captioning performed by vitac >> should we be supplying that? we've clearly decided that is information we should have and anyone should have, have the right to. >> let's take some questions from our audience. let's get the microphone to the gentleman in the front. >> i'm sitting here thinking what a marvelous panel and i'm agreeing with everybody on it about the importance of public even

funding, first amendment, no censorship and globalization. i'm worried about technology. we did a survey where we found that -- we where looked at the relationship of magazines to their web sites. we found that even a magazine like "the new yorker," probably the best of them, doesn't fact check for its online stuff with the rigor that it does for its print magazine, arguing that you need speed because you need traffic. the copy magazines don't copy edit with the rigor online like they do with print publications. the online everyone has a handle, whereas in the traditional media the convention is you don't use anonymous sources except where it's absolutely necessary. the traditional media have a separation of advertising and editorial, whereas the online world, it's all mixed up together.

so the question i have for all the panelists is how do you maintain or achieve and uphold appropriate standards to the new technology media in this complicated world that you're all talking about? >> who wants to take that one? >> you know, i'll say one thing, i'll give an example and, you know, this isn't show us in the most wonderful light but i think it does in a way. we cover russia pretty closely and our internet presence is strong there. and we were played by someone impersonating a blogger, or at least so he says. and to this day we're not able to know for sure if someone impersonating him said some things that we put up and he says, no, it wasn't me.

we checked with him and he says it wasn't him. and i'm sure it wasn't. there you are. what are you to do in that circumstance? you quickly go back and check the source. you quickly, quickly and immediately say he says it isn't him. how interesting. how interesting. and we of course doesn't know which agency or entity was impersonating him but this is the kind of thing that happens on the internet, as you said. and we do have to move quickly. he's news so if he makes comments that are interesting, people are going to want to quote them but we've set in some more strict standards about how to check that you really got him. >> is it a fair observation on the internet -- kristy, i'll ask you, that the notion of saying we don't quite have this yet, let's hold off until we really nail this down, that that's a

real old media thing to say. you can say it's out there, it's been alleged, it's been charged, it will make it on the web. >> i have worked on fleet street as well as in new york. so i will tell you something i heard in the newsroom once and "that's too good to check" and that's something that fleet street editors feel is a good attitude for young reporters to have. so it's not just about internet versus print. it's about cultures. and working at reuters has been a revelation for me in that they're a 24/7 culture from the get-go. so we itend to think of 24/7 asa new thing but there are those who have been 24/7 forever and they care a lot about checking.

there is more of a loosy goosy acceptance on the internet. yesterday on twitter i followed a debate about politico where the question was does politico think it's okay to publish there is a rumor before they've confirmed is it true or not and then you keep on reporting the rumor and reporting whether it's true or false. so that's kind of a cultural choice, not just because the internet exists. i think the pressure of everybody being there and the pressure of, you know, now i think journalists feel they are competing not with other journalists but with everybody who has an iphone adds to that sense of urgency. the only other thing i would say, victor, is there's a flip side, too. especially i work a lot now especially on sort of the build of our new site with this young are generation of digital user.

from their point of view, they feel like old media is insufficiently fact checked. one of the things that drives them crazy is anything that doesn't have a link to the source. so actually being inaccurate with your sources is much harderliharder online than it is in print because can you check that link immediately. and the internet community can keep you more honest. the olden days of foreign correspondents, they would write about people who never in a million years were going to see what they wrote. >> our global voices community, it says "new york times" just did such and such a story and half it have came from someone's blog and the other story misquoted so and so and misconstrued what happened because i was there and i saw it. that certainly adds value.

and then you've got the other problem with who reported first on the helicopters in pakistan getting osama bin laden? so i think, you know, of course people don't have to start reporting. you can't wait -- i think i'd rather that the journalists get in there than let this go on twitter, you know, rumors spreading for a long time before any journalist actually weighs in. but i guess the other point, too, and this just to broaden this out globally and coming back to singapore and transpose this conversation into some other cultures, you sometimes hear non-professionals shouldn't be allowed to report first because they don't have their facts right as an excuse for censorship and as an excuse to

say these are the people who are allowed to report the news and then all these -- if you're not given a badge or a card, you can't report the news and it's illegal and you can be arrested. and so we have to make sure as we're having this conversation because as lee rightly points out, this is really a global context for media, that we're not saying, okay, there's only certain types of people who are allowed to be journalists, who are allowed to commit journalism and any other way of conducting journalism is shower responsible, bad for the public and should be shunned. we have to be careful of how we framed that. >> one thing and we'll get another question from this side of the room. >> i think this is an argument for what victor raised for multiple kinds of media, including some publicly funded media. you just get a different type of voice that comes out of a

publicly funded -- bbc and npr, voice of america. and commercial pressures coupled with the nature of the new technology are pushing inexorably towards this kind of highly current sorts of news. you really benefit from having multiple systems, multiple voices and in fact that's what we've had in the united states for the last half century. we had broadcasting, which was regulated and we had the print media. >> let's take a question. >> two quick points and then a question. i'm an editor in politico. we don't publish rumors. i'd like to just point out to our distinguished ivy league president that another ivy league president, rick levin of

yale, is devoting a lot of time to changing the culture in singapore by partnering with the national university there and trying to instill our values in that culture. so my question is this -- if you were sitting around yesterday and you had the choice as anyone in washington did of watching an exciting game between the red sox and the orioles or watching the new president-elect of france give his speech, which you could watch on france 24, which would you do? >> was that directed to professor -- >> i didn't know the game was on so i watched the president of france. >> i'm not sure that in this new world people really want ink.

>> let me take andy's point and also add this to it. when we have discussions like this, we like to talk about covering revolutions and crises and covering people who have been thrown into prison for embas expressing themselves but much of what the media does is also new music reviews, celebrity interviews, the newspaper when is they thrived had a monopoly on tv listings and stock tables and box scores. are we seeing new forms, say whatever social media folds into, are we seeing journalism in a digital age fold into larger things like a newspaper, which is a vehicle for all sorts of information. it's not -- it's not on tough reporting. are they linked together? or have we so disaggregated

journalism from the other things it used to come along with, which are rock music or the society page it used to be, that it's tough to get people to pay attention to it because we're on going to talk to those who will pick the french inauguration speech over the red sox-orioles game. what do you think is it. >> there are different platforms serving different segments. you're also seeing a lot more segmentation and online media directed at niche audiences doing pretty well with those niches. so there is a certain -- you nope, there is a pretty big percentage of americans who actually were interested in that speech. not the same number as would want to watch the baseball game, but there's enough that depending on how you kind of set up your platform and how you're

targeting your audience, there are online publications look foreign policy, for instance, has a very lively web site targeted at foreign policy wonks. it not the same size audience as the baseball audience but it does very well with that audience. >> i don't know, i think it really true and i don't think it's really bad and i don't think we can do about it. i lived in the soviet union. when you were on the subway, you can see people reading the papers, that was sort of normal. then the soviet collapsed and they were reading porn. before that -- my friend was ukraine so i thought it was a higher culturier and then you saw it wasn't. it was that was the only thing available and when other things were available, people wanted other things, too. but i think this also goes back

to lee's argument. it's maybe why you want some form of intervention to create a common platform because we're no longer forced into the common platform. >> i would say on the first point -- thank you for the observation about yale and studying at a liberal art college in singapore. because universities are doing exactly what what needs to be done with respect to the press. that is, we're in a new era, we just started being in this era. we are incredibly independent no economically and technologically with the rest of the world. we have to know more than we do. we have to educate young people to are part of this new world. how are we going to do that just sitting and thinking and having lots and lots of international activities based from there and universities are responding now in different ways. one is the yale, nyu, qatar, abu

dhabi singapore branch knowledge are doing something different and work on research around the world. but we're doing i think in the university world what needs to be done in the press world. >> let's get a question in the front row and then in the back after that. >> would news vouchers makes news better or worse? supposed within the government subsidy that you're proposing, president bollinger, some of it went to news consumers and they could pay for the web sites that charge. would that make things better or worse? >> well, i mean, i think these kinds of questions are very important and i don't want to speak as if i have thought through every dimension of this. my own personal view at this

stage is that having funding mechanisms that create and nurture institutions like npr, like our international broadcasters, like abs, like universities is going -- that will give you these very important and distinct voices in the world of the press. if you just give a tax rebate or a voucher to individuals, you know, that wouldn't result actually in this kind of media. now free market economists will say that only proves that in fact what you're trying to do is impose something on people who don't want it. and that's an old debate and i happen to take the view -- the opposite view. i think we have public values weeshs have national parks, we have public lands, we have city parks. we really benefit as a society from having a mixed system in

which we can make our individual choices and we don't always read shakespeare when we go home at night and we do turn on the baseball game and watch it and we don't always participate in public debate when we should. we have that option but we also have the option of going into a national park which doesn't have golf courses, doesn't have amusement parks and the like and it's been preserved as a matter of public values and i think that's what we need in an american world service. >> the question in the back row. >> thank you. i am here almost by accident and i happen to be the onner/publisher of alaskadispatch.com. i'm quite sure none of you have heard it, i urge you to look at it. it's an online news-only web site. it's considered to be the most comprehensive source of

independently claimed read news in alaska, however, we have no physical world presence. so i am sitting here listening to this conversation and thinking back to my prior years when, for example, "the washington post" went through the janet cook incident and realizing that print as a medium or broadcast or cable television as a medium has not necessarily done all that perfectly at presenting truth and we all can concede the many examples. so what is your feeling, all of you, or any one, about how a site like mine, which is as honest in its attempt to present straight forward, highly edited, embedded journalism, how is that to be recognized by folks like you and particularly by the readers of the world as something different than other things you would refer to as

citizen journalism? >> who would like to venture an answer? >> it has to do with reputation. i think news organizations or online organizations that are doing a good job have developed a reputation of being credible and straight forward and fact based. that's how you distinguish yourself from random commentators who may not be as rigorous. but i think that's -- i don't see how else one goes about distinguishing one's self other than reputation, you build a brand, you build a name for yourself. >> and you hope that your reader line increases over the years on the basis of that. where's the microphone now? let's get another question from the audience. >> it was touched on a little

bit earlier, but if you could go back to the issue of how technology is affecting news organizations access to war zones. you talk a little bit about syria but right now the united states and other countries are not really covering the drone strikes in pakistan because the military has just said we're not allowing access there on the u.s. side and the pakistani side. i think viewers are sometimes -- well, the less sophisticated news junkie might not be aware of the fact that the information they're reading on yahoo! news has not been first hand reported because somebody's ry. the editor is happy and cnn is happy because they feel like they're reporting it but i feel like there's this disconnect coming and it's in newsrooms and it's -- from what i believe, i

becoming increasingly more difficult for news organizations to cover war zones. we saw it in the gaza strip but because it's proliferation of technology and we are kind of still able to get information from these war zones, we kind of still feel like we're doing our job but the trends are there that if journalists unite and push back and say we want access and we don't think it okay that you're refusing to left journalists in, these things are just going to become a culture to themselves. >> i'm not sure about the drone strike -- >> they're not left at all in the northwest travel zone. you have to sneak in and the u.s. military is not commenting. they're until recently denying these drone strikes. >> were you covering the drone strikes? >> of course. if we can make sure we're right about a drone attack, we'll

report there's been a drone attack. i would push back a little bit. because of the iphones and devices and proliferation of cameras of one kind or another, there's actually more pictures and information or lajd information about war zones and everything else than there ever was before. the problem is there's tons of information. which part of it is accurate. that's where the journalism comes in in a way is sifting through. i know my old employers at cnn and abc news have the same thing, are really getting into the business of analyzing, for example, photographs. where was this picture taken? we spend time on that. we have professional hp figuring out which corner in damascus was this picture taken because it makes a difference, that sort of thing. i don't think there's less coverage, i think there's more. there's more information but we're less sure about its

authenticity sometimes because it's hard to get to sights who has a professional journalist po get to the place. that said, we get into syria from time to time. i'm. >> to complicate the picture even board even more, they've pointed out a trend in war zones that the percentage of freelancers, professional journalists that aren't tied to the support from a news organization are, you know, amongst the largest growing source of news. and also local journalists in these places. and they are more vulnerable than ever. and the number of deaths of free lancers and local journalists in war zones is growing very rapidly.

>> i have to say, make two comments. one is that all the information that i have about major news organizations and the coverage of war, current wars, establishes that we have far less than we've ever had in recent memory. and insofar as that's true, again, points to the essential problem of how do we get the information we need in the modern world, this global world the second point is that it's always interesting that we no longer think, i think, seriously about what the first amendment might say about a claim by journalists to have a first amendment right of access. only 30, 40 years ago the supreme court made a narrow decision, 5-4, saying that we

would have protection for whatever the press basically published. that is "new york times" versus solomon, pentagon papers, government documents, so on. but there would be no right of access under the first amendment by the press that government held or controlled information. that was a very vital debate in the scope of the first amendment, in the 1960s and 70s and into the 1980s. it should be again. i'm not saying this particular supreme court would be favorable toward that but when you think long term, you think several decades and how principles develop, one of the things we should be thinking about in the united states is a first amendment right of access, especially to war zones. >> the last questioner began with the impact of technology. i would note here and ask the former television journalists

for confirmation, that device with which one can take pictures of an vant and then transm-- evn transmit images, which used to be a crew of three, four people that would drag vast cameras everywhere. it looks like a single reflex camera and gave no indication. the ability to make video images in any location has become phenomenally greater. >> and the ability to transmit them live. in the early 90s you had to have a crew with a satellite dish to operate it or other than that it was stick a videotape on a flight. >> i was in new hampshire just before the primary. i realized what the current press corps looks like, which is a bunch of monopods with cameras stuck on them gaining more directly access to an event than

just about any medium could have delivered until 10, 20 years ago. so it's the landscape has been greatly changed. we could on like this for quite a while. i must say these are the kinds of issues that justify and require the existence of the colombia journalism review to actually treat seriously the questions of the intersection between technology and free speech and new media and commerce. i wish i could share all the optimism about public funding that we've heard expressed today on the panel. it seems there may be some necessary alternatives to that. to the panel, thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> i just want to join in thanking all of you for being here today. for my decades cjr has believed that you can be both a watch dog of the media and an ally in searching for the models that sustain quality journalism. i think we would all agree that those worthy goals are more critical than ever before. i think today's discussion, whether it was around public spaces, funding and values, twitter as a curation of access to academia, the role of universities or indeed the role of the relationship between privacy and freedom is a discussion that's going to be ongoing. we hope you'll join us for a short reception afterwards. we hope you'll pick up a 50th anniversary copy of the magazine. i just want to say thank you to jim and to shelby for being such great partners, not just in hosting us but in very much developing this program with us and being passionate about these

issues. i want to thank bob and my friends at google, not just for sponsoring this but for providing youtube videos and being passionate about the issues. i want to thank our friends at c-span for broadcasting it so more people can see it and to david and kristy, who traveled for this, who has much to do and many demands on his schedule. he would not be here unless this was something he cared about and to robert, who put in a great deal of work before this panel ever met to make it such a success. so thank you all very much. [ applause ]