helicopters in abbottabad in pakistan getting osama bin laden? a blogger who said, oh, there's a helicopter crashed a few blocks away. and so i think, you know, of course people then have to start reporting. you can't wait. i think i'd rather that the journalists sort of get in there than let this go on twitter, 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 conversation out globally and coming back to singapore and to kind of 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, you know, these are the

people who are allowed to report the news and if you're not given a badge or a card you can't report the news and it's illegal and you're -- you know, 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 somehow is irresponsible, bad for the public, and should be shunned. we have to be careful about how we frame that. >> one thing and then 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 -- they have bbc and npr, voice of america.

and commercial pressures coupled with the nature of the new technology are pushing inexorably toward 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, which was free. and public broadcasting. >> take a question. here's a mike. you want to come "daily show." >> two quick points and then a question. i'm an editor at 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? >> is that directed to -- professor -- to president -- >> i didn't know the game was on. so i watched the president of france. [ inaudible ] >> -- i'm not sure that in this new world people really want to -- >> let me take -- this is andy glass of politico.

let me take his 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've been thrown into prison for expressing themselves. but much of what the media does is also new music reviews, celebrity interviews. the newspapers when 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 -- larger things like a newspaper, which is -- which is a vehicle for all sorts of information? it's not only tough reporting. are they linked together? or have we so disaggregated journalism from the other things it used to come along with, which were rock music or the

society page it used to be, that it's tougher to get people to pay attention to it because we're only going to talk to those who will pick the french presidenti presidential inauguration speech over the red sox-orioles game. what do you think? >> they're different platforms kind of serving different segments. you've got the platforms where people go for general stuff, and maybe it's more entertainment-heavy, but you're also seeing on the internet a lot more segmentation and specialization and niche -- and sort of online media directed at niche audiences actually doing pretty well with those niches. so there is a certain -- 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, you know, depending on how you kind of set up your platform and how you're targeting your audience, there are online publications

like "foreign policy" for instance has a very lively and successful website targeted at foreign policy wonks. no, it's not the same size as the audience for the baseball audience, but it does quite well with that audience. >> i don't know. i think it's very true, and i think it's really bad, but i'm not sure there's anything we can do about it. so i lived in the soviet union when it was still the soviet union and then afterwards. and when it was still the soviet union, you could actually see people on the subway reading dostoyevsky, chekhov, tolstoy, that was sort of normal. and then the soviet union collapsed and they were reading porn. and before that, my family's ukrainian, so i had thought it was just a higher culture and sort of culturally superior, that was the grandparents' point of view, and then you saw it wasn't. it was that's the only thing available and when other things were available people wanted other things too. but i think that this actually goes back to lee's argument. it is one reason i think maybe

you want to have some forms 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 setting up a liberal arts college in singapore. because universities are doing exactly what we're talking about here with respect -- 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 interdependent now economically and technologically with the rest of the world. we have to know more than we do. we have to educate young people to be part of this new world. and how are we going to do that just sitting in morningside heights and thinking and having lots of international activities based from there? and universities are responding now in different ways. and one is the yale, nyu, qatar, abu dhabi, singapore model of a branch campus.

we're doing something different. we have what we call global centers in eight different cities now around the world which are a network and will help faculty and students study 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. >> a question in the front row and then to the back after that. >> would news vouchers make news better or worse? suppose within the government subsidy that you're proposing, president bollinger, some of it went to news consumers and they could pay for the websites that charge? would that make things better or worse? >> well, i mean, i think -- 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 pbs, 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 won't result actually in this kind of -- free market economists will say that only proves that in fact when 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 collective public values. we 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 that's what we need in an american world service. >> a question in the back row. >> thank you. i am here almost by accident, and i happen to be the owner-publisher of alaskadispatch.com. i'm quite sure none of you in the room has heard of it. i urge you to look at it. but it is an online-only news site that is conceded by others besides our own family to be the most comprehensive source of independently read and acclaimed news and information in alaska. however, we have no physical

world presence. and 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 straightforward, highly edited and vetted 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? >> well, who would like to

venture an answer? rebecca, you want to try? >> sure. i mean, it has to do with reputation. i think news organizations or online organizations that are doing a good job develop a reputation of being credible and straightforward and fact-based. and that's how you distinguish yourself from, you know, random commentators who may not be as rigorous. but i don't see how else one goes about distinguishing oneself other than reputation, you build a brand, you build a name for yourself. >> and you hope that your readership 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 can go back to the issue of how

technology is affecting news organizations' access to war zones, you talked a little 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. and i think when -- and i think viewers are sometimes not -- well, the less sophisticated news junkie viewers might not be aware of the fact that the information they're reading on yahoo news or whatnot has not been firsthand reported because somebody is relying on a citizen blog, the aggregator journalist is relying on a citizen blog and youtube feeds and citizen photos to cobble together a report and the editor's happy and cnn is happy because they feel like they're reporting it. but i think there is this disconnect coming. and it's in newsrooms. and it's -- from what i believe, i think it is becoming increasingly more difficult for news organizations to cover war zones.

we saw it in the gaza strip in 2009. we're seeing it in syria now and pakistan. but because of the 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 worldwide don't unite and push back and say we want access and we don't think it's okay that you're refusing to allow any journalists in these things are just going to become a culture to themselves. >> i'm not sure where the journalists would have access to the drone strike, if you mean -- >> well, they're not allowed at all in the northwest tribal zone. just they're not allowed. and they have to sneak in. and the u.s. military is not commenting -- they're just -- well, until recently denying these -- >> the question is is voice of america covering the drone strikes? >> of course. that's a news story like any other. and of course if we can double-source and make sure we're right about a drone attack we'll report that there's been a drone attack. i would just kind of push back a little bit because i actually

think that because of the iphones and devices and proliferation of cameras of one kind and another there's more pictures and information and alleged information about war zones and everything else than there ever was before. the problem is it's joined the fog of war. in a war zone there's tons of information. which part of it is accurate? that's where the journalism comes in in a way is sifting through. and we increasingly as a news organization, and 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 help figuring out which corner in damascus was this picture taken? because it makes a difference given what we see in. that sort of thing. i don't think there's less coverage. i think there's more. but there's more information but we're less sure about its authenticity sometimes because it's very hard to get to sites, to have a professional journalist who's got

credibility, who's built that credibility get to the place. that said, we get into syria from time to time. other news organizations do. and i'm very proud of the courage shown by journalists who do that. >> rebecca. >> to complicate the picture even more, i'm on the board of the committee to protect journalists and they've pointed out a trend in war zones, that actually the percentage of freelancers who aren't tied to the support from a news organization are amongst the largest growing source of news. and also local journalists in these places who are covering the wars. and they are more vulnerable than ever. and the number of deaths of freelancers and local journalists in war zones is growing very rapidly. >> i would just make two very quick 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 of it than we've ever had in recent memory. and insofar as that's true, again, it points up 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 it would have protection for whatever the press basically

published, that is, "new york times" versus sullivan, pentagon papers, government documents, government secrets, and so on. but there would be no right of access under the first amendment by the press to government-held or controlled information. that was a very vital debate about the scope of the first amendment in the 1960s and '70s and into the 1980s. it should be -- again, now, i'm not saying that i think 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, and i would just note here and ask the former television journalists for confirmation, the device with which one can

take pictures of an event and then transmit those images back to some place, which used to be perhaps a crew of three or at one time four people who would drag some vast camera somewhere, the videos we're looking at could have been shot with something that looked like a single-lens reflex camera even and gave no indication. so the access to -- the ability to make video images and in any location has become phenomenally greater than it was until -- >> well, and the ability to transmit them live. i mean, in the early '90s we had to have a crew with a satellite dish who knew how to operate it. either that or it was stick a videotape on a flight and get it somewhere. >> 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 a more direct live access to an event than just about any medium could

have delivered until, oh, 10 or 20 years ago. so the landscape has been greatly changed. we could go on like this for quite a while. and i must say these are the kinds of issues that justify and require the existence of the columbia journalism review, to actually treat seriously with 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 to me there may be some necessary alternatives to that. but to david ensor and chrystia freeland and lee bollinger and rebecca mackinnon, thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> excuse my back. my name is christie hefner. i'm chairman of columbia journalism review's 50th anniversary. so i just want to join in thanking all of you for being

here today. for five decades cjr has believed that you can be both a watchdog of the media and an ally in searching for the models that sustain quality journalism. i think we can 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. and i just want to say thank you to jim and to shelby for being such great partners, not just in hosting us here at the newseum 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 again being passionate about these issues. i want to thank our friends at c-span who are broadcasting this so many more people can watch it. we really appreciate that. and again, i want to join my thanks to david and chrystia, to president bollinger, who traveled for this. and he has much to do and many demands on his schedule. and he wouldn't be here if this were not indeed something he cares about very personally. and particularly to rebecca, who changed her whole schedule and now flies with a 24-hour turnaround to oslo tonight in order to be here, which i think is above and beyond. and to robert who not just is the consummate moderator but believe me, 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 ]

in about 40 minutes on c-span 3, a conversation on u.s./russia relations. president obama is hosting a g-8 summit at camp david next week, and vladimir putin is skipping the meeting. he says he's busy finalizing his new cabinet, and he'll send russian prime minister, dmitri medvedev in his place. the discussions, on strategic and international studies is live here on c-span 3, be again, in about 40 minutes. both chambers of congress were in session today. the house gaveled in earlier to debate and pass a bill to replace what's called the budget sequester. that legislation replaces $98 billion in cuts from defense and social programs with different types of cuts. the sequester was the deal made last year to cut $1.2 trillion to offset the debt ceiling increase. and when the super committee failed to reach the agreement on cuts, the sequester went into

effect. the chamber also finished work on 2013 federal spending for the commerce and justice departments, as well as nasa and other science programs. that bill totalled $51 billion in spending. follow the house live on c-span. and the senate's continuing work on its version of a student loan bill. the measure seeks to prevent the doubling of student loan interest rates, is currently at 3.4%, and they're due to rise to 6.8% july 1st. earlier this week, the chamber failed to advance the legislation, and it's still unclear where the measure goes from here. follow the senate live on c-span 2. furthermore, i remain optimistic about the future of indiana, and the united states of america. the news media and political leaders spend a great deal of time talking about what is broken in our country. and in some degree, that is the nature of their business.

but we should also have confidence that the unique american experiment is alive and well. and our political system still can work. >> tuesday night, long-time indiana republican senator richard luger lost to primary challenger richard murdoch. look back at senator lugers 's, six-term career, including his work in the '90s. all online, archived and searchable at the c-span video library. as you just heard, indiana state treasurer richard murdoch defeated 36-year incumbent richard luger in the state's republican primary election. we spoke with mr. murdoch earlier today on "washington journal" for about 35 minutes. >> well, now, joining us from indianapolis on "the washington journal" is richard murdoch, who knocked off 36-year senator richard luger in the indiana gop

primary on tuesday. mr. murdoch, thank you for being with us. if we could, let's start with what we were talking with our audience about a little earlier this morning. and that was president obama's statement endorsing gay marriage yesterday. want to get your reaction to that. >> well, i was surprised that he made the statement, this being a political year, especially a presidential election year. because as i've traveled the state of indiana in the last 15 months i've not heard the issue come up i don't think more than twice. and clearly, in a state like indiana that is very conservative, that the president won in 2008, it will certainly work to his disadvantage here, and i see that happening in the other critical so-called swing states. states with large independent voters, i think that's going to be more of a negative than a plus for the president. >> what about your personal view? if this comes before the -- if you make it to the senate and it comes before the senate, what would your personal view be? >> well, i am one who believes that marriage should be one man,

one woman. i have watched here in indiana as i think -- i believe the number is right, i think 36 other states have also passed the so-called gay marriage ban amendments that's happened here in indiana. i appreciate the fact that a lot of states are picking this up as a statewide issue. to me, it's a fascinating issue in the sense that so many states are trying to preemptively act ahead of what the federal government might do. in other words, the states fear what the meg might do. and it's really a very unusual thing we see. i can't think, and i'm a bit of a history buff, but i can't think of another instance or issue where states have so rushed ahead of what they expect some federal judge might do in the future. >> why do you think you beat richard luger? >> well, because all politics are local politics. couple things came into play. first and foremost, senator luger, as you mentioned in the introduction, had been in the united states senate for 36 years. especially during the last ten years, he's really lost touch

with the people of indiana. a big issue that came up in the race is that he not physically -- physically had not had a residence in indiana since 1977. during the midst of this campaign, he actually filed a lawsuit to make the legal argument, you can't make me live in indiana. you know, hoosiers were very offended by that. over the several weeks after he filed that lawsuit, it was -- i could feel it, like a shock wave going across indiana. hoosiers are pretty simple people. we like to know who represents us, we like to know that they share our values. they want the to eat an ear of corn with us at the county fair, have a chicken dinner somewhere along the way, and i think mr. luger separated himself especially from hoosier republicans in that regard. >> mr. murdmur murder talk. if he is elected, it will require him to revise his stated