precedent for. >> sunday best selling author, lawyer, reagan administration official and reagan -- radio personality mark levin for three hours at noon eastern, booktv's in depth on c-span2. .. [applause] >> thank you, john, it's great to be with you today and with the other good folks at heritage, jennifer marshall, senator jim demint, appreciate

y'all's hospitality very much today. we will be talking about "prodigal press." as john said, dr. marvin olasky wrote this book originally 25 years ago, and it's been widely used in college classrooms around the country, but much has happened in the past 25 years. the 24/7 news cycle that john referred to is, of course, facilitated at least in part by the internet. when the original book, "prodigal press" was written and published in 1980, the internet, i'm fond of saying, was merely a gleam in al gore's eye at that time. since then, of course, the internet is really driving what happens in the news cycle. so we felt like it was due for an update. we started working on this book about three years ago, and it was just published in september. we've been delighted by the reception of the book so far, and what i'm going to do today is to just share with you some of the ideas that are in this

book. want to talk a little bit about world news group just to kind of give you an idea of who we are even though john did a great job of setting me up on that score. and also i want to be really clear that my purpose today is not to bash the mainstream media. i do not in any way, shape or form consider the mainstream media or what some people call the legacy media as the enemy. i do believe, however, that we are in the midst of a sort of a pathological media culture and that some of the ideas i'm going to share with you today, i hope, will allow us to identify some of those pathologies and then, ultimately perhaps, even to find a way out of that pathology and provide a hope for the future as you can see here. first, a few words, if you'll allow me a point of personal privilege, about world news group. we're the largest christian news organization in the country. we have world magazine which has

about 400,000 ratedders. we come out 26 -- readers, we come out 26 times a year. we also have a robust following on the internet. beginning about two years ago, we also started a radio program called the world and everything in it. it's a two-hour weekend program and a 30-minute daily program. for those of you who are used to listening to things on christian radio, you will discover that it is not anything like what is on christian radio. it sounds much more like national public radio than it does anything that you would normally hear on christian radio. nick and joseph are the two co-hosts of that program, and they've been doing an excellent job. starting after the first of the year, we're going to start a new 30-minute program that i will host and, once again, it's not really patterned after anything on christian radio, but think charlie rose or fresh air with terry gross, and you'll have more of an idea what we're trying to create with our radio

presence. we also have a world on campus web site which is targeted towards young people and a whole range of age-specific children's publications that are widely used in the christian school and the home school community. well, i'd like to begin by just sharing what for many of you will be obvious, and that is that mass media is dominant in our culture today, and it has a profound impact on the way we think. the average young person will spend about 54,000 hours with some form of mass media before they reach their 17th birthday. now, compare and contrast that to the amount of time that the average young person might spend in church. even if you go to church every day, 52 -- every sunday, 52 weeks a year for your entire growing-up time, you will spend less than a thousand hours if church. in church. now, that doesn't necessarily mean that one is having, you

know, less or more of an impact than the other, that's just a matter of how much time you spend with them. some of the time we spend with mass media is passive. but i think that these numbers really sort of put into sharp relief at least the amount of time that we spend with these various influences on the way we think. and i think it's, it would probably be a little bit disingenuous to claim that that massive amount of time has no impact on us what so far. in fact, senator joseph lieberman who many of you know was no doctrinaire conservative, he was a democrat and later an independent senator, said this: more than three decades of research has firmly established that electronic media have a powerful influence on the attitudes, values and behavior of america's children. this influence has grown only larger as the amount of time that young people spend consuming media has grown greater. i don't think any of us would argue with that. and that's one of the ideas that

we begin to explore in "prodigal press." how the content of the media shape the way we think. we also look at how the media themselves shape the way we think. but let's take a look at content first. i'd like to begin, often, my presentations about the content in the news media and how much it has changed over the years by saying i want to share with you the story of of a great christian newspaper. that newspaper is "the new york times." now, if you read "the new york times" today, you don't think of it as a christian newspaper but, in fact, it was founded by henry raymond, a bible-believing presbyterian christian in the 1850s. in the 1870s, one of his star investigative reporters, a man named augustus st. claire, went undercover in the abortion facilities of new york. some of you today may have heard of folks like lila rose or james o'keefe who has gone undercover with video cameras into planned

parenthood and other facilities and posted these videos on the internet. and that has been touted as an innovative use of social media in modern technologies to do investigative reporters. but, in fact, that was being done by "the new york times" in the 1870s. the times passionately opposed abortion in its both editorial pages and news coverage calling it infant murder and saying the practice is rank and smells to heaven. in fact, one abortionist that was exposed by the new york times actually ended up spending seven years in prison as a result of those stories. and "the new york times" was not alone. between 1825 and 1845 as marvin olasky documented in the original version of this book, "prodigal press," over 100 cities and towns across america had explicitly christian newspapers including the boston recorder edited by a man named

nathaniel willis, one of the most interesting and lively publications of its era. during that same period, new york city alone boasted 52 magazines and newspapers that called themselves explicitly christian. but, of course, we know that "the new york times" is christian no more. the times of today regularly editorializes in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion, two ideas that most evangelical christians find abhorrent. recent times' columnist thomas friedman, acquainted the tea party with hezbollah, and the tea party republicans have waged jihad on the american people. now, whether you agree or disagree with thomas friedman and joe nocero, i think you would have to agree that calling tea party republicans jihadist reflects a certain tone deafness when it comes to theological distinctives. so we begin to, you know, see that religious coverage, use of

religious language in newspapers and anything that resembles a knowing usage has dramatically deteriorated not just in "the new york times," but in other publications as well. so much so that jill abramson in 2011 said this: in my house the times substituted for religion. it was the absolute truth. so again, we see hour "the new york times" has come within a 150-year period, and i think it's fair to say what's happened at the times is fairly indicative of what has happened in other publications. well, to highlight all of the reasons for this change would cause us probably to be here for days. and besides, i'm here the talk about the book, and we have documented much of this in the book. but i would simply say there's been a lot of cultural,

technological and political changes that have taken place over those 150 years. in other words, there wasn't a switch that went on or off that caused the mainstream media to go from a fundamentally religious world view to one that is fundamentallier religious or at least not religious today. but it's been a wide variety of events and changes in our culture that have occurred during that period of time. some specific events that we talk about in some detail in "prodigal press" are the rise of transcendentalism. most of us remember from our high school english courses, maybe we tried to forget, but we might remember ralph waldo emerson and other of the transcendentalist writers. they were also men of letters in the public square as well. they were not ivory tower theorists, that they were writing in the newspapers and magazines of their day. the progressive era of the late

19th century also ushered in what some would call yellow journalism, some would call a golden age of journalism, but it's an era from which we remember names likehorse -- horace greeley and then coming forward into the 20th century, men wipe william randolph hearst whose newspaper chain and media empire, of course, is still around today and was the subject, by the way, of the movie "citizen kane" which has been called one of the great movies of all time. but it also really painted william randolph hearst as a man who was really dislocated from a sense of purpose and meaning in his life. so much so that at the end of the movie, he died alone and sad. and so we begin to see that, you know, as we march through the 20th century, the trial of 1925

which was covered by the leading journalist of the day, h.l. mencken, and really pitted -- it wasn't just a coverage of a trial, but it was a world view that was on trial as well, and h.l. mencken made that abun adaptly plain in his coverage, it was the christian world view versus a materialist, scientific world view that was really in the dock and not john scopes, the teacher, who was teaching darwinism at that time. moving forward even further, the whitaker chambers/alger hiss trial. again, if you've read "witness," you know that that trial was not just a trial about whitaker chambers and communism, but it was really a trial of world views. it pitted the atheistic world view of communism versus the threistic world view that whitaker chambers had come to

embrace over the course of his life. it also, by the way, put what was then a relatively inconsequential, small, back water newspaper on the map. that newspaper, of course, is "the washington post" be which covered that trial extensively and had its coverage picked up around the country and was -- because it was also a trial of new deal ideas, it really established "the washington post" as a leading liberal-progressivist newspaper of the late 20th century. well, all of these factors and more go into creating a media that we have today, so much so that by 1986 robert and linda lichter, a husband and wife team, along with stanley rothman, their collaborator, were able to write a book called "the media elite," in which they found that journalists were well to the left of the general public on a wide range of ideas and not just on the culture war ideas that we think about today like abortion and homosexuality,

but also on ideas such as affirmative action and energy policy as well. fast forward another 15 or so years, and we come to jim kuiper's study. he's a professor at virginia tech university, and he did a survey of 116 newspapers and found that media tend the operate within a -- tend to operate within a fairly narrow range of liberal beliefs. in other words, or not only are they liberal, but their range of contacts and range of, the range of views that they represent in their stories tends to be within a fairly narrow range as well. the other thing that jim chi possessor said that was really interesting was that they tended to omit conservative voices and highlight the more radical liberal voices. i think that is one of the reasons why whenever folks like that pastor in florida who burned the quran or the pastor from fred phelps of westboro

baptist church, you know, protests at the funerals of servicemen, those stories get picked up because they're loud, and they're shrill. but they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of either conservative or christian people in this country. but because most liberal journalists don't have any sense of rolodex of conservative and evangelical contacts, then they just tend to gravitate to the ones they hear most about. so it creates a flawed and a skewed vision of the, a, the number of people who hold liberal and christian views, but also just the range of those views and the reasonableness of those views as well. a study by the american enterprise institute found results that were consistent with these surveys that i just mentioned. between 10 and 15% fewer positive stories occurred in the media whenever there's a republican in the white house.

and so what we end up here when you take all of this together is a, um, is a vision of a mainstream media that is creating a metanarrative that ends up being biased in favor of liberal and anti-christian ideas. this is important because being in control of that public narrative, sometimes called the meta-narrative by theorists, really does matter. in fact, i saw an example graphically of how just miles per hour changes to a story -- minor changes to a story can make a difference. before i show you those pictures, let me just mention this. one of the reasons this is important is because robert weber, a theologian, said the most pressing issue of our time is who gets to narrate the world. how they narrate it really does matter in the way we think and in the way public policy decisions get made. now that photograph i wanted to

share with you. you know, storytelling, great storytelling can elicit a powerful reaction, but who holds the camera in this case really does matter. very small changes can make a big difference. so i think we see this every day in the mainstream media, that these changes are subtle or these differences are subtle, but they really do make a powerful difference in the ultimate narrative that gets told to the american people. so content matters. and what is in the media can shape the way we think. i'd like to shift gears a little bit and spend the next couple minutes also talking about the media themselves, the technology that is used and how that has changed and how those changes also affect the way we think and the way we process ideas. so the question that i would pose to you the one on the screen, have modern media, technology and culture actually eroded our ability to think,

especially to think deeply about complex issues and ideas which are the very basis of a christian and a conservative world view. now, many people who thought deeply about these questions say the answer to that question is, indeed, yes. one of them is neil postman who wrote a powerful book that had a big influence on my life that we quote extensively in prodigal press called amusing ourselves to death. what neil postman says is that all media have limited abilities and there are certain things that they're just not able to do. postman's famous metaphor was postman's -- was smoke signals where he said that smoke signals can communicate to you, for example, that i exist, might even communicate to you where i am and that i have a desire to communicate with you. but it doesn't communicate much more than that. you

>> we don't embrace any of the wonderful technologies that we've embraced because of the negative consequences that might show up in our lives as a result of that. you know, we know, for example, now that many people die every year, literally thousands will die this year because of their, because of texting while driving, distracted driving because of their cell phones. now, if we were told that that was the primary consequence of owning a cell phone, that we would die at the wheels of our car, you know, we would never embrace that testimonying. we embrace new technology -- that technology. we embrace new technology because it offers benefits to us. neil postman says that we should

always evaluate a technology based not on just the benefits, but on what he calls the net cost or the net benefits of any technology. a great example of that is, showed up in the news a couple of years ago. and i've come to call it the story of the facebook burglar. and it gives you an idea of what net effect looks like. a woman whose house was robbed posted the security camera video on her facebook profile. and because of that video, the burglar was identified and arrested. if this is all you know about that story, you would think, well, this is a fantastic use of technology, right? it was a fantastic use of the video camera, of facebook, fantastic use of the internet generally. but if you know the rest of the story, you might come to a different conclusion. it turns out that this robber was a facebook friend of the victim and that e learned that the woman would be out for the evening because of her updates on her facebook profile. so the rest of the story really

communicates that the effect of facebook on in the woman's life was not an unmitigated positive, it's just knowing the first part of that story might suggest. another great thinker in addition to neil postman is marsha mccluhan who wrote a famous book called understanding media. he's probably best known for his idea the medium is the message. he communicated that idea using a metaphor that is sometimes called mclewin's lightbulb, and it basically says imagine you walk into a darkroom. it's completely pitch back -- black, and you don't know what's in the room. what would your behavior be? he says it would be guarded, that you might have fear, that the way you walked around in that room, the way you communicated to who might be in that room would be a certain way. if the light suddenly came on in that room and you could see what was in that room, your behavior would completely change. you would see what was in the room. if it was a room like this, i would say there were no threats

in the room. all the happy faces here are friends of mine and not enemies of mine. my behavior would completely change. my attitude would completely change. my posture would completely change. mclewin asks the question, but what changed about the room? did the contents of the room change? he would say, no, not one bit. it was the medium by which we experienced the room that changed from darkness to light. that's one of the reasons he said the medium is the message. but media compel a certain behavior whether we want that behavior to be indicative of who we are or not. i sometimes when i'm talking to young people use the example of the lord of the rings, a contrast of the book and the movie. for those of you who might be lord of the ring geeks, then you would know who eragorn is. he has a lot of names in lord of the rings. he's son of erathorn, for example, which gives you an example of his lineage and

heritage and background. he's called strider which means, which tells you something about his physical abilities. he's not an ambler or a stroller, he's a strider. and he's also a ranger which is an office, and a ranger is someone who is a protecter. so as j.r.r. toll keen writes the book, these names unfold, and we begin to interact with the text on the page and build a picture in our mind of who eragorn is, the future king, will be. but be you've seen the movie which, by the way, i really like. i think the movies are wonderful in many ways. but the vision of who he is and all the other characters in the lord of the ring are dictated by the director, peter jackson. and whatever picture i might have in my own mind tends to get swamped, overwhelmed by the picture that the movie producer wants me to have of eragorn which looks a lot like sue go

more tenson to me. so media, in other words, have the power to manipulate and to confuse us. it has the ability -- producers in the media whether they were journalists or movie producers or record producers, can impose their view on us rather than allowing us to actively collaborate and participate with the world to come up with our understanding and our view of what the world looks like. so what can we do about it? and i will close with this and let you guys ask me some questions about the book and about some of the ideas. what can we do about it? well, i think one of the things we can do is we should stand for and with what has sometimes been called the good, the true and the beautiful and stand for and with those who produce the good, the true and the beautiful. at world magazine, we think a powerful tool for doing that is what we call biblical storytelling. biblical storytelling is the process of using scripture as our standard of truth and using

a biblical norm which is storytelling to make that truth come alive. so, for example, it would not be enough to say that abortion is bad if you, for example, believed that abortion is bad, but it would be more powerful, more effective to tell stories of women, of children, of families, of communities that abortion has impacted and tell the consequences or, rather, show and not just tell the consequences of those, of abortion or whatever it is you're trying to show the consequences of. and i also want to be clear that we don't think technology is bad. clearly, my presence here today is an indication that it is not amusing, we're streaming this presentation live on the internet, and many viewers, we pray, will watch this on c-span. yet another kind of technology. so all technology is not bad. in fact, we don't think technology is bad at all.

we should use all the technological tools that god in his good providence has made available to us. but we should, as neil postman said, be aware of both their abilities and limitations. we must be discerning consumers of technology so that we are not manipulated by both the abilities and the limitations of those technologies. well, i'm going to hold this closing story and after -- until the q&a and if you'll indulge me a couple minutes to close with this. but i'd like to just pause now and see if there are any questions that you might have. and, john, do you have some ground rules for the -- >> very simple, if you'll just wait for the microphone, and if you do not mind at least identifying yourself as a courtesy to the speaker, and i'm going to take the opportunity to ask you the first question. >> okay, great. i -- >> i notice that you keep talking about journalism, and i think about marvin olasky in a

journalism school. journalists used to be, like the diary, writing down what they observe today. then they crossed the line of i feel bad. then they crossed the line of maybe we should feel bad. then we've gotten to the point where even before the story is released -- particularly in washington -- the talking points, the pr campaign has begun so we can tell you what you're going to read before you read what you're going to read. is there any mechanism for getting around that? >> yeah, yeah. boy, that's a great question. and that, to me, is part of this pathological media landscape, this pathological media culture that we're in. is there a way to get around it? i think, you know, that pandora's box has been opened. i think the cat is out of the bag. i don't think that we can go back to a pre-24/7 news cycle which is a part of the reason this exists. and if i could just back up, i do think that often it's not

malicious intent on the part of people that create environment. sometimes it is malicious intent. but i think often it's, you know, it's a function of the fact that now instead of a couple of news networks, we have ten or twelve news networks. instead of, you know, 30 minutes with walter cronkite at 6:30 in the evening, we have, you know, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year that these cable networks have to fill. it becomes a real tyrant, this 24/7 news cycle. so they have to fill it. there's not, there's not enough -- i'm not going to say there's not enough news, because there's plenty of news in the world. but there's not enough reporting capability, so they fill it with punditry. and i think that that's a big part of it. i think the ultimate solution to that, though, is in the hands of the consumer. that, you know, we've got to stop rewarding that kind of

behavior. we've got to reward with both our readership and our viewership and our financial resources those organizations that are actually putting reporters on the ground and doing real reporting and not just resorting to punditry in the studio. and usually, by the way, those studios are in places like washington and new york and los angeles. they are not in, you know, places like where i live, charlotte, north carolina, flyover country, the red states in america. >> audience questions. >> yes. >> thanks. >> jennifer marshall here at heritage. world is quite explicit about its world view with which it reports and seeks to illuminate the world views to play in any story or editorial. can you comment on other media, how much disclosure of world view you think goes on? do you see differences between

print and broadcast and online in that regard with how illuminating they are, both their own world view and the world views at stake in their coverage? >> yeah, that's a really interesting question because you're right, world magazine is explicitly christian in our world view. and other media claim to be fair and balanced or objective or whatever language that they want to use. we've got an entire chapter in "prodigal press" that we actually had to revise fairly extensively for this version because things have changed so much in that very area that you're talking about in the last few years. where in 1988 the media were very subjective. there was a very clear bias in the media. but it was for the most part a disguised bias. we called it disguised subjectivity in the book. now we have moved into an era where there's completely undies guised objectivity. i would use msnbc as an example.

some of you might remember that the barack obama campaign used the slogan "forward" as part of its, you know, campaign branding. if you will. and you might remember that about that same time msnbc went through a rebranding process, and do you remember, do you know what slogan it now uses on its, that network? does anyone know? well, not forward, but lean forward, right? so i'm not saying that there's a explicit complicity between the obama campaign and msnbc, but i am simply saying it reflects a commonality of world view and that, so there are now, we now live in an environment where most of the news networks are much more explicitly either conservative or liberal in their point of view. i would also say that even those

that won't cop to the plea of being liberal are because of some of the things that we just talked about, the lack of sources that they actually have on the right and the ability and willingness to paint conservatives stereotypically or in a manner of a caricature, that even those that are at least pretending to some level of balance usually end up skewing pretty heavily on the liberal side. this goes back 40 years, but i can't resist telling this little anecdote. pauline kale was the legendary film reviewer for the new york magazine, and when richard nixon got reelected in 1972 with one of the greatest landslides at that time in american history, she reportedly said, nixon, i don't know anybody who voted for nixon. now, she was probably telling the truth. she probably didn't know anyone who voted for nixon, each though

the vast majority of americans did -- even though the vast majority of americans did. that, again, is just an anecdote that indicates just what a bubble most people in the mainstream media, most journallests in the -- journalists in the mainstream media live in, and they just don't know what's going on outside that bubble. and that's only gotten worse over the years. yeah. yes, sir. >> thank you. dave price, retired journalist and educator, try to tie my question into both of those. when i started in journalism back in the '70s, of course, it was newspapers. and there were pages, you know, the front page was supposed to be news, of course, with disguised objectivity and the editorials. and i think part of what you pointed out is this blend where today people have a hard time distinguishing between editorial, punditry, news, it's all kind of thrown together whether it's on the internet or in there. what role, if any, do you see education playing in separating -- and i would apply it to your own organization.

i mean, you're very clear you have a christian belief, you have a christian -- somebody might say bias, but you're coming from a point of world view that informs everything that you do, and you believe in. so what is the role of education today in your mind of letting people know the differences between this is what should pass as news, this is opinion, this is something else? >> yeah. well, i think the role of education is huge. unfortunately, i don't think that it is likely that the mainstream educational institutions of this country are going to be able to rise to that challenge. that just, you know, for example, the -- there are almost no journalism schools in christian colleges many in america. there are, um, the only graduate program in journalism at a christian college that i know of -- there may be others -- is at regent university. and so, and if you want to teach at the college, if you want to

teach journalism at the college level, you have to have a graduate degree in journalism. so -- at least usually. it's usually in journalism. so it's unlikely that someone coming up within that system that's getting educated in a, you know, the mostly-liberal, mostly-secular higher education system in this country is suddenly going, you know, a lightbulb is going to go off, and they're going to have a world view that is any different other than the one that for the last 20 or 25 years in which they've been indoctrinated. so education should play a huge role, but from the very earliest stage, you know, we put our kids in public school systems, public universities. our journalists in particular end up going to public institutions that are secular, that don't have, you know, a christian world view. so it's pretty unlikely that those institutions are going to

change that pattern. yes, sir. >> clip -- clint finish. [inaudible] i'm a citizen journalist with watchdog wire. certainly, you know, there's rivals when it comes to world views. could you talk about fox news versus cnn and contrast that to christian broadcast network? thank you very much. >> yeah. well, the -- i mean, fox news is not christian in its orientation, i'll say that. and, you know, christian -- what the christian broadcast network is doing, i'm not terribly familiar with it. i mean, i think it's a step in the right direction, perhaps, but it is not -- the christian broadcast network, fox news is not nearly enough to combat the overwhelmingly secular and

liberal world view that we see on virtually every other news network that's out there. and the resources of both of those organizations combined would amount to only probably a small fraction of the news-gathering capabilities that you would find at, say, a place like nbc. so, you know, there's just, you know, without making any sort of specific judgments or criticism about the christian broadcasting network or fox, i will just simply say that whatever they are doing that is good is inadequate for the needs of the day. yes, sir. >> dave russell, serve as the director for campus outreach at college ministry here in town. westboro baptist church, you commented about radical voices being highlighted. >> yeah. >> despite them being just a couple families, reallying with more baptist than the ku klux klan as a christian ministry, they're always making the news. could you talk more about why news editors might deem them

worthy? why their voices get highlighted so much? >> well, you know, i think it's a combination of ideology and practicality. the ideology is simply that i don't think that most folks in the mainstream media have the theological training and tools and temperament and background to be able to tell the difference between, you know, fred phelps and westboro baptist church and rick warren at saddleback church. i i think they might say superficially there's some sort of a difference, but for the most part, they don't get the difference. they don't understand what those differences are for the most part. they're just, you know, again with, it's not maybe animosity, it's just a complete lack of understanding, the inability to discern those subtle differences. and be, again, that's a part of the training. if i'm a science reporter for national public radio, it is inconceivable that i would get hired for that job without having some sort of a science background be. and yet journalists every day

cover stories. not just beat religion reporters, but i'm talking about all reporters cover issues every day that have a religious or a moral or ethical component to them, and they don't have any training in these areas. so i think part of it is that, that they just don't have the antenna to discertain the difference. and i think -- discern the difference. and i think another part is the practicality of it where they will -- if these guys are putting out press releases, if they are, you know, videotaping what they're doing and making their videotape available, if they are making it easy for the media to cover them, especially visual media -- television, electronic media -- by staging demonstrations and holding up signs that say "god hates fags" on them, those become compelling visuals that the mainstream media too often can't resist. you see it at the local level where, you know, you turn on virtually any local television

news network, and, you know, you see come to pass that old saying if it bleeds, it leads, right? they cover a lot of car wrecks, they cover a lot of fires because they make compelling visuals, because there's a lot of yellow police tape there. looks good on television. so i think there's sort of that practical aspect of i. the other side of it, too, is i think there often is some animosity. the idea that fred phelps is representative of mainstream evangelical christianity is, plays into many people's narratives of what evangelical christianity's all about even though it is completely not true. it's what, it's what they want to believe. it's their bias and their prejudice, so they will continue to cover folks like fed fell be pes or that quran-burning pastor down in florida and ignore many reasonable evangelical voices who have thought deeply about some of the same issues that they're covering.

>> as a footnote, how much of journalism though in the media, when i was growing up i thought of it as partly a public service, that they did as part of their overall broadcasting. now days it's where is the -- nowadays it's where is the profit line. if there's no profit line, we don't need to do the news, we need to do the gotcha moment. >> yeah, that's a really great question. i'm not clear, john, that that has changed a whole lot. if you look at william randolph hearst, he became one of the wealthiest men in the history of the planet, you know? long before, you know, the modern news era. in fact, you might even say he initiated the modern news era. but i do think it's, that -- it allows me to sort of segway in another interesting point. a lot of interesting journalism these days is now coming out of nonprofit organizations within the secular arena. you have organizations such as the center for public integrity or, well, the corporation for public broadcasting which owns,

which -- not the corporation for public broadcasting because that's a government-funded organization, but organizations like npr which is a nonprofit organization that receives funding from the corporation for public broadcasting and propublica which is another investigate i news organization. these are nonprofit organizations that are privately funded. now, unfortunately, from my point of view, both cpi and propub hi ca tend to be left-leaning, and that's where most of their funding comes from. and we don't really have a viable conservative alternative to those types of organizations. but i do think that that could be the wave of the future. is that we're going to see more nonprofit journalism, more journalism that's going to be funded by organizations, especially investigative journalism which tends to be exespeciallyive -- expensive and doesn't always provide an economic return right away, will be funded by these nonprofit organizations. looked like you had a question. were you just -- no? okay. any other questions? yes, sir.

>> then your story. don't forget your story. >> yep. >> dean sinclair from alexandria, virginia. early on in your talk today you talked about the fact that journalists are very much liberal in their political leanings, maybe 80 or more. is there something in the system that just draws, you know, liberal people to that kind of profession? is there something in the hiring mechanism? what's going on there that makes it so overwhelmingly liberal? >> yeah. well, that's a really good question. i think it goes back in part to the education system that we talked about. most journalists are being trained in the liberal, secular academies of this country. so that's likely going to be what they produce. i should go back, and we have a lot of these statistics in "prodigal press," but gallup has been doing a survey since the 1940s about church attendance

in america. and that attendance, while it moves up and down and has trailed off in recent years, has stayed around 40 president. when gallup asks the question have you attended a religious service in the last seven days, close to 40% of americans answer yes to that question. when journalists are asked the same question, a variety of surveys have been done on this topic, the number is usually less than 10%. so, you know, you can argue is that right, is that wrong, is it good or bad, i would just simply argue it's different. it is way different than the religious orientation, the religious -- the beliefs and behaviors of journalists just looks really different from the mainstream. and i think that in some ways it becomes a, you know, either a virtuous cycle or a, you know, a downward spiral depending upon your orientation. you know, if all your friends are liberal, if all of your friends are secular in their

world view and orientation and you get positive reinforcement from that, then that's just going to create a continuing cycle. it's going to be hard for you to sort of justify or rationalize looking outside your world view because you're getting all kinds of affirmation both professionally and personally within the community in which you are operating. any other questions? do you mind, john, if i close with my story? >> no. >> well, some of what i've said might lead you to believe that i'm a pessimist, and the truth of the matter is that i'm not, i'm an optimist, and i think there's a lot of hope for the future. and part of that hope springs from, you know, my understanding of history. and that is that god always works through a remnant. he, there's a continuous cycle throughout history of decline and recovery. one story that i find encouraging which i'd like to share with you in closing is the story of the battle of britain

which i think probably many of you know. the battle of britain began in august of 1940 when the german lift watt that starting bombing great britain. they started bombing great britain in part because hitler wanted to invade britain and knew that he had to have control of the air. but day after day the royal air force went up against them, and we now know with the hindsight of history that what hitler's plans were, and this is from his famous directive number 16, and i'm going to just skip could doo the last paragraph. the english air force must have been beaten down to such an extent morally and in fact that it can no longer muster any power of attack worth mentioning against the german crossing. but what we know is that the english air force was not beaten down, that despite tremendous destruction, the royal air force exhibited tremendous

determination. by the way, i really love that picture because see that dog running out to the airplane with the pilots? i just think that sort of humanizes that picture a good bit. and we also know that against overwhelming odds that the royal air force did not exactly prevail against the germans, but they were able to battle to stalemate in the battle of britain which ended, ended up ending in october of 1940. leadership, of course, made the difference. winston churchill, who was one of the most dramatic figures in 20th century history, said this, you may recall, about the battle of britain and specifically the raf fighters who went up day after day against the germans. he said: never before in the annals of valor has so much been owed by so many to so few. when i started studying this battle a little bit more closely when i read a biography of cur chill, i discovered something that for some reason i didn't

know before, and that was that the raf at that time only had 2,000 pilots, that it was only 2,000 pilots that went up every day against the full might of the germans. and when i found out that number, it gave me a lot of encouragement. you know, i believe that journalism is the air war of our time, and so while it is tempting to become discouraged in the face of some of the information and statistics that i might have shared with you, that there's a lot of them and so few of us, i continue to believe that while we may be few in number, with god's help we will be enough. so thank you very much for your attention today. thank you, john, and to the heritage foundation for hosting me. it's been a pleasure, and i look forward to having money. with some of you -- having lunch with some of you and hanging out for the next hour. >> thank you. [applause] >> and, of course, as we mentioned, we do have copies of the 25th anniversary edition of

"prodigal press" and some other books in the lobby. thank you again, warren, for joining us and for an excellent presentation and you for your attendance. and we will see you, hopefully, again in the future, not very soon from now. [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our prime time lineup for tonight. at 7 p.m. eastern, michael allen, majority staff director of the house permanent select committee on intelligence, reports on the restructuring of the u.s. intelligence system after 9/11. then at 8 p.m., joshua duboise, former executive director of the white house office of

faith-based and neighborhood partnerships, talks about the devotional e-mails he sent to president obama in "the president's devotional." at 8:30 p.m. eastern, christopher parker, social justice and political science professor at the university of washington, contends that the tea party is part of an american tradition of reactionary movements. founder and editor of national affairs, "uvall levin, is our guest on "after words" at 10 to present his thoughts on the divide between the political left and right. and we wrap up at 11 p.m. eastern with john nichols and robert mcchesney who argue that the increase in campaign spending over the past four decades has hurt democracy. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> we're talking with karen houppert at the national press club. tell us a little bit about

"chasing gideon." >> well, i worked on this book for about a year and a half, and it's tied to the 50th anniversary of the supreme court decision gideon v. wainwright. and my initial idea was to go out and kind of take the temperature across the country to see how this issue of the right to counsel has played out in the last 50 years since that landmark decision. so i found it, um, a huge crisis in the courts that public defenders are grossly overworked. some of the public defenders i talked to were carrying as many cases as 700 at a time. so what i tried to do in the work was to write a book about this crisis in the courts. this book was written for general readers, not lawyers, because one of the striving questions in -- driving questions in my book was how can everybody that's involved in the

court system -- judges, prosecutors, public defend pers, cops -- all recognize that the system is broken, that there's this huge crisis and not do anything? so i went in with that question, and i think the answer i walked out with is that most people outside of the judicial system don't know about these problems. so i wrote "chasing gideon" for those people who are interested in justice and fairness but don't know the intricacies of our united states court system. and i tried to tell the story narratively so that it's interesting to people and so that you see what it's like to go through the courts from a climate's perspective. i talk about an 18-year-old who was in a car accident and charged with vehicular manslaughter. i talk about a 12-year-old who's accused of sexual assault

because he played with a neighbor boy allegedly. and i talk about a death penalty case and other cases like that. and i try to tell the story through the perspective of those climates and what it's like for them and how important the lawyer's role is. because, um, the court system can be very overwhelming when you look at it, you know? and you walk into any court in the country, and you'll see rows and rows and rows of people sitting on benches or standing in the hallways who are meeting their lawyers for the first time on the fly, don't know their names, you know? they thrust out their hand, they fill out a story in five minutes, and then they ask this person to go into court and defend them. who -- and this person is juggling so many cases, can't really dedicate the time that they need to do justice to this

person's case. so i wanted to tell that story in "chasing gideon," and just to focus our nation's anticipation on that 50 -- attention on that 50 years after the supreme court decision. >> um, what is the core reason for the system being broken? is it simply a matter of not enough money, or is it a matter of there not being enough interest by qualified attorneys to do this kind of work? is it some kind of combination? something else? >> i think it's a combination of things. there's several systemic problems. there's a culture in the courts where, um, sometimes among public defenders there's a sort of bravado about, like, how much work can you do without complaining. so the culture of the courts can fuel that, especially also among judges who, um, have an attitude of move the cases along, clear the docket, let's keep things

going. keep the calendar clear. so there's that culture. and then there's big financial problems and financial disincentives. so there's often not enough public defenders, so their caseloads get too high. that's another huge problem. and then there's also a problem with the way that public defenders are paid in states. for example, out in washington state one of the cases that i wrote about out there, they have these things called contract attorneys. and they are paid a flat fee contract for every client that gets sent their way in a particular county. and all of their fees for experts or investors or any of that have to come out of their own flat-fee contract. so there's a disincentive sometimes to do good work.

of so there's a lot of different pressure points in the system right now, but i think the biggest problem is that, um, the general public doesn't realize that. and it's a hard sell to the public because all that people ever hear from politicians are kind of, you know, lock 'em up and throw away the key, three strikes, you're out. they really are fearful of getting elected by talking about any of these issues or showing the least bit of fairness or empathy for these people who are going through the system. so i think there has to be a cultural shift in the kind of conversation that we have publicly on these issues. >> any good news? >> there are some places that are doing good jobs. washington, d.c. is one of them. they have, you know, the creme de la creme of public defender systems. bronx public defenders has

started a national movement to limit caseloads and to try to deal more holistically with all of the issues that defendants might be facing like if they've come into the system because they've been stealing, and that's related to drug addiction or homelessness or whatever. those new programs are trying to have public defenders' offices deal with the source of the problem, to look at the root of the problem and deal more broadly with the people that come through their system. so there is some good news out there. >> thank you for your time. >> uh-huh, thank you for having me. >> a few weeks left in 2013 be, many publications are putting out their year-end lists of notable books. these nonfiction titles were included in the economist's book of the year, "in coolidge,"

amity shlaes recounts the tenure of the president. ian buruma in "year zero." in "margaret thatcher: the authorized biography, volume one," charles me, a reporter for "the telegraph," recounts the late british prime minister's personal life and early career. in "my promised land: the triumph and tragedy of israel." ari shavit presents a history of israel. margaret macmillan recalls the events that led to world war i in europe in "the war that ended peace: the road to 1914." in "lean in: women, work and the will to lead," sheryl sandberg, the chief operating officer at facebook, gives her thoughts on women and leadership. for an extended list and links

to various other publications' 2013 notable book selections, visit booktv's web site, booktv.org. >> now on booktv, william arkin argues that unelected officials in our national security establishment are undermining constitutional rights. this program, from the nor witch bookstore in norwich, vermont, is a little under ab hour. ..