nobody wanted to live, although many, many people are still there. we can talk about that later. the plan there was to build an industrial park along the lines of the one that ended up in the north but that project in which he was involved again no fault of his, such a boondoggle that it never came together and the priorities were moved to this other part in the. and i'm not saying this as, just make an indictment on sean penn or pick on him because it's always easy to talk about celebrities. they are in the public eye, say whatever we want about them. there's this image a lot of celebrities come down to disaster zones but their own kind of silicon, just there for a quick close-up and picture with haitian kid and put them down and get on the plane and leave. sean penn wasn't a. his ngo has done insofar as it's

an ngo, a lot of really good work. in fact, it's been in many ways a model for a lot of ngos in terms of the focus that has on an individual neighborhood instead of just general nebulous vision of trying to save haiti here and here and here and never really getting anything done. i'm not just can't pick on him but in using it as an example of part of what happens when we as outsiders coming to haiti and try to get ted our vision of what should happen, and deliver aid on our big truck without looking to see what's around, rumbling by and running over whatever is in the path. sean penn made a lot of mistakes. the last popstar we can talk about more in the question and answer session is filled with pop star politician in haiti, and i'll just leave this. it is not so simple even looking at the elections that ended the year of the earthquake. united states had a very heavy

hand and ensuring that, probably through voter fraud, nonetheless initially the electoral council had ruled should not move on to the second round of the election and it really was a direct intervention of the united states above all, including a personal visit from hillary clinton in the midst of the crisis in cairo going on at the same time, to essentially for lack of a better word dictate that he should be put back in the race and the then president of haiti then be left out. we can talk about that a little later. but essentially to sum up, the reason why things have not improved on the main is we keep doing the same things that we've always done. which include not listing which includes dictating to which includes coming up with solutions from the outside and trying to impose on society that has its own things at his own

priorities and its own elections that are far too often ignored. and so i think you offer listen to to me for the last 15 minutes or so but you really should be, if you're going to be working in haiti, you really need to be talking to the people whose lives are going to be affecting. because you going to be affecting them in ways that it's almost impossible for us to imagine from the outside. and in so far as i can be any service through my reporting or through my book, it's to transmit that message and to try to transmit some of those views which might not otherwise be heard. [applause] >> thanks for getting my book back. good book. you to read. okay, we have a few minutes now for your questions. and we have lindsey and the back with a microphone, and i if you have a question, if you would identify for lindsay to come to you with a microphone.

and then if you could kindly let us know who you are and what your affiliation is. and please keep your questions short because we don't have much time and would like to get as many questions in as possible. and while you're thinking of questions, we have one right away so i won't ask one. >> thank you. i'm a researcher in the department of history. and i had a question for all of you, but maybe most particularly you, jonathan. you seem to have implied that the ngo that work in haiti have not been successful in helping the long run. i remember just after the earthquake they were also voices saying ngos and governments don't work with haitian government. be careful, because all the money is going to vanish.

and now it seems like it's been a complete reversal, you know, talks about haiti thing, you know, you don't work with haitian government so they're not building the government, they are not building on the strength of local government. how would you solve this? on the one hand you don't want to give money that -- [inaudible] how do you do that? >> a very good point. i'll say one thing, and that is that while it is true that there were reports in the popular media and elsewhere, don't give money direct to patient government or don't work with haitian government. in fact, much of the rhetoric especially with the ngos in cells and with the state department and hillary clinton secretary of state was the most prominent example but there were many, many others, were actually changing their tune. in the early 1980s, going back

to about that period, there was a major push explicit within usaid and other places to avoid the haitian government as much as possible. what's known as ngos, they were single, the haitian government isn't worth a corrupt. at that point in the early 1980s, dictatorship. let's not deal with them. let's deal with these parallel structures and a point them. and it has been widely recognized over the last 30 years that what that has created is as the very cliché but also descriptive term goes, a republican ngos. and it is well known and is fairly incontrovertible that the system has weakened the capacity of government in haiti, and even private institutions within haiti to manage their own affairs. there's really basically no two

ways about it. however, there are many other reasons to keep money within their own borders. one of which is again it's just easier and it's just more pleasant. you look at the money that was spent in the humanitarian relief in the year after the earthquake, mostly in the immediate aftermath, to $.34 million. 90% of that never left the donor countries. 6% couldn't be accounted for at all. 1% went to the haitian government. filled with numbers in terms of the reconstruction money are similarly low. they remain in single digits and often that money came with major, major strings attached this effort hampered the governments ability to set its own priorities but again this is well known but it is really hard to change. the major group such as the monarchs and other so-called beltway bandits, the terms the often used to describe themselves, terms of endearment,

really like continued to get the contract again and they really, really don't want to let go of them. and it is very easy to take his perception of corruption much of which is derived from things that are poorly edited such as the dictatorship. and use as a justification for continuing business as usual. the one thing that i would say very quickly is that corruption as a catchall term is actually so broad as i would almost say to be useless. because it describes such a wide provide of activities, you know, you look at transparency international report that came out around the donor's conference there were a couple of blog posts written by their affiliated haitian shafi kahn and the only specific example of corruption they could come up with were bags of rice that had been donated and work sold on the street which is one of the intended dose of those food donations, and people using their family connections to get better places in the open air

marketplace, which is not any way equivalent to or even late to a propensity to take major disbursement of aid and put them into personal pick account, switzerland, instead of spending them on the appropriate project. i'm not saying that corruption is not a major concern in haiti. it absolutely is the one of the ways in which to fight corruption is to fund government institutions either literally the anticorruption unit of the haitian government, and yes, there is one, or to fund agencies such as the police or the customs bureau so they could pay higher salaries so that employers don't need to be collecting bribes. so the excuse of not funding the government because you're afraid of corruption and thus further contributing to the weakening and perhaps even the corruption within the government is a bad strategy. it is not going to be easy to change, but i don't know anybody who is usually involved in the attic hire a medium level to think that there's any way

possible for it without change. >> if i could then i have to leave. i have finally found an issue where i can disagree with with jonathan. because after the earthquake there really was no government. so if you're going to provide relief, humanitarian relief, you have used what was available, with the ngos that would come in a provided. the level of destruction of government agencies, i make a i was there as well during that time. there just wasn't anything there. a lot of middle and top government officials had been killed as a result of the earthquake. so lisa initially on the dominican side you almost had no option. the issue to me anyway is the understand the distinct intentionally and development. and when you look at the development, first he had to do what johnson said, you do have to listen to the haitians picked a certain degree the answers

have been there for years from haitians in terms of its patients, center. the issue is how do you make a development policy effective? you need a government. and how do you make the program effective, countryside, and you need some mechanisms to deliver services. and at this point still the government has really, really poorly developed in order, particularly at the local government level. that's really where the worst kind of absence of investment is made. but the action -- the answer theitheissues which have but maa requirement in immigrant which is what i said and every grant to every ngo, every contract for any development come and say you've got ask, every year you've got to transfer 20% of what you're providing to a government partner agency. and every grant and every contract needs to have built

within it institution building of the government to be able at some point to carry out these activities themselves. monitored. because there is a lot, there has been a lot of corruption were you budget support the government then you have any kind of oversight. you want to build the intro accountability with in those government agencies, and you want to have citizen accountability of those actions as well. so it's a combination. but you can't choose simply provide money to the ngos. you need to have as your philosophy that you're going to be providing services the building institutions at the same time. >> you can take off, but you can watch the webcast later i just want to say i agree that it wouldn't have been possible in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake if we're talking about on the afternoon of january 12 with a morning at january 132 suddenly scale up to the haitian government. nonetheless, it was abundantly

clear that this had to change at some point. it hasn't change in 3 cents and is going to be another disaster coming at some point in future. it would be a real shame to see a situation and which once again people say we would like to eventually done this but we never got around to it before and right now it's too late. there's always an emergency and is always too late. >> no problem. because i was ambassador, a government official, and during my time here i thought you have my support for my government. now i where a civilian had. i work in haiti, and i think the big problem is not either government or the ngo, or ngo. because a lot of the ngos seen the following the path of what government is doing.

so i think it's a problem of accountability. and yesterday i gave this example of what's happening right now, what i said we would not be able to have elections. take these numbers. 460 laptops, 207 extended computer memory cards, 88 portable batteries, 160 solar panels disappeared in june in the offices of the electoral council. either the prosecutor, equivalent to district attorney or even attorney general their, and who made the discovery that

happened. a government office, cp, intellectual council, permanent electoral council was provisional backing. the prosecutor or the attorney general has been fired. there is no investigation. there was an investigation, we don't know what happened. there was no break-in. so here is a major issue about corruption, theft at the highest level. and we don't know what happened and the u.s. is giving more money now for the next elections to buy perhaps all this equipment again.

so i say yes, we have support government because i think there's no other way to do it. however, we have to demand accountability and transparency. >> my name is kendra. i work for a small nonprofit here in d.c. called beyond the borders. i have two questions. the first one is for anyone. i saw that first guidebook for tourism in haiti since the '80s i think. animal and if you think that's a feasible alternative to the garment industry as some kind of sector that could rebuild or reconstruct haiti. and then the second question is for mr. katz, and how do you get

people to actually start listening instead of just saying they're listening? and how do you make, how do you ensure the longevity and that instead of just having it be a one time project? >> paul wrote a wonderful guideline. it's a fascinating read on its own. he layers and a lot of history and a lot of really interesting perspectives besides just sleep here, e.g. so it's a really good read. i think paul would also agree with the statement that you have to be very careful about how you do tourism. there again has been a lot of talk about tourism. that's what one of the major spokes of perhaps you can call bill clinton's view of the reconstruction of haiti or of view put forth by paul in january 2009 even before the

earthquake. of scaling up the garment sector, agriculture, but also tourism as a major goal. it's a caribbean island it is a beautiful place. but you have to be very careful about how you do. before i lived in haiti, i spent two years as a correspondent for haiti and the dominican republic and, a country that is dependent on foreign tourism but with very small percentage of the population actually benefit anyway from it. in fact, a lot of the jobs that are done in these big all-inclusive walled off compound resource in the dominican republic are done by haitians, some of whom are there illegally and end up getting sent back to haiti when it's time to pay them although they're very good at their jobs while they are there. so it be very careful about the. that is certainly not a model to replicate big compound on inclusive tourism like to see in a lot of the caribbean. that said, there probably are ways in which tourism can be done well. where the ideas that i've seen

put out there for a place to start is encouraging and creating infrastructure for members of the haitian diaspora to go back and visit their families for their international homeland, and building off of that in ways that would be sort of smaller scale tourism that would allow more direct interaction between the actual haitians and actual tourists. it's a very complicated balance. it perhaps can be done well but some models in the world are better than others but as to the second point, how to ensure that people listen and make sure that they keep listening, that's very difficult to do. i think this may be part of what's behind this question, a lot of organizations have on the project report a little box for committee participation that they check off. they're all kinds of ways to do. one of which is to send some people out industries, taken in get and put that in the dossier.

the issue is accountability, and the question with accountability is to whom are the aid groups or the government actors accountable? the way the system is constructed right now, primarily the people who are doing work in haiti are accountable to their donors outside of haiti or donor governments it into getting a you -- a big usaid grant you a call accountable, to some extent the congress. that's an issue because the priorities outside of haiti are very different from the priorities in haiti. it doesn't require them to be particularly mendacious. it may just be that they are different, but they are not the priorities that on the ground. they are not arrived at from the perspective what people actually need in the olympics one of the things to rewire this kind of

accountability and make sure in some way come up with a mechanism which these groups are accountable to the populace. and ultimately the only institution that can really of the accountable to the populace own happens in the world would be a haitian state. a haitian government that can be voted out of power event and something that is improving the lives of individual people. one small point, major point about accountability as were talking about it, brought up a couple times here is that one of the models for accountability in this situation should be the united nations. as mark was discussing in fact all the evidence shows that the united nations was responsible for grading a cholera epidemic that is not killed 8000 people, sickened between six and 7% of the haitian population and refuses to consider its own accountability, to even allow haitians to have their day in court, is a bad place to start. so at some level humanitarians have to take this principle of first arm and a kind of

selflessness and try to hold himself accountable out of, for its own sake and tha then ultimy these institutions, the ultimate of which is going to be a haitian state has to be fought. >> i want to address the tourism part of the question. while i was the ambassador here, i tried to get my government to pay attention to something that would really help haiti. haiti is unique of all the countries of the caribbean. it has a culture, a history that none of the others have. i would like to see haitian fortifications, beginning with, and many others. only you know about them. but we have fortifications in more than 30 of them throughout the country that were built to fight the war of independence. if these were regulated and

hotels were built around them, -- [inaudible] would attract people to come to a place to see where freedom started, and how it started. as i said, the appropriate type of residents around the. i'm quite sure when those people come back they will tell their friends, you just have to go to haiti to see what happens 200 years ago and how that changed the authentic will, including the united states and south america. >> i think we have time for one last question.

make it a short one so we can get to the presentation on the website. >> you mentioned the beltway bandit. i was just wondering if you saw any good come out of the tub contractors post earthquake? >> on an individual level, if you are a person who has lost everything in the earthquake and you are struggling and you don't know how you're going to get from day-to-day which is a huge portion of the population, and are able to receive something, it's appreciated. it can be a good thing. one example, tarps and cancer often referred to as their symbol for a failure. but that in and of themselves work better than the sticks and that she said people were living under a minute after the earthquake struck. and so if three years later we're talking about people living under sticks and bed sheets i don't think it would be

any bedsheets left, just living between sticks. it would certainly be a worse situation. and are other bigger things that you can talk about. one thing for instance, immediately after the earthquake was the medical assistance provided to it's stabilized. indisputably. people were, in fact, receiving health care a month after the earthquake, free health care on an order of magnitude they had never seen before in their lives. a lot of those groups found themselves treating car accident victims and malaria cases and children with congenital defects that would've never been addressed of the west and for those families that was absolutely a godsend. but my argument is you have to look at this in context and look at the big picture at once. but going really fast back to the medical situation, they were private practices of doctors in port-au-prince and the quake zone who were put out of business by the competition from free medical aid. and even though there were a number of projects underway to

build hospitals and partners in health recently for instance, opened up a teaching hospital, to a large extent the health care system came in in terms of free donated aid, did not leave behind in its wake a structural improvement that made it possible for people who were not getting care for their malaria or tuberculosis before the earthquake to get along after. and so again it is not an indictment of every single person who went down to haiti to say look, all of you screwed up. you all have blood on your hands. you should go home and cry yourself to sleep every night. but it is to say let's take a just look at what we are doing, take a serious look at what the lack of coordination with the lack of foresight of what the long-term impact of this kind of aid are doing, and understand that there's certain things that will be much harder in the short run that will be much, much more beneficial. >> meghan, you want to come forward? we will have a quick demo of our

website. >> good evening, everyone. my name is meghan pierce. part of the initiative that doctor mcguire has launched includes a website which incorporates a bibliography related haitian development and also small blog. so i'm just going to demonstrate very quickly how the website worked up about the contributing authors to both posts on our blogs and to contribute to our bibliography. on hope that you can deliver a variety of posts.

related haitian development events in addition of glenn andy grider district of columbia a. would also reflect a recently published articles related to haiti. that's all very interesting. and then we have a link to our bibliography on this tactic basically the bibliography functions as a more efficient use of scholars. all of the publications on our bibliographies are put into separate folders. so if you're looking for information related to gender and government issues or agriculture or education, everything is there for you. they we have a tab which is related to caribbean current events to sort of keep in perspective haiti's role in the greater caribbean area to confront we have an events tab you can see here. anything coming up in d.c. we will have a post about it. so that if you're interested in

attending events like this in a, some of them. sal turned back over to bob to wrap up. thanks. >> thank, meghan. [applause] >> once again i would like to thank very much meghan and scuppered doing a yeoman labor on this website. this is a beginning. and we welcome your participation on this website so please get in touch with us for blog posts, ideas. we hope that the bibliography section can help you be research. and i think our ultimate goal with this website is that we would like to be able to have it expand into a website that would help to achieve it towards that accountability that we have heard. we want to try to help ngos be more accountable to people in haiti. we're going to try to find ways to do that on the website. so this brings us to an end to

tonight's program. those of you who have questioned that we couldn't get to, perhaps you can approach speakers informally when it ends. we still do have over you on the side a little snack bar, and there's lots of good sweets over there if you have a sweet tooth not filled yet today. and otherwise, i think all of you for coming, and i would like to thank c-span for covering this event this evening. we are very thankful about that, and we hope you'll come back in the future. so everyone, thank you and goodnight. [applause] >> who [inaudible conversations] >> coming up on c-span2, the intersection of political dualism and infotainment. in a conversation with african heads of state, and there's the future of the aviation industry hosted by the u.s. chamber of commerce. across the c-span networks

during primetime tonight will be live at a town hall meeting look at unity and government. the bipartisan policy center and its new commission on political reform will host a kickoff event at the national campaign to end hyperpartisanship and politics. here on c-span2 at 8 p.m. booktv's "in depth" with randall robinson. on c-span3, a look at u.s. naval history. here's a brief preview of what to expect tonight at eight on c-span during the political dirty town hall meeting. >> i don't know that mr. reagan, if somebody could join us, if he would say, yes, sequestration what happened under his watch. i think it would have been an effort towards bipartisanship. i really think american politics today has migrated from an nfl atmosphere for hunger games. nfl, you do everything possible to be victorious.

you outthink, outplayed and out hit your opponent. but even in the nfl announced it will reach down and lift their opponent back. and hunger games, you make sure your opponent never ever is capable of getting up again. we need to remember that we are still americans and ought to be working together for this country, not just the parties. >> monday night on first ladies, and harrison dies after a month in office. she passes away just a year and a half later. julian tutt who becomes the president's second wife spent julia i think of as the madonna of first ladies. she loves publicity. she had actually pose as a model at a time when that was needless to say frowned upon. she was essentially known as the rows of long island. by all accounts was the

witching. certainly bewitched 57 year-old john tyler. who married her, and she loved being first lady. she had the job for less than you, but it was julia tyler who ordered the marine band to play "hail to the chief" whenever the president appears. it was also julia tyler had greeted her guests sitting on a throne on a raised platform with purple plumes in her hair. it's almost as if she repeated to that more queenly role that martha washington had deliberately rejected spent we'll include your questions and comments about these 31st ladies by phone, facebook and twitter monday night live at nine eastern on c-span and c-span3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> next, infotainment and political news. we'll hear from the executive

editor of tmz, "the new york times" hollywood reporter, a former network news anchor and a writer with the "l.a. times." szoka low public square and arizona state university's cronkite school of journalism hosted this event in los angeles but it's about an hour and 15 minutes. >> thanks so much for being here. thanks to my colleagues, especially the cronkite school. visited terrific panel of three and credible journalists with incredibly different backgrounds and let's get into. i must confess the first time i was told that is going to be moderating this panel i've felt great physical pain. and it was a flashback actually for me to a moment of real physical pain. in 2003 outside accounting

office buildings in norwalk, in l.a. county, where candidates must go to file paperwork they run for office. the recall election had been scheduled, people were going to run for governor. and i was there sort of staking out, cal covering it for the "l. times" when arnold schwarzenegger walked upstairs to go file his papers. trailed close by arianna huffington who wanted to get the full benefit of arnold's press crowd that had assembled the i was try to get a question to arnold was a me. the next thing i knew, my head had hit the ground. i had been mowed over it turned out sort of bowled over by teams of reporters, crews from access hollywood and inside edition. who i stood at my respectful distance while they wondered why the to arnold and got questions

answered. i must say once i determined i did not need medical attention i sort of had a question in my mind, should i be angry at these people who hadn't managed, managed to follow journalistic decorum, least among us political reporters to cover california politics, or should have learned something from that? and figured maybe what kind of martial arts training there getting people who had access. so that's kind of the question of tonight. the entertainment culture is what it is. it is here. even if you're just standing there and can knock you over. so if you're a journalist or a consumer journalism, the question becomes we get the journalism we need, took about politics and government. democracy in our country, how do we get that in that culture? out of journalist negotiate that culture? do you fight it?

or do you cleverly use it to your advantage but i'll in addition to the panelists. for some going to start with charles. there's aisha a thing on youtube that shows how to pronounce his name but i don't recommend. it's long. he helped launch the first season of tmz. is a coexecutive producer. and prior to tuesday he spent eight years at extra which is a pop-culture newsmagazine. produce nearly 2500 episodes of there. and before extra he worked at tv in phoenix which is the abc affiliate produce a nightly 10 p.m. newscast. he went to asu, majored in broadcast journalism. now, tmz can be a punching bag for a lot of people. you've been blamed for the decline of civilization i've seen in some of the clips. thought want to give the you the

opportunity to turn the tables a little bit. >> on all of civilization? [laughter] >> on journalism. when you read, when you see networks, newspapers do political coverage, do coverage for back government, how do you look at those stores? are there things that you know from the work you've done at tmz that makes you think, this could be done better, that could be done better? >> okay, i'm going to take down civilization now. know, i listened. tmz just dabbles in politics to appoint. and i don't think what review, what we do is what i think part of the menu at this point. the way people need to learn about politicians. what we're trying to do is to make policies and personnel to protect protect people interested in when we do politics it's more a guess would say on this earth.

we're not talking about policy. we're not talking about how this senator voted on a particular bill. we're just talking more about the personality of the person. because i do think that there's a new interest now in finding out about these people, not just as politicians. i think you can draw people into the about the policy, if you kill them all of it about the person aside from politics. some of our most attractive political stories, for instance, aaron shock, we have a photo of him showing his abs. who knew? the congressman from illinois. representative shock, hate to use the word shocked, at the interest he got when you put that photo up. suddenly he had constituents were reaching out to him that

never ever -- they didn't even know that he was the representative and they're saying wait a second. interesting. it's funny because it is like wow, a photo of the guys abs, they pay attention. you can say that's bad and person i do think it is a little sad that people should be interested anyway. but if that's what it takes to get them into church, then that's what it takes. and out there in shock and his constituents were paying attention to how he votes on things whether they like it or dislike it. something yesterday with. but at least now they're interested in and of you he is. spent i'm going to put you on a more, maybe if us a window on how the sausage is made at tmz. you've often been praised and read an essay just the other day, offer a political scientist

on american politics argues that tmz, talk about the subject matter, but that as a news organization it's a lot more vigilant than a lot of the major news organization. it's got sort of a machine of reporting presents a real reporting disciplines of phone calls and a lot of the sort of checks that other places don't do. is that true? >> basic journalism? >> well, yeah. >> it's like people say that a lot and how do you guys know those stores? is not really, there's no magic for the other them like you said, making phone calls, you know, three dozen phone calls, whatever does. we were just having conversations about people in the up on you that you can use to that if you're doing actual reporting you've used the people hang up on you because they're going to. that's your way are going to find, and when and if you've got us a all right, now do i go. and to call the next person,

call the next person. we always tell new employees who want to become producers at tmz say, you know, how many phone calls did you make? if there's a story you're working on, well, i call this person and they said they will get a callback. oka, ma what are you doing? why are you waiting for them to call you back. you're going to lose this toward to the other person was making a phone call and try to find out what it is you're trying to find a. there's always more than one way to skin a cat. so don't wait. our thing is always make as many phone calls as it takes and in as short a period of time necessary and get information. when you have it and when you can from the, with multiple sources, then we published. but you can't wait. that's the new environment of journalism. you wait, users. >> let me bring aaron into the conversation to give the inaugural walter cronkite professor journalism at issue.

you are known for reporting on 9/11 right there on the attacks on the world trade center. you have one enemies, awards, your fame, anchor of abc news world now. before that had a long successful career in seattle. in this, i'm curious what you think. this moment where people get their information. they are more likely if you're covering a campaign, you are more likely to see the candidate on an entertainment show come on "the daily show" than in front of you. answering detailed questions in an open-ended interview about policy. websites, new, popular websites are about pop culture as much as

news often drives political coverage. how should journalists negotiate this, if you are trying to bring news about government, politics? do you want to play these games good you want to be all over social media? do you want to be embedded, be a character on television just as they people you cover? >> first off, i was struck, because seen into the same thing to do took a picture of me without my shirt on. [laughter] and who knew? spit got that photo right here. [laughter] >> but he didn't have it first. [laughter] >> good point. >> they were a bunch of questions. let me take a couple things. first of all, these guys didn't invent that kind of television or that kind of information. i mean, i honestly don't mean

this pejoratively. the gossip stuff for celebrity stuff has been around forever. so they just do it in a different way in a different medium at a different level. i don't find it particularly threatening to journalism at all. in fact, if you listen to what he said we make lots of calls. we check it out, we verify it and then we published. that's pretty much what journalism is. that's pretty much what it is. and so they do it on a guy with really good abs, or a guide -- but it's just journalism, and if arnold schwarzenegger hadn't been an actor and hollywood guy you would not, you would have that story all by her lonesome, okay? as i'm sure the mayoral candidates felt quite lonesome here last week. he's a celebrity.

i don't feel, it's not that it don't feel but this has change. i understand that the business has changed. what i think we all need to do is to stop hammering him quite so much and just get back to the business of her own individual businesses because this business can he's interested in his stories. i'm not going to be chasing his stories but i'm glad he's not chasing my stories because they have a disciplined about the way they work that would be scary to me, and i just want to make sure that my guys are applying the same discipline to the stories that we are chasing that his folks are applying to the stories that they are chasing. ..

then you go well i had it tweet today and i couldn't get the story that honestly 140 characters let's be serious. [laughter] the question was about 940 characters. [laughter] >> fair enough, fair enough. no offense. >> no, no, no offense taken. so you know tell me, what about the pressure to entertaining? you are all network. >> i wouldn't know. >> your own network seems to be under incredible pressure.

>> yeah most recently. but no, look i mean how did they do it? >> they don't do it. how they do it is not to do it. i guess they figured out they can cover cruise ships for a really long time. [laughter] and equate that vacation with a natural disaster. but what is happening cable is that fox and "msnbc", for whatever you may think are more entertaining, okay? so cnn has always been cnn. it's always been the kind of public utility of news. you want to know what's going on so you turn the spigot on and fill your pale with news. it fills up and that's enough of that so you turn it off and then you want to be entertained. bill o'reilly is telling someone

to shut up or rachel is being kind of snorkeling and abusing or whatever in the old days olbermann was just going on and on and on. whatever it was. that is more entertaining. what cnn is yet again trying to figure out is, i mean i clearly failed that it. is to figure out how to make the day when that a natural disaster doesn't get the data and it doesn't start the day, to make those days as engaging as every other day. and you know it may be that you can't do that because it's not, and in those days you had to hope that anna nicole smith dies. [laughter] >> just to pick a name. on that note, i think we need to turn to "the new york times." michael cieply is covering "the

new york times." the "l.a. times" and as a reporter there. he spent nine years as a film and tv producer, production executive, a lot of different projects and even way back covering the entertainment business and "the wall street journal" and he has degrees in european intellectual history which i assume you can talk to anybody at ca a. so michael, there was a movie executive interviewed by pbs and said the great line in the movie business and once you're all the time his material is everything. the material is actually nothing the material doesn't matter. you can show up in front of the studio executive and they can come back with the greatest reasons owners not to become involved with it and you rise wouldn't drives the entire

business is attachment particularly in the 90s. so the question is, do you see that change? some version of that change happening in the journalistic world? >> yeah i think so. one really different zones here because i'm coming out at print and you are coming out broadcast and we are meeting somewhere in the middle on the internet. so these are radically radically different equations. i just want to back up and say there's a little bit of a false dichotomy here that we are talking about infotainment and how that might be changing things and if we are pointing at tfc oddly enough tmz i think having looked at it up close i would go beyond everything is said and i would say it's one of the most intensely plastic leave reportorial organizations i have ever seen occur in town.

look under the skin of the subject matter because the subject matter can distract you. and you realize that you may or may not be -- go -- but within the small contained universe you have a look up close and i'm fascinated at how you work the courts, you work long enforcement and you get it right. you do all the things that back when we were better stats on publications we used to do but trend publications are broad. they cover an enormous range of things. staffs are coming down and so we no longer have that intensity and focus were you guys ganged up on a small area and you report the hell out of it and it's an amazing thing. putting that aside, to your question, you are saying is that lack of importance of the material sort of taking control of journalism? yeah.

i mean what i see happening, let's just say internally if i look particularly at the entertainment zone. i don't even want to stop and say whether the political coverage is good, bad or different. it's really hard unless you study it and read it particularly every day to make a judgment about it that if i look at the way we handle entertainment on "the new york times," particularly on the web there is now a vast amount of material posted and sometimes printed that just does not matter. it's just absolutely vacant stuff. if you have ever driven through the south and look at miles and miles and miles of kudzu choking out the real stuff we have miles of kudzu on that web site in that paper and those of us who are still kind of just by habit, because we are old-timers and it's the only way we know how to

do it, trying to drill in and do a couple of basic things like tell people something they don't already know which is getting to be one of the rarest elements in the news story. much of what is printed is a regurgitation of what is known. my version of what is known known in my first-person experiencexperienc e of what is known in my attitude towards what is known in getting that first impression is rarer and rarer and rarer inside of print story. telling people something doesn't matter. you can go up and down. we have web producers who have evolved over the last five years. people used to post my story and now they basically go out and they will do a q&a and a very soft q&a with any celebrity on their own and helps them on their own and that kudzu pushes the story that might take us a week to crack ahead of somebody

who does only to tell it. and they will go to post the story and it will be seven stories down. the celebrity junk is basically crowding it out. it takes time and it takes space and it takes energy. fundamentally at least on the web site it's all traffic driven. more frequently you mentioned a celebrity name, the higher your traffic will go and you want a lot of traffic you have to keep a constant flow of those things. doesn't matter whether people have have already done it or already said it. >> i don't disagree with any of that. to tell a little story that is in your world though you will disown it is the single worst day i've ever had on television, the actor robert blake was arrested and he is arrested in

the san fernando valley somewhere for -- his wife. that is about what the story is worth, what i just gave you. the actor robert leg who has done one very good performance in a tv series, a tv series, is arrested for killing his wife. we spent four hours on it. not like a figurative four hours. we were asking extra correspondence for no reason that i could figure out if we should keep this going. how will this impact his career? yes/no career. [laughter] >> i think it was gone by then. i don't remember. so four hours okay.

so i go home and i get home at 2:30 in the morning and my wife who is a reporter looks at the half asleep and says, why? [laughter] honest to god i don't need this right now, okay? but i don't need it. the next day i come to work and there are 15,000 e-mails. on average day we get about 4000 e-mails but 15,000 i'm looking through a few hundred. not one, not one said you promised you would do serious news. not once, you didn't do enough robert blake. not once. is so interesting how we make a mistake and we shouldn't do this and my bosses are going crazy. i can't believe you're saying this. in the end you guys have got to decide too because that was the

biggest number we had done since pan am 587 crashed in queens five minutes after 9/11 and we thought it was terrorism. 10 years ago celebrities drove ratings and 20 years from now celebrities will drive ratings. whatever celebrity was 100 years ago the new will be driving ratings on the wall. i just don't think it's new. >> has gotten more painful. i will give you an easy way in web terms to think about how bizarre this has become. think about the oscars. 10 or 12 years ago we wrote about the oscars two times in the course of the year. there were nominations and then it happened and that was about what that enterprise was worth. starting in about the year 2000, i believe i was personally responsible for a terrible terrible corruption step in this

process and i was working at this time for the west coast editorial director at, the bureau chief of inside.com. we set up $35 billion in the first dot.com bust but it was the first early experiment in web news like instantaneous news delivery, traffic delivery. we did all media coverage and we paid everybody much less but the only thing that made money on inside.com was something that i and a couple of characters invented that we called the oscar track. we figured out on a lark that we could get a mathematical model and add up all the factors from serious ones to color of hair and pryor nomination and everything else, create a model that you could feed information into and every single day for five months rank all the contestants. i showed this to my boss and he said that's interesting but one suggestion. what's that? take it down to a decimal.

that will really fascinate people. so for five months straight we have posted a ranking, a horserace, 774.2 is now ahead but we instantly sold the entire page for the run to the lexus auto company. every day for 120 days i had to write a handicap that went went this -- went with this. the entire year i was making as many as three appearances a day on your cable news shows. we had to figure out how to quantify this and everything else. for five months of the year now because there is traffic around it. >> i might question you found something that worked, why didn't someone apply that to the rest of the operation?

basically what you are saying is a lot of what we do. i guess the scary part is when you start to become a slave to the occupation. >> what is being carted out? in the bygone "new york times." any story that takes real investment. when you read read the paper everyday, there are lots and lots of intelligent sounding stories that are in that paper and they are still pretty intelligent. if you know them from the inside and you know them for 20, 30 and 35 years you to know there's a styrofoam quality to many of these stories and that they are being done in a day what used to take a week. a classic example is this is a great story. i'm not a big believer that every story has to be great but every story has to be valid and it has to mean something. back in the mid-1980s when nobody in this town --

everybody in hollywood talked about -- and what a monster he was and he was hideous and running the entertainment business out of the caa and he is corrupt and evil and crooked or whatever and there has never been one single news story about him. not one. it prided itself on doing it all in the dark. i'm sitting at the "wall street journal." screw that. we will figure out a way to put them on the front of the wall street journal. i took off two months and i follow that man everywhere. when he would come to the carlisle hotel i'd i would be sitting in the jockey club with david brown talking about him, interviewing about him. two months solid nothing but peace in together who the hell is this guy that no one had ever heard of and ran it on the front page of of the journal. it jirga this entire reversal in his behavior. he decided he couldn't hide anymore and went public.

many many stories, "vanity fair" and everybody came after that. if i took two weeks on that story today would be fired. >> by the same token, aren't there ways to exploit it? my own experience, arnold's wash and anger becoming governor of california was a gift from god. people read those stories. i got stories into the "l.a. times" that were really hard topics. workers compensation, local government finance, business, taxes for businesses and i even wrote a book about the issue in the process and i was able to do that because i dress them all up as a story about schwarzenegger. >> became giftwrapped with arnold schwarzenegger the movie star. not all of them but a lot of people in congress, they were

very interesting people and if you can get to that and in peel back a couple of the layers you may find out their something interesting. they are not all movie star certainly but i don't know, seeing one of your representatives play basketball. you have a great jump shot and he does this every tuesday night might be interesting for people. >> are you doing at issues at tmc in disguise? do you have an agenda? >> no, we are not going to be a burden. sometimes we do talk about someone's politics but more like i said we are trying to make the politicians the personalities. learn something about the personality. you might be interested in them and you hear on cnn or on "fox news" channel, you hear someone

say marco rubio voted -- marco rubio? that is the guy i saw in tmc live. they talked for five minutes about why he lil' wayne is not the new tupac. and we had in mind when we did that. i saw at the end of the conversation there was a part of me that felt badly that we didn't delve deeper into his politics and what he is voting on but that wasn't the conversation. ultimately it's probably more interesting. i really wanted to hammer him about reaching for water. after the state of the union that we have a phone conversation and i thought maybe people will be interested now in what marco rubio's politics are. it's like we are opening it up and peeling it back and now people will want to delve deeper

into their politics. i think there's a huge appetite for that. by doing what we do we can create an area for people to learn about politics. right now people are turned off by politicians and they don't want to hear anything about them so why not try to make them a little more interesting and maybe will people will pay attention with their voting on or what they are not voting on or what they are screwing up. see here's a question. media has row consequences. i covered this area of chemical else in baltimore and the plant kept growing up. i remember asking the chemical engineer why this kept happening and he said the problem is what is killing us is not what we don't know, it's what we know that isn't solved. when you look at the polling of the american public, they know a lot of things that aren't so. they think they know a lot about how the government works and how politics works and they actually

don't. you know and i guess he gets to the question of sort of obligation. are we crowding out stuff that would better inform them? should we be using their celebrity to better -- >> in a strange way i think actually that is the upside of everything you're talking about. maybe a lot of people have it wrong but i am not a great believer in the church of journalism. watching too many people behave in too many bad ways and a very primitive interpretation i think it was jon stewart mill who many years ago set our only hope is all of us get so bad and so corrupt to have maximum freedom and maximum outlets and maybe if we are lucky on a sunny day the truth will kind of take shape among all of it.

i think there's a huge multiplicity as much as it's chewing us up economically. let everybody go at it because the more you have the greater the hope that ultimately you will be able to feel what's real >> just a little point here. i'm a great believer in democracy. viewers and readers will figure out what they need to know and what is appropriate to their lives. our job is to put it out there but we need to put it out there correct way. it comes back to charles i think in the last couple weeks there have been two amazing stories. there was a story that sarah palin had tried to deal with al-jazeera which ended up in "the washington post." there was a story today that paul krugman had filed for bankruptcy which was the topic of talk radio, conservative talk radio all day. both of those stories were put

out by a satire web site. either story was checked and they both made it out there. so rather than worry about all of this big stuff we ought to worry about the small stuff. he seems to be worried about it every day. just check it out. i mean part of the problem with the web i think is it's not that it's killing us. i am living and happy in the state of arizona. [laughter] and cable tv revenue from another time but it's like an e-mail. you say things in an e-mail you never would have written in a letter and you can say things on the web that you never would have. it's just too easy to push the button and it's out there. so i may not care about the guy with the abs but i care a lot about teaching students just

through the journalism they are doing. if you learn to be a reporter you can report on celebrities and you can report on politics. you can report on sports and you can report on the economy but if you don't know how to be a reporter you can also be a celebrity. that's all you can do. see what scares me the most is if such a vacuum. the stuff that we don't know that nobody is touching. the allusions that everything can be known i getting on line and leave this gigantic vacuum around actual information that is never uncovered. a simple illustration of this last year were in santa monica in the french court which as you know doesn't get on line the way other things do, there was a stunning case in which about 20 young jewish professionals filed a lawsuit for anti-semitism against the shangri-la hotel out of which they had been thrown by

the owner on a sunday afternoon. they alleged that she was pakistani under pakistani family was going to pull funding if they found out there were 20 jewish people raising money at a pool party which was authorized by the hotel staff for the idf. she came in and threw them all out and so forth. they are sitting in the santa monica court and won quick complaint goes out on the internet. i wonder who is right and who is wrong? what is really happening here? what is she really saying? which one is crazy? which one did a? what are the young professionals young professionals like? do they have a chip on their shoulder? i live in santa monica and there's not much to cover. my wife looked at me and she said get the hell down to that courthouse. i want to know if this happened

in santa monica. go and do it. so i started sitting in the courthouse in what turned out to be a three week trial and they kept dodging my duties but listening to the testimony. it was awesome and it was amazing. the jury found against the owner after she testified. there was not one reporter of any level in that trial. there was no local reporter. there was no ap reporter. there was nothing so that if my wife hadn't chased me into that and i filed with the executive editor of our paper. these people are just like your daughter. that's right, we are going to run it. so we stuck it in the paper. how many times a day does that happen and we don't know about it any more? >> we all talked about this whirring of the lines in the of the lines and no in the wind seems to unhappy about it.

to me i look at it and i can't tell and i'm an allegedly a professional journalist and the actives are running the government and the governments are the newscasters in the anchor chair. it's all sort of mixed up and there are sides to argue this is great. we are returning to a time when the public was most engaged and it was a limited public where less than half of the adults could vote. but those were huge numbers. there were parades. horace greeley could run a newspaper and run for president. now we are much more cynical and remove society. that is the argument for that but blurring the lines might have consequences for things like ethics. there are some media organizations that pay their sources and pay for tips. tmz i think is one of them. there are others that don't. should we worry about that?

should we worry about confucian? >> first of all we don't pay sources and we don't pay for information. we pay for video absolutely. [laughter] 's pie have a little something in my throat. i don't need a rubio. >> fair enough. that is one thing. >> why do you care? what difference does it make who is running for office? what difference does it make? i guess it seems like you want it to be upset about this whirring of the lines. you are right. i don't know what caused it and why is there a fanatic --

fascination with celebrities but you can't deny it. it's a reality. you can sit and whine about it and complain that it's harder to cover a story now. or you can deal with the reality. this is the way it is now and i don't have any issue with having politicians, i think the problem with ethics is the internet, everyone does -- your deadline is two minutes ago. you don't have that thing where you wait for the printing press to start running or your newscast is gone at 5:00. you have to do it now so that can cause a problem with ethics. if people decide they are going to get the facts. if you do that then yes you are going to have a problem with ethics and i always tell the

interns, what's really important here? what is really important is speed. that is what is really important that what is more important is ethics. he will stand and yell we need to have this now, now ,-com,-com ma now but it doesn't mean anything you can find now. i want the actual story now. before you hit the button to publish make sure what you are publishing is right. the day that we published the michael jackson death was literally six people after the entire room was working on it. they stood there and double checked. do we have this and do we have this? are we sure are? ..

i remember -- was dying and i wrote the 0 bit for the networking for abc and brought it 0 the editors and did what they did with it and then i made it better again, and everyone was excited. i said we ought to find out if she's dead. [laughter] because that's pretty much the baseline. [laughter] >> it's going to be

embarrassing. >> yeah. and i would rather, like, barbara tread if she's not dead and have my boys on it. [laughter] and honestly that it no different. and so are the pressures, the speed pressures different? i imagine they are. honestly, i don't deal with it every day. are the economic pressures different? absolutely. there's no question about it. but the basic kind of truce of journalism is that if you don't get it right, you don't last very long in this. i just don't think it changed very much. i would rather . >> focus on the area where the lines have blurred. i find personally very troubling now. but only in a way nation it incumbent on all of you and all of us to think more clearly than we often do. an awful lot of the political

and historical information we get now is coming from movies. i'm very aware of the. i cover movies so i'm watching what happened in the last two, three, four years, what cored is the movie at the lower end documentary and a fair number of dramatic films as long as they're not the big block busters, now move very quickly. classically took two years to get a movie up and running. just the physical act of it. now movies like social networking and zero dark thirty come across in real time. we get whole cycles of film that proport to tell us political stories and create political realities. and i think there's something -- something very beguiling particularly about documentaries. the physical fahrenheit 9/11 it

creates the illusion that everything must be true. i see it. i see what a rot rotten guy he lies like and the horrible thing he said. in the back of your miebtd you're thinking it must be true because the camera never lies. as you know, the camera always lies. the camera is a director's tool to structure a reality. not report a reality. i think it's easy to forget it and lose track of it that it becomes almost as if we all report need a new set of tools to figure out, you know, okay, how are we being used and many niplated by the inspirational or infour immigrating political tails we're being told. i would love somebody to do a split level documentary. they took the footage if it were

fahrenheit 9/11 tell it as an antigeorge bush documentary and reedit it with the shame shot and material and everything but pick it up and make a probush documentary out of the same. you can do that. that is the one place that . >> yes. two things, one on point -- i actually think most of the documentaries are preaching to the choir. >> yeah. and so whenever harm there is, i agree there's probably some harm in a journalistic sense is confined to people who really suffer from the primary information disease of our time. which is simply wanting to hear things you already believe is true. that's number one. on the subject of historical things, i live in phoenix, so i go movies really early in the day because it's what you are do when you're old and in phoenix.

[laughter] and air conditioning. >> yes. we are walking out of lynn con and there's an elderly couple which means they are two or three years older behind me, and the guy, the husband says i thought that was great. and the wife said, yes, it was good. the husband said, i can't get over how much he sounds like lincoln. [laughter] [laughter] i go through life trying not to be noticed. okay. and i turned around and my wife grabbed me and said, come on. [laughter] so maybe things are happening too damn fast. >> okay. there's one case where maybe the lines are blurring. maybe it's an issue. fascinations with celebrity -- we were discussing this today is

does it bother you that the first family seems to be attaching itself -- and this started way before them. but attaching themselves very publicly to celebrities? like is that an issue? does it bother you that maybe they are, you know, getting too close to them? why are they getting closer to them? is it just for money or funding or because they want to be seen and they want some of the shine they get from . >> maybe it's the other way around. >> maybe it's the celebrities want to hang out with the president. maybe they get the shine the other way around? >> the day after the oscars when we're sitting there and the single -- every single off the record, what the hell was that complain about the oscar show mentioned being upset that michelle obama showed up and coniferred the oscar. not one person that i talked to that morning said they liked

that in hollywood repealed deeply against it. i'm not sure i quite know why. >> it's a great conversation. we want to bring the audience in to it. >> i have to turn other to you for questions. i know, there will be dozens of them. we only have a limited amount of time. all four will be upstairs at the reception. jennifer and i are taking questions. she's on the other side. please come to us. we'll pick you out. remember to say a first and last name before the question. it's being recorded to be put up on the website by tomorrow morning, you share with your friend that couldn't be here tonight. and we have c-span here tonight. it will air probably next month. stay tuned for that. jennifer has the first question. >> first question on the left. >> hi my name is mr. aarons. i always have -- i was struck by the fact that one topic, i thought wasn't discussed very

much here. we live in a democracy. people vote in a sense are responsible for decisions that are made by our government that have an effect on our lives and people around the world. and when entertainment starts crowded out real information that people presumably need to make these decisions, i think it's a problem. if anyone will vote for or against for marco rubio for some rap star or something. i think we are in real trouble. i think so. is that not something that bothers you. there's the responsibility the journalists have. >> it i agree. it would be a huge issue if someone voted for marco rubio because they too like tupac. maybe you listen to what marco

rubio says and make an informed decision. listen to what he says about issue and make an informed decision. he's on the radar because you heard that. that's something that appeals to you. i mean, you're right. i think that all of that information is still out there. i guess the problem is it's harder to find and not as used to be you can turn on the news at 5:00 or 6:00 and you would get that information. now you're not getting it there. it's still out there. so you have to search for it a little bit. >> can i make -- just on your slightly different take on this. you'll be offended by this in a gentle way. [laughter] if you go back in your lifetime, and or my lifetime, you'll find that the more likable candidate wins the presidency almost every time. now there are ties, i mean, honestly, you know, johnson and

goldwater neither you want to hang with. but if you actually -- you have to think goldwater was less likable than lyndon johnson. you say what you like about george w. bush. he was way more likable than al gore in my opinion. the more likeable guy wins. it tells us something about them. particularly in a president. we want the guy that comes with a woman that comes in the living room every day to be likable, and so while i don't think that's a, you know, the musical taste is necessarily a reason to vote for him. i think and no -- knowing who the person is tells us a lot about all of those things we can't anticipate happening, but do happen when someone is elected president and they have to respond to. and that may be more important than knowing how they feel about the deficit. >> the camera all lies. i don't believe for one second

. >> you're a cynic, for god's sake. [laughter] >> i don't believe for one second -- what was a joke mcbegin nice -- that was a landmark. you're talking about the television era. it's been forty years now we've been dealing dealing with this phenomena. the nixon-kennedy debate. we are trusting image, and we -- . >> candidates want -- there are kennedy was more likable than nixon. even mrs. nixon liked kennedy more. [laughter] >> what we know about kennedy now and his behavior and many of the thing os curred he may not have been more likable. >> right. he may not have been. >> the question over here on the right. >> david bloom. as a stormer long time -- former long time reporter that handles social media. you talk about the speed driving the decision making process

giving you less time to do the long-term reporting. but the other thing you didn't get in to is the impact of our big data of our understanding of the story people want to watch. and in fact part behalf is driving the entertainment interest is in fact that's what the audiences are showing in a very hard to refute way what they want to follow. it's almost like big data and understanding that the hard numbers of social media and seo are changing journalism more than the subject themselves. >> they're going where the money is. it's the willie sutton approach to journalism. >> i'm curious what is your -- . >> look, that happens first before the internet to magazines. it you look at the magazine rack. general interest magazines that told you something about outside of yourself slunk and died one by one. it used to be magnificent

magazines here, california, stories you could hardly dream were occurring out there. wind forward twenty years and every magazine was demographically driven. they been put to a place are where they were a mirror reflecting the desired readership. from coz moe poll ton on down it became niche market where every magazine was intellectual wall paper. they're not intellectual or wall paper for the people who already feel that way. it's a mirror held up to them. that's what is happening in the internet. you know, impossible to refute the pressures of traffic and the numbers, you know, you will always do better by giving people what they want, but that's not necessarily going create values. sometimes the single true fact is that something nobody wants. it's still a single true fact.

it's important. >> and i -- to me what this stuff has done is made data more precise. it wasn't data before. i knew at 4:15 every day where anna nickel knick coal smith where we sphent enough time or not. exec tyes would call and say what happened at 10:15? [laughter] we covered the war. [laughter] i don't know what got in to us. [laughter] >> [inaudible] it's been funny to me because i there's a lot of me there. >> right. >> a lot of me in the character. literally i talked to aaron. and there's a lot of me. like most people who watch lawyers when they watch lawyers

show and doctors watch doctor's show. and they say first of all -- [inaudible] [laughter] and it's never really that good. [laughter] so i think like at love things about the internet it's increased speed. speed was always an issue. it's microtargetting -- the information is more precise but we the stuff we didn't have a sense of before because i think we did, and so while i understand the argument, i think a lot of things you just -- it's just an exaggerated sense of what has always been. >> but see . >> princess dianna just sold magazines but we would really know she sold magazines. we knew before. >> it's a vast difference.

you come from television where it's been everybody has known that. in tv, you grew up with ratings and feedback and knowledge. >> right. >> and now prince believe it or not even up to this day, we still have editors who say i don't care if one person doesn't care about this. it matters. do it. >> where is that dude working? >> i had a story not that long ago. i won't say it was a great sorry. but it was a story about chinese censorship in american movie. it was difficult to put together. it had to do with american movie studio are running their script through chinese sensors because uninvited and the sensor say change this, change that because they want the movie to play in china once it gets made. nobody asked for that story. there's one kid in the whole world colorado state student who asked me why the hell aren't you doing something about the chinese censorship. i spent a week and a half and did it. there was no demographic value

to that. it ended up in the paper. >> it did get there. >> a question on the left. >> hi, randy olson. i want to simple story question about what is at stake with the whole issue you've been alluding to is it a crisis or not. we have cnn you seem like it's kind of same old thing. and at the other thing "the new york times" you feel more urgent about it. the crime rate is down and life expectancy is up. it doesn't seem like the society sun ralphing. simple question, is it a crisis or not? >> first of all, i really -- just -- i don't want to sound defensive about this which is a good clue i'm about to. [laughter] i don't representative cnn. i don't want to. god knows they don't want me to. [laughter] so, i mean, i'm pretty comfortable on the networking television broadcast those things. i don't want to be seen that i'm

not comfortable and i don't think, you know, i was an employee of theirs. and employee of abc. they don't want me speaking for them either. is it a crisis? i don't see it as a crisis. i don't. i think democracy information is kind of messy sometimes. this is sort of messy, it can get messy. but it's always been this way in some way or other. it will sound like a cop out, maybe it is. i don't know. we need from you is some diligence in what you do. you have to look for stuff. it is there. the time, i mean, honestly you wouldn't know it from this conversation, the "times" is an mading newspaper to me. reading it every day is the story of an avenue avalanche or politics. i can't find it anywhere. but if you only look at the home

page, you don't get it in every sense you don't get it. and so we all -- and the kids we teach and we need to work harder, better, smarter, and more efficiently. but so do you. >> here's a question -- is there a good infrom -- and bad? if it's about important things. if it gives the sense of what reality is. >> that's subjective. i don't know i can't put my finger on why. i hate that word. i just hate it. when i got an invitation to be here and i thought infotainm et. it's like people don't like the

word news. they don't seek out news. but getting news but don't like to call it news. they want to be entertained. and it's sort behalf aaron was saying about maybe people watch msnbc or foxx because they are entertained by while getting the news. they don't want just news. and so -- i don't know what it is about the word, but, you know, i don't think it's a crisis. i don't think you can say whether there's bad or good. it's whatever people want. like you said, it's a democracy. if you want to read about paris hilton or lindsay lohan and want to go to tmz. that's great. if you don't want to -- you have the right to read "the new york times" everyday. >> i would say almost exactly the same thing but differently. i think you're right. it's not a crisis because for it to be a crisis you have to believe that things were wonderful before and wonderful died now and what is going

happen? i think you have to be an aid dwrot think that's true. it's just not. it is a time of enormous chaos, you know, it's like periods in china history where we have 1,000 years of chaos. it's incumbent on everybody to do more thinking about what they're seeing, reading, where they're getting it than it used to be. can you imagine? i don't think ten or fifteen years ago you would have had get together like this. they occur all the time now. everybody is sharing in that process of trying to figure out what is happening here? what is it all about? i think that's a good thing. >> i want remind please join us for wine, beer, soft drinks, whatever you would like. you're in great company and our guests will be there tonight.

our last question. >> matthew -- [inaudible] i want to talk about this idea -- i don't know if i'm making up the term the journalism -- [inaudible] we talked about how some parody information is come out and turned to actual news about sarah palin. i know, the associated press has been doing it for years. the people followed stories and it's been that way since the beginning of news. but it seems like piggyback journalism is happening so frequently now everybody is on the same, you know, weather it's entertainment or actual news that a lot of misinformation is going throughout because of this. one person get it is wrong, everybody gets it wrong. do you feel this is actually dangerous? >> that, i think -- i don't know if i would use the word dangerous. it comes from what you were talking about. there are sites that do nothing but aggregators. all they're doing is they want to get a story up on the site

they know people are searching for. if sarah palin is a hot topic and they know people -- they're going put the story up there. that's what i was referring to when i said it can be a huge problem for ethics if all you're doing. you're running a site and your goal for the day is i'm just going get the biggest numbers i can get today. it doesn't matter if it's true, doesn't matter if it's real. i'm going it find the stories i know people are searching for. it's easy to find that information now. anybody can do that research. i'm going put up the store -- stories. yeah. that's dangerous. i've had so many people walk up to me and say, hey, is it true -- i think my sister one night called me and said, something about stevie wonder. it was a ridiculous story. what? no. that's not true. where did you hear it? >> i don't know i saw it a few times on somebody's facebook. i figured it had to be true.

people start passing that stuff around. again, i don't know if it's dangerous. >> we've been finding particularly -- i i want to say for the last eighteen months there's been a shift of some kind that phenomena has created the enormous opportunity for us because once everybody gets in the habit of piggybacking and moving in a waive in one direction. it makes it easier for somebody who has a simple common sense to act in contrary way or think ahead a little bit and lead the next wave, and lead the next wave. when individual reporters or individual editors develop that habit, and i do know many who cultivate exactly that skill it turns that in to great opportunity for everybody else. >> is there an argument though because of that confusion for

the honest thing tmz does. you are transparent. you're as transparent as heck. you have a show that shows your process. i mean, should everyone do that? [inaudible] >> yeah. right. but someone on typically could see the show and get a fair idea how you work and make decisions about how much they want to trust you. i don't know it seems like, you know, some of the even, you know, morning shows, you know, you see a little bit more of the scenes. but it's the mainstream "the new york times," the networkings where it's wizard of oz thing. >> a lot of what happens is still behind a curtain. maybe we need to take a show to the "new york times" story meeting. i was in one once, like bill keller, the executor editor argued for a paris hilton. >> a story meeting and distract all of them. don't show up in the rep territorial pot. one of the problems you have if you are drilling in hard on

something that is difficult. the story people don't want you to tell. a big or little story. what they don't want you to tell, you are going to deal particularly in a hollywood con technical in an enormous sourcing. you know, you might not do an abusively. you have a choice you can print the on the record lie or get to the bottom of something or lying on a great deal is enormous and off the record. i wouldn't be too quick to assume that someone should be able to put a camera over the shoulder of every reporter. you'll see a great deal of truth wrung out of the system instantly. >> i was thinking about the sarah palin thing, and i don't know how to quantify stupid. and -- [laughter] honestly. what i -- the thing that worries me in all of this is that part of what i learned, i think, as a young reporter is not simply

what was the story but what is the story. and if there's one thing to me beyond the business of journalism that changed, it's the gate keeper function of journalism that changed. there is no gate keeper function. nobody is saying that ain't the story anymore. somebody is running the story. there was a story back when john kerry was running for president about john kerry having an affair with the intern which was a sensitive subject given the clinton was having an affair with an intern. and it ended up as the things go on dredge and then on talk radio. and my boss called me and said what are you doing with the kerry intern story? i said nothing. he said that's what people are talking about today. and i said, i got a problem. there's not a simple fact in the story. i don't know what to say than people are talking about a story

that has not a single fact. that was the gate keeper function of journalism. that's gone. now the next day the candidate goes on imus which is not a source of journalism. okay. it is a place where politicians go and denies having an affair with an intern. at that point, i have no choice. the candidate has now denied something and i have to do it. what we do, because we play this -- we're above it all game which is why i'm sitting here tonight. [laughter] we did a story about the agnat my of a rumor which we call dressing up pig. it was still a pig. but, you know, what the internet has stolen from us editorially is not that bad stuff gets out there. in a weird way people figure it out. the stuff that shouldn't be out there at all.

the gate keeper function is gone and it's never coming back. and you guys have to live in a world where news forgive me is thrown up out there. for you to pick through it, and i, you know, that's what scares me. and if you want to use the word crisis. if someone has to agree there's a crisis tonight. i'll agree it's a crisis. more son than anything some dudes' alabamas. what do i care? >> well, i think at -- [laughter] to leave it at that. i want do you -- [inaudible] [applause] the event in los angeles from couple of weeks ago hosted by public square and co-hosted by the cronkite arizona school.

info containment and political journeyment. here on c-span this evening we are going to continue the conversation and get your thoughts. we opening up the phone lines for your participation. what is behind political celebrity journalism? what political news shows are you watching? where do you get your news from? topics like that. here's how you can participate. the phone likes for those on the east coast and central time zone 202-585-8880. 303-588-3882. just a reminder make sure that you we'll get to your call shortly. a couple of other ways to participate facebook.com/c span. we have number of posts already. we'll read them in the program. on twitter following the hashtag

infotainment. joining us is the journalism professor. you can seen her on fox news channel and cnn reliable sources among other places and skype joins us from "politico" is patrick gavin, who covers politics obviously but written about personalities in politics not only at politico but at the fish bowl d.c. and the washington examer. patrick, and jane thank you for joining us. we look forward to the conversation about the broad issue of political news and entertainment. jane i'll start with you. if we had to do aer is vai of your journalism student in american university walked to the classroom and asked them where do they get the news? who do they get the news

they enjoy the daily show. i think that's true of a lot of young people. they watch and read serious news. they like to take on the news on those kinds of shows. >> during the conversation there was a lot of talk about the nut and bolt of journalism and the dual pressure of getting it fast and getting it right. what is that pressure like for you at "politico"? >> it's certainly it is -- "politico" mantra to beat the competition when it comes to getting stories and scoops. the risk of make suring they get it right. "politico" has just as rigorous as a hierarchy and editorship as anybody else but, you know, we make mistake as other news organizations have.

i think it's the risk every journalist has experienced in one way or another through your day job, facebook, or twitter. weighing that division of faster have sis fact. there's at love pressure to get things up quick. for your own reputation make sure you get it right. >> going back to jane's student and the comment about the students getting news from shows like the daily show. how does a public case like "politico" walk the fine line between both being attention grabbing and informational entertaining, and also obviously covering a very serious political scene in the nation's capitol and elsewhere? >> it might be slightly unique in the sense we are very, very narrow. we have a narrow scope and vision which is sort of designed for intensely political june key. under that, for us anything that

is political is relevant to us. that could be something about gay marriage the supreme court. it could be about a transportation bill. it could be about the president's rights. or the nexus of celebrities and politics which we see all the time. that would be donald trump weighing in, ashley judd, maybe deciding to make a run. we see the an nexus happen for and more. we'll cover it because i think we see the intersection happening more and more with celebrity culture and politics. >> back to the nuts and bolts issue with jane hall. there was a lot of that until the conversation today. who were you training what are you training your journalism students for? where do they want to go? do they want to for a tmz, for example, or "politico"? >> i haven't had anybody that wants for tmz. i've had at love kids who want

to work for "politico." i'm happy to say some of them are working for "politico." i teach politics in the media from a news study standpoint. i get future journalists and future "politicos" in that class and future journalist in the reporting class. my students are interested in journalism, and i think they know they need to be multimedia story tellers. they need have more of a profile which creates their own personality in a way. they know that, you know, we believe they need to know how to report. which was one of my take away from the briefs program. you know, i wish we would devote the resource that tmz spend to things that are little more significant. everybody praising them for checking out the facts and making a lot of phone calls. that's what we teach. we are also trying to educate for a universe that is online, multimedia, apps, smartphone.

you have to file a lot and so you to file quickly. >> we have a lot of calls waited. you intentioned an interesting story. patrick, do you consider yourself a mutt media story teller. >> absolutely. i think everybody has to be. when i started at "politico," i did a lot of -- be at the even and grab your slim cam and talk to whoever is there of relevance. now everybody does that. it the technology has gotten better and it's on the phone. we had reporters covering the 2012 campaign and have an interview with mitt romney and literally upload it from the bus. we would have it on the website minutes later. i think everybody, you know, if you're not utilize your camera where you can then that's probably you want to learn how to do it. >> we have calls waiting. it is not meant to be unfair. eve lynn is journalist on the line.

welcome. go ahead. >> caller: i have a couple of comments. who is writing the headlines -- i have friend who -- [inaudible] i found the other day -- [inaudible] they were collecting comments other illegal immigrants should be detained or not. >> where did you read the headline? ? >> caller: on that station. it was in the morning. they were flashing headlines of newspapers as part of the show. >> you mean on washington journal? >> yeah. "washington journal." one of the headline was aggravated -- [inaudible] felony released. and. >> i'm going let you go and we'll go to patrick first on this. on the roll of headlines. "politico" at times gets very attention-grabbing headlines. how important is that in the editorial decision there?

>> it's really important. you want to obviously, you know, at least for "politico" it's a unique challenge. if you look at the website, the main article you have a decent amount of real estate to expand on the headline. the articles below it, you have got maybe 35 characters. maybe a little bit more to explain. it's very challenging thing we have a people that do a wonderful job not only describe the article, describing accurately and doing what the reader said. the web can be a difficult format. a lot of times depending on the platform you're writing for, you might have a very, very limited piece of real estate to get the point across. to balance your need to get right and capture it in context and your need to make it interesting to viewers is something that the people earn their paycheck with. >> the column this weekend in

"politico" not attention grabbing but certainly news from the both celebrity and political world. rush limbaugh gay marriage is inevitable. he writes about comment he made in the radio program. jane hall, the issue of where celebrities or major media personalities make news about politics. it's more and more common. >>well, you know, it's very, very interesting. the gay marriage story, you know, chief justice roberts said politicians are falling over themselves to endorse gay marriages. when they were arguing it was a reason the supreme court needed to interview because it was an oppressed group. now you have a lot of figure in the media like rush limbaugh who is a powerful figure still in the republican conservative side of things. i guess you could call him a celebrity in a lot of ways in the sense that he carries a the

a lot of weight when we went after the young woman from georgetown what he said about her and contraceptive. that became news, it became, sadly, something that was a narrative that came in the campaign. if he's a celebrity, he's making news and setting a political agenda. >> let's go to allentown. brooklyn, new york, allen is in brooklyn. go ahead. >> caller: thinking back the last thirty years it was considered a matter of personal choice and freedom that people want to ride motorcycle without helmet or drive without seat belt or drink as much alcohol because they considered it their prerogative. now we recognize this are social cause to the behavior. i think we are today in media discussion about where we were thirty years about the decision of the social cost of personal behavior. it was not just a matter of personal choice how much people pig out on sugar entertainment

-- [inaudible] is not capable voting widely for the own interest or more importantly for the interest of the later generation that are going affected by our decisions. the living generation of voters is effectively collectively those who steer the ship of state and later generations are passengers on the ship. if we are pigging out on nonsense news. we will steer our ship to icebergs and reefs. the only way question steer the ship in a they is responsible for our children and grandchildren the debt, climate, infrastructure all sorts of issue of govern mans. if we have some understanding that ignorance is not a victimless crime. we effecting people who are responsible for it. >> allen. thank you for your comments. jane, do you care to take stab? >> i think that's an important point.

newspapers are losing circulation to a lot of other police stations. -- places. i think the caller makes serious point. we live in celebrity-personality-oriented culture. you know, i personally think that is lamentable in many ways. it seems to be a way that people can put their issue forward when you have somebody like george clooney, you think his thing to spotlight darfur which people might not be covering as much as they should. that can be a good use of celebrity. a bad use if you cover somebody like anna smith. that's a more serious issue in itself own way. >> coking the comment why do we make murders, celebrities, and why are there now more beat journalist that

get the fact instead of repeating the same over. wire blot over and over again. facebook.com/c-span. we go to sandy in connecticut. sandy. hello. >> caller: hi. i'm happy to be on here. i thought the program was excellent. i was happy to hear someone mention the news room program because i was at the director's guild in california this year and i spoke and wanted to know when the show be on again because as far as i was concerned, that was more what should be a typical news program today rather than the gross entertainment that we're seeing. i would like to see a real news program at 7:00 p.m. in new york complaicial to the "new york times" which i read evidence. most of the news we get on the news programs we see on television are just flop. and as the person before me said in the writing it's just

repeated over and over again. sometimes two or three days. which is really not news anymore. i would love to see a real news program. all of the organizations obviously have a certain responsibility to to be respectable and dot news in a way that is beneficial to the readers and civic discourse. ic question agree on that. i'm also fairly consumer oriented on a will lot of questions being raised. there are amazing television programs. there's c-span, there's charlie rose, 60 minutes. a lot of great educational programmers. there's probably more than any period in history. in term of print journalism.

"the new york times," the new yorker, if you want in-depth stuff it can be found. dancing with the stars will dwarf what we're doing right now. it's going dwarf the charlie show. i think news organization have a certain responsibility news organizations are a business app and it's going where the viewers are. ting has to be a two-way relationship here. news organizations provide more of a concept. at the end of the day you meet the content and the demand needs to be there. and the expectations has to be there from the consumers in order to demand be met. san city mentioned the newsroom. i want to give our viewers a flavor of that program that jeff daniels, the anchor in the program. here is one of the recent programs where he offers an app

gi for the war in iraq. take a look. >> good evening. this is news night. that was a clip of richard clark, former counterterrorism testifying before congress on march 24, 2004. americans like that moment. i like that moment. adults should hold themselves accountable for failure font i'm beginning the newscast by joining mr. clark and apologizing to the american people for our failure. the failure of this program during the time i've been in charge of it. to successfully inform and educate the american elect rate. let me be clear, i don't apologize on behalf of all broadcast journalists nor do all broadcast journalists owe an apology. i speak for myself. i was an police to a slow and repeated and unacknowledged and unamended train wreck of failures that brought us to now. i'm a leader in an industry that miscalled election results,

piped up terror squares, and failed to report untech tonic shift in the country from the collapse of the financial system to the truth how strong we are to the dangers we actually face. >> jane hall from american university. that hbo program a fictional set bought material very real. how would we see something like that happen? how rare is it that an anchor or major networking news personnel would take responsibility or apologize for something in their reporting? >> well, you know, a lot of there's at love blame to go around about the iraq war and "the new york times" and "the washington post did do stories how they failed to covert dissent and how they didn't question the administration and how we didn't know enough. we were listening to people that didn't know what they were talking about that said they represented iraq.

a lot of people said it was not serious news. there's a conflict between ratings and celebrity news getting ratings and giving people what they need. i think to be fair we should say, you know, there is still pretty serious news on and the "newshour" and pbs is a serious newscast. in my opinion. >> back to the nut and bolt issue. on the cruiseship story.

put yourself in the managing editor for the day on cnn jane ham, would you absent another major international story would that be the story of the day? you're putting me in a new tough. the new president -- they didn't spent a lot of money to cover it unlike wars that they and other networkings have spent a lot to cover. they got a big bang for the buck. i think they probably might have pulled away from it sooner than they did. that's one of the dilemma. >> same question to patrick. the deputy manager there that day of the cruise ship. they have video coming in. do you cover it or not? >> i think for cnn business -- as she mentioned with the new president. if it's the direction they feel bring in the most viewers. it's difficult to blame them for trying to run a profitable enterprise. that's not the news for the

day. it's a cruise ship story or recycling the day's headlines. a tough call. and i think that the one may made is obviously looking at carve out the special needs that the other networks were to cover. >> back to calls in a minute. here is a tweet. else from james watching political journalism on c-span. our politicians, celebrities and celebrities politicians? one from michael who said there's no more intelligent journalism in the mainstream. dumbing down of america is nearly complete.

>> caller: thank you. i'm the writer, a poet, and i also am a part-time editor if the person that covers meetings here and in central massachusetts. there are too many stories that keep getting repeated. they should be cut off. -- [inaudible] and family guess died of boredom. but the -- i appreciate c-span's coverage on -- i'd say at least 80% of my news from c-span listening to directly you.

i'm retired, i have plenty of time to monitor that. i'm doing some of my spread sheet work here at home. >> glad to have you with us. let's go to a journalism student in lake jackson, texas. cory, hi. >> caller: hi. i've been watching the show the whole night. i think it's been amazing. my question is for the night as a journalist student, we are taught to gap the bridge between not only the celebrity world, which everybody is covering, but also the real life. i guess my question is where am i supposed to do this? do i follow my heart to give everybody the news that i feel is important? or do i follow what everybody is watching in this celebrity world and give them what they want? >> i'd say follow your hearlt. i tell my students i'm old to be idealistic. you have to do what you feel comfortable with. you know, again i don't mean --

i'm critical of the media. but i do think are places doing straight, serious news. and you need to align yourself with one of those or start a blog and become well known that way. there are plenty of outlet. there's a lot of interesting work being done around data. there's a lot online you can do with mapping and lot of things that weren't present in the past. it's not all terrible. it is true that when i used to work in magazine we had what i heard not this phrase before the three-second rule. whenever you have on the people of people magazine, for example, has to be somebody people know quickly. that's what we're up against in a lot of ways. it doesn't mean you should abandon the idea of doing serious work. i really feel strongly about that. >> patrick from "politico," one of the pieces of the conversation earlier from the public square talked about journalists i building a brand

individual journalists building brand and that's through conversation on facebook, obviously and also on twitter handle. how important is that to you? for me personally i don't know if it's terribly important. perhaps i should say that's me being short shieghted in advancing my career. the reality is that branding is important for a lot of reporters. simply because you see especially here in washington where journalism is a little bit better off than it is in other part of the country. if you didn't "the washington post or "new york times" behind you are nothing. necessarily you don't need to have the backing behind you.

and he correctly realized his readers are coming to him for him not for the organization he works for. he took the work to the own site he's being soliciting donation and done well. that's a great a lot proper rare example how branding can be profitable. you no longer need obviously having health care and 40rbgs 1k plan. >> patrick from "politico" and jane haul from american university joining us. take your call and intersection.

in newtown bipartisan agreement we have to take real and substantial action to reduce gun violence. it's been three months since then. 3,000 more americans of gun violence. let's check inspect what we got done. >> the only votes taken since newtown have weak end gun control in america. [laughter] >> okay. [laughter] the votes the senate took last week to promote the justice department from taking look at gun shop owner inventory to make sure there's not theft. >> take makes sense. [laughter] prevent the justice department from tracking stolen guns. [laughter] we have lulted guns to false sense of security. [laughter] the daily show with john steward. he's talking about some things

that actually happened in term of the gun control issue. does he -- do people not only get the news from him. does he shape opinion? >> i think so. that's a serious piece you showed. "the new york times" and "the washington post in particular have been doing a lot of reporting about what he was talking about. which is gun control and why is it isn't passing and what's the history? i think what most my students find particularly entertaining is that he points out the hypocrisy office. he added something where he shows karl rove or a democratic counter part saying one thing about how, you know, sarah palin is very experienced but tim cain is not very experienced in another clip to cite an example. he points out an edit highly i think sometimes selectively what cable news pundit say and somehow hoe they are all over the map. i think that pintures a lot of

pretend and that kind of irony is very appealing. i think to people in are and sadly there's a cynicism i think you have but i think that's reality. i think that is part of the appeal. obviously he's cares about serious issues too. >> let's goat some calls again. here in pennsylvania. john. welcome to the conversation. >> caller: hi. [inaudible] >> hi, john. >> caller: good evening. basically i wanted to talk about where jeff daniels is talking about an apology for the iraqi war. do you think we'll see any news person or anybody involved in the media apologize for the lack of reporting about what happened in benghazi? , i mean, it's just -- it's not even the elephant in a room. it's like a minor -- i've heard -- [inaudible] references the anna smith and

other minor celebrities but i would think as a journalist. i was a vietnam military journalist and also a newspaper reporter, and i just can't get over the lack of attention that this has been in the popular press. i think browne brought up the fact that john kerry had alleged affair. by denying it it became a story. >> right. >> caller: i would like to know how these people feel. >> john, thank you for the question. we'll let patrick to have an answer. where are we on the benghazi story? what do you think about the comment? it hasn't been thoroughly covered in >> the short answer to the question of whether or not you'll see an anchor apologize for it. i think the answer is no. people can disagree or agree about that. the main reason is that i think at love people are critical how

the u.s. handled the situation in benghazi how the state department handled it how the obama administration administration handled it. that's seems to be where the brunt of the criticism goes. that for better or worse will be a nice distractions for any news organization that feels if they drop it as well. i think that's -- [inaudible] stops with the administration, state department, if there were any wrong doing and how they handled that. i don't think it's probably the best example in which you might see a networking anchor apologize. i think the reality that reporters apologize all the time. ..

my question was with the validity, how are you supposed to find news on the internet when you can't find -- who argue supposed to trust and what happened with the freedom of trust don't they have a responsibility that the news happens with press and who are you supposed to trust if you can't trust the people on tv that for years our grandparents had been telling us this is the news like cnn. this is supposed to be news and it's like none of it is happening the way it is supposed to be.

>> host: let machine take an answer on that. we were talking before the program on the so-called brand names in the journalism. >> guest: i don't believe with this often said that puts it back on the consumer and says you need to read things on the internet and then you decide. it's better to go to sources that you feel have a level of depth and objectivity. it's happened in cable news in general that you have an opinion more than supporting because the economics of how much it costs in part because of economics reporting costs that gets back to this other question that it's also funded that kind of gets to the payment, but punditry and going after somebody in johnston or below riley, that is

entertaining. but separate from that i guess i would say find the source is the you see supporting the story i think they've had cutbacks and you can tell that what you're doing takeouts on the control on how of the nra has had power for many years. now you can see if you think the nra should have been reported on more thoroughly in the past maybe they should have faulted on that. i want to connect one thing if i could. if the benghazi is a story the media cannot or don't feel that they can report much independently about what happens and you get into a political story of hillary clinton giving an account i'm not sure we are evergreen to know the truth of what happened and i don't know that the state department knows what happened. >> host: going to california

next and santa rosa. >> caller: i am a little nervous and a little bit upset because you've been talking about all the newscast every morning i watched and there is so much news that i am amazed you are talking about that. >> host: we asked at the beginning of the program where you're getting your news from so you listen to democracy everyday? >> caller: everyday not one other station covers. >> host: thanks for chiming in. patrick from politico, this goes back to the previous comment made.

in terms of reliable sources what does politico do on a daily basis to ensure that politico itself is a reliable source people keep coming back for news they can trust. >> a lot of it is fact checking and the same sourcing that other news organizations do as well. the nice thing about journalism and is that it is self policing in the sense that if politico gets something wrong that's going to hurt our reputation and its reorganization and independent writer and reporter the same type of thing. so there's very little incentive to mess things up and incentive to get things wrong and you know perfectly well that when you do that is a huge step back for you and your news organization and it's a very tough thing to climb out of. so accordingly if you don't have st. policies in place or guidelines in place to make sure you are getting it right mature you are going to get it wrong

more often than right. >> host: both of you spend time inside of multiple news rooms and i wanted you to take a look at this clip from dmz and comment afterwards on the dynamic not necessarily the contact of what you're going to see because it is political personality but it's a dynamic of the newsroom. >> he electrified the gop convention last night but insiders say there something he could do to make this speech is even better. >> i think she's in great shape and a little bit of a cleaner attire to accentuate that physique. >> that's the congressman washington muasher board. saying paul ryan needs a makeover. >> it was very boxy. >> it is a little lurch-like. >> like when you lose weight in your afraid you'll gain it back

so you don't buy clothes for yourself. >> maybe he was a fitness fanatic or maybe there's another explanation. >> he borrowed chris christi's jacket. >> that would explain it. >> tmz senior editor their harvey and his staff at the news forum, patrick, when you see the program, how close is that to the newsroom at politico though the topics are different? >> guest: that isn't very similar to our newsroom. that may be easy for people. i don't know that necessarily get too worked up about it but that's exactly what you expect when you go to tmz. you would be a little bit taken aback but the reality is there is plenty of room for everybody to cover politics the way they do and that is how they do it. the fact that tmz is interested

in these as they are is a very telling story and tells you a lot about the culture in washington over the years but i don't blame them for doing that. i think for their audience that's how their audience wants politics covered. >> host: you mentioned earlier a couple of your students at american university would like to work for tmz. what is their motivation? >> guest: i didn't say that i said i hadn't had any and i'm not sure that i would encourage them. i want to be on the record about that. i think what they do is very interesting and a definite sort of mocking tone to the narrator. they do report things and when the reported michael jackson de really reported what happened on michael jackson. you know, and they have their facts straight. i think what that speaks to more is and someone said this earlier celebrities, politicians and our politicians celebrities now we

require both male and female politicians to be very good looking. sarah palin was very attractive and other publications put her on the cover in running year. i know it's a controversy and i think the picture was from running magazine and she objected i believe to that. people have shown pictures of hawaii shirtless. there is something going on that we require a standard of good looks that everybody jokes about this abraham lincoln might not get elected he didn't have good abbas as far as i know. what's happening is the kind of hamster wheel. the politicians know this is important so they look good and we cover them so they look good and it seems to be a factor in politics. >> host: on the issue of celebrities here is from nancy who says that it disgusts me.

here are words i never want to hear on the words again, back to the calls we go. don is in mt. prospect illinois. >> caller: hello? >> host: you are on the air. >> caller: i just want to make a comment it was a couple years ago on the o'reilly show they were discussing things and had differences of opinions and so forth and then o'reilly said you will come back again and we will discuss these and he said no i won't come back again. he said you are an entertainer, you are not a journalist. >> host: what is your take because you've been on the bill riley program in the past. >> guest: i actually would defend bill o'reilly. i don't know that he's an entertainer. he's entertaining and there is a difference. whenever you think about him, he has a point of view, she goes off the news coming he is big in

to combat. two years ied détente every week about the media but certainly a very intellectual figure i always felt the obama administration should have been on a lot sooner than they finally did. if people go on their i think he can give them a shot. >> host: many florida, hello there. >> caller: everything that? >> host: everything is good. go ahead with your comment or question. >> caller: i'm out here in miami florida and they took him off the radio and we got to listen to him online. and right now i get a lot of my information from there. one thing you have not addressed is the issue dealing with all these corporations back in the day to buy an apple these news outlets. i think that's the reason why the quote on quote to dumbing down of the media has occurred because you don't have this

independent news media organization. i'm 43 that i remember as a child watching walter cronkite, things like that. one thing else i would like to say, even though i'm a liberal, i really enjoyed watching the video on c-span about senator bob dole. he gave an interview back in 2007 and i thought it was really awesome and i follow c-span and i'm a liberal. >> host: it's in the video library on the issue of reliable sources. patrick do you think nowadays 2013 as opposed to ten or 20 years ago there are more or fewer? >> guest: i think there're certainly more media outlets and as the call mentioned there have been some isolated cases, documented cases in which reporters were news outlets have talked about the quote on quote corporate lawyers but i do think as we talked about earlier at

the end of the day the organizations and parent companies are not to make a profit and i think companies know that if they do create a climate of fear then it gets done or what kind of stories can or can't be covered. that's ultimately not to going to create interesting and compelling journalism. he certainly has instances documented about that in the nervous culture that's been created in the news rooms after they've been taken over. but they are fairly isolated i don't know if i would make it a red alert issue. >> 15 minutes in the conversation on political journalism with jane hall from american university and patrick from politico and taking your calls here (202)585-3830 for the eastern and central time zone, (202)585-3881 mountain and

pacific and for journalism students and students the numbers (302)585-3882 and the hash tag on twitter is entertainment. bellevue washington, this is ward. welcome. >> caller: yes, good evening. thank you for c-span. i am old enough to remember when there was some semblance of a distinction between opinion and news in journalism. i believe it is from the early 1900's there was a code on that somewhat accurate to and in the 1960's ended up with new journalism which was kind of great for magazines like time and newsweek but it seems to have bled over into newspapers and nowadays we have a self selecting silo by people who listen to rush limbaugh or they listen to msnbc and that disturbs me greatly because i am still a reader of newspapers.

one thing that bothered me is the comment from ms. hall about the nra in the sense that the treatment is gone over the line in terms of the so-called gun culture and i wish that pbs and the other sources that have been great with state of journalism. that's basically it. >> do you want to follow with the comment? >> guest: i'm not sure as clear as i meant to be the jon stewart has a clear point of view. he's saying there should be legislation and i am trying to make the point that newtown fostered a lot of looking at the power and players involved in

legislation or lack thereof or why this hadn't happened in the past. my point really was to reporting, and i think that is a thing that has gone by the wayside. reporters are under pressure and they don't have the same resources. if you look at most of the news organizations, they have had cutbacks, and when you lose is the kind of reporting that allows you to go in debt, and that is something. >> host: going back to tmz for second, here's the web site for a story about a barbara walters and apparently she said in an interview with president obama. she was doing an interview with president obama and made a mention of the fact she is going to retire next year. it seems in the last certainly ten or 20 years of the presidency, the president is often seen with celebrities but it doesn't seem to be news for example any more when the

president shows up on late night with david letterman or on the jay leno program and most recently in the oscars michelle obama was used as one of the awards. well as the association with celebrities? >> guest: there has been a spike. the reality is there's been a longtime relationship between d.c. and hollywood. the two of them feel like big ego in both of the town's so it does go a long way back. but i will say especially in the past four years largely because hollywood has been very supportive of president obama more so than his predecessor george w. bush. you have seen a very big spike in celebrity visitors to d.c. and the white house in particular. and i think what you have also seen as well as a little reduction of the stigma that politicians might feel when it

comes to associate themselves with celebrities. if there was a stigma attached with the president hanging out with hollywood types he wouldn't have seen michelle obama at the oscars. the stigma has gone away as the republican president i don't think the base would like seeing the president hanging out at the oscars given some of the stereotypes that exist but the reality is you've seen a spike in the coverage in washington, d.c. and the fact dmz even talk about barbara walters the talk about keith olberman and about paul ryan and president obama and michelle obama. us weekly is the same, people magazine. there are so many outlets that have no interest in washington because they were traditionally thought of as boring and stale.

but just in the past four years and is significantly out. >> host: from politico this evening, people watching in washington, d.c. the headline is mccain it's a tv show, the daughter of senator john mccain. we go to michigan next, to hear from glen. >> i would like to say a couple things about professor hall's appearance of politicians and that kind of thing. one is i guess it means the clich the caller showed this more seriously though, i kind of disagree. i really don't care what any of these people look like. i feel that this kind of underestimating the audience. i think it is really a big

problem. that's where you get a lot of this nonsense because the power that the elite or whenever clich you want to use, they don't think people want serious news. it did put out serious news on a regular basis by and large most people but if they thought it would have a direct impact on their life and that kind of thing, but the crime and the standard of living and that kind of stuff on a consistent basis. >> where do you get your daily news from? >> pretty much anywhere i can get it, newspaper, television, whatever is available at the moment. >> host: we will let you go there and hear from jane hall. >> guest: one thing we haven't focused on as people in the public by using their celebrity. we still look to the first lady in some way as a person who

personifies style. that's been the tradition. there's a lot of attention probably too much on what she's wearing and she had hired designers. she's made a whole initiative about exercise and making school lunches more nutritious. i don't think an unknown person who wasn't already looked at and have people curious about them would get that kind of attention and i think there is a use of celebrity and i think the first lady is in some ways a celebrity. it doesn't mean she's not serious but you can use it in a positive way. i think if i were that kind of person i would be looking for ways to use it. >> host: the founder tmz was talking about a potential launch of what he's calling d.c. and he also talked about how his organization is seeking to get younger users and the younger people interested in politics.

here's what he had to say. >> young people are not interested in traditional media for the most part anymore because it doesn't speak to them. and it's getting -- the audience is getting older and older so when young people aren't coming into the old people are getting older, you know what happens in the end. i mean, it's inevitable. so when you look at what happens with the dynamics of the audience, then the question is what are people doing to attract those young people to regenerate interest in what's really important which is the news and when i say the news, it can be politics, city government, celebrity. but what do you do to attract those people and then the question is how do you reinvent yourself. >> host: on the issue of attracting younger users what is

the demographic that target of >> it's not age specific what we want to focus on is a narrow group we want the country at the world political junkies. that isn't as wide a of a deal as the cnn site. >> host: do you think the way the news is delivered to david more specifically footer with people having news feeds, streams and they get the hits and stories linked on twitter is that the way of the future and what does that say about the long form journalism reporting. >> there is no doubt people are

supporting the news in different ways. islamic it swings back and forth a little bit. right now and for the past decade or so you have seen hyper speed news cycles. >> i want to spend more time flashing the story out with the overload in which the news is coming out at hyper speed but it is just completely overwhelmed by it and they don't have time to check to cover every day because people don't have time to check websites. there are plenty out there that

isn't necessarily online in the more traditional manner. >> host: this is the wrong title for tonight's program. it should be entertainment is political journalism. we will get a couple of quick calls from ohio first up is darris. go ahead. >> caller: i'm a big fan of the show. should it be because the media package is out to basically tell them and give them more to do to understand the difference between the news and what i see on the tv because it feels like shackles and chains but i took a pop culture class and the pop

culture class seems so crazy i guess because i didn't fully understand what was going on. but you kind of see how your level of what the elite pointed out earlier and i wonder what you thought about that. >> host: unless you have something to add to the comments >> guest: i want to add something of a set about the ipad and mobile devices people are getting headlines that way but also as i said you can go deeply. there's a lot of interesting experimentation and work going on about the safety of your water supply and you can look up your city. there are a lot of interesting things. i don't want us to say nothing new is good or everything in the past is gone. there's a lot of interesting experimentation. so far it hasn't been there for

a lot of it, but there are a lot of interesting experimentation is going on. >> host: maybe these are the concerns from the media for delivering the news, the newspapers and some cases people get i pads, readers and stuff like that but the demand for journalism and for news is still there and for the media organizations like politico and other organizations the advertising will come back. >> is journalism what we are trying to talk about or the survival of hard copy newspapers? i think newspapers on line for everything i've read have a very strong brand and they are doing a lot of interesting things that are an adjunct and interesting area all online whether they can get the advertising is going to try of how this plays out. >> host: state college

pennsylvania. >> caller: concerning celebrity and people believe in what they want to find in state college where we have the scandal and it's quite a celebrity and joe paterno's grand testimony he admits to being told by his employer that something, she was doing something of a sexual nature with a young boy for over ten years he never tried to locate that boy or rescue other victims yet the people here in state college refused to see that truth and continue to make a hero of him and i noticed he goes on the show saying we were all totally unaware in his own words she had met chinua and didn't do anything and i notice there is a lot of pandering because he was such a celebrity. you won't be welcome in state college as a politician, the newspaper, student, news out but, resident