that i -- sort of the inspiration from my most recent book. and it comes from learned hand who was a judge on the u.s. court of appeals for the second circuit in new york. and he was -- he was giving a speech to 150,000 immigrants who were taking the oath for the first time to become citizens. this was a naturalization ceremony. 150,000 in 1942. so many people that they held it in central park. and they asked the judge to speak to them. they had a little bit different view of the court. and he talked about the spirit of liberty. and he said in that speech liberty lies. we resume or live coverage now at the american civil liberties union membership conference in washington dc. the event includes remarks by senator elizabeth warren and panel discussions focusing on the media and the rule of law. >> just as all of you are doing in your home states, here in

texas we've been fighting for racial justice, lgbt equality, reproductive rights, religious liberties. and all too often these days immigrant rights. for 32 years, i worked in the newspaper business. i cut my teeth as a reporter in connecticut. where is connecticut out there? [ cheering ]. >> good. had we had auto fill back then, it would have been so much easier for me to get indicted politicians on the screen every night. but indy newspaper career back home in texas not long after rick perry put his arm around my shoulders and told a crowd he was proud i was his home town newspaper editor. cause and effect perhaps. [ laughing ] >> so it's obvious the media and the first amendment are things i've dealt with pretty

much every day of my adult life. and now those issues are something all of us are dealing with every day. i still think the mission of journalism is to shine light on wrongs. to hold the powerful accountable. to baden our horizons. yet we hear dly reports about fake news, disinformation, distortions, about a total disruption of the news media. what does it mean for our constitutional democracy and freedom of expression? this is an important discussion, and nowhere is it more important than right here, right now as we aclu members seek to learn to be inspired and to arm ourselves with the knowledge and the arguments we need to continue our vigorous defense of the

first amendment. to help us do that today, we have an excellent panel. one that represents a variety of media and of viewpoints. and i think you will know their names. first of all, there's david king who has been the opinion editor of the washington times, the president of the national rifle association, a political consultant and a presidential advisor, among his many other accomplishments. he has collaborated with the aclu on such issues as prison reform and limiting government surveillance activities. a distinguished reporter, editor and columnist for the washington post, ruth marcus has been with the newspaper for nearly 35 years. ever since she graduated from harvard law school. she's currently deputy editorial page editor. and for her weekly column has been nominated for the pulitzer

price. catrena is editor and publisher of the nation. she's written for just about every major newspaper in the country and she's a frequent contributor on television news shows. she's received awards, from among others, the new york civil union, the american anti-discrimination committee and the asian-american legal defense and education fund. so i want to welcome all three of them to the stage now.

[ cheers and applause ] >> yes, david, we're putting you in the middle. [ laughing ] >> we hope that's a comfortable spot for you. [ laughing ] >> so before we start, we want to know a bit about you and your news consumption. so i'm going to ask some questions. all you have to do is raise your hand. the first round you can raise your hands multiple times. there's no one answer. where is the first place you turn every morning for news? facebook? twitter? do you go to your local newspapers? >> no. >> who said no? [ laughing ] >> how about your national newspapers. the washington post, the la times? the new york times? okay. all right. this is an aclu crowd. [ laughing ] >> how about local television? there's sort of a room divide here, i think.

what about cable television? okay. raise your lahand if you've increased your media consumption in the last 18 mont so now that you're getting more news, do you trust the media? >> no. >> no. >> oh, guys. i'm worried about you guys. i'm glad i got out. do you think the media holds our institutions and elected leaders accountable? >> no. >> no. >> they can't. >> well, i think we see that there's a whole new landscape here from when some of us started in thisbusiss. in the space, you know, of a little more than 55 years, we've gone from a president who held an average of 23 televised press conferences a year to today a president who averages ten tweets per day.

many of them directed at our institutions, including the press. he wants to reach the people directly. we have gone from all of us getting our news the same way. from journalists exercising judgment, providing depth and analysis, to the places you mention you get your news. twitter, search engines, news pages, online sites. some that we may or may not know whether they use what we once thought of as professional journalists. 25,000 newsroom jobs have been lost in the past decade. some of our neighbors would say that's a good thing. we have a president who won overwhelmingly in regions with low newspaper subscription rates. and we have journeyed from a period where newsroom conversations once centered on things like whether the story

had the right context. did it tell you why you should care? to a media landscape seemingly donated by quick bait in places we never before would have called centers of journalism. so our conversation today could have been an all day symposium. but instead we have about an hour and a half. and we're going to divide this up in a couple of parts. starting with how did we arrive at the state of the media and the age of trump and, therefore, we go in the future. i expect this group will have a robust conversation. they are not without opinion. and i have a conversation starter or two. and then i probably will just stay out of the way. in march, catrena in your magazine, tom englehart wrote

every day there's a new tweet, a new outrageous policy, a new lie or misstatement, a new thing about stormy daniels and on and on and on. so how did we arrive at this moment? does this president use twitter to distract us from the real catastrophes of the administration as you wrote saturday? this is a very dangerous moment, not just for the media but for institutions rule of law. those institutions which check a president and an administration. i think it's particularly dangerous because this president and his war on the media -- and, by the way, the war on the media isn't just donald trump saying media is the enemy of the people. today, as some of you may know, is the end of net neutrality as we know it. and i think that is a real speech fight of our generation and the aclu and attorney

generals around this country will continue to fight for that freedom. but it means that you're giving our use of the internet over to big telecom and that is a disaster. but the structural changes in the media which were happening before donald trump could lied with donald trump. so you see the consolidation of media. you've seen the loss of local urnalism. the loss of journalist jobs. you've seen the obliteration of the line between news and entertainment. so that a reality star like donald trump could go down the elevator -- and, by the way, there's different media in the country. we can use that as a predicate to this discussion. because there is the nation. there is democracy w. there is the new york times and washington post. and i will say that i think cable in many ways for these last two years has not served the public interest for the most part and has gone for click bait, media malpractice over

media news. so i think it coullides with th president for a check on his power. b but let me end. it's not just this president. there was an italian journalist who covered. you know who he was. he's still lurking around the political landscape. but he was someone like trump. and those journalists said it would be a mistake to focus too much on trump's character and the man because it will allow him to portray himself as the victim versus the establishment. focus on the sources of trumpism. we will have trumpism after we leave the sta and many of the media institutions favorably do this. look at the source of trump strength, economic, social, political factors. because that election in 2016, the media played a role. but so did the fact that i would

argue -- and i'll stop with the first election of the post financial crisis in this country. millions of people felt left behind. they weren't being listened to. there was a backlash against the first african-american president. that's not news to you. but i think we need to fix hard the strucral needs to bld a public interest, rebuild the public interest media. focus on the source of the trumpism. and don't allow him to make the media this elite institution because there is a fundamental need for a public interest media in this country if we're going to preserve democracy and the resilience of our institution like the aclu. [ applause ] >> who wants to jump in there? >> me. >> i'm an older guy. sometimes i don't hear the monitors. much of what you say about the structural changes are true and have been going on forever. you know, politicians have never liked the media.

and for good reason. and they're not supposed to. but when i first came to washington and was involved in presidential politics, ruth was a young girl then. >> you might mention i still am. but that's okay. [ laughing ] >> if somebody wanted to run for president, they actually had to go to dinners in georgetown with leading journalists scottie reon and all these people. that was the first primary. if all of these people decided within the establishment that the candidate was okay, he would get mentiod. possibly could run, et cetera, et cetera. that began to break down. and every candidate in both parties was trying to find ways around that. and what we have now is the breakdown, which is partly tej -- techno logical and structural and candidate tris trying to ta advantage of that to get their message out in the way they want it rather than filtered by the media. i remember in the nixon years

the president would go around and ban the national press from press conferences because he wanted the local people he could get his message out that way because they cover it differently. that worked a little bit. not as much as he liked. other candidates tried different things. i remember when i was working through ronald reagan, he went to florida. and we were trying to get a specific message out. and he gave his -- had a press conference. and all the national media got it because it was -- it was a different message that they had been hearing. the local media who were we targeting didn't get it because they liked the general lines he had been using. so the wrong story was in the wrong place and we had to bring him back to have a press conference where he would just talk about that so they would get it through their heads. but what happens when you have an infrastructure that breaks down. and when you have multiple ways to reach people, you have the kind of chaos that takes place when you're also free. the other problem that we have

which goes into that is, you know, many years ago daniel patrick said we all have a right to our own opinions but not to our own facts. well, it turns out we do have a right to our own facts. everybody if you just watch msnbc or fox news, you don't get just different opinions. you get different facts. and it's reflected in public polls. 20 years ago if you asked voters about state of t economy, you would get a sense that it was an economic answer. today if you asked voters and if it's a republican president, the democrats will say everything is terrible. the republicans will say it's great. regardless of whatt is. and the same is true the other way around. so the answers to questions that used to be issue-based are now simply politicalcally based as we break up into a -- into a society where we get our news in a boutiqu way. when we grew up, the older people among us, there weren't

-- i talked about the negatives of that. but there was a source of facts and news. ane could disagree with it. i often did. but we were all operating on the same plain. today, and i think president obama said it at one point, we live on different planets. we not only don't agree on the solutions, we don't even agree on the problems. and that's part of the chaos that's going on. probably that will be resolved in some way. but i don't think it would be possible to predict how it is. the only thing i'll add is that -- and this new generational thing in part when you have raised your hands about how many get your news on twitter and facebook. i don't do either one of those. but if the washington times or the post i'm sure this is true, we get a certain number of pieces over the transem, if you will. sometimes some of them are pretty good. if i get back to them and say we're filled up in the print edition but we could put it online, their response tells me

how old they are. [ laughing ] >> because if they're my age, if it isn't printed on paper. >> right. >> it really doesn't exist. and if it's a younger writer, they say -- >> what's the print. >> that's fine. anyway, but think that that structural chaos which can be both destructive and krufkt -- constructive is something everyone is trying to grasp. >> so, you know, the marriage of the trump moment and the techno logical moment is a really interesting phenomena. every president -- i didn't know about the nixon story about trying to explode the national press. but every president has tried to find his way of going around, going over the heads of circumstance venting -- circumventing the national media

and getting terrific headlines from localnewspapers. one local newspaper was thriving enough to have people to cover them. but trump has just taken advantage of this technolic moment where you can -- he can communicate unfiltered with all of these people. i looked at his twitter feed the other day and he was above 50 million followers. and the stark fact that a president of the united states has had a single, full fledged news conference in the 500 plus and counting days of his presidency really tells you everything you need to know about the president and the media right w. in some ways he is the most bizarrely accessible of candidates. he called some reporters directly. he answers lots of questions. and yet he's not held

accountable in the normal mechanisms that we have all grown up with and expect to be held accountable. and then we forget sometimes to say, whoa, this is a really strange moment that's going on here that we have a president without white house press conferences. a normal psident would have had x by this point in his presidency. he has had one. and then we get into this debate about how responsible news organizations should cover his tweets. do you cover his tweets as if they are -- i love the feed that puts him up on kind of official white house looking letterhead and puts it in context for you. or do you understand them as official policy that should be reacted to? or do you understand them as a distraction mechanism? and i think the answer is you have to understand them both

simultaneously as both and walk and chew gum at the same time right about the tweet for what they're worth and the ones that are worth lamenting and responding to, to respond to them, and not to allow the tweets to serve as a distraction mechanism to distract you from the underlying policy that's being made while we're all mesmerized by twitter. this is a really hard phenomena as the trump moment collides with the basic destruction of the natural preexisting financial model for the news industry. and we have tried to find something else. in a weird way, trump has some of that problem, although there may be some degree of news

fatigue. newspapers and eyeballs. definitely he has created with his reality show presidency an up tick of interest. . . . maybe our viewership on television will go down. that is not true. but in some ways, i'm going to end this on a hopeful note. the trump moment for me as a journalist has actually brought something i've never experienced before. i know there was some grumbling in the room about the degree to which the media is capable of holding the president accountable. but for the first time in, how much as i outed for, 35 plus

years of being a journalist, people are thanking me for what were doing. and it's not me. it's the news media generally. that is a new thing as you have a president who describes what you do other living as enemy of the people. some of the people recognize that we do play an important role. that is for me the upside of the trump administration. [applause] >> words, the "washington times" common with thank you while the step you don't publish and opposed. >> you're welcome. >> i come back again, we are living in a radically changing time. sometimes when you're living through that history, it goes on the front line to experience a very painful ways. the old order is disappearing our diet and the new one is part of that. i come back again.

i was reminded of this by the ominous story the other day. the trump administration beginning to leak investigation and seizing a journalist and there may be three others. a lot of people think that's a danger. i think it's an extraordinary danger and ominous sign of the justice department's willingness to curb the price. on the other hand, we can't live a historically. several people noted that president obama left the template with the use of the espionage act. some of you may have known tom musgrave, certainly what happened to snowden, who i think deserves a pardon. i think he did a public service. i think we need to put some of what we are living through in an historical context and not maybe

too much to ask. it may be very nation ask because we were founded in the by abolitionists. just think the aclu, we think this is our moment to show resistance and renewal in a different way. i think we made some history here. just a footnote on a snowden languishes in moscow and speaks out against abuses there. i am horrified i have to say by how many and firmer intelligence had have been signed up as talking head on cable. you may not, but he perjured himself twice coming at me as there giving it vice to all of us on how to combat intelligence lapses. bring back snowden to be a commentator, msnbc or cnn. that would be more helpful. i will say that i think you are so right. there was a break down of the

public sphere. but at the same time in the olden days there was gatekeepers. gatekeepers who defined in police the parameters of what was possible by way of opinion. in the chaos and who are marginal now can have a voice, but that hasn't downsides, too. >> welcome the tribal nature of our politics today, you hit upon it with i had hoped that after the obama administration would be past the spirit of going after the borders because that had been worn during the obama administration been since woodrow wilson. but we are not. i remember when clapper first perjured himself before congress. i wrote that he should be resigned, fired, gotten rid of.

the left is all for that. now clapper is a hero because he is attacking donald trump. he is the same line intelligence officer who pursues his own beliefs today than he was then. [laughter] [applause] >> that i agree with. that may take us a little different direction. you've all made reference to the way it used to be when you started out, when i started out. i've talked to a lot of reporters who said they may be the new golden age of television -- of television and all forms of journalism. but how is it changing the way you do your work? katrina come you are an editor. no just what you write, but how you direct your staff, how you

choose. >> what is that it and how is it changing? >> how has that changed the way you approach in your case opinion writing in your case choosing news articles or things to investigate. is there a new approach? >> how has trump changed us? for us, it has been a really fascinating challenge. we have a very diverse, i would say op-ed page, but it's not a page amore. there were two pages in the paper. you can still see the print paper on the op-ed column. but it is an op-ed abundance of opinion online that ranges the gamut. one of the things we discovered in the age of trump was that our conservative columnists actually

were more anti-trump than our liberal columnists. who dislike trump most. was it michael griffin or george will or god bless him, charles krauthammer. he created a big challenge for us because what was once a kind of vibrant freya disagreement among the ruling conservatives, and it just became this we hate donald trump eco-chamber, which is actually not a healthy place if you want an opinion. we actually had to do something that i know people in this room would not be encouraging us to do her thinking we should be spending all of our energy doing, but trying to find, intellectually honest pro-trump or at least trump empathetic columnists. that has been one of the special challenges for me as an op-ed

editor of the trump era. the second, which is related has been to make sure that is a columnist and editor we don't either overreact to trump or under react to trump. there are things that the president is doing better things that any republican president for most republican presidents would do that i happen to disagree with, the editorial board might disagree with, but are in the norms of republican presidential behavior and that means we respond to them accordingly. i disagree. i've lamented. we should stop it. but it is not fascism. but at the same time, we shouldn't under react to things that donald trump does that are

not like what a normal president does. i mentioned before the failure to hold news conferences. calling the press as much as this very disturbing seizure of a sickly metadata from the reporter had its antecedents and behaviors of the obama administration. behaviors that if they weren completely contained by at least we're kind of some guidelines that would make that a little bit unclear whether or not they're enforced. just because there are 10 outrages in the face of a street storm or in the space of the day, that doesn't mean we should only react to two of them. we need to figure out a way that is really hard in the era of constrained resources.

d h a whole bunch of stuf that i wanted to yell about last week and decided i was going to use myolumn write about the administration really lamentable decision not to defend the constitutionality of the affordable care act. not because of the impact on the health care law, but because of the impact on the rule of law and the really terrible precedent it set in the most extreme cases for an administration to defend the duly enacted statutes. so not under react, not overreact, but also in particular not under reaction to the excesses of this administration is for me the kind of challenge of the trump era. >> katrina, how are you approaching your words

differently or not. >> the morning-after public collection we came in bleary-eyed and did a cover, mourn, resist, organize, onward. which was a template in some ways. but you know, founded in 1865 not to make a profit, but to make change and to believe that our journalism can build a more democratic and equitable world. there are four areas we continue to build out in the trump era. we get hired immigrant rights reporter appeared we were committed to covering those on the front line of what we quickly saw would be injustice. but we have covered insurgency in progressive politics for 153 years and we ramped up in the fundamental belief that social movements make transformational change. we've been covering black lives matter, to me to movement never again come and environmental rights movement, economic justice. this is in our dni.

i will say whether you love him, hate them or don't care about him, he put issues that have now become part of our debate and we followed the issue, free higher red, medicare, racial justice issues. war and peace, those away. aclu was founded by antiwar act to this. but war and peace is not high enough on an agenda and when there's talk of a president like trump with his finger on the nuclear button, that gives people a little more interested in war and peace, yet we also say where your voting to give this president were defense budget when you're so worried about him? one of the few publications to oppose the war in iraq vigorously, but senator mccain announced what a disaster it was. we try to do investigative

reporting. we have limited resources, but i'm very proud on the eve of the trump election our coverage of the federal for-profit prison industry led sally gate's deputy at the doj to announce they were shutting down. we've got to go back in and do the work again to make change. [applause] because i will end. i don't know about reuther daed, but there's no question as a journalist in these times is an editor you wake up some mornings with some despair because you look out and part of journalism is to shame to make change. when you have not just trump, but a lot of people around him who seemed incapable of being shamed, you wonder what is my work accomplishing? what is the change? you got to be in it for the long haul. investigative journalism is part of that. making change through x rosing, proposing an arresting people

attention and listing the movement and just the people. finally, partf what we to do is put new ideas on the agenda. i mean, we've been championing for 20 years. i think we should -- [applause] we should feed ideas that may seem radical. like abolish the second amendment. [laughter] [applause] >> good luck with that. >> i know. and i'm not sure of it. there's a whole set of issues that may seem radical, but in these times it seems to me important for the nation and the aclu and the great work. our cover story a few weeks ago was the aclu playing a larger role in the spirit of the aclu changing politics of this

country. i know they are as complex as the imac, but i think at the moment in the aclu was founded in that spirit. so i will stop and simply say one of the things we have our great scholars on our editorial board. one is eric phone or who writes about the civil war and read construction. duringhen e-mailed one night and said does anyone dare have a tie to the bernie sanders campaign. can you tell bernie sanders to quit talking about denmark. i love denmark. but can he retrieve this country's own radical tradition, which exists to remind people of what is possible. even in the darkest times, which these are close to. i would submit wasting dark times before. institutions are resilient in the judicial resistance, which the aclu is so central a part of

has fought and won. it is a long battle. but that judicial resistance reminds us of the media that checks in as legitimate and continues to work even if the president called the fake news is so vital. [applause] >> david, do you want to weigh in on something other than repealing the second amendment? >> at the "washington times" and one caveat, i am no longer the full opinion editor. i am not editor at-large because they spend moree fishing than i do at a game and i write a column. let me just talk about the way we look at it. i don't know -- we have to do some of this reaction because that is what readers expect. we are not about pro donald

trump or anti-donald trump. we are about certain principles we tried to get those principles out. we are also about accomplishing things. we are the conservative alternative in washington. the first op-ed that was published when i took over the editorial page of the "washington times" was written by some fellow by the name of romero. as you'll remember that. we believe in order to accomplish goals, there are a lot of goals that people share a need to work together. i know that 97% of the people in this room, my wife is here, so that's two of us are not possible to much of what donald trump is doing. we happen to like a lot of the agenda. he wasn't my candidate for president, but the change that we seek in the change you might see are very different things. that is legitimate and that is

what we should be fighting about. just opposing everything because that's the other team if you will pay one of the things that i really dislike in washington is our team and their team. it doesn't work that way at least in my mind. there were things we all want to accomplish, some things i might want to accomplish. the thing we all want to accomplish we ought to work together on. [applause] i think that is incredibly important for conservatives and particularly the aclu have worked together over many years. some of my closest friends in washington have been activists with the aclu back in the nixon era. your younger members won't remember much of this, but chuck morgan were recently, joe lore of new york, anthony, there are areas where we believe in individual freedom. one of the things then the

things in this maybe be for later part of the discussion, but i think it is important to remember what we are about and what your organization and other organizations are about and not simply get into a political or tribal food fight that not just of skewers, but makes it more difficult to make real progress on issues that are incredibly po today we have greater assaults on our privacy and many of the things that we've ever had. we don't know how to deal with it. were also face of the generation that to some degree doesn't much care about it and that makes it even more difficult. these are important questions and they shouldn't be buried by the fact that we like gel and we don't like miller whatever. they should give people a like mind to work together, to accomplish real things. [applause]

>> so, i think all of you mentioned the agenda setting in one way or another. not a lot of hands went up about trusting the media, about the media's ability to hold elected officials, public officials accountable. but in the old days, we have thought about editorial pages is the place to set an agenda to be the local conversations, sort of a town square discussion and debate. katrina can you talk about investige reporting leading the way. too often i hear from some folks that they think that is biased journalism. of course i contend that the bias the day you decide which are going to cover. but how do you overcome this feeling the agenda setting is really conservative liberal

bias. >> that probably affects us because i was asked by one of the networks not too long agot t n and talk about certain things. if this was 20 years ago i'd do it because 20 years ago, people observed the norms. if i said something off the record with the off the record. today that is not so true. i said so i don't think i'll do that. he said i can't blame you. we live in a different world and here's the difference. 15 years ago, 10 years ago reporters, whether conservatives, liberals, they are all biased in their minds. we all are. we have certain beliefs in things we hold very dear. but there is a professional desire to try to not let that show up in reporting. now we are in an era where "the new york times," for example,

said reporters have an obligation to let their views on donald trump affect their reporting. well come you can't expect the people on the other side not to react to that. and in today's world, it is a very different kind of world you are dealing with denis were some years ago. i've been involved in politics aside from journalism in this town for more than 40 years and in all that time, well, until the last two or three years, never had a problem dealing with any journalists. he sometimes had a problem dealing with a local journalist who would kill his grandmother to get to washington, but with washington journalist you didn't. you could talk to them, agree, disagree. that is changed and conservatives feel very cornered

by this. i'm not saying that others don't feel the same way. mehe reason they don't trust e media is years ago and it was wrong. everybody knows that reporters get things wrong and they decide when the report something they don't like that it was probably wrong. >> this really links up to some of the previous conversations about challenges to the media in the age of tron. to me, another one of the central challenge is when he is calling you the enemy of the people, when he is at rallies describing reporters ask him, and a thing for the most part, certainly when i was a news reporter, strove to be fair and

objective. how were they to respond? and simultaneously, how do you cover fairly apolitical candidate mla president who says things that are demonstrably untrue. i know there's a lot of frustration on the left with failing to call out lies. i am not actually a big believer in using the word lie because it imagines an ability to get inside somebody's head, which i personally don't have. but i think these organizations have struggled. we first createdact f checkers and in the 2016 campaign, kind of embedded the fact checking in the body of news stories and then when it was warranted in the headlines of news stories and then when it was super warranted, when it was clear that you knew you were saying something that we could show you new to be untrue, that's the occasion from my point of view when you use the word lie.

but he has created a whole set of challenges for people. i'm an opinion writer now, but i used to be a news reporter. my job is news reporter was completely different. he's created a lot of challenges position.e who are in that the executive editor and i'm not up to because he's not the boss of me. i don't report to him. but he gets it exactly right. he says we don't go to war. we go to work when we are attacked by the president. that's very hard as human nature to sustain. i see a lot of social media where i think people, colleagues in newsrooms across town are not serving themselves or their news organizations very well by responding in kind rather than simply continuing to do their jobs in reporting the facts and letting the facts speak for

themselves. when you set yourselves -- when you allow the president to turn you into the opposition, you create your own set of opposition. >> i'm not sure that the building of one side of the opposition would resolve on one side. this was a mutual hostility. i will say this, but as you know, not just today, but before there were a lot of reporters who feel about presidents and politicis the way donald trump seems to feel about some reporters. the difference on all sides is those things you said not be out in the public. this is sort of the changing age, where everything we say is in public. politicians shouldn't do that. neither should other people. >> my father told me never to do

anything to be ashamed of if it appeared on the front page of "the new york times." >> years ago if somebody got mad and wrote a letter and had a secretary, the secretary would stick it in a drawer. and then they got a fax machine and things got worse and now they have a twitter account. >> someday i'm going to patton, maybe it exists. there's an app or it gets shut down at a certain alcohol meter. that i think has caused a lot of trouble for many people. i want to come back to the whole idea of where i said and i respect what ruth said about yours reporter now you're an opinion writer. if you have a chance to check it out, was between lane greenwald, someone i think highly of and his twitter feed is worth reading. but it was a bit of debate between the former editor of "the new york times," bill keller unobjective verse adversarial.

i think another people thought this to the greenwald came a bit ahead because he's basically saying with a nation stands and it's not fair and balanced, but it's been honest about where you sit or stand in disclosing your values or principles, but never giving up on the court, which is fact, evidence and verifiable data. [applause] >> even if they are different facts. >> the one danger but the trump administration right now is how many agencies are having data either funding to collect data and that has long-term consequences. read this debate because the degree of object to the in my mind has been a complex one because we all sit and stand in different places. you witness the seeping of opinion into objective news stories without the requisite honesty about where you stand.

that is an important debate to be had. in terms of standing for principles, absolutely. after this event i hope to go make congress then you should learn about the leader and fighter on a number of issues and maybe go see senator rand paul. these two people over and not to a many to restraint in realism in our foreign policy and rand paul wrote an op-ed with kamala harris a few months ago on failed reform. there were fundamental issues where you can subsume your differences and we certainly have differences, major differences. find those areas of principle agreement and i think that story needs to be told more because there is more that dan is in the news where it is often polarization and tribalism, terms i don't like. the aclu has stood for principle

and i recommendt deba because they do think we are in a moment where i will say one last thing. it is true what bruce says. this president has tried to incite violence against journalists at rallies. so even while one tries to bring history to bear again and who can forget spiro agnew in the attack on the media journalists as they leak is not a new one. but this has a new edge to it. i would say that journalism as a profession has fed some of that, not in any way allowing insight into viole but professionalization of the profession, which does lead to disconnect with people because it becomes, let's say we could use more humility. there could be more humility in your executive editor is right. don't go to war, go to work.

>> to you and i have actually a slightly different definitionf what t work is or should be. you think that the work not of opinion journalists like me, but if my colleagues in the newsroom needs to be to not respond to the provocation and to continue to do the job even when, for example, the other day as spokesman of the environmental protection agency referred to a reporter as a piece of trash. in my world, the best thing you can do is to write it down and tell it to people. >> when i said i adversarial journalism, whatever party, government, corporate power accountable. i don't mean calling donald trump a scumbag ergo we love. one day low, we should go high or local. i mean adversarial in the sense

of holding accountable. >> i have to raise and historical point. i came to town to work for vice president spiro agnew in 1970. some of you -- most of you won't remember what you're referring to. there was a campaign thing. i was in the speech. the des moines speech was on the print media that agnew delivered in as a result of that, we had op-ed pages because what happened was all the publishers and editors said we are not biased. we better get those sapphire, al these people, higher than to show we have both sides. so we should talk about the good as well as what you think is the negative. >> i want to get to the future of journalism, but before we go, one last question.

bill clinton said that the press went easy on barack obama. >> so what? >> the press went easy on barack obama and a whole host of folks on the right say that the media has been incredibly unfair to president trump. discuss. [laughter] >> who are you asking, me? >> let's start with katrina go right down the line. >> when did he say you've been busy the last week? >> it was read in the middle of all of that. he said he thought the press had gone easy on barack obama because he was the first black president. >> i think that is too glib and parts of the media and the country went reserved about president obama. his birth certificate and all the conspiracies. i can speak for myself that the

nation, we were open meeting press secretary obama when people attack the professional laughed. i think in retrospect in the belief that you need an inside outside strategy and you want to push a president to listen to movements and take certain steps, there has to be a different calibration. president obama i think he was savaged by poor elements of the press in this country. the press has been unfair to president trump. again, the problem with the coverage of president trump and said with humility because it's not the case all around as it is to fixate on the palace intrigue, scandals, the man in the character. at a certain level we are playing his game because it becomes all about trump and not

about -- [applause] and not about the forces that will continue to afflict our country after trump is gone. cabration.nse, we need every >> i rarely agree with things that bill clinton says, but i think he's a little bit right about this. i don't know what the motives were, but i'd like to use a concrete example. back during the bush administration, the press was all over, and properly so, gives violations of privacy over the security and the like. and i agree i wrote a lot that the bush administration was overreaching after 9/11 and a lot of the power should be given to government and there should be a little reason involved. i stood at that one of the meetings and i said i'm willing to join in the criticism of

bush. what is going to happen when your guys and then i related this story when the patriot act is set toas paul wyrick, the late paul wyrick and i were at the two critics of the patriot act and the justice department said some people and he said we know this is extraordinary power, do you have nothing to worry about. he says we are the good guys. and he said what about when the bad guys have that power? they didn't come to me because i'm so obstinate that probably visit was of no value. i said paul, i'm worried about when the good guys have the power. when you have these powers, there is a tendency to abuse them. and barack obama became president and a lot of these issues that have been hot issues during the bush administration were not covered anymore. a major reporter who i had said before the obama administration,

a lot of this is political. it's not that these people care about these rates. it's that they want to beat george w. bush over the head. he covered these issues extensively for a major publication. he came to me afterwards and said i thought that was hyperbole on your part. but it was true because these issues were not covered in barack obama, as presidents always do, didn't back off. he doubled down. and yet it was covered differently. that is a fact-based analysis have because a lot of people for whatever reason saw him as part of their team and this includes people in the journalism profession, well, we don't need to do that. we've done that before. >> well, i think there may have been -- i think president clinton may be a little bit right in terms of media who are

pretty enamored of barack obama for the first time they saw him at the democratic convention, giving his keynote address, going a little bit easy on him. it certainly was not my experience with the obama white house that they we pretty much never happy with anything they were writing about them. i think they probably felt, hey, why are you cry so hard on us? because they probably perceived us to be incorrectly on more of the same team. i think it's telling president clinton would see it that way because he is on this kind of guy was a victim of xyz tour and some of it as i had it so much harder than barack obama, so i think the more interesting

question of whether we were too easy on barack obama is whether there is an element of us being too hard on president trump. and that kind of gets me back to my what is the baseline. i really believe we can't grade this president or any president on a curve. we have continuous series on the editorial page called with a presidential president would have said, where we sort of take a trump moment and kind of model like parents do a proper presidential behavior might look like. but we shouldn't conflate, we shouldn't treat all to romp acts as heinous and respond to all of them at the highest level of high-speed when summer was as i said before, norton or

republican president would do with the regulatory policy at the epa under president romney really be that much different than it is under president trump. it doesn't mean it's not worth writing about. it's just a question of whether there is a degree of feeling besieged and frustrated and everything else in the media in terms of responding to trump that is leading some people to respond to all trump acts with the same kind of knee-je reaction. i think it's really worth for us to continue to think about as we try to cover him resolutely and aggressively, but also fairly. >> that's great. let's switch gears here a little bit and think about the future of journalism. katrina is laughing. she's written about this a lot.

she talks about the fact we need real reforms in media, real accountability centered journalism. not necessarily valuing profits over public interest. we have six companies today in this country that own the vast majority of metropolitan newspapers and television stations. regional newspapers, et cetera. sinclair as we all know has the potential to reach 72% of all households in america because of their ownership of television stations. so, do we need some antitrust enforcement? or should the government start propping up independent journalists and helping them out? if you do either of those things, how do you do those things without risking what i

might call the slippery slope, the loss of state neutrality. >> i may have been writing about this, but how it gets to where one sees the real future of a robust public interest journalism is a tough one in these tes we do need to revive antitrust. i say with some encouragement that there are key democrats were reviving and i think you will hear from senator warren after this. she's been a big player in talking about the need to address this consolidation. not just immediate, but of corporate power, with a vigorous come a vibrant, antitrust structure. that shouldn't be republican or democratic. think of theodore roosevelt was a serious antitrust trust buster. one can begin in the states, but right now with the federal government we have control of both houses it's difficult. i also think at the same time, i

do need and my colleague john nichols has been writing about this for two decades. the founder of free press, which is the net neutrality consolidation. we do need to think about the way for citizens to get contributing to certain media. the public broadcasting experience in this country has been a political football. but when people talk about the slippery slope and government control, look out across the industrialized civilized world in their example. i want to the cliché of the bbc, but other examples where you have government funding, the decentralized and protect it. it's hard to see that right now and i don't think would fly with the trump administration. for-profit models. finding the martial product a few years ago, which is doing terrific work. one of our editors let this to run a nonprofitrinal juice

news organization called the appeal. there are these models, o-palooka, investigative reporters and editors, but they are across the country and also operating in state because one of the things we forget is his corruption of the state local level can metastasize about some oversight, some media appeared in states around the country there's a nonprofit models to make a barely for the loss of statehouse reporters and the decimation and local news. it is not a perfect model and i hate to kind of throw it out there, but what happened to the "washington post" with all the complexities, buying it, putting god 110th of his fortune into the "washington post," if you could find civic minded millionaires and billionaires across this country at the denver post, which you may have

followed. the denver post, very good newspaper haseen ravaged by private equity company. these people live far away. you could find people come in a private equity, but people in a community who to band together for support papers. that would be a first step. i also think you've got to find a way to claw back from facebook. google has arty set up a fund -- [applause] to support journalism but it's a tiny amount. europe is that chavez, but finding ways to shame or claw back from facebook, which as we learned it took a model and has over a data than all of that, but declined funding is the first step, but there's no silver bullet.

>> i find it interesting because those are often stated concerns and they are not unimportant concerns, but we're talking about that at the same time we talk about proliferation out there in the breakdown of the old structure. i'll tell you i don't know the answer and i'm not going to claim i do, but i do know one thing i'm worried about when the government decides it will start regulating the news and say what is valid and what isn't. >> i didn't say that. >> there is a move on as you know for government to play a role with fake news and regulation. >> just last week the french president announced the freedom of the press is so important in the next day he asked the government was set up a bureau to make sure the freedom of press is used the way they want it to be used. whatever the problem, whatever the chaos, whatever the abuses, the one thing you can say about

people in denver, chicago, washington, they are not the government. i would rather fight with them because you can find ways around it. you can find ways to communicate. that's one of the things we talked about earlier is getting around the existing media. people are inventive, technology has amended. things will sort themselves out and they will do what i have great faith in a much better way than would happen if the government decided to get into it and health. >> especially when you've had the president talking about licensing, you know, yanking licenses and pardon me, but very nixonian conversations and threat like that. the last model that i would look to would be government support of government funding because you will inevitably go down a

very dangerous slope i'm not. katrina puts her finger on the same that kind of worries me most about the journalism thedscape out there, which is evaporation of coverage of state and local governments because if you don't have reporters covering statehouses, you'll have rampant corruption of statehouse is just like if you don't tend your garden, it is going to get really noxious threally bright thing that i would say in an otherwise very difficult business climate for journalism has been the growth of subscription models. as young people get used to paying for things on the internet, whether it is their netflix or who will or whatever, they are also getting used to paying for news. you see at "the new york times," "washington post," other places,

people are understanding if you value pairs, you need to pay for it and that to mean is the best way to ensure our future as we can't all have jeff bezos, but if we got 2 million of them paying a little bit, that is the way to get it to be a lowly keep it going in the climate direct to the business model collapse. >> servers, do you think the president's attacks on amazon are connected to mr. baze does ownership of your paper? >> well, i think i renounced my ability to read the president's mind, but i think the facts kind of speak for themselves.

he has called it the amazon "washington post," so i leave it to you to make that exact connection. >> i ask it in a more serious vein. if that's not a little frightening to all of us about the threat to the first amendment, that is a failed threat. >> in the totality a comeback to it today is a historic. the ending of net neutrality has really been taken over by telecom, not public interest is potentially very dangerous. we were told there was going to be this great flourishing on the internet. that could be shut down. it's become paid to play, a civil rights issue, a digital divide issue, a free speech issue and we haven't seen the full result yet. we have to play hard as best we can against state level attorney generals to retrieve some of that. like the u.s. post office,

postal service, which the nation, by the way, the nation has championed. when a producer in the u.s. postal service to right-click bait. i don't know what is going wrong or right. that is a very tricky thing for a lot of publications, even though print people say is dying. when they jack up the price is five, six days a week, that is also part of the shutdown. >> they have to do that for amazon to deliver. >> the privatization. >> just in historical, not hysterical, but historical note, if you look at journalism history, we are now getting back to the kind of chaos that existed before the war in an 18th century when there were hundreds of publications, most of which were bought and paid for by politicians and it's sort

of lcable news today except that was an era and i'm not saying this is good, but it solved itself and then we had this sort of peaceful era in part because of advertisers who didn't want to advertise in publications like you and i would like, but one of these more general things and then they came along and wiped out the most profitable part, which was declassified and new technology came along and we are sort of back to the 19th century. it solved itself once and it will probably solve itself again. >> so, let me ask you this. we talked about the different models of journalism. as all of these folks go back to the 50 state in the territories, the places that don't have congressional representation, what can they do to support

their local journalism, if they're short of being a billionaire who buys the paper, what can they do to promote better journalism at home in those protections are talked about over this last hour and a half. what would you suggest? >> i was really disappointed in mid-low number of hands that i saw from people who said they turned to their local newspaper and maybe it is like a chicken and egg thing or not as good as they used to be or not as good as they should be, so it's not the best place to turn to for news. if you don't subscribe in support them, they can have the resources to do that job. so while you shouldn't totally subscribe to the "washington post" and read online, you should also subscribe to your local newspapers and get them

delivered to the extent that they are also getting delivered and thanks for doing the both of it. we need both national sources of information on local sources of information. >> anybody else have a better idea? i agree with bruce. i think local papers are vital. i tried to read the local paper every day. the cincinnati inquirer on the opioid crisis, the palm beach news and investigation under charter schools, but go back to your community. write letters to the editor. maybe try to find a network of people who might raise funds to take over a local paper. that is not unimaginable. i say follow the nsn the sense of news about e media. you're not going to get from cable or television. net neutrality, if you can go to free press or follow a set the

nation. i think those are vital for a healthy community. >> i don't disagree with that. i think the real tragedy of the nationalization of global newspapers, turning them into the lack of oversight of state government in particular and the investigative reporters that used to do that kind of work don't have jobs anymore. there are two ways i think that iseing dealt with and on the right there have been some of those people picked up by public-interest firms to do the same kind of thing. and i hate to say this, i told the story earlier, but there were very acute newspapers that are going to exist five years from now in print form. that is just a fact. but in the states, not in all states, but many stayed they are

developing digital, very good reports on state government, state politics, better stuff than we would've gotten in the past. i think it's a real problem. it's a problem because dates are so important, federalism is so important. a lot of what affects people takes place not in washington, bu the state and you need a vibrant journalistic community to make sure there is some kind of accountability and for certain. it may be recovering because of these develmes. but almost vanished in a lot of places. >> what a wonderful nonprofit publication, the texas tribune. one of the things i appreciated so many of their stories get picked up by local newspapers. they share their report with everybody. the newspapers that don't have the capital staff that they used to have can charter for the

tribune. we are about to run out of time. last question. we talk about whether this is the golden age of journalism at would you tell an aspiring young journalist about the business today and what they ought to pursue. >> so, i think what i would say honestly and it's funny because our interns from our new class of interns started today and i didn't go to their lunch because i was coming to your lunch. i think what i would tell them is do it if it is what you are really compelled to do. you're not going to make a lot of money. they're going to work a lot of long hours. but there is nothing more fun than being a reporter and if that's what you want to do, you

should do it, but understanding it is a different set. i left law school and chose to go be a reporter knowing t they were of different financial root. i don't know if i would end up making that same choice now but i did many decades ago because of the perilous state of the industry. but what i would really say is that this is what you really feel you were put on earth to do, it's what you have to do. if you don't feel like it's what you were put on earth too, there's a lot of other interesting ways to make your way in the world. >> when i talk to young people, say there's a million ways to make a living. it's sort of parallel to what you are saying. if you're big interest is money, go read a hedge fund. if that's not going to make you happy, do what makes you happy. there are people who want to be writers, who want to be

reporters. it isn't a question of money. it's a question of doing what you want. there are a lot of people in this country who are very rich and very unhappy in their are people who are poor and unhappy, too. a lot of people make a living doing what they want to do. if that is what they want to do, they should. are we ending? .. >> learning how to cover lupus and within that some of the core concerns of the aclu and it was a real passion

many of them are doing podcasts, videos , some are just doing the basic journalism, reporting, writing i think you need a whole new skill set and a flourished in all arenas but they were really excited about a journalist they felt could make change. moved them and that's the kind of journalism i've been part of. it cannot make change, it can cause trouble, that's good too, causing trouble but i recommend the nation's internship program, 40 years old this year. we've had i mentioned one of the interns went on to found the marshall project. at every moment, three of the editors for progressive publications had interns so we enjoy the map the washington post who was a great intern so check that program out. but if you believe in journalism as making change and not as i said earlier, forgetting there's, verifiable data and evidence but if you believe there's a

larger role or journalism over time, i think there's a passion to it but you have to have it as ruth . you can make a living, a bettiving other arenas if you wish to. >> it's been a wonderful discussion today, thanyou. [applaus thank you so much. we will wrap up now and as i understand it, senator warren is our next heater in this very room sothank you for joining us, thank you david, ruth,tr group . [applause] >> we will resume the program 2:15 p.m. feel free to visit the action center at your table and we will resume at

2:15with senator elizabeth warren . >>. [inuadible conversation]

>>. [inuadible conversation]

>>. [inuadible conversation] it is the aclu annual conference in washington. they're expecting to hear from senator elizabeth warren scheduled for 2:30 eastern, that could be a little bit earlier. we will have live coverage when it gets underway.

her colleagues gather in this afternoon, coming in at 3 pm eastern live on c-span2 as well. her coverage of the defense authorization moving forward on that bill this afternoon with votes late in the afternoon. as we wait worthy aclu to resume and our live coverage to resume we will take a look at this weekin washington from the washington journal . >> we are back at our table this morning, the white house reporter for the associated press and mike bluntness who coverswashington for the washington post here to talk about the weekend. let's begin with tomorrow and this historic meeting in singapore taking place at 9 pm our time . today i should say, tonight in dc. what