i see heads nodding, i can never think of what the company is. but the same year in 2019, i got to watch on the big screen, ben hur in may and lawrence of arabia i think in september. it is absolutely awesome because i had never seen either one of them on the big screen. if you ever get that opportunity, absolutely take it up. >> thank you so much, please join me in thanking him one more time. >> if you are enjoying american history tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive weekly highlights of upcoming programs like lectures in history, american artifacts, the presidency, and more. sign up for the a htv newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv every weekend or anytime online at c- span.org.

the house will be in order. >> this year, tremont celebrate 25 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balance, unfiltered coverage of government, taking into where the policies, debated and decided, all of the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to the white house historical association. i am stuart mclaurin and i am the president of the association. it is a real privilege to have you here under our roof at historic decatur house. we have a full mid-room here and those of us, those of you who are joining us by c-span, we have a terrific program plan

for you this evening. this is the first of four episodes in our white house history quarterly lecture series on media and the white house. now, it is shorthanded by saying white house history with frank says no, who is our moderator. [ applause ] and, frank, you have big shoes to fill, at least high shoes to fill, because we have in compton here and we had four episodes of has history with in compton and rk that was great fun as well. this program is put together by the david m rubenstein national center for white house history here at the association, led by dr. colleen jobin, dr. matthew castillo and all of their colleagues who are here today, put in a tremendous amount of work to put on this series as well as our other substitute programs that we have as part of our education mission here at the association.

i would like to acknowledge a member of our board of directors, anita mcbride, who is here. and three distinguished former members of our board, bob mcgee, martha kumar, and mike mccurry who are also on the panel. they have several members of our national council on white house history, who are the real wind in the sales of our work and we are very, very grateful for their support to help make our nonprofit and nonpartisan mission possible. without their financial support we could do -- not to what we do. we receive government -- no government funding whatsoever. we are 62 years old, founded by mrs. kennedy in 1961, to be the private partner to the white house, to maintain the museum standard of those beautiful interiors and to teach and to tell the stories of the white house and its history going nk back to 1792 when george washington selected that piece of land just across the street from where we are tonight. welcome our moderator this evening is frank.

he is the -- somebody is -- our moderator this evening is frank, he is the emmy award- winning journalist who has held just about every position of leadership that can be held in television, from bureau chief to anchor, white house correspondent, to television host or talkshow host, he has interviewed five american presidents and leaders in every sector around the globe. for 11 years he gave leadership as the director of the george washington university school of media and public affairs. he is currently the head of strategic initiatives for the school. and also teaches, which i think is probably the highest calling of all of those, is to engage young minds in engaging them in media and how to become the next generation of great american journalists. another project he has underway with the school's planet

for.org, i encourage you to explore that and learn more about that current endeavor that frank has underway. you are in for a treat with the panel, with kelly, mike and martha this evening. enjoy and my part of the program is over and with that, frank, i will turn it over to you. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] and before i go any further, i want to thank you and the white house historical association for what you do, just to bring the stories to light, to bring these places to life, so that we can learn from them and learn from the past to inform the future is one of the most important things to do, thanks to you and the association. >> well, i am really looking forward to this conversation this evening. welcome to those who are joining us from afar. what happens at the white house now is everybody's business, it always has been, but now cameras, 24/7, ring pretty much

whatever is happening there to the rest of us. so our panel this evening is the best. kelly o'donnell is nbc senior white house correspondent. she has cover the white house for quite some time, has interviewed multiple presidents and any number of news conference crises and places abroad. she will be able to tell us what it is actually like today and how that camera and that image beams around the country and the world. mike mccurry, you probably know him. i often talk about mike mccurry as the most remarkable press secretary i ever worked with because mike got it and mike came over from the state department where he was a press secretary where there was a lot assistance and somehow he tried to blend the two. he was a secretary for bill clinton, there were high points and low points in the tenure. we will talk about some of those and maybe even see one or two. and he is a former cochair of the commission on presidential debates. another place where the camera has been so important and so

influential. and vemartha kumar is a walking encyclopedia of the white e house. and brings such a credible insight into what she talks about. she is a professor, her scholarly focus has been on the white house, she kind of hangs out there, these days and can bring you not just trivia but big picture stuff too, but has written some important book that kind of give a perspective on all of this. before the us, how george w. bush and barack obama managed a transfer of power. i don't know why that would be newsworthy, but managing the president's message, the white house medications operations. just two of the things you have looked at that give some focus here. i would like to frame this conversation a little bit with a couple of clips and pictures that kind of get us started. television is a powerful medium. i was the cnn white house correspondent in the days when cnn was revolutionary, and the power of the camera. because suddenly, it wasn't just walter cronkite, it wasn't

just 6:30 at night, it was any time, the camera could be on. and the president could speak in a longform in a speech or an event and we might take it live. that brought it to living rooms around the country, around the world in real-time. there -- it wasn't always that way. let's see if i can make this work. there we go. john kennedy, john f. kennedy is often known as the person who brought the presidency to television and vice versa. this was his first news conference in 1962. and as mike mccurry points out, it wasn't at the white house, it was at the state to permit correct? let's just listen to a minute of this. >> i have a statement about the negotiations. a these negotiations as you know scheduled to begin early in

february. they are of great importance and we will need more time. >> there he was, standing in front of the group, two microphones, reading from notes, very stiff, very formal. it changed over time. not just a news conference, but the sitdown interview. tom with gerald ford, it changed over time. it became a credit briefing room, and there is george w. bush, look at that. the place is jammed. it changed over time with barack obama announcing the death of osama bin laden with a very solemn ceremony and that camera in the foreground taking those words around the world. what has changed has not just been the technology, of course, the speed, but the audience on the expectation. let's dive in. mike, as a press secretary, when you think about this change, and how this has sort

of swept over us and it is now about speed, what is the biggest component in terms of actually communicating from the white house, the decision? >> i think too often is speed. you have to stay on top of a story, try to stay in front of the story. that creates a little bit of a dilemma because we don't pause long enough sometimes to really consider, what are the most important elements of that? because the camera moves, the story moves, the cycle jumps ahead to whatever the next crisis or subject is. so i think one of the consequences of having the televised presidency is that ita is all media all the time and that is sometimes not the way government works. government works slowly. policymaking takes time. d making that sausage is sometimes not an easy thing to put on television. but that is a consequential business. >> sausage making live.

>> fantasy consequential business of the presidency and i am not sure we capture that adequately through all the debit -- television coverage that we have. >> what are the things about jfk? the medium was new, not many people had television still in their homes. it was a great thing. that that bringing together of the picture, that photogenic thing and the information, here he is talking about geneva arms talks, but a serious stuff. has that equation of information versus picture changed over time? how do you balance that in the environment we are in now? >> certainly since john f. kennedy, every president has been tested through the lens of, can they be a televised candidate and president ultimately? they are tested as that process goes through and so they know it is a part of their job. and one of the things i think especially happens when there is breaking news, is we look to a president to address,

depending on the type of a breaking news, is it an opportunity to seize the moment and bring calm? to bring answers? to send a message internationally to our partners, allies or photos? is it a way to bring the nation together? is it a way to control the moment? there are a lot of different uses that a president can seize the power of this collective experience. one of the things that i find very fascinating about working in television at the white house is, the white house is a place where everything that is important in the world is intersecting there. and some of them will bubble up and demand attention that day. some will take a long time in terms of policy and plans to develop. and when something bubbles up, that is a chance for a president to harness that power. we are there every day, the lights are fixed, microphones are set. a president can literally take steps from the oval office to

come to the briefing room where we can set things up on the south lawn, sometimes you're competing with the sound of the marine one helicopter and so forth. but the immediacy is something a president can use or not use. >> so michael dever, who worked closely with president reagan, who was known fondly as a great indicator, had this great line. my job is to like the president. it was his way of saying, the picture predominates. so how do you balance today, when this has now been around for a lot longer -- i mean, that is 30, 40 years ago now. the picture hijacking the information you are trying to convey.an >> well, the staff has, i think, an inordinately difficult job of managing the imagery. if the president is on the road or traveling, i think how they stage an event comes critical. for example, if they stage an event and you are at a location where there are a lot of

choices to be made about where the president stands, about the lighting they bring in, different things like that. but the head on camera position, which is the obligation of the tv pool, which is your constant shot of d the president, that will be framed very tight, of just the president. and so they have to contemplate, how will that moment look? they will have the sweeping picture. president trump often said they are never showing the crowd. there was always a crowd. there is an obligated camera that must always stay on the president. and that image sometimes is a particularly attractive one and sometimes it may not be as attractive as the experience of being there in person. so sometimes there is an advanced person's challenge. there are times where a president is competing with the sound of the rain pouring as he is trying to communicate something important. competing with the chopper as i described, so there are challenges, but that also adds a reality to the experience. >> martha, a historian for us

for just a minute. i put up that video clip of john f. kennedy walking into the press conference. the press conference for the longest time was in some ways, the dominant television image and message delivering system of the president of the united states. i have kept track of this. i remember doing press conferences, primetime press conferences at the white house in compton. you knew something big was coming because helen thomas hadv had her hair done that they. it was primetime. l primetime was a big deal and america watched, and every newsroom watched and every headline the next day reflected what happened in primetime. what has happened to be im primetime news conference? >> well, the last two presidents, biden and trump, had none. zero. and obama had four, but they were all in his first six months. and reagan, by this time, had had -- he had had seven

nighttime, 15 at the white house , but seven were nighttime. when you look at his diary, you see that he prepared for several days. >> it was a big deal for the white house to them. >> it was, because this is an opportunity not only to protect him and his personality but what his interests were and what his knowledge was. so they would prepare, sometimes, inlets and -- one set that i looked at, he had his economic advisors come in to talk to him, foreign policy, national security, and domestic policy. so, when a president comes out in a press conference, he is pulled together from throughout the bureaucracy, information on what was going on. and then, he took time on two

of those days, to practice in the white house theater. >> do you really loss of the primetime presidential press conference? >> a point that i d would make about that is preparing for that press conference is an action forcing event with the government. we would sit around with president clinton and vice president core and get ready for a press conference and i would -- my job was to be the nasty reporter asking the main question. which got me in trouble sometimes. but we would give him what he prepared talking point our answer was. he would look and say that is just mush. we would say, well, you want to do something about it. so you he would pick up the phone, call the secretary of labor or call someone else in government, said we have got to get a better answer to this question. really, one of the advantages is that it moves the process forward and it requires better decision-making, i think. i think that is one of the

important aspects. >> really interesting to think about, about how this be television event focused those in power to think about, not just what they were saying and how they were saying it, but what the policy was behind it. >> it affects the quality of the questions too, because we are now in a situation where i am boiling down to bumper sticker level, as humorous as possible, can the president hear me? will he know what i am trying to ask him? or as in a presidential press conference in primetime, you have the microphone, you have the president's attention, you can ask a nuanced, thoughtful question. and he will understand what youo are asking. he has a moment to contemplate it and give you a thoughtful answer. now we are often incompeting wi all those other things in the room, trying to just get his attention. and it really becomes haiku. and i hope he hears me, i hope he understands and i hope he will answer. it is a very different quality

of questioning. >> certainly, as we think aboutl the cameras and the white house, the press conference is one place and venue but it certainly isn't the only one. we can see over time a number of different places and ways in which the camera has played a role. so let's take a few of those now and discuss them. let's think about big news, major news events. this is one of the earlier times when the cameras were invited in, 1947, harry truman announces he is going to run for a second term. president ronald reagan and his top advisers gathered around, what? the televisions, watching the coverage of the challenger disaster. when america's spacecraft blew up, taking several lives with it. this is a wonderful video clip that i want to share with you. this is ronald reagan bringing mikhail gorbachev into the oval office to sign the guestbook and then sit in these chairs. and cameras were live. people ae

soviet heading. you didn't know to do this process. and >> now, you will go over and sit in front of the fire. [ inaudible ] and -- >> and, he tells them there will be five waves of cameras and reporters coming in from all over the world. i was there for this. okay? and for those of you who were around during this time, this was a moment with incredible, high drama. mikell gorbachev in the oval

office, the soviet union, the united states. it is interesting to explain this to young people at this was really all about and the tension of this moment. mike, what about capturing the mood of a place, of a moment like this? >> well, you can see here that it is absolutely a -- essential, that the plate stage managing be carefully done. that the moment that is created reflects whatever the president's priorities are, that is because a visual image of something that is much larger and more important practice on being, obviously, on the eve of important change in our world, the end of the cold war. so, how you frame those moments and how they look and how that is communicated to the people, becomes one of the central challenges of being on the white house staff. is spending a lot of time

thinking about, what are these moments going to look like? and how are they going to be captured and how are they going to be broadcast to people? because you are making history. and you are conscious of that all the time i think when you are working at the white house. >> martha, is there -- are there many moments like this that are even remotely unscripted? not that this is not unscripted, clearly is choreographed, as mike points out. but in thinking about cameras bringing people inside, there is both opportunity and danger in something like this. >> oh, yes. when eisenhower went on television with press conferences, his staff had recognized his press secretary, james haggerty, and many of his supporters from the campaign recognized that you needed to create a pr shot in the white house. and so, they set about doing that and they brought in robert montgomery, who was a producer and actor, who did staging. and you have had

succeeding administrations creates not just that press office, which always existed from around 1927, and then nixon formalized the communications operation that would do the future planning and doing the stage setting. and that was done at the beginning of the nixon administration. they realized it right in 1969, that that is something they should do. and every administration has had such a shock. because you have to think of, how are you going to get, now, how are you going to get the public's attention? because there are so many different ways in which you can do it. >> to that point, how have you seen the threshold change of how you are going to get the public's attention? there are some larger things

here we should talk about, but changes that are taking place that when john kennedy steps to that stage, when reagan walked into that room, there wasn't social media. there wasn't a constant disinformation campaign, there wasn't this disaggregated audience that there is now. we were talking a while ago that when there was a primetime press conference, it was the president pretty much talking to the country. that is a hard thing to duplicate today, very hard for the president to talk to the country. so how about that threshold martha was talking about? >> i particularly love seeing these clips because it reminds me and arms me with things i will take into the white house tomorrow, because it is so important to be reminded that we are not just covering today's news event. we are building the historical record. and everything that you see in these images tells you who was standing at the president, what with the body language? who was in the room in a place that gives you some insight about the influences on the president? there is so much information there that is more than the news event itself.

and that is something i think about every day when we are covering events. today for example, president biden welcomed in the new democratic leadership, that was in the roosevelt room. ron klain, who is his current but outgoing, we believe, based on our reporting, chief of staff, was there at the table. 40 years from now when people look at that, that tells a story about what is happening in this moment. covering it and having a chance to let that moment breathe and let people see it in a real way is critically important. >> how important is it, and how do you now do it, to get a president out there on a big news story? those cameras are always on and demand is like, get there now. do something now. >> you pick up on a point that martha said, the structure of the white house staff is important to understand. there are two different offices. there is a communications office in the press office. the communications office is the one that does the planning, orchestrates the event, figures

out who is going to stand where, with the background is going to be, with the message is going to be that is portrayed on the wall. if you think about it, that of the product development side of the house. the press office is the retail sales part of the operation because you have to go out and sell the stuff. sometimes you win and sometimes you don't and sometimes they buy and sometimes they walk away. but that is the juxtaposition that that i think is necessary for a successful communication. you have got to have both the planning that goes into orchestrating the event, and understanding what the message and the picture will be, but then you have to have a reliable way to talk about it and answer questions about it, and to face criticism, skeptical reporters who are going to ask questions. >> what was the biggest crisis you had? what was the biggest news story you had? aside from that which we shall not talk about, but we will. like, in the major policy

department? >> it is interesting, we will drift into monica linsky land i am sure. >> let the record show that you uttered those words first. >> but you know, the harder things were the questions of policy that were complicated. >> how did you use television? >> you had to work hard at it. i remember we at one point, president clinton announced we were going to regulate tobacco. the theory of the case was that , you may not know this, a cigarette is a medical delivery device. that was the theory, because it delivers a dose of nicotine to the human body. and on that basis, he then promulgated rules and the fda was involved. so i had the secretary of health and human services there, donna had david kessler who is the head of the fda, they went and said you guys, you're the expert on this, you got to answer the questions. and they got so wrapped up in the news show of this regulation, that i could tell looking at the reporters, i said

-- and so, those of you who know these two individuals, booted them out of the way and took over the podium. because i had stayed up and studied this thing and read it. it is hard work. and so i answered the question, i kept looking at them saying, am i getting this right? but the important thing is at the end of the day, you have to explain things in a way that is accessible to the american people. and i think that is what the advantage of television is, it gives you that opportunity even if you are not getting, you know, the whole country watching all at once, you get the opportunity to lay the case out and have people understand what it is your turn to accomplish. >> martha, there is big news of bin laden, major policy announcement. there is also crisis and controversy. this is a news conference,

briefing room appearance by president trump in the middle of the covid crisis and we had policy but we also had controversy. from your point of study, looking at cameras and the impact of television, does inevitably crisis and controversy overwhelm the information and we get distracted by that? >> well, you look at that and you see a somewhat chaotic scene. and i think that typified a lot about the white house. i think in crisis, administrations to handle differently, like bringing in people who are experts. for example, when the challenger blew up, the reagan white house brought in people from nasa. and they stayed at the white house for a couple of weeks, so they can answer questions about

it. when, in the obama administration, they wanted to talk about the iran deal, they brought in this is an example of success, they brought in ernest from the energy department who was very clear and was able to speak authoritatively, but have an understanding of what the reporters knew. so, in a crisis, people are going to tune in and the bin laden statement was way late at night. i think it was around 11:00, and the president had asked for airtime and there was concern around the country that there was something unfolding. and so they had to let out that it was going to be the bin laden killing.

and they had an enormous -- one of the largest audiences they have ever had. >> so these moments, these huge news moments certainly attract an audience. >> they are difficult to come by. >> let's go down memory lane for a minute here. and i have a, you know, cameras in the white house. these are famous words. >> i want you to listen to me. i'm going to say this again. i did not have sexual relations with that woman. but i want to say one thing to the american people, i never told anybody -- [ inaudible ] >> a couple of pieces of video running at the same time. okay. so, mike. >> with that doubletalk? [ laughter ]

>> the cameras in the white house anticrisis, cameras were everywhere. you get a controversy and the cameras don't quit. so how do you manage television and this constant focus when you're in the middle of white hot crisis? >> to me, the most critical thing is to make sure you have got fax and that the facts are a reliable. and that you can slow things down to the point you can actually put together the information you need in order to tell the truth. now, i got in trouble, i got asked by helen thomas who came up before, can you ever lie when you're the press secretary? i said no, you cannot lie but sometimes you have to tell the truth slowly. and what i meant with that, i

got in trouble for saying that, but what i meant by that is that sometimes you don't have the complete story or sometimes someone's definition of sexual relations may be different from what mrs. mccurry's was, or is, so you have to stick to what you know is verifiable. i think marlon fitzwater, one of my predecessors, a wonderful guy, great press secretary, the only press secretary for two presidents, said that is the ultimate responsibility of being in that job, is to verify the information you are getting. and if you are not completely sure that it is reliable, then you have to back off. i am thankful that during this whole episode, i never went beyond anything that i was given -- or given to me by the president's lawyers, his legal team. and i had to go question after question, one of my briefings went on for more than an hour.

47 different questions about, what did he mean by that? what is the definition of that? just based on that. i just stuck to the script i had been given by the lawyers, at one point i said look, i am double parked in the no, the now, there is nothing else i can say. >> jump on this, whoever wants to go with it. i think one of the concerns often expressed by the public is that television feeds off of this stuff. if there is a problem or a controversy, and real news, whatever that may be, however you made a fine not, gets shoved to the back. is that a fair criticism? or does any media do that? long before there was television there were banner headlines, there is all kinds of stuff out there. is that a fair criticism of television? >> i think that there is a great burden on the consumers of news to be able to work through all that is out there. if you want serious review of

policy, there are places to get that. if you want the immediacy of what events are happening now, television is a great place for that. if you want quick headlines, scroll through your phone. i think there are a lot of things that people don't understand about how we do our jobs, and i understand that. i am sure there are plenty of shortcomings in my understanding of how people do their jobs. but right now, we are in a situation where we have been peppering the current press secretary, who is limited in what she, i think, has been given permission to talk about with respect to the biden documents circumstance and has referred us a great deal to the white house counsel's office. and it has been a challenge for the reporters, and i am sure a challenge for the press secretary as we are trying to find different ways to elicit something new. to cover the ground, to move the ball. and if you are a viewer who is watching that, and you may not

understand what we are trying to elicit, it can look repetitive, it can look like we are bullying. there are a lot of things that might not be ideal. that is the sausage making. >> martha, one of the things that have changed, of course, is we can call it -- we can cry about it but we can also call it the democratization of information. now it is not just television, a cnn camera or msnbc camera that is there but it is a tiktok camera. it is not really a camera but goes out on tiktok. how have you seen whether it is crisis or otherwise, this technology changing the way the imagery of the white house is projected to the american people in the world? >> one of the areas i can see it is the interviews that president biden has chosen to do. and he has chosen to aim to particular audiences at certain times. so, he has wanted to get to young people, for example, so he had an interview with -- in

the east room of the white house, that the white house didn't promote except to that particular group and there were six young people, and each one of them had an issue. abortion, student loans, things that they individually were interested in. >> this is going through social media? >> it is on instagram, facebook, and it was on tiktok. and even though the federal government doesn't want people using tiktok, the president has used tiktok for his interviews. so, i see it there, when reagan was president, he did interviews. someone who was once our board chairman here, they would do weekly interviews with the president, all of the is magazine, because that is where people were getting their information.

>> i want to talk about one other thing now too, when we talk about television in the white house, that is the camera outside of the white house. that when the president goes on the road, the camera goes with him, television goes with him. president nixon at the great wall, 1972. this is a picture of george walker bush in new york. famous bullhorn speech, i think we have a clip of it which i will roll in just a second. and the power of a camera that goes with the president on the road, to capture a moment and a message. can you roll that clip? >> i want you all to know that america today, america today is on bended knee. >> i hear you, and soon everyone that brought these buildings down will hear you.

is what i believe he said. >> we have that and we will not go back to it. whatever you want to get to, the next -- there we go, you want to roll that? let's take a look at that. >> i want you all to know that america today -- america today is on bended knee. in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here. for the workers who work here. for the families who mourn. this nation stands with the good people of new york city, and new jersey and connecticut. as we mourn the loss of so many of our citizens. i can hear you. [ cheers and applause ] >> mike, that is great, thank you very much. this is an incredible example of the power of the message and the medium on the road at a

time of immense national crisis. >> one thing that is powerful about that is that it was impromptu. we talked about the planning and everything else that goes in that, was not scripted, it was impromptu and it was genuine and authentic. and you really saw a glimpse of something. the most interesting moments of the presidency are when something is not scripted in advance and when you see that you get a glance of the character of the person, that is when we mentioned i have been involved in the presidential debates, i think those are some of the most interesting moments in our presidential debates that you recall, are things that, when there is a flash of temper or where there is something that is really revealing about the person, that is something that you get from television that you wouldn't get otherwise. >> i don't get many of those spontaneous moments in television, do you? >> i do think there is the

potential for it and it is a chance to show emotion. the tear from president obama on sandy hook, that is an enduring image. there have been flashes of anger from a president occasionally or when presidents go to comfort people and there is a real moment of human empathy. that comes through, it is an essential character or humanity that television is uniquely able to transmit. people feel it. >> weekly, remember, president obama singing amazing grace in charleston, which was a revealing moment. and not something that any white house aide had said, hey, here is what you ought to do. >> let's turn the page just a bit and say that it is not just presidents who take advantage of the camera and the white house. this is jackie kennedy on the very famous tour of the white house, as you may know.

cbs, charles collingwood, rhodes scholar, wandered around with her. she brought the american people inside the white house in a completely different way. here is barbara bush, sitting down for an interview. laura bush, sorry. sitting down -- they are related, but you can't mistake them. sorry about that. sitting down for an interview, the role of the first lady has very much taken shape. michelle obama, using the south lawn and the garden and the kids to convey a very different message. martha again, as our history in here, how have you seen the first lady's relationship to the camera and bringing the camera in effect the -- >> it certainly is very important. jackie kennedy tour of the white house, truman had had one with the -- >> it wasn't quite the same.

>> it wasn't quite the same in black and white. hers, she had an audience of around, i think it is 80 to 88 million people. so, that was something of a national moment. but often, what happens is the first lady is seen by the senior staff of the white house as a source of, maybe she is going to cause trouble when they come in. but then they recognize that all of a sudden, gosh, her poll numbers are higher than his. and so then they start using the first lady. so they become very important in giving a human element, a view of, what is the president really likes? >> so there is imagery around the first lady that is -- >> so, it is very important. and we saw that with michelle obama, that he seems to be

pretty cool and she was very warm and very empathetic. so you would see her there with kids and undoubtedly hugging kids. >> one of the things that i think it so important is in my coverage across four presidents, but what i think is important for the white house press court to do, is to have a chance to talk about the families, the cultural moments that are the white house, things that go beyond politics, beyond the tribal, partisan experience that can happen in our country and first lady's help to do that. the artistic guests and entertainers they bring to the white house can do that. i have a site housel now called the first pets, i love to report on the dogs and the cats, because people relate to it. >> they have a camera on their color? >> all of my colleagues know about it, they send me pictures of commander or willow seen in

the wild on the grounds there, because i think it connects people to what matters about the white house that is not politics. these are real families who for a time live in that white house and they are part of our cultural story. >> look at this, this is a great piece of video. we saw president reagan ringing in the calgary chuff. this is mrs. reagan touring mrs. glover trust. so it is not just -- you know, atmospherics and christmas trees, sometimes first ladies are using the skimmer to convey real interest in policy and things. >> they have roughly is, mrs. bush was certainly about afghanistan and the literacy issues, each woman who has had that role has had an important policy agenda. >> they have very important staff people, right? acknowledging mcbride who is here, the people who has worked with the first lady's staff are equal to the people on the west wing who works in the present

in many cases. because of exactly this, i have been binge watching the crown, we don't have royalty but we do have a family and that conveys part of the story, the narrative of what else it is about. >> eleanor roosevelt was the president's eyes and ears. so she went out and there was a wonderful new yorker cartoon where there were minor's down in the mine and they say, i think mrs. roosevelt is coming. she then would report back and she had her own column. >> let me show you a couple of other images here, we'll talk about that. a couple of other big things and then open it up for questions. i like to call this elevating dollars and icons. you don't need any words around that, it may be one of the weirder pictures of the white house. talk about an unlikely pair.

this also is president obama, the medal of freedom awards in 2016. >> welcome to the white house, everybody. today, we celebrate extraordinary americans who have lifted our spirits, strengthened our union, pushed us toward progress. i always love doing this event, but this is a particularly impressive class. we have got innovators and artists. public servants, rabble-rousers , athletes, renowned character actors like the guy from "space jam."

[ laughter ] we pay tribute to those distinguished individuals with our nation's highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom. >> so, here, this is incredible. ellen degeneres, robert de niro, bill gates, kareem abdul- jabbar, frank gary, the ability to have an event, bring a camera in and bring these other dimensions of america to you -- do you put this image on television? >> oh, yes, this is one of the events that often is carried live, is always almost included in our nightly newscast, and is one of those things that jumps out into a cultural touch moment. i also think when the championship teams come to the white house, that is another one that people relate to and look forward to. and certainly medal of honor is

another one. when it comes to people who are notable like this, i think it just touches every part of american life and it is not about the president. it is about american talent and ingenuity and art and the president is simply the person conveying that honor. and so it is bigger than the moment. and i think it is one of the great american traditions, and as you can see, president obama and every other president i have covered, truly enjoys those moments. >> i covered the white house for more than seven years and the big story was the white house easter egg roll. people want to see this thing. so, mike, you are the image meister here, what are the pictures, what is the television that connects with people? that you know connects with people? >> a great example here is when you connect to the walks of life that americans experience. and when you touch them about

something that is relevant to who they are, what they think the country is about, those are the great moments. you know, we talked a lot about how television can elevate and amplify moments like this, where we are celebrating something exceptional about the country. the television also needs to do, i think, the job of giving us the nitty-gritty and the hard work that goes into it. i wish we had television coverage of markup sessions in the u.s. congress. where people would roll up their sleeves and are actually doing the real work. >> people were positively riveted by the c-span coverage of the process of electing, or not, speaker of the house. and bringing people -- but the -- >> my point is, there has to be this balance between the glamour and the gritty. what really is the real work. >> let me ask you all and very quick question -- >> and i just put in something

here on the glamour. last week, the golden state warriors came to the white house and steph curry came to the briefing room with steve kerr and the briefing room was just shock a block. you could hardly get any room, there were so many reporters reflecting the interest in seeing -- seeing curry. and then, after he left, gradually, fewer, fewer, fewer people. they seemed to just simply vanish when it came down to the nitty-gritty of news. >> i'm going to ask you all a very unfair question and ask you to try to put it in a soundbite. we will see how you do. and then go to some of your questions for a few minutes and we will be just a few minutes and you will all be on your way with your evenings. we have gotten a sense of what television and cameras have meant, from the earliest days through crisis and controversy,

through celebrating different walks of life and trying to bring the white house -- the people's house -- to the people and the public. but it has come at a time, we have talked some about this, of a much more competitive, much more rapidfire, 24/7 media that has also become about social media. and has been complicated by disinformation in a pretty tough, polarized environment. i would just like to hear briefly from each of you, then we will open up to questions, do we understand our white house better? are we being well served, is the public being well served by this? >> that is my mission every day. and it is one that i am proud to do. along with all of my colleagues, to try to take the messages of the white house and the issues of the white house, and i happen to work in

television but for all of us in our various media outlets, to try to tell the people's story and the president's story. it is incumbent on those who consume news to do their homework too and to seek out quality and to recognize that news at needs to not just be curated, but needs to be edited and needs to have professional structure around it. so there is work to be done for the consumers of news and always more work for us to do as well. >> mike, you said one of your biggest mistakes was turning the camera on during the briefing. we have too much imagery? >> there is very often too much noise. but i think, if i were thinking of the question, i think credibility is the word that i would use. that reporters have to be seen as being credible in the reports they are given to the american people, and white houses need to tell the truth. and have to be respected as people who are willing to

confront hard truths sometimes and deal with things that go wrong. mistakes that happen. and that is not an easy thing to do. but i think maintaining credibility would be the gold standard. >> i think, yes, the television continues to be important in giving us a sense of who the president is. and it gives the president an opportunity to get his message out and find out whether the public likes it or not. i remember george w. bush going to the border and doing many interviews and talking about immigration legislation that he wanted. and the public just didn't want it. the retirement accounts also that he pushed. the message got out there in a lot of different ways. but he found out that maybe he

didn't want what he was trying to sell. but i think if you look at his presidency, look at him as a person, you knew who he wants. you had a good sense of that. and i think we have gotten that with all of our presidents. and so i think television has been a positive, but i also think kelly is right. we as citizens have an obligation in a democratic government, it is important to maintain that government and one of the ways of doing it is really finding out what is going on and reading a variety of news sources. not just following one that may fit in with one's opinion. >> as i like to say, every news consumer now is his or her own executive producer. you choose and you are responsible for the information

you consume. so we all share that. a few minutes of questions from the audience, if anybody would like to go first, right here. yes? upfront, front-row, i'm sorry. we will come back to you next. >> you talked in the beginning about the primetime press conference. why have we lost it? >> because we have lost the audience. mr. mike mccurry? >> there have been occasions where the networks have audien disinterested and there were so many other places they could go, some of the other competitive things on 57 channels that would be on. whether it is the utility value of running your entertainment program, with the white house and particularly, you think the president is there to push the message. >> i think ann and i were at

the white house the very first time the white house asked the networks for prime time coverage and the networks said, no. one of the reasons they gave was, will you have cnn now. and if is political, or whatever. the threshold also changed when they warranted the principal carriers of this messaging, where they could say, you know, this is not sufficiently newsworthy, or we have got other money we want to make elsewhere. >> they did not say that. >> but there is considerable cost. statement it is considerable cost. >> to give up programming for networks to do that. they try to do the balance of what they think the public interest is, versus giving up of that time. >> thank you all for speaking tonight. my question is, provided various comments about it is the public's responsibility to do their homework in regards to the information served to us, i have a problem with that. so, when i first started

college, a wannabe journalist, i just wanted to produce the facts. that is what i expect to hear. i would think that most people in this room would like to hear that, because we all worked various jobs and may not have time and we all want to be involved in politics for me which is why we are here tonight. why would that statement be made? why do we need to do our homework? i get we need to do our homework, but we should just hear the facts from journalists is my opinion, yes? >> what i mean when i am saying that is that we now know that there are a variety of news outlets that have an ideological opinion, that may have a niche in the way that they are focused on material. so, what i am saying is, to be well informed about a variety of topics, be aware of that so that you know what it is you

are getting. be mindful of what you are consuming. that is what i am suggesting. i am not suggesting that you have to spend all of your free time reading lots of news. i am a traditional news journalist. i do work that is not ideologically driven, and i've worked very hard at that for a very long time. there are lots of different outlets and i think it is challenging sometimes or news consumers to know what it is they are getting. so, that is the harder part for people who are reading material . if you are reading things on the internet, you may not know the ideological point of the. you may not know if there is an editor involved. everything i did for nbc, there were multiple editors who reviewed what i did, there were multiple lawyers involved before i put anything on television. it is not just me on my own. there are standards involved, in addition to training, 30 years of experience doing that. there is care put into that. does it-- it doesn't mean we

will not make mistakes sometimes, we are all humans. there is a variety of ways, especially as a fractured universe, things will look like news because people can self publish and we can all put this out there. that is all i meant. being a smart consumer is what i am saying. >> when i say, everybody is their own executive producer, i don't mean to let anyone in the media off the hook. any realm of the hook. you are responsible for getting it right, pursuing the truth, reviewing resources, for being transparent with where the information comes from. you are responsible if you get it wrong and you need to stand up and accept that. all i am saying is, to kelly's point, there is so much stuff out there, you need to be an informed consumer. there are really good mattresses and really bad mattresses. same thing. we have time for a couple more. one here and we will go over there. >> i want to ask you about something called, watergate. >> that is the hotel, apartment complex? >> that is what it is.

you just said about being an informed consumer. i had happened to have a baby around the time that was on. how long was it on? at least days. at long time. i really want to know how-- if you all, if any of you know how that impacted society, to have the president of the united states be accused of what he was accused of him and went it was over, i watched it for days, i'm telling you guys, they should replay that. when it was over, it is clear that was a setup deal. the whole thing was a setup deal and nixon took the fall. and i would like your opinion on that. >> a lot of history and another white house series we could do on that. anybody want to comment on the impact of the televised hearings from the president? >> well, in those hearings, i think that the public and the

whole issue, and the coverage by the "washington post" and the "new york times", after all of the things that became a part of watergate, i think the news organizations certainly gained respect from the public for the truth of what they projected. it certainly has changed as far as public attitude towards government, and towards the press as well. >> i think we have time for a couple of more questions. >> my question might have some similarities to the last one. we have learned through history that years later, the press in effect was covering up for presidents roosevelt with his polio, and president kennedy with extramarital affairs, or his health in general.

what changed that? was it television, or was it watergate? what was the change that may be present subtly-- >> such a fascinating question. >>-- not want to play ball with the press? >> not just watergate, but vietnam. and i think it was the realization that the cozy nature of the white house and the reports are, and the relationships were just not going to cut it when you had that doubt that you were being told the truth by the president and the people around. so, i think the culture of that reporter and principal relationship changed dramatically. >> the president-- television played a role in that too. it went places and showed people what the reality looked like on the ground. it was not just somebody's

word. >> people want more information. if you see evidence, like the freedom of information act in the 1960s, the people want to know more. so, watergate, i think, fed into that growing realization that there is a lot more information out there and the public wants it. so, i think those efforts have expanded over the years of what we want to know. >> one last question, if you've got it. did you have one last question, or is that it? one last question over here. can we do that? front row. >> i am a student at gw. i was wondering like in terms of like television, maybe it might die out, do you think it will die out because of social media?

>> that is a great last question for the night. what is the future? kelly going to be unemployed anytime soon? >> i had a sinking feeling about that. i think that a visual medium is not going to die. what we call it, how you receive it, how you pay for it, how you watch it might change me but i think the desire to be connected in a live way to me in a way where materials playback, a jetsons model, something i can't even think of i think it will continue. now, you probably don't the table at home, do you? wow! well, i am impressed by that, because most young people do not pay for cable. i will be the last court order on the final day. i have given my professional life to working in tv news. i am bullish on tv.

i think people want the opportunity to see things in real time. i think that will be an enduring desire. and i think the chance to experience things collectively, which we don't often get to do, to experience something at the same time together, whether we are doing it watching tv, or in some other way we are connected, will endure. political leaders will want to harness that and the white house will always want to be at the forefront of that, whatever we call it. mike? >> i can't add much to that, other than to say that i agree. we want to be connected to our leaders and we need to see them. some way or another, visually, we will always have a community, i think, well into the future to experience some of what our leaders experience, because we need that. we need to have confidence in

them and we need to know who they are and what they are about. presenting that will change as technology changes. we have seen that already. i did not have to deal with twitter, facebook, and social media in my time. my daughter says, that was in the last century. there will be different ways in which we get the story that one way or another. >> even the leaders themselves, when they want information on what is going on in the world, they look at television. they look at the way in which president trump was a consumer of news and of television. and president johnson had his three television screens in the oval office. the leaders themselves are informed, not just the public.

>> so, the technology has changed, the audience has changed, the expectation has changed, but to your question, what we hope hasn't changed is the commitment and the priority to get real information to the public so that they can be informed, properly engaged, and make this a kind of democracy that it should be. journalism and the white house should be all about. what a great conversation. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> back to you. >> thank you, very much. frank sesno, mark kumar, and kelly o'donnell for this very insightful programming this evening. one thing i love about my job is i like to learn

something new every day. clearly from the expertise, insights from folks here, we all learned something this evening and i am reminded about how fortunate and blessed we are in this country to have the freedom of the press, people like kelly during her job every day to bring that information to us. people like mike to foster accessibility to our leaders, their message, historians and scholars to have context to understand that in retrospective and in current scenarios that we live through every day on television and other forms of media. this is the first of four programs we have on the media and the white house called, white house history with frankston as the sesno, the space will be here march 30th, the topic will be women in media at the white house. will all want to be here. we hope c-span will join us for that occasion as well. to close this evening, i invite you all to join us in the historic parlors of decatur house for a reception and continue the conversation with

our panelists and each other. until the 30th, thank you for supporting the white house historical association.

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