deficit disordered that's the issue. i had a piece a few years ago, well, quite a few years ago, that ran 18 minutes. >> i'm weeping. >> you remember george burns once said he loved the newshour, he went to sleep to it every night. he may have been watching that piece. i don't really know. but no, it's -- in the culture in general there is a shrinking of the sound bite. .

we had moments in the panel where, as an aside, i would ask somebody requester and, what do you mean by that. it's a commitment 20 to have -- would ask somebody a question, what do you mean by that? it took 1 minutes 20 to do the exchange. that is a problem. >> some people understand you do not have to take the one minutes. i do that, the willingness of politicians to exploit that, and -- add to that the willingness of politicians to exploit that, and you have those town meetings where you have people who were completely ignorant, acting in destructive ways because they had been pushed, partly by the

lack of information they got from the media, and the void was filled by politicians willing to exploit it, but people do not seem to be willing to read what you write. you have a lot of people who do pay attention and a lot of people who should but do not. >> and of those people actually read a great deal. it is not their unwillingness to read. it is what they're reading. >> you're not going to get great economic reporting. >> laws that support their -- >> preached to the choir. >> this affirms the idea that each boy should be heard, and people get stronger convictions when they are not getting anything that counters about. -- each voice should be heard, and people get stronger conditions when they're not getting anything that counters that. >> when i started out as a

reporter in "the washington post" in 1965, i was hired as a city reporter and told to report in two weeks. i came down, and the editor said, we have an opening on the business page. why don't you take it? i was 23, and i thought it was not a good idea, so i took it. i did not have any background in this. the entire business section was five people, and the last time i checked a few years ago, it was 80. it may be lower now, but suppose it is 50 or 40. we're talking about 10 or 15 times what it was back in the late 1960's, and people who come into it usually have some background. i remember giving a lecture to die at newsweek -- to a guy oat

"newsweek," and he stopped me and said, i have been in the day. i know about all this. the idea that -- i have an mba. i know all about this. the idea that a reporter would have then mba in the 1960's was an absurd. new sources create an enormous amount of pressure, not all of which is bad, but some of which is bad, to reach conclusions, to distill things into understandable sound bites or whatever you want to call them, because that is complication to get a police and the illusion of as much information as you can in a short -- or at least the illusion of as much information in a short amount of time as you can. when i came to "news we" in 1984

and started writing columns, it was about 1100 words long. it is now 700 words long. i do not want to see all of the missing words are gems, but you have to take things out when you write 700 words out of 1000 that it might be good to leave in. >> use it to market pressures. you have a circumstance now or various market pressures and all the technologies are driving the ability of traditional media to afford the kind of expertise they need and the kind of investment they need to properly represent the subject as complex as the economy and health care,

and i like to combine them when i am talking about this, and what you get is what i said before -- demagoguery. >> there is also the question of not just market pressures, which is a fair point, and it is obviously a relative one. it is hard to think of an industry that has not this year, but the organizations i know have all felt a lot of market pressure, and the financial institutions have all of a sudden got shoved from the back pages to the front page. we also have to talk about it -- you cannot suggest blamed the adb generation. -- you cannot just blame the add generation. news organizations reaching market pressures would not be there to put it on the front

page of people were not logging in or tuning in to see it, so there is a question now about news, how much do you reflect what consumers are looking for, what they are seeking out, and how much do you report on what they need to know? you just give them the ice cream, or do you give them the problem with ice cream to get them to eat it. >> you give them roughly that tastes like ice cream. >> -- broccoli that tastes like ice cream. >> which is where we have come. >> there are a few separate issues that have to be separated. one is the ways that technology has enabled more sources of information then we have ever had before. consumers have more choices than they have ever had. if they want to watch a 30- minute video or an hour-long video they did not have to sit there at 7:00 at night. it is easier than ever before. >> do you watch it online?

>> every bit of it online. >> i like to think we do fairly sophisticated stuff. we now have 20 million visitors. that is three times what we haven't three years ago -- what we had three years ago. greed information is out there. there are more sources of it, -- great information is out there. there are more sources of it. at the end of today, you have to believe consumer choice is a good thing, even if you do not particularly liked the way some consumers are exercising their choices. >> there would seem to be a couple things we are worrying about. isn't there sometimes a mistake made that people have a tendency to look at media as separate entities, newspapers or television or your ipod or on- line one really there is a seamless -- it is all one, but i do not think everything else understands that.

>> our businesses to try to get and keep your attention. that is what we get rewarded for. some of us are buffered with a lower salary and stuff like that. it is fair. if you are going to get an audience, and you're going to use television and income -- an increasingly popular medium because fewer people read -- >> they read the internet. >> that is fair. they do not read books as much. they read shorter thanes. -- shorter things. if you are going to tv, and tv is what you're dealing with, had

you get somebody's attention when you are trying to keep them watching when you have hundreds of different options and they can go get a beer? people have learned the techniques of work on the brain, and one of them is when something moves in the frame, we are program from the evolution to think maybe it as a creditor. i hate to be overly simplistic, but there's plenty of hypothesizing that is what is going on. that is why we think this stuff keeps moving. it is all happening, and there are other techniques. when you talk about making ice cream into broccoli, yes kerrigan anybody working in the news hour should constantly be thinking about how do you keep

it interesting. now that as with any communicator does. in some form, they always have. >> it is the same thing as selling a new product common and and what happened was for the longest time there was no real competition for that product. five we were like auto companies. there is a tremendous benefit to keeping people's attention, and you can keep their attention with techniques that have nothing to do with teaching them about the world. that is a classic, age-old struggle, but it is one that might be increased by the nature of our ability to manipulate mines for regan >> i did not think anyone would take -- to manipulate mines. >> i did not think anyone would take you seriously. >> i have a question. in the old days there were guys to produce information and

consumers and the gatekeepers. i am exaggerating a bit, but what is happening now, for example, for you -- you have competition, not just with lots of people producing it, but you also have things in your sphere. what does that do to you if for example, simon johnson were to start hosting a show? what would you do? what does the do to you? do you feel threatened? is it good for you or bad for you? how do you respond? >> you are absolutely right. for years and years i have written about the glories of markets and the benefits of competition, but i always

assumed i would be exempted from the benefits of market, and all of a sudden, they have come flooding through, and i have to say, i do not like it. i wish all the economists would unplug their computers, but unfortunately, this is not going to happen, and there are two defects, i think. -- two effects, i say. one is that rewards to journalists are going to go down, because there are a lot of people reaching the stars and people who can say, i draw this kind of audience will be well rewarded, perhaps better than they used to be, but the run-of- the-mill people are basically competing with lots of folks who are offering their opinions,

either for free or at a reduced rate, and a reduced rate meaning somebody else is going to be paying their mortgages send food bills or whatever, and the economic award they are getting -- most is psychological. that is one of fact. the second effect is -- and i agree with alan. it is unfortunate in some ways for people like me, but with all the competition, i would say it improves probably the average product and put pressure on people like me to make our stuff relative region relevant -- hours of relevance so we can survive in this competitive marketplace, but it is also going to produce an awful lot more diversity, and that is to say you are going to have a lot more in junk, and you have more

high quality stuff, and in general, it is a good result, but i would prefer to go back to the bad old days. >> this gets to your second point, which we have not talked about, which is what this is doing to the economic market. it had to do with what technology is doing to the economic model. as a consumer, being able to read paul krugman or simon johnson or having those voices of people who want to analyze things or study what they are thinking or willing to do it free on the side to keep auriana huffington happy is a good thing, but a lot of us really think it is important for society that there be people out there who are paid to find out the facts, who are not doing this on the side, who are not being paid to do something else than to do this to build their

names, but are paid to go out and do the hard reporting it takes to find out what is really going on, and that is going to be the challenge for the next 10 years, coming up with business models that enable organizations to support a large group of reporters. >> isn't part of the problem that most people do not understand or certainly do not celebrate journalism. now they are one. just about everyone decides he can become a journalist, and journalism itself is dying. i mean the person -- your mother says she loves you. check it out. that seems to be dying. >> there are lots of good journalists out there eager to work if somebody can. >> as opposed to somebody who

presents himself as a journalist who is really an advocate. >> that is the question about simon johnson. how many people know who simon johnson is? simon johnson is the former chief economist for the imf. in all the years i have interviewed economists, and that is 32 now -- these things are quickest, with most insightful i have ever interviewed, so to answer the question, how would i feel about simon having his own show -- i would be jealous. i would figure i would be on the show, so i would not worry that much, but what you were saying, i would be concerned that simon, who has a point of view, a point i often agree with, but if simon

has a show, financial daytime tv, let's say, which is the kind he can absolutely do, it would take viewers away from me if he was doing some of his explanations, and i am forced to work in an organization where it is real on the one hand -- on the other hand, check out your mother's claims. i would feel the world might well be a better place for having simon in it as well, to the extent i thought even-handed journalism -- viewers were being taken away from that to him. i might have misgivings. >> the news has become, the thais, and what you're buying

-- not modified, and what you're buying into is an individual brand more and more these years, so that is what my impression is of the network's decision to bring in a name like two of them that have been bandied around here is because people have an idea of what they are going to get when they tune in, and i think there's a premium put on quality of that information being delivered, but that is different. people do want to hear opinions, a few points, and what's not, but the journalism we're talking about being in danger does require a tremendous amount of investment, and that is what is in danger. i do not mean to say there is not true value o, because they'e giving you an interesting

viewpoint, and those are the same people a journalist can call and say, what do you think about this? >> now they get their own shows, and it is cheaper in the long run than investing in reporters. >> i want to follow up on some of the report -- some of the points being made about the language having to do with fact. we have talked about consuming ice cream rather than broccoli. my question has to do with the difference between fact and opinion. one of the things we know when we go to the grocery store is witkin with a label and see how much protein and calories -- we can look at the label and see how much protein and calories are in it. no longer is there is clear a separation between fact and opinion -- i can look at how the stocks did or how a team did, and that is not very arbitrary, but if i picked up "the new york times" or "the wall street journal," i know there is a

selection because there's too much to cover, but at what point in time is the responsibility on the part of media to explicitly acknowledge or try to keep editorials on the editorial page of separate editorializing from the reporting of the news? i wonder whether you think these things have been increasingly merged or have increasingly come together as a result of competition for viewers and advertising. >> isn't part of the problem that reporters should not be a, size. -- there is also context, which is part of our job. it is the selection of what goes into that that is going to offend somebody who would like to see a different conclusion. >> what you're talking about is a curious byproduct of 20th- century america. i happen to believe in it. i happen to think it was a good

buy products of 20th-century america, but it was pretty much you need to us, and things do now seem to be heading in the other direction. i just came back from today's london, and it is a different kind of journalism. no effort to make -- two days in london, and its different kind of journalism. i think it is something that should been maintained, but there is the problem margaret was talking about, and that this technology does make facts duplicable, so yes, somebody had to spend the shoe leather to go find the facts, but once they do, it is pretty easy for everyone else to get onto it, so personality, voice, you need analysis, being carl krugman, tends to be an important way you

get your readers to identify, because they can get the basic facts from 1000 different places. >> you get more of a reaction. if you looked comments on blogs, not necessarily the blogs themselves, but the comments, a tremendous amount at this point -- it is a tremendous amount of decoration, posturing, and i know it from my own question and answer sites. i get few comments -- i am just trying to enter other people's questions. i have people helping me do it. i get linked in by a woman named nagin who goes under the student name jane, so a libertarian lager, -- blogger.

some of them are intelligent. it was a different purpose than what i was trying to do on this website, and i think it just shows that of course it is easier to cop an attitude and get response to that attitude, and that tends to be self- fulfilling to the extent that you go to consumers highways. -- consumer's choice. >> i now work for rupert murdoch, and a lot of people think rupert murdoch is the guy -- he created fox news, and it had a media logical attack on cnn, and there was a great deal of fear at the time he took

over "the wall street journal" that he might use it to compete with "the new york times" the same way he used fox to compete with cnn. you could not do anything to drag the editorial page further to the right than it already is. a lot of us were worried about that, and it has not happened. why hasn't it happened? it has not happened because rupert is a smart business person, and our audience appreciates the fact that in the news pages -- sure, we provide analysis and try to put things in perspective, but we know -- they know we'll police attempt -- it is not that we do not have biases and that they did not creep into the reporting, but they know we are trying to go out and find out what really happened and tell them what happened, and our audience appreciates that, in part because they are in business, and when you're putting money

down on the line, you cannot afford a vice when you want good information. what does that tell you? that tells me at the end of today the kind of journalism you are talking about will survive if people wanted to survive. if there is an audience for that kind of journalism, that will survive. >> that is the big if. will people wanted to survive if they can get their newset ainment if it seems to contribute to a national hysteria that makes honest consideration of issues more difficult. >> look to you are talking about. when you talk about the pbs news hour -- bloomberg is certainly. i go to bloomberg regularly for my news. that is the first place. >all i am saying is this is

appealing to -- we should just the knowledge it is appealing to very narrow stratum of the american public, and when you keep talking about is the general level of discourse as opposed to the discourse taking place here tonight, for example. but the general level of discourse is what matters here. every individual has a vote, and most individuals do not pay the kind of attention they should. >> my theory is in terms of what we're talking about with frustration and mixture of opinion, we are always getting some sort of opinion. how many times have you heard walter cronkite cited for saying how wonderful it is to take a stand. you are always giving something. you always know where to stand and what to get your information. now it is hard to decide who is credible and who is not.

people are responding to personal brands if not network once, because they want to know what they are going to get. maybe it is picking their same opinion and someone who thinks like them, or maybe it is, but i think it is going to lead to a multimedia model where it is may be scratching the surface to complement where you get more of the information flowing through more or more. i think there is going to have to be that kind of consolidation if there is going to be a media -- a viable media model, because we're all fighting for a slice of the media prior -- media pie. >> it has been very interesting to listen to the panel discussed increase in media outlets over time.

the expansion of financial reporting, depending on your medium, the number of reporters themselves who are engaged in analyzing and reporting on financial issues. my question -- but you have also mentioned the amount of coverage given to a television financial story may be no more than one minute and 15 or 20 seconds. my question is this. what is your perception, given this expansion of media outlets, the increase in reporting -- what is your perception of public comprehension of the financial system in the country? did they simply read your headlines, watch your lead story, and then turn somewhere else? is that the basis of your understanding, or is it your perception that they do not understand because it has not been explained to the media to

which they turn for news to distinguish between debt and deficit or how budgets are adopted at the federal level. i would be interested in your perception of however you would put the news, how you think the public except sit and comprehend it. >> my view is -- i do not mean this as disrespectful. most civil do not know much about anything, and there is a good reason for that. it is because there is too much to know, and i am always surprised but should not be any more, when i got and talk to people who are very bright, who are very engaged, and who are very interested and knowing what's significant is going on, how little they know about the subjects i would talk about every day, and i think the reason for that is that unless you are personally engaged in many of these issues or

subjects, it is almost impossible to know what you might want to know, and the kind of people i am talking about our doctors, lawyers, government officials, and faith -- in state and local governments. people have their lives to leave. they cannot pretend they are in graduate school and every day they are going to spend three or four hours going through the stuff they ought to go through so they can remain informed about the major issues of our time, so i do not blame people. i agree with i think everyone here that there is more information available, and easily accessible than ever before, that people who want this information can, but it is very difficult to assemble -- assemble the stuff, and i will give you an example now with this health care bill. my brother, who is not a

journalist and who does not live in washington, is much more perceptive of these things than i am. he said, it is your impression no one understands what is in this bill, and i said, that is basically the truth. i am learning new things about what is in these bills every day, and i am certain even the people who are dealing with it seven days a week, 24 hours a day, do not know everything that is in these bills, and this is just the kind of microcosm of the difficulty of staying up with stings. it is we do with things. it is not what i cover, but i am reading most of what i can find about afghanistan, and i am completely confused about what we should do in afghanistan. i think the case on both sides is compelling, and i am sure also that there really do not have the foggiest notion of what is going on in afghanistan.

there's a limit for what people can know, and i see -- i think we have only 365 days in the year, and the internet has not changed that. >> the world has become much more complex. it is a much more complicated place. we are talking about the financial crisis, so at this conference we did, alistair darling said during the interview that after lehman brothers and the crisis in september, he was talking to a very senior, well-respected london banker, and he said, have things changed at your institution? oh, yes, things have changed a lot. one thing we have made a firm policy that we are not going to buy any security we do not understand. wait a minute. what did you do before? these are very complicated. it is a much more complicated

world, and even people that are in the middle of it do not understand. >> i have a really tough question about journalism. what is the use? you talk about the futility of journalism, but we cannot really explain what is going on. is that what you're saying? >> in my side of the business back in the late 1960's, i have a model in my mind that if we bring the right facts to bear that the system is ultimately rational. it may not be rational day-to- day and week to week, but if you bring the right facts to a situation, a policy will go in the right direction. if you persuade people this is an educational process, i did not believe this anymore. what i believe is when people have made up their minds about something, it is almost impossible to change their

minds. it is not that their minds cannot be changed, but they cannot be changed by facts and evidence. they have to be changed by experience. before world war ii americans were avid isolationists, so we fought the second world war, and in half a century, people thought what we had done between the wars was not a good idea. that was not because franklin roosevelt convince them isolationism was bad. it was because they could see the policy was an abject failure. i think people who have not made up their minds about something, the debate can change, so what is the virtue of a free press. the virtue is that democracy is a very messy system, and the free press is a part of that system, and the system would be worse off if we did not contribute to it, but it is very

difficult to say that we have made things better in a very specific way, and to the question about bias earlier, the problem with bias in my view is not that there is more of it, because there obviously is in the blogs and whatever, but most of that is harmless in the following sense. people know this is bias. nobody pretends that they are moderates, so most of the biases of front. it is like going to the grocery store and buying something with sugar or not. you can read it. there -- when people read it, it is the unconscious bias in what

we decide. those are the most dangerous, and i think my view of of the danger of forth we used to call the mainstream media with this process -- is that this process is driving some major news organizations to the left or right, and there is a kind of self selection process that goes on here. what academic research and common sense suggests is that when audiences become a typical political tide, you start aiming news of the audience. it is commercial survival. it is the kind of feedback you get, so that is the danger for

what we used to be the mainstream media. i think the journal has resisted that very well. i am not sure some of the other trade organizations have resisted it as well. i think islands reason is -- alan's reason is the people who are reading of our political and some things, but before being political, they're engaged in business every day, and they want information they can trust. >> if he quits, sarah palancin s a whole editorial page. if we quit, we leave the field to lou dobbs and jim cramer, so it would seem in the sense of posture you would want to surround and not ask questions like that, -- want us around and

not ask questions like that. and i think of the point as being a point of trying to educate and not just educate people who happen to watch the show. i never thought i would be talking to more people than would be talking to me, so it seems like an incredible privilege to have the small an audience, but beyond that, i think seriously my main issue is to get the pieces and excerpts from the pieces we do into the hands of high school teachers who have to teach all of americans and who have been facing a tremendous problem, which is economic, a topic most people shrink from because of

the numbers. i know it is happening. >> the scary thing about your audience and my audience -- 1.2 million is a good audience. i was doing washington week in review when they canceled the sponsorship because they said this audience was too old. when you're too old for then arp you know you have a problem. >> i do know what is happening. we do not have an account, but i've spoken to groups, and teachers are desperate because students are not reading the books anymore or not as much, so there is lots of video in the classroom, and if you have video, a little bit of broccoli, a little bit of ice cream, a little bit of stuff moving on the screen and try to explain it, i think that is the point. >> when somebody was making the point this was too big to comprehend, it is our job to try

to take out the points that are most important and make them comprehensible, something people can understand. >> i should add, i think there is a good chance to pursue the truth. that by itself is an important value, and i am sure i am not getting at it, but i am working for it, and that is what i try to do, and make it accessible to people in a format which is digestible. what i was trying to suggest is that by itself is not necessarily going to lead into the garden of eden. >> that is the important point, the people do not always make rational use of this information. i was talking about the credit defaults swaps and stuff like that, but even the people buying it did not understand, but there

was a lot going over the last three years that was easy to understand and i think a lot of people did understand. how many people did not scratched their head a little bit when they heard mortgage companies were making loans -- 100% loans, no money down, and you do not have to prove you have a job or an income, and we will qualify you based on the first year's payment, even though in two years the payment is going to double. everyone knew that was going on, and they chose not to react to it, not because they did not know it, but because it was in their interests. when you have moments of national mania like the one we went through for a couple of years, and we did it again during the internet -- a think it is too simplistic to say it is because people do not know what is going on. i think people knew what was going on in many cases and found

it in their interest to keep it going. >> i think financial journalism has shown its relevance in the last year-and-a-half, because all of a sudden there's a tremendous hunger for it. i think there are questions to be raised for how the coverage was, the quality of it, was the work done -- there is a fair amount of criticism that has already been leveled, but that is why -- i struggled with this question myself. did financial journalism, did everyone really do their job? then you go back and read the journal and elsewhere, and you find a fair amount of people who did great pieces that did not draw in any kind of attention at the time, because people do not want to hear a negative story. they just want to hear, there

is an amazing merger in china. although growth is great, but people do not want to hear warnings. >> we were hearing this question, is a doll becoming opinion? people who criticize this -- is it all becoming opinion? people who criticize the stories did not say, this is an outrage. that is not our job. it is your job to figure out if it is susceptible. >> i did a story in 2006 were two people are talking about whether there is going to be housing crisis or not. the guy has now become famous as the great doomsayer. i was denounced in one place for having tried to cause housing prices. it was clear that the presenter favor the opposition of nouri al

ribini. >> are people really doing the job, now that they are given the opportunity because people have been so directly affected by this -- are we really doing the job not for people on this panel, but media in general, doing the job of letting people know what needs to be done, what regulations need to be put in place, all these kinds of things that perhaps will prevent the next bubble? we went from one bubble to the next novel very quickly, and you get the impression -- to the next bubble very quickly, and you get the impression no one is being warned. >> we went through this 30-year time of increasing confidence in the markets and the ability of markets to self correct, and most of the journalist writing these days were brought up. it is their entire professional

life. it became the accepted wisdom that markets may go a little of stray now and then, but generally, they correct themselves, and then you have this event that really caused in some fundamental ways -- called that into question, and that may be a problem. you are asking all of us -- not just journalists, but all of us to rethink conventional wisdom of three decades, and i do not think any of us have come to grips with that. >> it is beyond even that. there is a conflict of regulations, the issues that night -- that might be raised about our economy, all of these different things i do not get the impression the media are really addressing, and they become easy to deflect by the people who are making money again and all these kinds of things.

>> you have to remember that at the end of today, people who really have the podium are the people we elected into office, that setting an agenda, created a framework in which issues are discussed or not discussed, most of that work is done by officials or their appointees. i would say there is more agenda-setting outside now than 30 or 40 years ago, precisely because of the rise of ideological cable channels and ideological political and partisan websites and logs or whatever, so to some extent, the language and conversation is not completely set by our political class, but when i came into the business, and when alan came into the business, we did not think it was -- what we were

supposed to do was we were supposed to provide information to help people understand what was going on in the world, but we were not supposed to set the agenda. we would sometimes drift into that if we all think we are crusaders and we're going to make the world better, but in general, there was a self restraint, and some people thought it was too much self restraint, but even today, a lot of sense of restraint has dissolved. the people who release of the throne -- set the tone on the subject matter are the people who we elect to office. we rise and fall on their weakness and courage. >> there is information that the media should be providing and the context of their -- >> probably allen has a better sense of this then i der, but

most major newspapers still do and used to have plenty of issue stories during the elections. these are long and sometimes ponderous stories. my guess is they are not that well-written. we do them because they ought to be written. and i think people make it -- my view of politics is there are some people who are avid conservatives and avid liberals, and they know how they're going to vote before the candidates show up, but there's probably a middle 50% or 60% who are not at political and who make a lot of their decisions based on gut feeling about whether they can trust the person and whether the person shares their values or whatever, and we would like to think that we live in this rational world where people sit

down and study things in become experts and then make up their minds, but herbert simon, who was a well-known economist who won the pulitzer -- and nobel prize, came up with this wonderful term, which describes him most of the time. he says he satisfies. we are not rational, but we take all the information dumped on us, and we try to make an educated guess, and balancing that in a crude way, and we had to the information they get, and hopefully, we had now for the better, but i do not think we can think politics over will be a completely rational, logical process. >> particularly in an era where media manipulation is so easy to do. the campaign negative ads, they work. >> the policy is itself so

complex and so quickly changing in its environment that is unfair to suppose there are resources, except in very special places, to do what you were suggesting a few minutes ago. whenever they call the stimulus bill -- the american -- >> recovery. >> that thing was more than a thousand pages long, and i tried to read -- i read parts of it, but nobody is going to pay me even minimum-wage to work as long as it is going to take to completely digest that, and that is the final form of the hill.

-- of avila -- the bill. i have to make a decision all the time. i think we all do. he has not read it. who the hell in america has read it? >> i do think the answer -- there are going to be a group of people out there who really want impartial, fact-check information, and they may have to pay for it and support it in some way, and that is what we are doing. that is what bloomberg does. you have groups better trying to do it in a nonprofit way, raise money for people in support. that is the big question that is going to be solved. how do we find the people who

care enough to pay for it? had weakened and to pay for it now? how do we have a hybrid -- how can we pay for it? how do we have a hybrid model that can spread to the broader public? >> that is what i do. i work for this indirect public address, but those of you that watched the show may notice it is more and more underwriting, more little ants. there is a real encroaching going on with regards to this, which also raises a question, can it be independently in doubt so it does not have to allow to semi and scald underwriters. >> remembering that the main media in fact are very much susceptible to the pressure from advertisers. forgetting even the editorial pressure, they certainly have

pressured to deliver ratings and circulation, so the best way to do that is to have bill o'reilly and keith overmanned -- told german -- olberman, so now when you have something like the economy, there is no appetite to find out why it was people have lost their -- >> the question is how broad is the appetite. i happen to love broccoli, so i do not like this. how do you turn ice cream into broccoli? how do you do the various things you need to do to appeal to the audience? how'd you get it into schools so people are more receptive when they actually become consumers of their own information? >> the economists are doing quite well, and "the economist"

is a magazine completely devoted to information and substance, so there is an audience. >> doing quite well with whom? >> there is an audience. >> in a way the problem is all whole model that mass advertising is the way to support the media, in retrospect, that is what drives you to tiger woods and britney spears, because you need -- it is not about the value of the information. it is about how you get the most eyeballs, but if you can get the conversation away from how you get the most rivals to what kind of information canada produced that is valuable enough to somebody they are willing to pay for it -- how do you get the kind of information that is valuable enough somebody is willing to pay for it? that is what it is all about. getting away from the tyranny of the mass advertising model.

>> the super elite pay for content, and the last stories on bloomberg have been about tiger woods. that is the behavior. i can show you the metric. it is all tiger. >> not on the news hour. >> that is not what i am saying. i am not saying that is what we are dealing with. i am saying the information these people are seeking out at the end of today reaching crisis that a measurement of leadership by people -- >> is that the measurement of leadership by people who subscribe? >> i am talking about people who pay via terminal and then for free on the web. >> it is certainly most popular among the free on the web. >> absolutely among terminal. people who pay to have a terminal.

>> they are not paying $20,000 to get tiger woods. >> no, their employer is. >> they just want to see what bloomberg have to say about tiger woods. >> what we have to do is find out away dead tiger woods created the derivatives they drove us into the -- find out the way tiger woods created the derivatives that drove us into this mess. >> these techniques of trying to figure out how to get people interested in something they would not otherwise be interested in is what we were talking about in which all of us have tried to figure out what to do and had different techniques for trying to do it, but that is the nature of communication, and it has always been. >> in television i just got the nod from the governor who said you have an hour 30, and we're

going to have to wrap this up. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> in a few moments, former u.s. surgeon general and attorney mahoney talk about arguing before the supreme court. after that, interviews with supreme court chief justice john roberts and justice john paul stevens. later, another chance to see the discussion on media coverage of financial markets. tomorrow, american university holds the second day of their annual campaign management institute. you will hear former republican and democratic strategist talking about how to frame issues and target voters. that is live at 10:15 eastern on

c-span 2. ♪ >> this is "america and the courts." next, encore presentations from supreme court week special. first, supreme court journalist lyle denniston and joan biskupic on covering the courts. >> by and large, people that cover us like their work. they know their traditions. they know the schedule, and they do a good job