with the public as a news organization, whereas in reality we're connected with the public that is online. there's a reason why you don't see people live tweeting from congo. there are reasons you don't see people doing citizen journalism from certain neighborhoods in washington, d.c. and we ignore that at our peril. >> i think we're going to see more and more collaboration and that a lot of the collaborations are going to be not only between different kinds of organizations but more that are being done with news. we are starting to do more with youth. i am thinking of the youth radio club in east oakland that won a peabody award. that would not have happened five years ago. i think we will see more people teaming up together to create content with could not do otherwise, bringing in

communities like you thought we might not have looked to to be part of the routine. >> a think what we are going to see, and hopefully not in the next decade, is the point at which the social graf, the interest graf, and the local graf -- the social graph, the interest graph, and the local graph combine to be about a narrative paradigm. that is the point at which social media becomes massively destructive to the current media experience. on the other hand, it is fascinating and wonderful, and hopefully we do it. on the other hand, watch out. >> thank you very much for your participation today. [applause] and thank you to the department of communication for sponsoring this. thank you to all of you for joining us here today. please join us for a reception

right outside. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> president barack obama's bus tour of ohio and pennsylvania it is under way. at his first stop today, the president told the crowd the outcome of the november election will determine the nation's economic future for the next 10 to 20 years. here is a portion.

>> when the american auto industry was on the brink of collapse, and more than one million jobs were on the line, governor romney said we should just let detroit go bankrupt. >> that's what he said! >> i refused to turn my back on communities like this one. i was betting on the american worker and i was betting on american industry. [applause] and three years later, the american auto industry is coming roaring back. [applause] that chrysler plant up the road bringing on another 1,100 employees to make the cars that the world wants to buy. the wrangler built right here in toledo just set an all-time sales record. [applause] what's happening in toledo can happen in cities like cleveland, can happen in pittsburgh. it can happen in other industries. and that's why i'm running for a second term as president, because i'm going to make sure that it does. i want it happening all across this country. [applause] >> four more years! four more years!

>> just like ina said, i want goods shipped around the world, stamped with "made in america." [applause] unlike my opponent, i want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas, start rewarding companies that are investing right here in toledo, right here in ohio, right here in maumee. that's what i'm looking for. [applause] >> we are, too! >> governor romney's experience has been in owning companies that were called "pioneers" of outsourcing. that's not my phrase -- "pioneers" of outsourcing. my experience has been in saving the american auto industry. and as long as i'm president, that's what i'm going to be doing -- waking up every single day thinking about how we can create more jobs for your families and more security for your communities. [applause]

that's why my administration brought trade cases against china at a faster pace than the previous administration -- and we've won those cases. just this morning, my administration took a new action to hold china accountable for unfair trade practices that harm american automakers. [applause] and let me tell you something. americans aren't afraid to compete. we believe in competition. i believe in trade. and i know this: americans and american workers build better products than anybody else -- [applause] -- so as long as we're competing on a fair playing field instead of an unfair playing field, we'll do just fine. but we're going to make sure that competition is fair. that's what i believe. that's part of our vision for america. [applause]

>> tomorrow, the campaign bus trip includes a stop at an elementary school in poland, ohio, near youngstown, followed by a speech at carnegie-mellon, in pittsburgh. we will have the last stop at 2:00 a.m. eastern, on c-span. >> one of my favorite things to talk about is this drug that is in maybe half of pigs, half of the house, and a lot of the turkey. there are multiple drugs. but this particular drug is when they walk onto the killing floor. that means when the animal is killed, this drug is in there. >> this week, martha rosenberg looks behind the seas -- behind the scenes of the food and drug

industry, and finds public health deficiencies. part of a book tv, this weekend on c-span to. >> we should focus on the results we want. it can create jobs. it can sparked innovation. it can expand opportunities. it can guarantee our competitiveness. it can put america back on top. >> you can talk about goals all you want, but we have put up stop signs. we have put a stop lights. none of it ever changes the behavior of congress. >> from the time i lost control of the committee, and we went out to have a beer -- i will have to give you a mortgage interest deduction. i said, what about 26? >> you could make the advantages

to homeowners much more progressive. what we did was to convert the home mortgage deduction to a tax credit at our lower rate. >> changing the tax code, yesterday and today. current and former lawmakers of the bipartisan policy center on the battles won and lost. find it online at the c-span video library. 120 years after the dedication of the statue of liberty, an author has written a book. he sat down at the museum of jewish heritage in new york city in may to talk about the controversies and changing meanings of the american symbol. this discussion is just over an hour.

>> good evening, and welcome. i am the director of collections and exhibitions at the museum of jewish heritage. i am happy to introduce a brand new book, and just a note but we are being taped by c-span, so when we get questions at the end, we will want to entertain them, so i will call you at that point. he is the director of french studies at nyu. he is the author of five other books. those are all in the field of european history. he is currently writing a history of modern europe for oxford university press. in 1999 he received the distinguished teaching award. we are particularly lucky to be

one of the sites to discuss his new book, and this is something we have been looking forward to for over a year now. we have been working with ed and a team of scholars to look at the work of the poet emma lazarus. he has been indelibly linked with the poem at the statue of liberty. good he has worked on the exhibition on display until the end of 2012, and i am pleased he is here to share his inside. -- his insights into the history and meaning of the statue. one reason we decided to do this is this is a big year. we are into the year 125 years into the dedication, so it is a perfect time for your book to come out, and i think very few people really know where the

idea came from for the statue, so give us some insight into how it came into being. >> it came into being in france in the middle of the 19th century. it was 1865 right after the assassination of abraham lincoln, and a group of french people behind the radio were a -- behind the idea were emotionally tied to the united states. they love the american form of government, and they were abolitionists, so they have a particular affection for president lincoln, so they came together at the home of a man who was friends's leading -- who was france's leading specialist on the united states. smoke-filled died in 1859, -- toquevill died in 1859, so a --

toqueville died in 1859, and group of guys got together, and the idea was to try to come up with a way of commemorating the life achievement to celebrate the victory of the north in the civil war and to make a critical comment on their own government. france had an authoritarian government run by napoleon iii, the nephew of napoleon, and it was a government that was not friendly to liberty. they tried to put these together to commemorate abraham lincoln and a way of being critical to the government and get away with it, so the idea

was to criticize their own government by talking about how much better the american system of politics was, so that is the french origin. it comes out of the french situation with a group of well educated french man who wanted to make a comment about their own governments politics, and eventually out of this group came the idea of a colossal statue. but it took a while to get there. i do not know ifi want to talk about a whole development, but the legend says out of this the conception of the big statue in new york harbor happened. it did not take place at all. it's a good about six years for

-- it took about six years for the statue to develop, and the first idea was to build it at the southern end of the suez canal, and it would commemorate the opening of asia on to europe, the bringing of enlightenment to asia, and he had this idea of the coast -- he had this idea because he had studied the ancient world, and he had taken a trip of the nile and seemed a colossal 3000 years -- and had seen the ancient colossus built 3000 years ago, and he was impressed by those, and he wanted to build a colossal statue of his own, and he thought he should building it in egypt, and that

was his first idea, and it is only because the egyptian government ended up being bankrupt. -- bankrupt, in hoc to the british and french, the british were able to use their position of being creditors to buy up the susette -- to buy the suez canal, and that is the reason they took control, and the egyptian ruler did not have the money to finance the statue of liberty, and he went back to france, disappointed he was not going to be able to build the statue and a whole variety of circumstances that intervene. one was the franco prussian war, which kicked him out of his home. here again he was from a province occupied by the germans in 1870. his actual home and was occupied by german soldiers.

good he was a great french soldier, and he went back to -- he was a great french patriot, and he refused to go there as long as it was occupied, and he went back to paris only to have the paris commune break out. that was a revolution in which the working people basically seize control of the government and wanted to institute a radical form of politics. he was a liberal, which would have made him more of a centrist, a moderate diet, and he believe in liberty and republicanism, but he thought the paris commune when weight to far -- went way too far. he could not live in his home city, because it was occupied by the determined -- by the germans, but he could not return to paris, because it was in the hands of political radicals he hated, so the idea

was to go in person to the land of liberty, which to him was the united states. good he had never been there before. he did not speak a word of english. he did not know anybody, and in 1871, he wrote a letter to his friend, the professor in american politics and history, and he said i am leaving france, and i hope to have the liberty. -- i hope to find in america they liberty we do not have here in our own country, and which i hope someday we will. that is how he got to the united states. it was only when he got here that he came up with the idea, you know that statue are was going to build in egypt, it really needs to be in new york harbor. good >> i love hearing about his journey.

in a way, it had even more richness then toqueville's journey. he went from east and west, and he is really seeing america as something much more progressive and done what france have to offer a this time that he came to see this as the only possible true home of the statute. i love his account. i read that the rocky mountains were terrifying because he had never seen anything like that before. >> there was a group of people, they loved america, but it was a theoretical thing. they had never set foot in the united states, and what they knew they read in folks, -- books. and in some newspapers. when he came here for the first time,he figured out immediately the statue was going to go up. he found the island where he was going to put it.

he did not have any takers. no one was interested in this. here was a guy no one knew. he did not speak any english. he had no contact. -- contacts. he wanted to put of a colossal statue in new york harbor, and he wanted the americans to pay for the pedestal it was going to stand on. they thought he was ninth. -- was nuts. he decided, i really need to find out who the americans are and what it is as a country if you're a good -- as a country. he got on a train, and other modes of conveyance. he crossed and took the northerly route on the way up and the southern route. he went all the way to san francisco. he spent six months traveling from the east coast to the west, and back again. compare that to toqueville's trip. toqueville did not give further

west than ohio, and he only spoke to a handful of people, and everyone knows about that trip. "marcus c. in america -- democracy in america" is the book. bartholdi made that pale in comparison. he talked to a wide range of people and explore the countryside, and he wanted to understand what made americans tick, and he was surprised by what he saw. he had read that americans were individualistic. he actually --the saw us as collectivist. he saw the united states as a group of people who likes to form associations, who wanted to be with other people. he saw the french as the individualist and the americans as the more social people, and

from that he concluded he was going to put up his colossal statue. it was going to have your mean something to people as a collective entity, and that is what made him realize the statue of liberty needed to say something to all americans, so he came up with the idea that what it would do is commemorate a hundredth anniversary of the declaration of independence, and this idea worked that he would build the statue in 1876, and it would stand for 100 years of american liberty, along this -- the longest period of liberty anyone had seen, and when he presented it in those terms that it was going to be

the anniversary of the centennial of american liberty. good >> it is interesting that -- the then, it took hold. >> it is interesting that he looked back 100 years to find that moment and will sing to americans, because americans were coming out of the civil war with abolitionist ideals and the position of the french have supported the south, and all of this is creating great anxieties, and the statue is going to help heal those anxieties and the relationship between america and france, so it was a strategic moment, because it is not a contemporary looking backwards. -- not contemporary. it's looking backwards. >> what is important is to gloss over the civil war. the civil war did not jibe with what their understanding was.

-- of what america was. america was the land of liberty. it was orderly liberty. we could be free because we had ourselves under control, and what they feared about the french was that they did not have enough control to live in a free society, and they wanted to figure out how the americans could do it, but they could not look too closely at american history, because recent american history was pretty terrible with the fratricidal conflict of the civil war and slavery contradicted the very ideals of american liberty, so he wanted to take the long view, and in the long view, the civil war receded in importance, especially with the revolution, and especially because the no. north won and slavery

was abolished, so the story had a happy ending. >> let's talk about how the storm of the statute took shape, -- the form of the statue took shape. because we talk about the suez canal, but it is so fascinating that the same time he is starting to do his journey to america, it is starting to take new form to the one we know as liberty, and that curtis and -- from the egyptian one to the one y, and thatlibert crystalizestalized.

that crystallizes it more clearly. >> he goes to egypt, and the first sketches look like an arab woman, and that made sense for egypt, but he also have a lot of other images in his head, and one of them is the colossus of rhodes. this is the ancient statue built on the island of rhodes in the third century bc to commemorate a great victory, and this was a male statues that presided over the island and the city, and it commemorated a great vision. -- victory. when we talk about emma lazarus, we can get back to that, but he has got these different competing images in his head. he has got a colossus of rhodes, but he has also got the goddess of liberty. good these were greek and roman goddesses that surfaced during the french revolution that come from greece and rome that in ancient times represented a freedom of slaves, and those images reemerged to symbolize the liberty the french revolution was supposed to bring, so all during the 19th century in france you have

different versions of a goddess, a female version of liberty, and you see them in sculptures 0000 i i i i i i i ithere is a whole -- you see them in little sculptures, and you see them in paintings. there is a whole series of paintings. a bunch of them that symbolize bartholi. one is "liberty of the people." you have images they are looking for. the image of the goddess of liberty is there for frenchy people to keep in mind what an ideal liberty might be, so when he gets to the us, -- the image of the goddess of liberty is there for french people to keep in mind the ideal of what liberty might be. the french are looking for this ideal, and they end up with

authoritarian governments after having revolutions. the image of the goddess of liberty is there to keep -- four french people who want a more orderly form of liberty, for them to keep in mind what an ideal of liberty might be. all these ideas are jostling around in his head. when he gets to the united states, he decides that his liberty needs to be a classic, ancient, in greek or roman goddess of liberty. it has to be western, because it is going to be in this western power, the united states. it is going to represent the ideal of liberty that was never realized in france in the 19th century. >> how did things get set in motion between bartholdi having the idea, selecting the site -- how did the fund-raising and

engineering get rolling? >> the first thing to say is that the statue of liberty was not a gift from france to the united states. neither government had anything to do with it. neither government raised a single penny toward the statue of liberty. there was a bill in the state legislature of new york and also in congress to put up some money. the bill in new york was vetoed by governor grover cleveland. the congress voted down an appropriation of $100,000. all the money had to be raised by private sources. bartholdi does not speak english. he knows nobody. he goes to the editor of a french newspaper, published in new york. he speaks to this french person. she says, it is not going to do you any good to speak to me. you have to talk to americans. he has a letter of introduction to sumner, the great

abolitionist, because bartholdi is an abolitionist. they meet. people in washington said, why are you talking to us about the statute -- the statue you want to build in new york? talk to people in the york. the united states was still very much a set of separate entities, separate states, in the middle of the 19th century. he did not get any play until the centennial, until 1876. in philadelphia, the celebration in fair amount part -- fair amount park -- fairmount park, bartholdi sent over the arm and the torch. he managed to cobble together some money in france. he goes back to france and comes up with a definitive model.

he starts trying to raise money. he finally gets enough to build the arm and the porch. it goes up during the centennial celebration in philadelphia. zillions of people go to see it. it is the most popular attraction, and the most photographed. bartholdi gets an idea. i can make some money by selling souvenirs. so all the kitsch we see if we go out to the statue of liberty and go into the gift shop, bartholdi, the sculptor, even before he built the thing, was already figuring out how to make money from souvenirs'. that is actually how this fund- raising got off the ground in this country. once philadelphia display the arm and are successfully, your decided, we cannot let this second great town beat us -- new york decided, we cannot let this

town beat us. it went up in new york in -- went up in new york. and there was a world's fair in paris, for which bartholdi build the head. he was a shrewd promoter. he had the process of the building photographed. he could then showed to journalists -- show it to journalists, who got interested, because this was the beginning of the illustrated newspaper. all of a sudden, you could do a lithograph. the technology was not there to publish photographs yet. but you could do a lithograph and present this image that was under construction. people in france were fascinated by this. it helped the fund-raising effort. bartholdi said, i have the arm,

the torch, the head. he let people go inside the head, climb to the top, look out the window. roger kipling said in his memoirs, i was at the world's fair as a boy, and i looked out the windows, and a french guy said to me, young englishmen, you have now looked at the world through the eyes of liberty yourself. it was things like that that made the statues in real even before it existed and allowed them to raise the money. tell me if you know this. i did not know this before i started working on this book. the statue of liberty was built entirely, from head to toe, in paris. it stood in paris for two years before it was dismantled and put in 212 crates and shipped over to the united states. one more thing to mention along those lines. when the torch and arms were

displayed in madison square, "the new york times" ran a snarky editorial in which they said, maybe he is going to build the rest, but if he wanted to convince us, should not have started with the foot and leg? build it up from the bottom. we might be convinced. "the new york times" -- i have quotations from a bunch of editorials. they were warm and cold. they got war mainly after it looked like philadelphia or boston might actually want the statute if new york did not get it. >> i am going to go back in my memory to what am lazarists is doing at this point. -- m l lazarists -- emma lazarus is doing at this point. she was near the park. she was a cultured young woman.

for those of you who do not know much about her, a lot of people assume she was an immigrant herself, who must have had a hard life and come over on a ship. that was not the case. by the time she is going, in 1849, she is a fourth generation jewish-american. even today, a lot of my friends are not fourth generation americans. 1849, before the civil war, she is firmly seated at the american table. but she always knows what it means to be an insider and an outsider at the same time. she had wide access to social circles, intellectual circles, artistic circles, literary circles. at the same time, her jewishness is frequently commented upon. she certainly knows the trials and tribulations of jews in exile. she is an avid student of

history, of anti-semitism, of literary work. this has a profound impact on her thinking as a very young woman and a brighter. -- a writer. by the time the statue is going up in madison square park, she is not yet positioned to be the spokesperson we would know her to be with "the new colossus." but remind is hard at work to break down society and recast it in her own poetic terms. even as a teenager, studying with the transcendentalist, she is constantly looking at these events, whether it is the civil war -- she might have seemed the funerary casket of abraham lincoln go by. just as bartholdi is thinking about these forces that will create a new version of liberty, and a new american model, she is at work in new

york, thinking about the plight of immigrants and refugees, which will crystallize in sharp relief in the 1890's, a few years later. she undoubtedly -- the 1880's, a few years later. it did not mean that much to her until 1883. there is a moment where all of these things come together. but how were other americans, people such as mark twain, perceiving this statue? what was some of the other buzz? >> there was a fair amount of skepticism about the statue. the editorial in "the new york times"-- and there were certain religious figures who thought the statue of liberty was a pagan image. they were read about that. there were a lot of others --

they worried about that. there were a lot of others who did not understand why you would build a greek goddess in new york harbor. americans did not do that sort of thing. they did not build big monuments. this was a country whose economy was just beginning to develop. in the second half of the 19th century, it was exploding. but this was a practical place. people were hard at work, building an economy from scratch. they were not stopping to commemorate things. when they did, it took a long time. it was a hard process. it took something like 40 years to build the washington monument. this was to the greatest hero in american history, the founding father. it was clear what the washington monument was about. it was about george washington. it was not clear what the statue

of liberty was about. this is where emma came in. emma, more than bartholdi, defined what the statue of liberty would mean. it did not occur to bartholdi that the statue of liberty would represent an open door to immigration. for him, it represented the abolition of slavery. that is why there are chains under the foot of the statue of liberty. it represented 100 years of american orderly liberty. and it represented the french ship he hoped to see between france and the united states. -- the friendship he hoped to see between france and the united states. immigration did not cross his mind. >> in france, she was called "liberty enlightening the world ." emma changes that identity

forever. we do not know the statue of liberty with the title "the new colossus," but it makes sense. she refrains the statue as a symbol of immigration. she sets that in motion in 1883. this is a storm that makes great sense for her, in her professional, emotional heritage and development. she is through seeing the effects of anti-semitism, the russian pogroms, the great wave of immigrants in 1882 that are not finding jobs at home or in new york. she volunteers for the hebrew immigrant aid society. she goes to the refuge. this is the direct experience we can attribute her writing to.

by the time that americans need to fund raise for the pedestal, she is positioned to be the spokesperson. tell us how that happened. >> the american role is to finance the building of the pedestal. we are in the early 1890's -- 1880's. the statue is in paris, paid for. it is our turn to come up with the money. the fund-raising committee is not doing well. one of the ideas the committee has is to get a bunch of prominent american artists to contribute a work, auction off that work, and to use the proceeds to pay for the pedestal. this is the origin of the and the lazarus' poem -- the emma lazarus poem. her first impulse was to say, i do not do stuff like that. i am a poet. i wait for a news.

i am not a writer for hire. i write because it comes from within. one of her friends, and esther short quotes this -- shore quotes this in her biograph of emma, says, you have been working with jewish immigrants who are suffering, who have fled a place where they how often persecuted. you are working with these people. you have come to feel for them. you should write a poem that represents their plight. emma then understood she could connect the plight of jewish refugees to the statue of liberty. she did depth. -- she did that. as some top scholars have said,

she did that by giving the statue of liberty a voice. she makes the statue speak. "give me your tired." the statue is talking. she breathes life into this in our statute, something that would not have occurred to a sculptor, because that is not what sculptors do. in that sense, emma lazarus, you could argue, is more important to our understanding of the statue of liberty than the guy who built it. >> some critics even said, you gave it a raison d'etre. your work is perhaps more important than that of the sculptor. that is hard to believe, but it did forever change the message. to getting to know emma lazarus, it is only by knowing heart evolution as a jewish american who came to understand the

plight not only of jewish refugees, but for all those in exile, that there would not be an easy answer, especially in the urban centers -- she starts to reclaim the message. -- reframe the message. most people who know the palm only know a few lines. i learned it singing the irving berlin song from "miss liberty."" but i have come to read the poem in a different way, and read the front end, which sets up the second half. i am going to read through it. "not like the brazen giant of greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land, here at our sunset gates will stand a mighty woman with a torch, framing be

imprisoned lightning. her name -- mother of exiles. for mild eyes command the harbor. keep coming ancient lands, your storied pomp. give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched masses. i lift my lamp beside the golden door. i love what ester shore says. it is a poem of welcome, but also protest. we are not just going to search -- going to accept the ancient world. we have a different idea in mind. help us make sense of this poem. >> the image of the colossus that artists like bartholdi had

came from a german lithograph of the colossus of rhodes. it shows a gigantic male figure astride two slivers of land, cut by a harbor. this was the harbor at rhodes. this 18th-century lithograph was very different, archaeologists found out, from the original statue, the colossus of rhodes. it was a warrior, male, powerful, and giant, presiding over a victorious country. not like the brazen giant of greek from -- fame. we are not doing that. >> she starts out with a negative statement. that is not how we normally think of poems, criticizing something else. >> not with conquering limbs.

we are not going to do that. we are going to have a milder image. the image is still going to be a mighty woman with a torch. but the transformation has been from a male warrior to a female image. it is not a demure woman. it is a powerful woman, a mighty woman. she has captured lightning. it is the imprisoned lightning. and her name -- she gave her the name "mother of exiles." she is a mother figure. >> that is the big moment in the poem nobody knows. >> she is shifting from the negative to the positive. we are not going to do the thing the ancients did, with a warrior culture. we are going to do something completely new. we are going to welcome all kinds of people who are suffering and need a safe harbor. what we are going to do is we

are going to have the my the lady -- the mighty lady go out into new york harbor and bayview welcome to our -- bid you welcome to our country. worldwide welcome. mild eyes command the harbor. we go in to the quotation. there is one more negative comment. emma has the statue of liberty say, "keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp." we are going to be more humble. we are going to welcome the masses, the people who have nothing. we are going to give them something. >> i love thinking about this whole poem, knowing more about

the history of the statute and emma lazarus. it is not just this trope. it is saying so much more. another thing that is seldom known is that within the same colossus,"writes "new co she writes "1942," a companion piece -- "1492," a companion piece. columbus comes to america at the same time the jews are cast out. she says there will be a new land. there is an account of how she was convinced to write the poem. think of those immigrants you are championing. this poem, "1492," directly

following "the new colossus," we know her story influenced this poem. she was not writing from a lofty place. >> she was writing from the heart. she was writing from experience. she was riding throughout the life experience that changes you. i think that, as you said, things were percolating, but they really came together in the early 1980's, in new york, out in the east river. she was working with and giving solace to people who were lost, hoping to find a home. the fact that these people were jewish, like emma lazarus -- her do deism was both important to her and not important to her. she had been accepted into the

high society of new york, which was a christian society. she was accepted into the society without denying her jewishness or playing it down. it was not necessarily front and center for her. i think the experience of working with the jewish refugees, and then thinking about how to cast their experience in these literary terms -- that was a life changing experience. it represented a change that had taken place, and allowed her to complete that change. she had a different identity now. now, she was a person who spoke for a group of people who were part of her. the poems she wrote -- she was always a brilliant poet. but her poems were not so connected with an intimate emotional life experience. i think this is what happened in

these poems. >> a lot of people do not know that she died very young. she died by age 38 of hodgkin's disease. she travels to europe. she comes home. there is a chance, on the boat, she might have gotten up on deck and some in the statute. but she made it -- she may never have seen it completed. when she dies, this poem, the only poll most americans know her for, is relatively unknown. after that fund-raiser, the poem goes into obscurity, for the most part. what happens to the poem? how does it get united with the statute and start speaking to the new generation? >> that is something that most

surprised me, researching this book, is how completely the poem was forgotten for the first 20 years of its life, and arguably even for the first 50 years. she writes it in 1883 for the fund-raiser. it falls into obscurity. it is overshadowed by a xenophobic reaction against the huge numbers of people pouring into the united states. this is beginning in the 1880's, going up to the first world war. there are tens of millions of people who come in. these people, for the most part, are considered to be different from those who are already here. the new people come from southern europe and eastern europe. they are catholics and jews rather than protestants. that difference mess --

differentness were is a lot of people. there is a fear the country will become unrecognizable. the people who are not like the northern european protestants who settled the country originally -- so many people are coming here that we are not going to know who we are anymore. there is quite a fierce reaction against it. one of the best or worst examples of that is a poem that was written in 1890 -- published as a book in 1895, first written in 1892, by a guy called aldridge, who was the editor of "the atlanta." it prominent literary person. -- "the atlantic," a prominent literary person.

he promotes the statue of liberty as a white goddess whose role is to protect the united states from all the dangerous people who are coming in. the first image of the statue of liberty that is associated with immigration presents immigration in a negative light. the purpose of the statue is not to welcome the immigrants, but to shield us. the title of the aldridge poem is "unguarded gates." is it well to leave the gates unguarded? these are the worries that preoccupy people. what precipitates this is that the u.s. government decides they need to build a center to receive all the immigrants, and they want to build the center not on the mainland, but out in the harbor, so that people considered undesirable do not even get to set foot in the

country. the original idea is to build the immigration reception center on the same island for the statue of liberty stood. that produced an uproar. an uproar. people said, how can we solely the statue of liberty -- sully the statue of liberty, a great american monument, with the riffraff from europe? this is where ellis island came in. the compromise is to put the immigration reception center in another place, next door. it is not far away, but it is not symbolically on the same place. in fact, originally, the statue of liberty had to be physically separated from immigration in order for both, in a way, to be accepted. finally, in 1903, the economy is in much better shape.

the economy in the last two decades of the 19th century is worse than we are experiencing now. it is a to decade-long depression. -- a two-decade-long depression. it is the gilded age. a small group of people are doing extremely well, and a large group of people are suffering. in that environment, immigration is controversial, then as now. it was not until the economy picked up in the early years of the 20th century and there were more writers who began to talk about the statue of liberty in positive terms, related to immigration -- a great moment of that is the play "the melting pot." it is an ode to the greatness of america as a country that can receive people from everywhere and blend them together so we can be interpreted.

-- integrated. in that play, which became popular, and the president went to sea in 1908, the statute is represented there the way emma did, as a beacon of welcome for people from abroad. that begins the process, which does not come to fruition until the new deal. it is not until then that the poem and the statue get routed as a symbol of welcome for immigrants. >> how did the new deal and the effects of world war ii change the place of the statue in american imagination? >> the first thing that happened is that immigration basically was over. in 1924, the immigration act reduced immigration to a tiny trickle. by the 1930's, even though it was obviously a time of great

economic difficulty, people were not worried about immigration, because there were so few people coming in. one of the things the roosevelt administration wanted to do, in the face of the economic depression and threats from abroad, the threat from nazi germany, was to foster unity in this country. one way to do that would be to explicitly set out to make the immigrants, who were now, most of them, american citizens, many of whom had been here for a couple of decades, to make them and the rest of the country feel we were all one nation. there was an explicit effort in the new deal to create a sense that we were a country of immigrants. we could be united around the idea, and this was a good thing. nothing better stood for this motion and then -- notion than emma lazarus's poem.

during the war, confronted with terrible tyrannies, the statue of liberty seemed to represent america as an island of safety in the midst of this hideous terror that was going on in europe. >> one of the exhibitions a the museum is called "voices of liberty." it features audio testimony by survivors and other refugees in the 20th century, particularly holocaust survivors, in finding great hope in that simple. i know you have come across great quotations. >> many of these i found in a compilation for the centennial of the statue of liberty, again completely financed by private contributions. there was not a single penny that went into the restoration of the statue of liberty. people were asked for donations. a lot of people sent letters with them. here is one from the holocaust survivor, in not very good

english. she says, i have spent many years in concentration camp by hitler. i lost father, mother, three sister, two brothers. was agony, hunger, torture. our uncle in the united states made affidavit. we arrive in january, 1948. was a blizzard. we pointed to that lovely lady, the statue of liberty, the biggest dream i ever had. you read things like that, and you really understand what the statue of liberty is about, and why it is such an emotional symbol for us. i will not read them now, but there are earlier quotations of people, jews who escaped pogroms in russia, who remember what it was like to see the statue of

liberty, and to know they were safe when they saw the statute. bartholdi understood. he did not think of the statue of liberty as welcoming immigrants, but he that came into the night states would have to almost touch the statue of liberty. you go through the narrows added channels every boat into a place where you have to come so close to the statute that you cannot miss it. why when you saw the statue, you could reach out and touch it. you thought the boat was going to tip over. everybody was crying. people are crying when they see the statue of liberty, and she becomes alive. they speak to her and she speaks to them and they speak to her.

it is this amazing and emotional experience. you know you are here when you see the statue of liberty and you can reach out and touch it. >> even though she is such a fixed icon, it looks like she is always in motion, almost coming out of the harbor, through the mist. in some of these more recent times, she was a very powerful symbol during 9/11. how did americans come to imagine her in the face of 9/11? >> afterward, the statue of liberty, everyone was relieved the statue of liberty was untouched. we were especially relieved because we need the objectives of terrorism were symbolic. one of the reasons they went after the world trade towers was because it was a symbol of american economic power. it was easy to see that

terrorists could have gone after the statue of liberty, too, so there was relief and the idea that that statute of liberty still standing was a symbol of resilience of the united states , and partly the statue became a symbol of resilience because this is not a demure little lady. this is a tough mother of the harbor. you can see her back foot is up as if she is striding, moving forward, and she is going into that at way and, whenever headwinds are going to becoming at best, she is going to be standing there and protect us, standing at the gate so the indicted states in our most import harbor. she represented that extraordinary resilience of the city and the country as a whole after those attacks. >> it is like she is lifting that lamp, like it is an active

gesture, it is not a piece of antiquity. it is very much for americans, for visitors, for tourists, and for american jews and very powerful symbol of that eternal light and hope. >> absolutely, and we can get into that details of the construction of the statue, but this was an amazing feat of engineering in the 1880's, to build the statue of liberty. you probably know that skeleton was built by gustav eiffel, and to be able to pull that off and be able to have that thing stay up and the winds of new york harbor was an incredible feat, and also at the same time give the idea that the statue is in motion, that is even more extraordinary, i think. to be able to pull that off, to

be able to create this work of public art that could take all these new meanings and for different generations under different circumstances, so that after 9/11 it could mean resilience, something of a sculptor never intended, but it showed the power of his art, that his art was able that mean for people in all kinds of different times and a different generations, circumstances. >> i am sure that members of our audience have their own memories and questions about the statue, so we will now take a moment and there will be a microphone floating to the audience. let me know if you have a question, we will ask you to keep the questions rather than comments, but we will be happy to take some from the floor. in the back. >> in the exhibit, there is an early proposed sketch of the

statue, where she is holding the torch in one arm, and there is a cast in which she has it in the other arm. did it bartholdi change that for symbolic purposes? >> great question. he changed the arms because one of the first incarnations had hurt holding a broken chain in the hand that now holds the tablet, because it was supposed to represent the abolition of slavery. by the time this that you got built, so the original conception is a few years after the civil war, by the time pistache got built, the abolition meaning gave way to the idea that the statue represents the majesty of law, and that is why she is

holding a tablet. there is an engineering reason why the torch had to be in one arm and not the other, given the way that the statue was going to be facing. >> other questions? we have one over here. >> i think this statute is moses for me. he had no torch, but he had tablets. was this a thought in the 19th century, this special jewish connotation of the statute? >> what were the jewish connotations in the 19th century? >> the notion as the statue as a female moses. >> as a kind of moses.

that really makes a lot of sense. that is of course true. holdi ot know that bartle had the idea of moses' liberating the jewish slaves of egypt, but any educated, cultivated corporate -- person at the time would note that story intimately. and the fact that his our original idea was to put it in egypt and the fact that he had been involved in abolitionist activities certainly makes completely plausible, a sensible idea, that somewhere in there was the idea that the statue was a kind of moses, liberating the jewish slaves. absolutely. one of the thing steep mentioned about abolition, and that is by

the time the statue finally went up in 1886, it took a long time to build, and long time to raise the money, and by then the reconstruction period was over. that turned a fair number of americans against the way that reconstruction had unfolded. and so the imagery of abolition had been submerged enormously. in the 1880's, it was a period of a lot of racial strife in this country, as different parts of the country were trying to reestablish a racial hierarchy -- lynchings in the 1880's, there was an average of two mentions every week. the african-american commentary on the statue of liberty when it went up was quite possible. it either said what is this image of liberty meaning in this

country people without origins are suffering that way? there was a feminist reaction, too. you have made liberty and woman, and women do not have the right to vote. there was a group of suffragists the chartered a boat and sailed it out to the statue of liberty for the inauguration ceremony, and they had a bullhorn. you can imagine as part of the official ceremony, and they spread the sasha just -- the separatist message, which means if you are onto promulgate the image of liberty, you have to lead as the. >> why don't we sum up by talking about the ways the statute exists all over the world to make a statement, just not in new york harbor. >> probably the one to begin

with is the goddess that the chinese still put up in yemen square in 1989. -- in tiananmen square in 1989. the man who came up with the idea at a post card of the statue of liberty, and he was from some town about three hours by train from beijing. the reason i know about this is he was interviewed in a column, and he told the story, so he goes on a train, goes to beijing for the standard -- the photograph to the structure of liberty, and he goes to the arts school, and the students decide they need to represent their movement by creating a statue of liberty. they build this goddess of liberty out of papier-mache, and there are other materials they could cobble together, and at

the last minute they changed the feature of the sectors to make it look more chinese for fear that the government would come down on them if they produced two obvious western images. there is a good a graph that i could not get the right to, so i could not put it in my book, a photograph of the goddess of liberty in the square looking to strike at a huge banner of mao, as if to say, "we're going to make it and you are not pure " that is the clearest representation of how other people have used the statue of liberty to represent ideals of liberty that they want. there are almost 40 countries that have replicas of the statue of liberty. there are four japan, two from earlier periods in china, france

has 13 replicas of the statue of liberty, there are three in paris alone, in ukraine there is a statue of liberty -- any place where at a point in time people have wanted to express their desire for liberty, for change, for a better way of life, the staff virtue of liberty is an image that comes to mind. that is why there are so many replicas. >> i love one of the things i heard you say before, that she comes to represent what ever we need her for. i think it is a great idea that she is both a piece of the past, that she is also leading the way for ideals. >> that is after 9/11 why we need her for reassurance, for a sense of persistence. she had been there in new york harbor for over 100 years. she was unscathed by this attack.

so we could look to the statue of liberty as a hope that she has persisted and so will we. >> great, and this is only a fraction of what you touch on in your book, "the statue of liberty: 8 transatlantic story." thank you for being here tonight. [applause] inesident obama's bus tour ohio is under way. at his first stop today, the president told the crowd the outcome of the november election will determine the nation's economic future for the next 10 to 20 years. here's a portion. >> i am running because i believe that in america nobody should go bankrupt because they

get sick. i will work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but a lot i passed -- but the law i passed is here to stay. [cheers] let me tell you something, it is gone to make the vast majority of americans more secure. when not go back to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against people just because they were sick. we're not but to tell 6 million young people that suddenly they do not have health insurance. we're not want to allow medicare to be turned into a voucher system. now is not the time to spend four more years fighting battles

we fought two years ago. that is the time to move forward and make sure every american has affordable health insurance and that insurance companies are treating them fairly. that is what we fought for. that is what we're going to keep. we're going to move forward. >> [unintelligible] the bus trips wraps up in pittsburgh. we will have live coverage, getting under way at 1:50 p.m. eastern live on c-span tomorrow. mitt romney is back in new york to continue his fourth of july weeklong break. he is back on the campaign trail on sunday when he attends a fundraiser with eric cantor. you can see a number of his campaign events online at c- span.org. >> we pulled and the refueling

at 9:30 that morning. >> kirk lippold on the al qaeda attack. >> at 11:18 in the morning there was a thunderous explosion. you could feel all 800 tons of destroyer crossed up and to the right. it is like we seemed to hang in the air. the ship was doing this odd twisting and flexing. ceiling tiles popped out. everything lifted up off my desk about a foot and slammed down. >> more with kirk lippold sunday at 8:00 p.m.. >> cory booker gave the

commencement address last month at stanford university. speaking to an audience of more .han 25 ,000 this is 50 minutes. >> it now gives me great pleasure to introduce this year 's commence speaker, cory booker, the nature of new wark, -- the mayor of newark, new jersey. energetic, upbeat, inspirational, honest broker, determined to make a difference, ranked among the top 10 for the 2010 world mayor prize. careless, determined, committed.

that is how the press -- fear less, determined, committed, that is how the press has characterized quarry poker. -- cory booker. he is a former member of the stanford cardinal football team. board in washington, he grew up in a predominantly white suburb in new jersey. his parents were one of the first black executives at ibm. as an undergraduate he studied political science. interested in helping urban youth then, he volunteered at a crisis hot line, reaching out to young people. after receiving his degree in

1991, he earned his second degree in sociology. awarded a road scholarship, he stuttered -- he studied at oxford. he earned his j.d. from the yale law school. he moved to new ark. at the time it was one of the most violent cities in the nation, a city with a glorious history. booker has also -- often described cities as the last frontier to make real the promise of america. he believed that newar wask city. in 1998, he was elected to the new york city -- newark city council. some of his messages were on orthodox. one of the best examples, he went on a hunger strike and

camped out in the middle of a housing project. this was an act that prompted dozens of neighbors to join him because they were concerned about his safety, and it worked. the mayor, who had opposed earlier efforts, agreed to increase police patrols in the area. in 2002, poker decided to take on city hall literally. he ran for mayork against the incumbent. after losing, he withdraw from the public eye. he remained focused on transforming his city, and four years later he ran again. in 2006, cory booker was elected 36 mayor of newark. serving in the second term, one reporter called him having an

epic determination. he understood a city cannot flourish unless families feel safe. he tackled crime-prevention in a typical booker way -- hands on. he patrolled the streets at night with his security team. he partnered with businesses and raised millions of dollars to install more surveillance cameras. he hired a police chief who put more officers on the street in evenings and weekends when crime was most read it. in two years, the murder rate dropped 36%, and on april 1, a 2010, newark marked its first month in 44 years without a homicide. [applause] under his leadership the city

has added more affordable housing, increased the number of parks and green spaces, and attracted millions in private the flag debate. after he expressed concern about low academic achievement, mark sector berg committed $100 million to improve schools. despite a grueling schedule, he remained one of the nation's most accessible mayors, stunning to appeals, holding regular office hours, and using social media to stay in touch. he has more than 1 million followers on twitter, a few years ago, when a constituent tweeted him, cory responded, "please to not worry about your dad. i have salt, shovels, and great volunteers, and yes, the mayor

doubled his driveway. since his days as a big brother, cory has been concerned about at risk use. when a couple teenagers were arrested for spray painting graffiti, cory cited to meant to them, taking them out for meals and arranging to drink, but also setting standards for best behavior and language. two months ago on arriving home, he saw smoke coming from the building next door. he heard a woman's scream at her daughter was trapped upstairs. the security detail try to keep him back, but he said, this woman is going to die if we did not help her. help he did, running into the building and suffering burns and smoke inhalation, but stating that woman. hours later he was back on line -- [applause]

hours later he was back on line tweeting reassurances to everyone concerned. fire officials characterized his rescue as barry erick, but very dangerous. -- very heroic, but very dangerous. he said that one moment he might not make it. that seems to me to characterize cory's lucien. he has the courage to do the right thing, even when it is scary. that courage, that conviction, has helped improve the lives of people in his community and beyond. he exemplifies the potential of every stanford graduate to make a profound difference in our world. please join me in warmly welcoming one of stanford's own, newark mayor cory booker.

all right! >> thank you. thank you. all right. thank you. last time i was on this field some guy from ucla tried to bury me right here. it's good to be back on top of the soil. i feel so lucky to be here. i really do. it's a feeling that stanford has given me for all the years i've been involved with this amazing university. i know there are some people here that felt like me after freshman orientation. you got back to your dorm, you closed the door, and sat on your couch and said, "why did they let me into this place?" i began from that moment on when people got impressed that were not from the stanford community and said, "you went to stanford?" and i said, "yes." well, they let me in because of my 4.0 and 1,600. and i said it was 4.0 yards per

carry and 1,600 receiving yards my senior year in high school. every step of my stanford career this university has given me immensely more than i have ever been able to give it. and i feel on this day when we celebrate the class of o-12 -- >> o-12! >> that we -- is this going to go on my whole speech, guys? i'll be very careful when i use that then. i feel that this university and this moment for me just fills me again with a sense of gratitude. for me and this great class, today is not just a day of celebration, but it is a day of appreciation. and allow me, with the class, to just give my thanks. first, thanks to the trustees of this university. i had a chance to serve with them for five years. it is one of the most incredible assemblages of human beings on the planet and they

pour their heart and their spirit into this university to protect its highest values and to ensure that it endures. thank you, board of trustees. [applause] i want to thank the faculty and staff. i have never, ever, in my life, seen folks that have not just mastered their discipline, not just mastered their academic endeavor, but showed to me and other students a level of love, caring, involvement and spirit that sustains me to this day. my connection to faculty members, here, at this university, has not been severed just by leaving here. indeed, it's a faculty member every time i've gotten inaugurated as an elected official. it was always my family there and even a stanford faculty member, jody maxmin, who joins me on that stage. please thank all of the faculty members, as well, for all that they've done.

and i want to thank another group that i probably did not say thank you to enough -- a group that is often first forgotten. those are the people that really keep this university running. they are the secretaries and the assistants. they are the people that mow the lawns and water the grass. they are the people that clean toilets and bathrooms and windows. they are a part of the stanford community and their caring and concern has made this day possible, as well. please thank them. and, finally, i want to thank the families. you are the ones that really made this day possible. each and every graduate has someone tied to them by blood and/or spirit who was there for

them, who planted seeds in their spirit, who nurtured the ground on which they grew. you are responsible for them being here and, while they were here, you sent care packages, made phone calls, sent money. and that's, perhaps, what i want i want to talk about today. family, not the money part. all us politicians are focused on more than just that. the family. today is father's day, and i thought i would focus, really, on two men in my life. i am one of those guys that knows in my heart that women in this globe -- philanthropists are finding this out, so many people are seeing that -- if you support women, that you will help change neighborhoods, change cities, change countries. and from a man who is part of the african-american tradition, which is rich with matriarchal power and strength, please do

not think that while focusing on men today that i do not understand that truth. but, today, for a very specific reason, i want to focus on two men in my life who were at my graduation. and i know they would like to be here today but, for reasons i'll mention later, they could not make the trip. these two men are my dad and my grandfather. they taught me what it means to be a man. and they both are these outrageous spirits with the corniest jokes imaginable and they would show up to my graduation and both of them would be like a stereophonic bad joke-telling machine as they would weigh in to me. my grandfather, this huge, big, man would sidle up to me and say, "you see, boy, the tassel is worth the hassle." yes, granddad, yes. and then, of course, he would look through the program and say, "i see that you're not magna cum laude or summa cum laude. you're just "thank you, lord,

i'm out of here." my father would not be undone. he, too, was at every one of my graduations and his jokes got more painful as the years went on. he and my mom would love to say -- they'd look at me and they would whisper to another parent and they would take the line and say, "you know, behind every successful child is an astonished parent. i really can't believe this unbelievable." my father got tired of graduations after a while. he's a guy that went to college and then went to work and he saw me graduate from stanford once, graduate from stanford twice, then go to england and study and get another degree, then go to law school. and, finally, he said at my last graduation, "boy, you got more degrees than the month of july and you ain't hot! get a job!" i want to pick up on these two incredibly corny men and really

get to their two specific lessons that they imparted to me on graduation. my dad would touch me almost like he was trying to feel my very spirit. he would look at me and he would say in ways that are eloquent, he would impart to me this truth, he would say to me, "boy, you need to understand that who you are now, you are the physical manifestation of a conspiracy of love. that people whose names you don't even know, who struggled for you, who fought for you, who sweat for you, who volunteered for you -- you are here because of them. do not forget that." my father said those words on a graduation day and he knew that i would not forget that because this was his consistent theme to me all of my life. he wanted me to know where i came from. now, my father, in his own

charismatic way, would always talk about his own journey being one that was a result of a conspiracy of love. and i listened to those stories year after year. by the time i was 40, i would start arguing with him because the scenes would get so much more dramatic with time and change. can'td be like, "dad, i believe this, you were born a poor boy." he goes, "poor? i wasn't poor. shut up, man." i said, "dad." he goes, "no, i wasn't poor, i was just p-o. i couldn't afford the other two letters. don't exaggerate my material well-being, son." i'd have to argue with him and try to convince him that he was not telling the full truth when the weather patterns began to shift over the years from, you know, raining in the mountains of north carolina, then the thunder storms started, then the hail period began, where it went from hail the size of golf balls, then footballs, then soccer balls, then small cadillacs. this last year i argued with him because he tried to tell me, and i couldn't accept it, i had to be respectful of my dad, but

i could not accept it -- "there's no way, dad, you were in the mountains of north carolina, you could not have had a tsunami in your childhood." but as much as my dad seemed to exaggerate aspects of his childhood over the years, the truth is he was born very poor. he was born to a single mother who could not take care of him. he then was raised by his grandparents, like many children in my community, but then his grandma could not take care of him. and then he was out in the community but it was that conspiracy of love people whose names i do not know in a small, segregated, north carolina town -- that rallied around this boy, would not let him fail, got him to school, put a roof over his head, put food on the table, taught him discipline and respect, and he made his way. and then when it was time for him to graduate high school, he

was not going to go to college. he thought his destiny was to go to work, get a job. but it was that conspiracy of love that would not let him turn his back on higher education. i couldn't believe it. this last thanksgiving as my family was going around talking about what we were thankful for, here is my father that begins to cry because he could not remember all of those people in the town. he could not say their names, who put dollar bills in envelopes so that he could afford his first semester's tuition at north carolina central university and then get a job and stay in school. but they are a part of that conspiracy of love. and then, in college, my mom and dad would not let me forget the truth of that time -- it was the early 1960's. and i had this privilege last year being the commencement speaker for my mom's university, fisk university, on her 50th reunion. and she reminded me about what

happened at her university. at the night before dinner, she took me around to table after table, stopping and saying, "cory, this is the young lady that led our voter registration movement at a time that it was dangerous in the south to go out and register people to vote -- you all remember goodwin and chaney and schwerner." she would take me to another table and say, "this is a young lady that led our boycott of a downtown store that would not serve african-americans." at every table, it was almost like she was talking to me again as boy, snapping her fingers and saying, "pay attention! this person marched for you. this person protested for you. this person sacrificed and risked expulsion for you." the conspiracy continued. my parents would tell me about landing in washington, d.c. -- that's where they met two college graduates, african- americans that confronted the reality that many companies would not hire blacks.

but it was this conspiracy of love -- black folks and white folks and latinos, in washington, d.c. and elsewhere in america -- that were forming organizations that were challenging companies and working with them to hire blacks. my dad soon became one of the first blacks hired by an oil company, then one of the first black professionals hired by a department store. then, he and my mom became part of a wave of the first blacks hired from this small tech start-up you all out here in silicon valley may not have heard of called ibm. the conspiracy continued. when my parents got promotions after doing so well at ibm, they got moved to the new york city area. they were looking for towns to move into and, immediately, found out that many of the nicest towns with the best schools would not show the homes to black families. and so my parents worked with this group of conspirators who formed something called the fair housing council, and every time my parents would go look at a house and were told it was sold, they would send a white couple there to see if that was the

truth. i was told that white couple's name was mr. and mrs. brown, but they were not brown. my parents fell in love with a home. they were told it was sold. the browns were there next, told it was still for sale. they put a bid on the house. on the day of the closing, my father went instead of the browns with a young lawyer whose name i don't know, walked into the real estate agent's office and said, "you are in violation of new jersey fair housing law." and before he could finish his piece, this young lawyer, bright and ready to confront injustice, the real estate agent stands up and punches the lawyer in the face. he sics a dog on my dad. now, the size of the dog has changed over the years. my father now insists it was spawn from hell, it was cujo. my mom will whisper to me it was just toto, cory, it was really a small thing.

and so there i was, 1970, a baby growing up in this town. my father and my mother, my brother and me -- as my father referred to us "four raisins in a tub of vanilla ice cream." and in this amazing town, in this nurturing community, i grew strong and had my share of success -- high school all- american football player, i was in the honor society, president of my class. but if my parents saw me getting too big for my britches, if they saw me looking proud, my father would be right there. he would say to me, "boy, don't you dare walk around this house like you hit a triple, when you were born on third base!" he would say to me, "you need to understand something, you drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty and

opportunity that you did not dig. you eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for you by your ancestors. you sit under the shade of trees that you did not plant or cultivate or care for. you have a choice in life, you can just sit back, getting fat, dumb, and happy, consuming all the blessings put before you, or it can metabolize inside of you, become fuel to get you into the fight, to make this democracy real, to make it true to its words that we can be a nation of liberty and justice for all." and so, in answer to my father's call, when i had exhausted most of the degrees available to any bright student, i moved to newark, new jersey. and i tell you, it was not some

great altruism. i was looking to be the man that my father raised me to be. i was in search of myself and i found a community of heroes that embraced me and brought me back full circle to family. when i first arrived in newark, i decided to answer that call from that great american philosopher, chris rock, who said, "why is the most violent street in every city is named for the man that stood for nonviolence?" newark had so many strong neighborhoods, but i sought out one that was in struggle and found it on martin luther king boulevard. it looked spectacularly troublesome to me. my eyes saw abandoned homes being used for drugs. my eyes saw violence. my eyes saw graffiti. but the first person i met, the tenant leader in high-rise

projects that i would eventually move into, miss jones, she said to me, "tell me again what you see. describe what you see around you." and i described what i saw. and she looked at me and she said, "boy, if that's all you see, you can never help me." and i go, "what do you mean?" and she goes, "you need to understand something, that the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. and if you see only problems and darkness and despair, that's all there's ever going to be. but if you're one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes, you see hope, opportunity, possibility, love -- even the face of god -- then you can help me make a change." and i remember, after she said that, looking at her, scratching my head, and thinking to myself -- ok, grasshopper, thus endeth the lesson. i worked with this woman, this tenant leader, and i would sit at her kitchen table and watch these other african-american women sit around that table in these projects being run by a

slumlord and they would sit there and strategize about how to take care of the kids in the community, how to keep a family in their housing when they missed a rental payment. i stood there and i watched them thinking about how to support that community and i found it, i found conspirators. i found people coming together and they weren't just in those projects -- all over newark i saw more and more people who had a courage, who had a spirit, who had a love. and so, for my father's sake, i want to explain to you the three things that these conspirators all had in common. one was they embraced discomfort. they did not seek comfort and convenience. they went to where the challenges were. here were people around me in newark doing extraordinary things outside of their comfort zones.

like the man who was a retired state worker that got his stimulus check in the mail and, instead of just spending it on himself, he went out and got a lawn mower, marched into one of our troubled drug lots -- there was this big grassy, overgrown, field with trash and debris -- and he started cleaning it. he made it look like the white house lawn. never confronting a drug dealer, but eventually they left. like the woman who came to me in my office hours, an 80-year- old woman, complaining to me about how dirty her street was. and the next day, i go out there and here's this 80-year- old woman outside of her comfort zone on that street, sweeping the entire block showing that, he who has a heart to help, definitely does have a right to complain. it's about the guy i know who was driving to work in newark and didn't like the graffiti. and instead of just driving by it and accepting what was, like so many of us who just fall into a state of sedentary agitation when we're upset about

what's going on but we don't get up and do something about it, he stopped at a store and began making a routine out of his commute to work where he would stop and take paint and paint over graffiti. in my city i see that conspirators know you do not go through life comfortable. democracy is not a spectator sport. it is a difficult, hard, challenging, full-contact, competitive, participatory endeavor. and this is critical, people who get comfortable of body get fat. people who get comfortable of mind and intellect get dull. people who get comfortable in their spirit, they miss what they were created for.

they were created to magnify the glory of the world, not simply reduce in size and fail to reflect that spirit. i've come to learn in my life to embrace discomfort because it's a precondition to service. i've come to realize to embrace fear because, if you can move through fear, you find out that fear is a precondition to discovery. i've learned in my life to embrace frustration because, when you get really frustrated, that is a precondition to incredible breakthroughs. now, the second thing i've seen amongst conspirators is this idea of faithfulness. mother teresa was once asked how she judged success. and she said, "god didn't call me to be successful, he called me to be faithful." i didn't need to read mother teresa. i just simply needed to look at people in my community in newark. miss virginia jones, that tenant leader, was once telling

me a story when i was peppering her with questions about her life. i had lived with her now, in those buildings, for years, and i never knew that she had a son. she told me about one day somebody knocked on her door, she opened her door and there was this woman crying who could not speak. she dragged her down to the lobby and there, on the lobby floor, was her son, a veteran, who had come back to visit her. there he was on the lobby floor with three gunshots, bleeding that lobby floor red. she sat there and telling me the story that she fell to her knees, crying in her dead son's chest. and when she finished telling me the story, i looked at her and i said, "miss jones, i'm sorry, but why do you still live in these buildings where your son was murdered, walking through that lobby every day?" and she looked at me, almost like she was insulted by the question, but i knew that she and i were two people that paid market rent to live in this housing. she had choices of where to go,

and she looks at me and she says, "why do i still live here?" and i said, "yes." she goes, "why do i live in apartment 5a still? and i said, "yes." she says, "why am i still the tenant president for over 40 years?" and i said, "that's electoral longevity, i want you to tell me about that, but, yes, why?" and she crossed her arms looking at me and she said, "because i'm in charge of homeland security." here is a woman that remained faithful. and i want to tell you graduates of all the lessons of conspirators, this is the hardest one for me, personally -- to stay faithful in a world that can be so cruel, to stay faithful in a world that justifiably emotes cynicism. i have seen things in my life that have broken me in spirit, have ground me down to the floor. in 2004, in april, i was walking through one of the neighborhoods of my city and i heard gunshots going off. it sounded like cannon fire between the buildings. i raced towards where the gunshots were fired and i saw

kids screaming and yelling. i saw one boy falling backwards off of some steps. i went to catch him and i caught him and i looked over his shoulder, and i saw the white t-shirt he was wearing filling up with red blood. i laid him down and put my hand on his chest trying to stop the bleeding but the blood was coming everywhere. i screamed at someone to tell me his name, and they did, and yelled at people to call the ambulance. and i start screaming his name. "don't leave us! don't leave us!" foamy blood was pouring from his mouth. it was one of the most gruesome things as i sat there trying to stop the blood. but he kept bleeding, and he died right there in front of me. the ambulance came and pushed me away, opened his chest, and i saw the number of bullet holes in him, and, i tell you, it was over, i was broken. i was done. i went back to my apartment and tried to scrub the blood of this boy off my hands but i felt my heart fill up with anger and blackness.

all i could think is, what kind of world do we live in where everybody i know knows who jon benet ramsey is or natalee holloway, but few people i know can name the name of one black child killed in my city today? what is going on with this world? [applause] that we seem to value life so little that dozens of kids, of boys, of men, are murdered every week. i wanted to give up. i was done. and then i left my apartment and walked out to the courtyard and i saw the back of miss jones's head. she turned around and she saw my expression. she said, "come give me a hug." and i hugged this woman and i wept in her arms. she held me, and all she said is, "stay faithful, stay faithful, stay faithful."

i'm telling you right now, courage does not always roar. it's not when you stand up and beat your chest and you're ready for the big game, the big fight, the big speech. that is not real courage in my book anymore. it's not running into a burning building. real courage is that when life has beaten you down so low, when you are broken, when you have wounds that you wonder if they could ever heal. courage is when you've done something wrong and you feel the weight of shame on your chest so heavy that you can barely breathe. courage is when you're curled up in a ball on your bed sleepless throughout the night and when the sun comes up, courage isn't the roar, courage is that small voice in your mind that says, get up, get out of bed, put your feet on the floor, brush your teeth, wash your face, comb your hair -- god, if

you have it -- put your hand on that door knob and go outside for another day of loving and stand with all of your might and look up into the heavens. and courage has you say in a defiant spirit, you can take everything from me, you could cut me deep, you could render me in shame, but you will never, ever stop me from loving. from loving those who mock me, from loving those who hate me, from loving those who don't forgive me, from loving the cynics, from loving the darkness so much that i myself, through my small acts of consistent, unyielding love, will bring on the light. [applause] and this brings me to the final point of conspirators that my dad and my community have shown me is that conspirators are the

ones that show up. they just show up. and what do i mean by that? i mean that, we go through life all the time but we don't always show up. we may be there in body, but we're not there in spirit. and we begin to erode the truth of who we are, we fail to live our authenticity. a great president, lincoln, said that "everyone is born an original, but, sadly, most die copies" because they don't show up. i've learned that what you think about the world says less about the world than it does about you. and when you show up in this world and have the courage to tell your truth in moments big but more importantly, in moments small, then you are the architect, not only of your own destiny but you're the architect of transformational change. showing up.

forgive me, i've got just a bad story about that. but i was on my way to stanford as a freshman, coming back to "the farm." and here i got on a plane and it was packed with people, but somehow god shined his grace upon me, because, as they closed the door to the plane, there was two seats open next to me. and i thought to myself, look at all these other people, it's such a shame that they have to deal with all of that cramped space but i have this whole seat. god obviously loves me more than them. well, just as i was sitting there so satisfied, the door to the plane opens, and all of us shot to attention because it sounded like someone, some beast was coming in. some screams were happening. we couldn't understand what was going on outside the plane, and then we understood because the beast came onto the plane and it had three heads -- it was a woman and a little boy and a baby. immediately everybody on that

plane looked at them and then slowly turned their heads to me. and i could see everyone was thinking, you smug little man. and that woman and her two children came to stand before me and said, "i'm sitting there." and i said, "are you sure?" and they moved in and they sat down, and immediately, as a 19- year-old man, i had suddenly -- i had an evolved thought -- that i could accept this now as being the worst flight of my life or i can make it different. because in life you get one choice over and over again, that is, to accept conditions as they are or to take responsibility for changing them, to yield to the circumstances around you or to show up and do something about them. i decided that i was going to make this the best flight of my life. i started telling this little boy jokes and he started laughing at my horrible jokes, like my grandfather would love,

like why did tigger and eeyore have their heads in the toilet? because they were looking for pooh. like, why, wt do you call your mother's sister who runs away and gets married? an antelope. i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i had to try. by the time we landed, we were all having a ball. the woman who came on the plane embarrassed suddenly felt like she was lifted. we exchanged addresses as i was getting ready to come down here to the farm and we never kept in touch, but five years passed, 10 years passed, 15 years passed, and i was running for mayor of newark. on my most discouraged day in that campaign, i got a letter from this woman saying, "you don't remember me, but i met you on a flight to stanford 15 years ago and i will never forget your kindness then." she said to me, "not only do i remember your kindness, but we're actually here in newark, we own a factory here." her son became a great volunteer

on my campaign. they got me involved with their company, and she ended up being something that all politicians love -- a campaign contributor. show up! and now the second man, my grandfather, who was with my father in spirit. it's one simple thing that he would say to me at graduations. he would say to me, "boy, understand that you have a role in this world and that's to get along with others, to join your spirit with them." i tell you this is one that i struggle with. you see, conspirators need to embody those things i mentioned before but they also need to join together. my grandfather, this amazing man, his life was all about the joining together of disparate elements of our society. he was born, also, to a single mother. but he was born in a difficult circumstance because he was

born with red hair and much lighter skin than his siblings. it was obvious that he was born to a white man at a time that it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry. he grew up feeling that he had, inside of his spirit, so many different parts of his country. he ended up becoming a person that did everything he could to unite people. he was a union organizer bringing people together for justice. he was a democratic activist working within the party to support fdr. he was an entrepreneur, bringing people together for business endeavor. and he wanted his children and then his grandchildren to understand that what makes this country great is how united it is. he used to load us onto an rv and drive us around the country to show us how great this nation is. he would tell us history of our country even if he didn't know it. we would ask him questions when we were driving through arizona. "granddad, why do they call this town yuma, arizona?" and he would say, "well, let me

see, that's because when this town was founded, there was a gun fight and one guy shot the other and he grabbed his heart and said, 'you ma,' and then died." i talk to my grandfather all the time about this country. he tells me that, son, this country, we forget. we talk always about the declaration of independence, but really, this nation was founded on a declaration of interdependence, the recognition that we need each other. when i talk to my grandfather now, by and wish to him that we are a nation that has become so polarized, where people are so quick to identify themselves as democrat or republican before they say first and foremost that i am an american. there is focused on left and right. they forget that this nation

must go forward. i anguished to my granddad when i talk to him now. how can we, so far as a nation that the word compromise is a curse and the word patriotism is not used to unite but is used to demean others and to esteem yourself. i.n.d. true patriot and you, because of what you believe, are not. this is not the america my grandfather believed in. he said we were formed to come together and make a more perfect union. to me, this is what i found in my work. the change remake comes about when we come together across party lines, across religious lines and racial lines. when i was introduced, he talked about a hunger strike. the great feeling i got from that experience was how the city came together to deal with the problem. that is what we need in america

today. my grandfather would love that every nation that makes up this nation, every heritage has this ideal of unity. it is like the old african saying, if you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. and nevis and he loves. -- another saying he loves. when jews come together they are strong, but with other people they are invincible. like the islamic saying that one of the pillars is that we all share one god, one spirit, one sold. it is like this wonderful man in a jail cell in birmingham who wrote the truth of our nation in 1963 when he said "we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, in a common garment of destiny." when i stand in a conspiracy in

the work, i feel that connection to conspirators who understood this truth of coming together like those people who came together, scientists and engineers, to turn the moon from a dream into a destiny. like those conspirators on the underground railroad, black and white, who came together, saying we must overcome this slavery. conspirators who took us from a child labor to public education, from sweatshops to workers' rights. they were all conspirators to kims -- came together to invoke our highest ideals, to celebrate our common aspirations, to live the truth of our founding, which is that this nation is nothing as it stands apart, but everything if it's dance together. -- it stands together. [applause] ultimately, we must live our whole lives. e pluribus unum.

graduates, i tell you this from my heart. it pains me to tell you that my grandfather and my father, " would have so wanted to be here today to pillar you with their corny jokes -- the two men are not here today. my father is not here because he is at home in atlanta. i talked to him this morning. he is struggling with parkinson's, in the latter stages of that disease. 20 years have brought my father from the man running after me on the football field to now a man who has a terrible disease that is stripping him of his physical mobility and mental faculties. but when i am with him, i see that the disease can take everything from him, it can make can not even recognize me when i

sit before him, but i still see in this man his spirit, his kindness, his love. ic within him the manifestation, physically, of some of the conspirators. my grandfather is not here today either. my grandfather also had his struggles with a terrible disease. cancer kept coming at him again and again. my grandfather kept beating back time and time again. i'll never forget. once i was visiting with them -- him, he said he is doing fine. he pulled out a pill he was taking and said, in his best ", he said "say hello to my little friend." the last time i talked to my grandfather, his big body was shriveled and weak from radiation, from the sickness. the last thing he said to me before i left him was i love

you, son, i love your children, and i love your children's children. i left confused. i have no kids. i thought he was just delirious. but as i struggle to make sense of his words, i got a phone call that explained them to me. it was almost 10 years ago to a month that i got that phone call. i was in the midst of a campaign for mayor. i was on spruce street in newark. it was a family and -- member who said, your family -- your grandfather is dead. i did not do what they told me to do. i could not, grandmother. i pulled over to the side of the road and wept at the loss of my hero. in the midst of my tears, i remembered his final words. he said, i love you, and your children, and your children's children. it makes sense to me.

my friend who was an astrophysicist told me that the stars we see at night -- and some of them could be gone already, but the light and the energy that they give off, you can still see it today. that is my grandfather. he loved so much that his love will affect generations yet unborn. he loved so much that he may be gone for me, but i still feel him in every cool wind that breeds in my face and every deep breath i take. his love is with me and i hope he feels rich today. thus, i say to you, on this graduation, i say to you in the name of my father, in the name of my grandfather, to join the conspiracy. be a class of people that rejects cynicism, that is not joining the ranks of participants in negativity, but

the lovers. joined the conspiracy and love with all of your heart and all of your courage. let your love be defined. let your love be rebellious. joined the conspiracy. make change in your life. change one not roll in on the wheels of inevitability. it must be carried in on the back of lovers. class of 2012, stand up and the lovers of life. take the more difficult love -- road and love in a way that you can make to the word of children being said in the work every day, that you can be responsible to make for this world and our nation truth the fact that we are one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. god bless you can not fault. -- 2012. [applause]

[applause] >> president barack obama's two- day bus tour of ohio and pennsylvania is under way. at his first stop, the president told the crowd that the outcome of the november intellect -- election will determine the economic future for the next 10 to 20 years. here's a portion. >> when the american auto industry was on a breaking point, more than 1 million jobs were on the line. governor romney said we should let detroit go bankrupt. i refused to turn my back on communities like this. i was betting on the american

worker. i was betting on american industry. three years later, the american auto industry is coming runback. [applause] the chrysler plant up the road hired another 1100 employees to make the cars the world wants to buy. wranglers built right here in toledo. just set an all-time sales record. what is happening in toledo can happen in cities like cleveland. it happened in pittsburgh. it can happen in other industries. that is why i am running for a second term. i'll make sure that it does. i wanted to happen all across this country. -- it to happen all across this country.

[chanting "fourmore years!" ] i want goods shipped across the world with the stamp " made in america." unlike my opponent, i want to stop tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas. several companies are investing right here in toledo, right here in ohio, that is what i am looking for. governor romney's experience has been in owning companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing. that is not my phrase. pioneers of outsourcing. my experience has been in saving the american auto industry. as long as i am president, that is what i will do. wake up every single day, think about how we can create more jobs for families, more security

for your communities. [applause] that is why my administration brought cases against china faster than the previous administration. we won those cases. this morning, we took a new action to hold tschida accountable for unfair trade practices that harm american automakers. americans are not afraid to compete. we believe in competition. i believe in trade. i know this -- americans and american workers build better products than anybody else. as long as we're competing on a fair playing field instead of an unfair playing field, we will do just fine. but we will make sure that competition is fair. that is what i believe. that is part of our mission for america. >> you can see president obama's

entire speech tonight at 8:00 eastern, here on c-span. tomorrow, the bus trip includes a stop at an elementary school in poland, ohio, near youngstown, followed by a speech at carnegie-mellon university in pittsburgh. we'll have live coverage of that tomorrow afternoon at 1:50 eastern. >> one of my favorite stories to talk about is this chemical and 1/2 of pigs, cows, and turkey. this particular drug is not withdrawn when they walk onto the killing floor. that means, when they are killed and the meat is sold, the drug is in their. >> this weekend, mark rosenberg looks behind the scenes of the food and drug industry, and

finds regulatory lapses and government complicity in undermining public health. sunday night at 9:00, part of a book club -- about tv this weekend on c-span. >> tax reform should focus on the results of rwanda. you can create jobs. you can spark innovation. it can expand opportunity. it can guarantee competitiveness. it can put america back on top. >> you can talk about goals all you want, but we have put up stop signs, we have put up stoplights, and none of it ever changes congress's behavior. >> from the time i lost total control of the committee, i went out with a beer former chief -- with my chief of staff. we had a 25% raise tops. they said, get rid of mortgage interest deduction.

i said, what about 26? >> you could make advantages to homeowners much more progressive. what we did was to convert the home mortgage deduction to a tax credit at our rate. >> changing the tax code. yesterday and today. current and former lawmakers of the bipartisan policy center on the battles won and lost. find it online on the c-span video library. >> "washington journal" today, we spoke to jim laurie, a former correspondent for nbc news and abc news. he talked about the purchase of -- purpose of cctv for 45 minutes. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we continue our series looking at foreign broadcasters operating in the u.s.

wheat kick things off with al jazeera america -- english, the first english-language news channel headquartered in the middle east. tuesday, deutsche welle. yesterday we focused on voice of america, the official external broadcast agency of the u.s. government. tomorrow, we wrap things up with bbc america. today we learn about cctv of china. jim laurie is an executive consultant to the english news service of cctv. he is based in washington. thanks for coming in. guest: thank you for having me. host: tell us about the mission of cctv overall. what is done here in the united states? guest: china central television is the largest television presence in the world's largest nation. more than 40 television channels -- most of which are in chinese, a state-owned, state- operated television network, more than 13,000 employees, staff around the world, mainly

feeding the chinese population with news, current affairs, entertainment, sports -- every imaginable kind of broadcasting from beijing for the entire nation. in recent years, roughly 10 years ago, china central television began to develop international channels, channels that reached out to the world. very limited at first. they founded an english channel called channel 9 12 years ago. in the last few years, there has been an attempt to basically replicate what other international broadcasters are doing. that is, create, in a world of proliferating 24/7 news channels, create a news channel to put out there in the world. i must say, the chinese are a little johnny come lately on this. the only started to think about a proper 24-hour in which news

it -- english-language news channel channel in 2009. in 2010 in april, they launched what they call cctv news, a 24/7 news channel broadcast out of beijing and seen here in the washington area on comcast channel 273, amongst other cable and satellite operators here and around the united states and the world. the attempt was to replicate what they saw other countries doing. state television in qatar. you alluded to al jazeera, which went from an arabic language -- arabic language channel to an english-channel. russia today. they launched a fairly large operation in washington two or three years ago broadcasting to the north american audience. it was an evolutionary process. the chinese expanded their

operations, beginning in april 2010. now, they decided to open up full broadcast centers in various capitals of the world to produce programming locally. host: let's take a look at some details about cctv china. the overall operation has over 13,000 employees. 42 channels inside china. seven channels outside china. it is owned and operated by the chinese government. cctv news is the english service that is available in 100 countries and reaches 80 million viewers. that is available in the u.s. by cable and satellite. we were taking a look a moment ago of -- at a live shot of cctv. tell me about cctv america. this was launched just in february. you are producing a one hour program for the united states. guest: that is right. the intention was to have different broadcast centers focusing on different parts of the world. they first launched a broadcast center in nairobi, kenya, which focused on the african

continent. they went on the air in january with one hour a day, firing good african journalists and -- hiring good african journalists in basically every african country and producing seven days a week of programming. beginning in september or october of last year, we began to build an operation here in washington. we began to hire good, quality, professional international broadcasters to work here in washington and produce, initially, one hour a day of programming. it will be expended by the end of this year to four hours a day of broadcasting, mainly during what we refer to as american prime time, the evening hours. currently we are on the air at 9:00 to 10:00 each evening. much of the program is devoted, and this is quite natural for china, to business news. we have a program called "biz asia america." a staff has come to us from bloomberg, from fox news, from abc, nbc, all the major

networks and the states. total operations are roughly 100 people here in washington, which will be expanded to provide more coverage as the year goes on. host: we are talking about details launched in february of this year. more than 100 employees and 30 correspondents covering north and south america. one hour of programming a day, soon to expand to four hours. jim laurie, talk to us about editorial control. who makes decisions about stories to air? when we hear about an operation that is state-run, state-owned, it begs the question, does the government have control of what it's on the air? guest: ultimately, of course the government has control in any state-operated system, whether it be al jazeera, russia today, even france 24, which is another entry into the 24/7 news world. in terms of the actual, practical aspect of everyday

journalism, there is a great deal of autonomy that is afforded to the washington operator -- operation. there is a team of editorial managers from china who lived here in washington. the mandate for the washington operation is, as you alluded, to cover north and south america. there are a lot of resources being expanded to cover south america. we cover a wide range of issues. the decision making in terms of what goes on during the hours we are on the air rests here in washington. host: if you would like to join the conversation about cctv, here are the numbers to call. let's take a big story that was in the news recently, covered extensively here in the united states. the dissident who has come to

america, chen guangcheng. how did cctv cover that story? >> first of all, the english- language channel is seen everywhere in the world, including china. having said that, one recognizes that the number of english speakers in china are a distinct minority overall. i would venture to say that in my observations over the last 25 years watching china, there are different standards set for chinese-language broadcast aimed at the chinese mainland population, and standards of broadcasting for international viewers in the english-language. the case of chen guangchencg -- one has to be realistic. it was not played up in china the way it was played in the hour we are responsible in china -- it was as part of the hillary

clinton visit to china. it was in that context that we -- that this story played out. as you recall, the situation with chen guangchencg in the u.s. embassy threatens to derail, to a certain extent, the clinton-geithner visit, so there was a very effective, as it turned out, diplomatic move to resolve this issue. watching the american networks, as i did at that time, we basically saw the chen guangchencg as the number one that dominant story and, by the way, hillary clinton and secretary geithner are in china. the way the chinese covered it, the way we covered it, was that there are important meetings going on in china between the leadership and hillary clinton and mr. geithner and, by the way, this situation with chen

guangchencg has been resolved by his leaving the u.s. industry -- embassy and coming to america. >> jim laurie is an executive consultant for cctv. he started that in 2009, and has helped develop their news channel in washington. one of the many hats he wears as a broadcaster. he also spent time overseas in journalism. guest: almost all of my career has been overseas. i have worked in china since 1970. i studied chinese history in school here in washington. my life has been fairly invested in asia. host: our caller is tony, a democrat, in winston-salem. caller: i would like to know -- everything is about the money, i

am afraid people could come in and do everything they want. it should not be like that. abc was like connected with disney -- you notice the difference. i mean, internationally, we just have to make sure, you know, that all your intentions are very good because, at this stage -- anything is possible. host: 20, when you say you were concerned about money, tdo you mean it who controls the content? caller: exactly. there are lobbyists. i mean, everybody, internationally, foreign -- sometimes i raised my eyes at obama. and i am a black person. host: a response from jim

laurie. guest: 24 your comment. i would like to venture into the -- thank you for your comment. i'd like to venture into the financial aspects and have the impact american commercial television. it is fairly clear that the advertising arena creates a certain desire for a certain type of content. i will not get into that, but i want to address the issue of why the chinese ventured into this area of 24/7 news. it is that they wanted to be part of the conversation with al jazeera english, with russia today, with france 24, with the bbc and cnn international. there has been a perception that media, internationally, for many years has been dominated by cnn and bbc. i think there has been, particularly in the last 10 years, a situation where a lot of countries, including china,

are saying, we need to have parts of this pie, if you will. we need to be able to present alternatives to what the bbc and what cn and and the big players are doing. host: 1 at person rights and, cctv does this. let's look at a show called 24 china and a recent story filed about asians in america. >> the u.s. asian population has risen at rates rarely reveled in america. it is a modern immigration wave that has sent agents from less than 1% of the population in 1965 to 18.2 million in 2011, a more than 543 -- increase according to a new service called "the rise of asian- americans."

host: why is that story of interest? guest: that is from our correspondent in los angeles. a lot of stories involving asians and americans are part of the agenda of cctv news. the interesting survey about -- that that came out of was that the occasion-american community is now the largest minority community in america. that was an important event to consider. we consider a lot of issues that draw, if you will, asia and america to gather in terms of the content that we produce for cctv america. host: tunny joins us from charleston, south carolina. caller: i have two questions. first, we obviously have bias in media news reporting in the u.s. fox news leans towards the

right, ms nbc towards the left. these are involved with cctv -- could this lead to any bias in their reporting? my second question is for libby -- guest: obviously will ignore the end of that. i do not know if we should even deal with the first part. what about political persuasion and how it should play out? guest: the main aim now is to produce quality content. content that can be put side-by- side with the bbc, with cnn, without jazeera, and be regarded as respectable, honest, quality reporting. there has been a great deal of emphasis to hire the best people in broadcasting to bring this about.

one of the tragedies of the present era is that the traditional networks have been downsizing because of the economy, because of fewer dollars being spent. you see great networks like the bbc being forced to retreat in terms of spending because of the freezing of license fees in the u.k., the british parliament saying they will no longer fund the bbc world service -- they have spread themselves than. this has been a good thing for a new channel, a startup like cctv. we have been able to reach out to quality journalists and say, on board. we have recently hired, in the last five months, three former bbc correspondents in doubt -- south america. in cuba, in sao paulo, and peru. we are developing in south

america a network of correspondents that will be greater than anybody. no other network will have as many correspondents covering south america. we have a weekly program devoted to south america, a program called "america is now -- americas now." this allows experienced correspondents in south america to come up with good, in-depth pieces that are powerful. michael's is our correspondent in havana, cuba. he had been there for some time. the bbc had said come back to london. he said, i do not want to go. he came to cctv and has done excellent performing -- reporting out of cuba, haiti, and parts of latin america. host: mike in newark, delaware. democrats line. caller: i would like to ask mr.

laurie about the chinese communist government. it does not if -- refer to itself as communist anymore, it says market socialism. is that really? are the leaders of china right now consolidating their part -- power and wealth? will this ever be able to reach a democracy? thank you. guest: thank you. i will not look into a crystal ball and tell you what china will look like in 10 or 20 years' time. clearly, the communist party is the ruling party of china, and that is likely not going to change anytime soon. because of that, there are certain areas that will be controlled. having said that, i have been observing china -- i first went to china in 1978. i covered china for abc news in the early 1980's.

i have been absolutely astonished by the incremental change and incremental in terms of freedom that we have seen in china since the 1980's. what is developing in china right now is absolutely remarkable when you examine the internet, the place of micro- blogging, which is the place where a range of voices are coming out that were silent until now. so i'm relatively optimistic about china. in my observations, it has often been the case of several steps forward and then a couple of steps back, then a few steps forward. there is a to and fro to the china dynamic, which for me is endlessly fascinating. host: one of the trigger followers rights this. guest: the proof is in the

pudding. you need to make up your own mind. watch it 9:00 every night, seven days a week, on what ever cable system or satellite system you may have. see the quality of reporting. see whether you can detect particular bias or not. then make up your own mind. i think one of the wonderful things these days and media, and as an old media person i am sometimes critical of the free- wheeling ways of the internet and the 500-channel universe, but the good thing is that we can compare and contrast so easily. we can go on-line, we can compare our bbc content with cctv and news content. we can compare fox news with current tv and ms nbc. we have all these resources to draw on. we can make up our own minds about who is most accurate and most therapy. host: we're seeing the service

mr. gore was talking about. now republican caller in new jersey. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. my question for mr. laurie -- you mentioned hillary clinton and mr. geithner, but you did not mention mr. bernanke, the head of the federal reserve, who was there sitting to the right of mr. geithner. is there a story behind the head of the fed being in china? guest: it was my personal mission. i have no interest in sliding mr. bernanke, believe me. my point was that chinese television coverage and the size the critical importance of the economic relationship, and treated as secondary the interest of mr. chaen. the american media at give the impression that the main event was chen and the minor event was

the relationship. host: a report came out today saying that the obama administration challenges china's on their imposition of duties on american-made automobiles. the u.s. is challenging china's in positions of anti-dumping and duties on a $3 billion in exports of american-produced automobiles. is this the kind of story seat -- cctv would cover? guest: i cannot say for sure. i am sure this will be on the agenda for consideration. when i can say is that the general policy is to take a story like this and present it from both sides. so long as there is a chinese position, to be voiced, an alternative position, both sides will be represented. i'll give you an example. there has been a lot of debate over the last several years about the renminbi, and the

proper place it should be vis-a- vis the united states dollar. in this country, there has been a lot of pressure on the therenminbi to be valued upward. the chinese feel they cannot move too quickly in that direction. if you were to watch folks news or cnn or other american media outlets, he would feel that only one side -- you would see only one side of the story, that the chinese were out to keep its currency at a particular level in order to bolster exports of china and, in some way, do me the u.s. to increase in poverty. the chinese except that position, but they want to have your say. we do not see their say on fox news or cnn, hence the need, in the chinese view, of this kind of channel, cctv news. let's go to ron, in

burlington, vt., a democratic color. caller: don't you believe this is more about continuity of news throughout the world? if you take a lot of the major players, they are just repeating the same points over and over. i think this is more of an agenda -- a un one-world government type of thing. what are your thoughts? guest: i do not subscribe to a one-world government kind of thing, but at any of that what is involved in media in general as we have moved towards the 500-channel universe and the multimillion url universe is that we no longer have the same standards of broadcast journalism that we had when i grew up. when i joined nbc news in the

1970's and went on to work for abc news, we had essentials three networks. our mission was to create a product that would encompass the largest possible tent. we had to satisfy every possible your because all the viewers only had three or four joyces. as we move into the 1990's, we had a situation where we had cable television, we had the internet, and we had this proliferation of all kinds of television channels, internet channels. we had a situation where the market was more fragmented. had what i call the folox- ification of news, when used with an agenda becomes acceptable in the international marketplace. i went to india in 2010. i said, what kind of news channel c respect? i was expecting the response to

be the bbc because they are straight down the middle. they said, we think that the most interesting news channel in the world is fox news. they said, yes, they are engaging, they have an agenda. we want an agenda as well. we want to be like fox news, because that is how we can reach out to a dedicated audience. you see over time this fragmentation of audience around the world, and various broadcasters are realizing that they need to present alternatives in order to cut through the very fragmented internet marketplace. host: san francisco, california, independent color. caller: something or guest said in passing registered with me about how players like china

have to come on and try and be an alternative to the bbc, for example. i grew up listening to short- wave radio. i do not know how this plays into tv. the french stations are on 24 hours, cnn and so on --deutsche wele. two major broadcasters just went off the air this past week, radio netherlands and radio canada international. they are not broadcasting to anywhere anymore. except on the internet. and yet, the chinese and other people -- the chinese are still broadcasting heavily on radio. so is voice of america, and the bbc, although not to the western part of the world. i'm wondering if the chinese coming on the scene would be of any kind of -- would cause the other broadcasters, may be on

radio or television, to up the coverage, including maybe our own voice of america? now, you have religious broadcasters and radio havana, radio china -- radio beijing, i guess. not much else. all the other ones are shutting down. just like the space race, the russians spurred us on. i am wondering if the chinese getting heavily in broadcasting will bring back some of this on radio on television -- on radio as well as television? guest: i also grew up listening to short-wave broadcasts. you are right. many of the old short-wave radio players have left the scene. the old radio, when i was young, it is now china radio international. they have a large presence around the world, including on the domestic broadcast

frequencies here in the u.s. there has been a purposeful effort to the place cri in markets here in the u.s.. i believe that secretary clinton and others have not commented on this issue of international broadcasters like al jazeera, like cctv news, like russia today, like france 24, and some of the others who have begun to eclipsed the media as it has been established here in the united states, including the voice of america. anybody who worked at the voice of america, and you had somebody here, libby, yesterday, will have to admit that they have put tremendous pressure. there is tremendous pressure in congress to cut their budget. whether the international proliferation of voices, this international " -- conversation, will propel the u.s. congress

to -- give more money to voice of america i cannot say, but your point is well taken. host: preparations for the farewell party of radio netherlands is in full swing. after 65 years, the dutch department of regional netherlands is preparing to go off the air. guest: this is largely, libby, as we have seen, because of budgetary restrictions. it is part and parcel of the international financial crisis. it is to china's advantage, because it is this emerging, gigantic, economic power -- they now have the funding to invest in media where perhaps other countries no longer have that funding. host: let's take a look from -- at a show called "asia today." this was on cctv news. >> pakistan and the united states have reached a deal to reopen routes used by nato to

supply troops in afghanistan. this ends a seven-month closure in -- begun after 24 soldiers were axed and killed in a nato strike last november. the news followed a conversation between hillary clinton and the pakistani foreign minister. clinton, in the phone call, apologize for the november nato airstrike that prompted islamabad to close the route. host: that was a clip of the news program called "asia today," which you can find on cctv news. does a story like that it erred inside china in chinese? guest: i would suspect that it does. i do not spend a lot of time comparing what is on the chinese channels with what is on the english channel. that broadcast and out of beijing. it is quite likely that a version of that was carried out on the chinese news channel.

as we alluded to earlier, there are so many different chinese channels -- there is a 24-hour news channel, 24-hour sports, 24-hour business. everything that you have in the media here in america is reflected in a chinese in china. but i have been observing, overall, chinese-language media coverage over many years. i was attached to the university of hong kong for five years. we had the china media project. my colleagues monitored very carefully the developments in chinese media. although there have been a number of setbacks over the last few years, the overall trend has been to be able to cover more stories in a better way over the course of the past several years. guesthost: eric on the republicn line, oklahoma.

caller: i'm a short-wave fan as well. this radical commentary -- host: what is the appeal? caller: you can hear the latest conspiracy theories, and a lot of truth as well. i like people who are passionate about what they believe. cctv, if it becomes anything like rt -- if you want to hear real independent, critical thinkers and alternative points of view, russia today has done it and -- fantastic job. guest: i will not get into russia today. i have my views about russia today, but what cctv is trying to do is present an alternative view in terms of the stories that it selects to do.

i will give you a major, very important example -- south america. our strategy meetings in 2009 in beijing as the start of the plan of 2010 launch of cctv -- what areas of the world are not covered enough? africa was one area. south america. it was observed that cnn had virtually no correspondence in south america. at the bbc was withdrawing slowly from south america. i had a conversation with the cctv news lima, peru correspondent, who was here in washington. he said, you could simply not good stories about perot on the air at the bbc. now, he is on several times a week with long-form stories once a month on a "americas now." that is a sunday night latin america-focused programs.

last week, we ran on a -- we ran a fascinating story that has a local application about a man named alan gross who is being held by cuban authorities. on the other hand, the holding here in america of what are called the cuban five, five individuals who were charged in miami with espionage and were being held here. he -- the issue is interesting and yet underreported by the established media. the attempt here is to have a situation where a lot of stories that do not get reported on cnn and fox news are reported on a channel like cctv news. at the same time, there is an effort to increase the presence of this channel in the american marketplace. host: elaine, democrats line, district heights, maryland. caller: all i want to say is

that cctv can be seen in the washington, d.c. area. you only mentioned cable and satellite, but cctv, al jazeera, and rt are available on channel 30, witches mhz networks. that is over the air. host: do you watch? caller: yes. i watch all three. if you do not have cable or satellite, at least in the washington area you have that available. it is great to get the other perspective. host: we are watching a live shot of that now. jody rights and about the power of the media to exert control or share stories. looking at the situation in syria, how china joins russia in

avoiding syria talks. they're boycotting a meeting. they are not attending an upcoming gathering in paris. how is the story reported? guest: this has been an ongoing issue since we launched the american channel in february. the chinese and the russians at had a different position from the united states on the issue of syria. to the degree that it in -- influences our coverage, it means we give more time to what the chinese position is, which has been up until now to seek the change in the situation in syria through negotiation. that does not mean that cctv does not cover the violence in syria. they do. but every time there is a condemnation of the syrian regime by the administration here, there will be the voice of china calling for

negotiation and moderation. it is an attempt to put the chinese perspective, the chinese pov, if you will, on the table. host: we now hear from little rock, ark., republican car. caller: i watch cctv a lot. between cnn and fox news ---cnn is more to the left, fox news is more to the right. cctv shows a lot more of what is going on around the world. it shows a lot more of what is going on in syria and iran than our news channels do. bbc does even more so, but i have a question. the question is, -- more to do with humanity. the way the world is going, if i

could get mr. laurie's comment -- the race to the top. does anybody really need that much money? if i had anything close to $1 billion -- you have people with $50 billion, $60 billion. i am just wondering if anybody needs that money. i will hang up. guest: thank you. i am not sure i can comment on individual wealth and whether it is good or not to have $50 billion in your pocket, but a perhaps prompt me to make a few comments about china's position in the world. everybody comments on china being america's biggest creditor, holding $1.20 trillion in u.s. treasurys. the chinese hope through the media to be able to explain this

rising power that china is, and i think they are quite genuine in wanting to reach out and try to find better understandings in a whole list of issues that may separate china and america. i think the chinese become quite alarmed when china becomes a political football, particularly in this election year. when one candidate or another takes the whole issue of u.s.- china trade and turns into a political issue. one of the stories that we began to focus on at the american operation of cctv is chinese investment in america. given the size of our economy, it is very small. it is only $4 billion or four of -- $5 billion of direct investment in the united states. there is a lot of good reasons why they should increase -- the chinese want to increase.

we had on the air the other day the mayor of washington. vincent gray has just returned from china seeking more investment in washington, d.c. host: we watched that segment yesterday. we suggest this town and other reporters doing that story. do the stories -- how nervous do americans feel? people come in and say they are worried about overseas investors controlling american assets. does it get that story, and not just the great opportunities? guest: i hope we will. these are the early days. i emphasize that we are still developing programming. we hope to go to four hours towards the end of the year, or early 2013. we are refining the kinds of reports we do. we are still hiring people. the numbers of reporters that

will soon be reporting to r news desk in washington will be something like 35 different reporters from all over north and south america. we have just taken on people in los angeles, san francisco, houston, miami. we are developing this. it is the early days yet. the combination of exploring these issues and having a fair amount of time devoted to them should eventually allay some fears. after all, investment in the u.s. can mean jobs. i remember the fear of the japanese investing in america. they came in and bought everything from the pebble beach golf course to rockefeller center. we overcame that. this is not something that should be feared, it seems to me. caller: we're out of time, unfortunately. executive consultant for cctv news. they then produce the programs.

cctv america has one hour of programming every evening. thank you so much. >> friday on washington journal, efforts to improve the economy. david harsanyl looks at whether the economy benefits more from job creation. we hear from nicholas jones from the u.s. census bureau and a cynthiagordy of theroot.com. later, coverage of international news bureaus continues with the bureau chief of bbc news. he gives us insight on operations at the bbc, and how they plan to cover upcoming elections. "washington journal" is live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the life of a sailor includes

scrubbing the deck in the morning, working on sails -- but by the end of the day you are ready for rest. you do not get eight hours of sleep. aboard a ship like the constitution, it is four hours on, four hours of. >> this weekend, the light of eight enlisted men aboard the u.s.s. constitution during the war of 1812. >> they live in fear of being whipped. it was always carried by a petty officer. the thing they never wanted to see was a petty officer getting ready for a flogging. the phrase today, do not that the cat out of the bag. you do not want to see the cat of nine tells coming out of the bag for a flawed and. >> that is sunday. this weekend, more from "the contenders," a series about political figures who ran for president and lost, but changed president and lost, but changed political