some things that were temporary like food but other things that were permanent, and it was amazing to see the turnout it is part of the american way. we have people right now that are having some hard times because of this terrible hurricane and the storm that followed it. difference. i want to thank you. we have some work to do. but to make this an enjoyable were sitting, we have asked a great entertainer, randy owen of alabama, to be here. [applause] he is an extraordinary guy. he will probably tell you a story about a store -- a tornado actually, that if his county in alabama and describe what it is that he is here. we appreciate effect that he has agreed to entertain and greet the people who are here this morning. thank you for your generosity. if you have a little extra, if you have more canned goods,

bring them along to our victory centers that are open. but also, if you can write a check to american red cross, that is welcome as well. we're looking for all the help for the families in need that we can get. i will go to work here at the table and get things sorted and boxed up and loaded on the truck. for the rest of you, enjoy the concert that randy will put on and think is so very much. i love you and appreciate you. thank you very much. [cheers and applause]

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♪ >> obama visited the red cross national headquarters and spoke

about recovery efforts after hurricane sandy caused widespread damage across the east coast. this is 10 minutes. >> first of all, i want to thank gail and charlie that are on the scene doing work every time we have a disaster here in the united states of america, but obviously the red cross is doing outstanding work internationally. we want to thank them for their outstanding work. a few things i want to emphasize to the public at the top, this storm is not yet over. we of gone briefings from the national hurricane center. it is still moving north. there are still communities that could be affected. i want to emphasize there are still risks of flooding, downed power lines, risks of high winds. very important for the public to continue to monitor the situation in your local community. listen to your state and local officials, follow instructions.

the more you follow the instructions, the more they can deal with situation. next obviously i want to talk about the extraordinary hardship. seen over the past 48 hours. our thoughts and prayers go out to all the families to of lost loved ones. unfortunately there have been fatalities as a consequence of hurricane sandy, and it's not clear that we have counted up all the fatalities at this point. obviously this is something that is heartbreaking for the entire nation, and we certainly feel profoundly for the families who have been uprooted and will be going through some very tough times over the next several days, perhaps weeks and months.

the most important message i have for them is that america is waiting. we are standing behind you, and we will do everything we can to help you get back on your feet. earlier today i had a conversation with the governors, and many of the mayors in the affected areas, including gov. christie, cuomo, and bloomberg. want to praise them for the extraordinary work they have done. sadly we are getting more experience with these big- impact storms along the east coast, in the preparation shows. for it not for the outstanding work of day in their teens, we could have seen more deaths and property damage. they have done extraordinary work, working around the clock. coordination between state and

local governments has been outstanding. obviously we are now moving into the recovery phase and a lot of the most severely-affected areas. new jersey, new york have been pounded by this storm. connecticut has taken a big hit. because of the sum -- because of some of the work done ahead of time, we have been able to get over 1000 officials in place. we have been able to get supplies, food, medicine, water and emergency generators to ensure hospitals and law enforcement offices are able to stay up and running as their of their responding. we will continue to push as hard as we can to make sure power is up throughout the region, and obviously this is mostly a local responsibility, and the private utilities are going to have to lean forward,

but we're doing everything we can to provide additional resources so that we can expedite getting power up and running in many of the communities. there are places where new work, new jersey, were you a 80% of the people without power. -- newark, new jersey, where you have 80 percent of the people without power. my instruction has been do not figure out why we cannot do something. i want to figure out how we do something. i want you to cut through red tape, bureaucracy. there is no excuse for inaction at this point. i want every agency to lean forward and make sure we are getting the resources where they are needed as quickly as possible. so i want to repeat, my message to the federal government, no bureaucracy, no red tape. dear resources where they're needed as fast as possible, as hard as possible, and for the

duration, because the recovery process obviously in a place like new jersey will take a significant amount of time. the recovery process in lower manhattan will take a lot of time. part of what we're trying to do here is also see where are the resources that can be brought to bear that traditionally are not used in these kinds of disaster situations. for example, there may be military assets that help was moved equipment -- us move equipment to make sure the flooding and pumping out the water in new york city can move more quickly. there may be resources to bear to help. private utilities get their equipment and personnel in place so we can get power up and running as soon as possible. so my message to the governors and mayors and through them to the communities that have been hit so hard is that we are going to do everything we can to

get resources to you and make sure any unmet need is identified. we are responding to it as quickly as possible. i told the mayors and governors if they're getting no for an answer somewhere in the federal government, they can call me personally at the white house. obviously the state and local federal response is important, but what we do as a community, what we do as neighbors and fellow citizens is equally important. a couple of things i want the public to know they can do. first of all, because our local law enforcement, first responders, to the extent everyone can be out there looking out for neighbors, especially older folks that is really important. if you have a neighbor nearby you are not sure how they're handling of power outage, flooding, etc., go over and

visit them. not on the door and make sure they are doing ok. that can make a big difference. -- knock on the door and make sure they are ok. people but not been affected around the country, now is the time to show generosity that makes america the greatest nation on earth. a good place to express that is by donating to the red cross. you think go on to their web site. they are in close contact with federal, state, and local officials. it will make sure we get the resources to those families as quickly as possible. i want to thank everyone here do is raise a great job when it comes to disaster response. the final message i say is during the darkness of the storm i think we also saw what

is brightest in america. i think all of us were obviously shocked by the force of modern -- of mother nature. at the same time, we have seen nurses at nyu hospital carrying fragile newborns to safety. we've seen incredibly brave firefighters in queens waist- deep in water bottling infernos and rescuing people in boats. one of my favorite stories is down in north carolina, the coast guard going out to save a sinking ship. they sent a rescue swimmer out. the rescue swimmer said i am dan and understand you need a ride. that kind of resilience and strength and looking out for one another, that is why we always bounced back from these kinds of disasters. this is a tough time for a lot

of people, millions of folks all across the eastern seaboard, but america is tough, and we are tougher because we pull together and lead nobody behind. we make sure that we respond as a nation and remind ourselves that whenever an american is indeed, all of us stand together to make sure we're providing the help necessary. i just want to thank the incredible response we a party scene, but i want to remind people this will take some time. it is not going to be easy for a lot of the communities to recover swiftly. it will be important that we sustain the spirit of resilience, that we continue to be good neighbors for the duration until everyone is back on their feet. thank you very much, everybody. thank you, red cross. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> the u.s. house held a pro forma session today. there was a moment of silence for the victims of hurricane sandy. >> all of us present to rise and share a moment of silence in their memories of those who have perished in hurricane sandy and to remember as well those who continue to suffer. >> today's after hurricane sandy caused major damage to parts of the east coast, president obama will head to new jersey to see the damage in that state with governor chris christie.

the federal government in the washington, d.c. area will open for business on a regular schedule on wednesday after being closed monday and tuesday. in new york, the stock exchange opened for business after being closed for two days. >> i especially like watching the gavel-to-gavel coverage. it is the only place to get the real deal. i like that the commentary is only intended to let you know what is going on. there is not too much analysis. i appreciate how i can release the crew and understand the programming itself, and i can get my analysis elsewhere. if you want to see how your government works directly, then c-span is just about the only place to go.

>> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> let's get the album that documents the grace coolidge family. part of the could family papers. we have one box that is just photographs and then several boxes of other documents. the photographs are heavy. the album should be in the back of the box. here it is. unfortunately, it is on black, a

city paper. there is not much we can do about that because we don't want to change the artifacts nature of the album itself. it is starting to crack, some of the pages are separating. this is a photograph of calvin coolidge, the day before he became president. he was in plymouth, vermont, visiting his father, doing some chores. this is a press photograph, so he did have the press along with him. you can see that they took one photograph of him here with his suit jacket on, and then another one of him without the suit jacket on. >> more from the vermont historical society, this weekend as we look behind the scenes on the history of mount er.io

>> a discussion on the current state and future of the news industry, focusing on investigative reporting and journalism practices. this event, hosted by zocalo public square, is an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] thank you all very much for being here tonight. thanks to cal humanities for making this possible. the topic is inspired by the jefferson quote about the price of freedom and liberty. jefferson also said, reportedly said, given the choice between government and newspapers, without one or the other, he would have preferred to do with newspapers and without government.

then he got elected and began to claim he was misquoted. from that, zocalo said big questions may lot of different perspectives. we have re-different people here -- three people here from different parts of the country, different backgrounds. they're all journalists. they are all people who have looked at a wide variety of topics in their work, and have among the topics they have looked at, are the media itself and specifically questions about how we keep a check on power, keep a check on government. you will hear from all three of them. i will introduce each of them as i ask the questions. immediately to my right is bernardo ruiz. his most recent film "reportero," is an incredible film if you have not seen it, it follows a reporter at an embattled mexican news weekly

reporting on organized crime and corrupt officials. the film was completed and toward mexico and the human rights watch film festival and will air january 7, 2013 on pbs. he also produced two documentaries examining the dropout crisis and is a previous director of "the american experience, roberto clemente," winner of an award for outstanding television documentary. he has done a number of other things. the question is -- what does vigilance mean at this time of transition, how we get information by newspapers, the changes in reporting. what does it mean?

what should it mean in this context? what does it mean particularly for the kinds of reporters that you have most recently made this film about who are covering very difficult stories where there is real risk involved? >> from my perspective, as a documentary filmmaker, i do not know i would consider myself a journalist in the traditional sense. i think i have a slightly different set of challenges. a traditional journalist has to be factually accurate -- like that, but that is a point of departure to make something larger. i do not always get there. for me, vigilance is about depth. i made "reportero" about the staff and reporters there

public, the co-director of the paper, and i wanted to make the film because so much of the u.s. cable coverage that i was seeing about the drug war, especially in this part of the country, to me seemed woefully decontextualized. it felt like rubbernecking body count journalism. x number of people were shot on the state. this person was be headed there, but no context. no background, no history, the deepening of the story. i'm by no means a expert on mexico's drug war, but i did have a very strong interest in this region and in tijuana. i began researching in 2007 while looking for another story. unlike other journalists, who do not have the amount of time that you often need to tell the

stories, when i was in production i had a little over two years to spend with the story. that is enough time to deepen your sense of a place, an institution, to gain trust and to hopefully have a deeper narrative. whether or not i succeeded or failed is up to the audience and the people who push back on my perspective, but for me the ability to spend time with an issue, too deep and your understanding of that issue, provide the debt to audiences, that is key to take apart that issue of the audience -- of vigilance. >> to different pressures that are in no way similar, but speak to how hard is to be a professional reporter, a documentary filmmaker in these

times. in your film you talk about a couple of different stories, a columnist, a court reporter, the founder, living on this side of the border to avoid danger. in a time when it is so hard to make a living doing this anywhere, are we asking too much of professional journalists, do you think? >> that is a great question. i think the newspaper reporters that profiled in a "reportero" -- the lead reporter, they had very serious threats that force them to send his family away for a while.

they would say, we are just regional reporters, doing our peace, cover and organized crime as we see it played out in this region. what u.s. reporters doing? i was speaking to a person who basically started one of latin america's first online news outlets, a fabulous online news outlet. he was saying is almost as if david copperfield were at the border when these suv is packed with methamphetamines and other drugs and narcotics were funneled into the united states, as if they magically vanish when they hit the united states. who is doing reporting on the criminal distribution networks in united states, atlanta, dallas, los angeles -- who is doing that reporting here? so much attention is focused on what is happening in mexico, we are lamenting the strengths or weaknesses of reporting in mexico. the mexican reporters,

especially the regional ones, were hardest hit. it is the once in these regional outlets like tijuana. they want to know who was telling the other side of the story and who is doing the money reporting, all these narco dollars. who is doing the story about money laundering? i do not know if i answered your question, but that is certainly a kind of push back there. who is telling the big story and the small story? >> let me bring in carrie lozano to the conversation. she is a documentary filmmaker and journalist who has done a lot of work. her film "underground" appeared at sundance. also she is an emerging expert on the question of collaborative reporting,

journalists, between news organizations and citizens -- she works in the investigative reporting for uc berkley and has co-founded collaboration central. very basic question -- who is doing this kind of reporting? you could say this about anything. do existing american media have the resources, individual television stations, to do investigative reporting on the toughest stories? >> if my boss -- my boss, for any of you who have seen "insider," he is the insider, al pacino. he says investigative reporting

is not non-profit, it is anti- profit. he is right. nobody ever had the resources to spend two years on a story. nobody knows this, but "the new york times" did not even have an investigative unit until the 1990's. even then it was just a couple of people. i do not want to say that nothing has been done, because scott can tell this -- at the local level. the local watchdog is hurting around the country, but at the national level i do not know that a so much the case that we are not able to be vigilant anymore. i think vigilance is taking a different form. it is taking the form of more collaborative efforts, where people are working together to

produce really in-depth stories that are hard hitting and take that watchdog role. it is happening in other mediums. a lot of documentary filmmaking is becoming investigative and there's more support and acknowledgment for that. if you look at the numbers over time, more newspapers do not exist, a lot of reporters have lost their jobs, that is true, you cannot deny it, but i went to the investigative reporting conference this year and there were 1500 people there, one of the largest turnouts ever. people are still doing work, doing it in different ways. the money is always hard to come by. it may be harder, but we also have wider means of distribution. it is hard to say -- there is no clear cost-benefit analysis of was a better then than now. i am not 100% convinced. i think it is different now. >> i worked in three newsrooms -- "the baltimore sun," "the wall street journal," and "the los angeles times." i worked with many brilliant people, but plan well with

others was not a strength of the people i worked with across any of those. it very difficult folks. they had a hard time collaborating and getting along with the person sitting next to them in the news room. my old boss from "the los angeles times," he called the collaborative effort a pain in the a. tell me what one of these things looks like. explain what happens -- how do they get along? do they get along? >> for those of you who have not worked in a newsroom before, journalists and organizations are incredibly competitive. even today, in your contract, you are signing confidentiality agreements. you will not talk about your story. a story -- i do not know if it

has been true -- they used to assign reporters the same story to two reporters to see who does the better job. there is a huge cultural issue here. what is happening because of diminished resources is news organizations are starting to say, i cannot do that kind of work on my own. i will start to work with other technically competing news organizations. i have been involved mostly in large-scale collaborations that involve pbs frontline, propublica, we are doing something with univision and the center for investigative reporting. it may seem like a no-brainer -- it kind of is, and especially today, but culturally is against the norm. we received at uc berkeley a grant a couple of years ago from the knight foundation -- they asked us to do a how-to model for collaborative reporting. we quickly realized that before we can teach people to do this,

we need to change their mind. we need to change the culture in some way or start to talk about the culture. do they always play well with others? no, not always. the thing i say every conferences i think that in the news industry we need to put a lot more effort into teaching and team work in a way other businesses do and teaching leadership. it is good leadership and teamwork skills, the acknowledgment of that -- reporters can do a job they feel good about. >> there is not enough money. everybody -- the audience is too fractured? >> it is both. for frontline, the executive producers there felt they do not have investigative reporters on staff, they cannot afford it. they want to have the most cutting edge investigative stories on the air. the way they do that is to work with other organizations who are doing investigative work. they are not broadcast

organizations necessarily. it is about the money and it is also about the fractured audience. one thing that we realized when we worked on a series with propublica, front line, and npr -- when you have a and your store with 25 million listeners more people watch the broadcast. it is finding different audiences. >> thank you very much. let's bring in scott lewis, ceo of the "voice of san diego." he manages the internal operations for the organization. he has traded partnerships and projects. he is a regular on tv and radio, host of "san diego fact check" here, has a weekly radio show, et cetera. you are serial collaborator.

your staff has 10 people. what kind of vigilance void can you fill with partnerships and you are young, hungry, a talented staff? >> i would like to map what we are not doing. areas of geography, institutions that are not being covered and why. holding a mirror up to somebody -- just by showing people that you are watching, there is a positive effect. our goal is to cover things as best we can. that means we cannot repeat or be redundant to anybody else's work. jeff jarvis says "you do what you do best, and you link to the rest." we find stories we can really be the best that and frame and

explained. and then let other people do what they do best. and accentuate that and try to help that. when we look at partnerships, we look at -- we look at a world where the producers of content, the drivers of explanation and storytelling, do not have to be tied to the means of distribution, a broadcaster re printing press or whatever. the idea that you can have the means of production and distribution in the thing that comes up with the storytelling is i think an old one based on the newspaper having a printing press in its building. we have decided we can be the agency that supports public radio, commercial radio, magazines, tv, and we can all work together to get the best stories possible. we are switching also to not necessarily covering beats but

covering narrative's. rather than just putting one person on education to try to gobble that entire fire hose that comes at them, they can add narratives and subtract them, make sure people are involved. if they are not enrolled in those narratives, something will play out without their impact. >> a follow-up question -- i am not thinking of any city in particular here. with that kind of operation, let's say you have that operation in a city where the daily newspaper in town started to do some very strange things. i imagine that. it was owned by somebody who was very openly talking they were going to support particular causes, particular developments, particular parties.

i imagine something like that could happen. does that add to the obligation of citizens, people like you, to do more to fill that void? or can you still fill the void -- is that city just out of luck? >> first of all, it is a remarkable symbol of what is happening to journalism. locally, the owners of the "union tribune" just purchased the "north county times" -- the assets are collapsing in value. they bought it for $12 million, sold his house for $18 million. putting aside that, these properties can be acquired and done with resume. this is not an expensive problem defects. i think that is an important thing to remember.

i have a budget of a little more than $1 million, which is a lot for a person like me. for a cultural institution for an impact with the entire city, that is not that much. museums are run on a higher budget. university colleges, professors in universities are on a bigger budget. the point is that if we want to solve this and realize we want to have more coverage, there are ways to do that. we have setup a society that knows how to find institutions with that kind of impact. the "texas tribune," we inspired them -- now they inspire us with their ideas and structure. >> they are treated from people from a "texas monthly magazine" wanted to focus on local politics? >> we were featured on the front page of the "new york times" after investigations we did. they told us, what can we do

here? they decided they wanted to do an entity in austen that covers politics relevant to the entire state. now they are running on a $5 million budget. we are all gawking at that. that is a lot of money for the -- not a lot of money for the type of impact that institution can have. with the vance, corporate and member sponsors, you can do some impressive things. we are trying to look at this is a problem to solve. do not cover anything unless you can do better than anybody else or nobody is doing it. makes sense of what people say, a fact check it, but find out what they do not want to say as well. applying those types of metrics to the stories and narratives you will cover can make it so that you are leveraging a small amount of resources a lot better than perhaps the old model.

>> for the whole panel -- you mentioned, bernardo, a story here, a big story here. what are we missing when we do the things we can with the resources we can -- what are the holes opening up where we are not being vigilant? >> it is geographic and qualitative. there are areas or not covering, institutions. people appreciate investigative journalism when it has its impact, but when it is not around to do not know what you are missing, unnecessarily. we do not know what we do not know. i think that is an important problem. >> we look for stories where literally is not work being done. one of the big stories last year was about an investigation in america. you may hear about a murder

investigation in a nearby city and it might seem flawed, but that is the end of it. this came from a long trail of reporting done by many different people. we started to just get a sense that -- we did not have a sense of what the country looked like. we started to learn there were no rules for what it meant to be a coroner -- you did not have to be a doctor or trained in some cities. there is an anecdote that somebody was also the janitor as well as the coroner. we are looking for tips where there is a story in front of

you, the local murder investigation, but what is behind that? that is what we are always doing, trying to look at an issue that may be all around us but nobody has found a really particular angle. we are lucky because we have the capacity to do national stories and try to get different organizations involved to look at something on a national scale. >> bringing back to that -- as a documentary filmmaker, i manage a small company, we are four people -- when you commit to a story, you had better know that you are going to do a good job. once you go down that rabbit hole, you are talking about a couple of years. for me, the criteria is, take a narrative out there that is well known and find a back story. i think about the story -- >> the legendary columnist. >> exactly, who when kennedy was being buried was looking for an angle on how to tell the story and ended up doing a beautiful piece, interviewing the grave digger. telling the story of kennedy's death through the point of view of this grave digger. how do you talk about the drug war and u.s. links to the drug war, this thing that is so impossible -- you have to root it in a specific story and find

some kind of back door, some kind of different way to do it. for me that is always an important piece of the puzzle. >> to look at another aspect of this -- a lot of citizens are doing journalistic things with their cameras all over the world. i found myself thinking as i was watching about everyone, folks in syria and homs, they show what they could, to folks here in oakland with camera phones trying to show police misbehaving. somebody, the act of journalism, how to protect people, whether they are citizens or professionals -- what do you think? we do not have a conversation about that.

should there be an international standard of journalistic rights, if you are committing journalism you should be protected? how you protect those folks? >> good luck implementing that law. is a great question. something journalists and tijuana struggle with all the time with the rise of social media and websites a lot of you have heard about -- including one which started out as a compendium of information about basically narco turf wars, shootings in the streets, the headings. it started off as a visual wallpaper and has since become interesting, more

sophisticated, and is beginning to write articles and put -- and the editor is anonymous, but they are beginning to publish pieces. this thing that was touted early on as being a kind of innovative or new information delivery system is now turning into a more traditional journalistic entity. the journalist would say, that is great that the information is there, and the kind of iphone video or man on the street, so called man on the street video of any event can be uploaded quickly, but who is providing context and analysis? not that we always need to rely on experts, but if you are writing for a weekly, that really gives you a totally different approach. you can provide context, provide perspective, in a way that you do not necessarily get from that immediate delivery of information, of data. >> in collaborative work, to what extent are using stuff that comes in from citizens? to what extent are you putting

data and other things out that citizens can then put the pieces together? how much of that do you do? what is its value? what does not work about it? >> we do not have a magic formula, we do not have the type of investment you can make controls the other people do. it is important to remember that journalists always put out a story knowing that the response is more valuable than the story they put out. to see what the truth is. we are just entering a very exciting phase. with this disruption, there has been a lot of different efforts to change the role of journalism -- not just to classify the job, but also to organize information better. one of the roles journalists never picked up the way they should have and we are trying to explore more is their educational role. you can do investigative journalism, but the idea that people understand everything journalists talk about or read about in their story these days

is really something we need to examine. they are not following the story is very well. it is not their fault. stories are not being told fully. they are not being brought to speed. the number of people who know how school board elections work or how different aspect of our community actually function before they can even get enrolled in a story about how they are developing is something journalists need to take stock in and step back from. this formula is being applied to stories, reader's digest, stuff like that, that help people. >> the citizen question -- >> we are not an outlet. we are a program at the university of california, a graduate program that does reporting, but we are working with different organizations. we do not really have an initiative, per said, but there are organizations that are doing incredible work with

citizens. "the guardian" in the u.k. is the best example of a large organization that works with citizens on a huge scale. one of the things they did in the last couple years was pulled from public records about the way their politicians are spending money. millions of documents. they created a form and citizens volunteered to go through those millions of documents and competed. it was amazingly successful. i do not know how many thousands of people participated, but it was a lot. "the guardian" is very innovative. american journalists are trying to find ways to do this -- to engage citizens. we do not get a lot of cold calls or tips, but we never ignore. i do not know if there are journalists out there -- we never ignore a tip. i do not care how crazy it seems, how far-fetched -- we always follow up. you will be surprised at how many amazing stories we get out

of thosetips . on that way, we deal with people in serious ways. when we do large-scale investigations, one of the things we try to do is make information available for other reporters. we treated maps that showed in each county or state level, it is different at the county level, how investigations work, what journalists need to report. trying to share as much information as we can so that other reporters can take what we have done and carry it forward. >> talking about educational -- i could not help but think of the internal revenue service when he started talking about education. you are collaborating with nonprofits. bernardo ruiz productions -- >> not a non-profit, but

primarily public funders, foundations. >> so you are non-profit, you have money from foundations, they have agendas. the second problem, the irs seems to not buy in many cases, they do not buy the notion that non-profit journalistic enterprises are educational things. how do you wrestle with both of those? >> there is a discomfort with the idea that newspapers are not going to be ok. the idea that it needs to be a public service type entity that take that role is still something they are getting accustomed to. there is movement in a positive -- >> these are old irs agents that are holding back? >> i do not know.

the point being, what i'm trying to address is that there is a role, there is a gap between when you leave school, even college, and civic engagement, being able to run for office. what that knowledge -- how you learn all the things about how your community works? there is a gap, and we have no organized system for how to get you to that point other than for you to individually look at your students' school or a stop sign not in place, then you start getting engaged. that is why i think our type of organization can increase that educational role and do more of what we are doing at the investigative and vigilance. >> have you had a hard time? >> we were one of the first. maybe they started to dial back the more controversial organizations. it has done quite well.

we never had trouble. it is important to note that the members who watched support it. it is not a question when they make that decision -- people are wondering when people support journalism, these newspapers fall apart and people say people are not willing to pay for journalism. >> they never ask, please, help us? >> it just stopped. it just stood there like a depressing time capsule for months -- it drove me nuts. these entities are falling apart without ever wondering what their community would support. frankly, a nonprofit is a much better situation to make that plea to the community because a for-profit is set up for shareholder values where receiving money as gifts is awkward. we see it in different

newsrooms around the country. >> you are more sympathetic? >> i am saying the mission- based organization is a more sympathetic organization to support. >> when you reported on some of these that are foundation- funded, had he seen examples of the founder trying to meddle? >> yes, but it is a meddling in a particular way. very few foundations exist solely to support journalism -- there are a few, but there are not many. there are thousands of foundations with in this country, and they have very specific desires and goals and impacts in mind. it might be to better their community, to better the arts. a host of things. when i say nettling, it is that sometimes they will give a news organization money with a very specific scope in mind.

i am making this up to be fair, but maybe they want you to just cover education. that could be great, but maybe what you really need to cover something else in that community, but suddenly you have a check in front of you and you feel compelled to cover education. that is the type of thing we are seeing here and there, but that overall is kind of concern. i think it could be that foundations could be educated about journalism. i went to a big foundation conference and realize they do not necessarily understand the ethos of journalism. that goes against the ethos of journalism to tell them what they should cover. i think it had a conversation, but it will take time and effort. >> for money to make films? how tough it out there? is there money for vigilance? >> on the documentary side, it is most of the time, as documentarians, we are what

would be considered enterprise journalism. we subsidize our development and by the time we have something to show or the sense of a pitts we are going to foundations. typically we are going to places where we think these projects would be well received. i am also sometimes commissioned by entities. i am working on an education serious, and that as a commission from the corporation for public broadcasting. the mandate is very clear. i have been very lucky in that the foundations that have supported my work -- in "reportero" we had quite a bit of support in the ford foundation. there was no editorial meddling and no restrictions on we should and should not be talking about. >> another aspect -- the standing army of journalists has declined and been given their honorable or not so honorable discharges.

particularly in the last decade. they have gone to all kinds of institutions -- i keep finding old colleagues are people i knew who argue in journalism from in a different kind of place. they will tell me that, at least. government is one -- you started in government. you were the inspector general of health and human services. the legislative leadership in california hired a bunch of journalists out of the press corps to put them in office -- they figure out stories that have not gotten a lot of attention. there are reporters working in l.a. county for the board of supervisors -- they have journalistic blogs or even internally. does that have value? can the government be doing this?

can you be doing journalism from within government? >> no. i do not think you can be doing journalism from within government. the inspector general is supposed to be apolitical, and that was not totally the case, to be totally frank. i do not know what it is like now, but when i worked there during the clinton administration it was absolutely not apolitical. people make decisions about what it will find, what you will do. i was told that during the bush administration the oig would write reports. that are be completely redlined and turned into a one page memo if it did not fall on certain lines. so i do not think that as possible. >> let me disagree a little bit. maybe not vigilance, but with resources in our world, all these complaints about not covering the good news,

different types of news that come from different types of entities can be reapportioned to other needs. at mayor's office, they had 1.3 of some of the best former writers in town, former journalists. they could have produced a voice of the mayor's office that was interesting to read, that i would have read. is that government propaganda? of course it is. but on the other hand, n look, nfl.com is doing. they run columns and interesting conflict-type stories. resources are going direct. in a world of dwindling resources, those resources are used for vigilance and to make sense of what they are saying. put it into context and find out things they do not want to

say, but perhaps we can drop the complaint that we are not covering good news and let them cover their own good news. >> that is a good point. >> what about the ngo? human-rights what has won a journalistic awards for its work -- human rights watch has won a journalistic awards for its works. in the los angeles area, the best investigative reporter now does investigative reporting paid for by the service employees international union local. what about that sort of thing? taken with a grain of salt, is that part of the answer? >> in a world where anyone can buy a newspaper for $12 million, we are close to everyone being pretty open -- newspapers are trying to do --

if a non-governmental organization produces a product that is transparent about things like that -- people can put it together and do in narrative you can understand. >> what do you think? >> i was just going to say, as long as these projects are explicit about where support is coming from, are up front about it, at least you are giving a fighting chance. interestingly, a lot of commercial organizations are not explicit or honest about where their support is coming from. in some ways, we are holding the ngo's and nonprofits to a higher degree of scrutiny. >> you get credibility based on the the algorithm you are using

to find your information, how transparent you are. it used to be that a young person like jason blair could work for "the new york times" and would have credibility. athink we're changing to world where an organization has to be open and show how it goes about its business, what its plan is, what it is trying to do, and let the reader -- >> what about the academy? what about universities as a home for this? full disclosure -- one of zocalo's most important partners is arizona state university. you work in the academy, doing investigative journalism. is that a natural home, with academic freedom, or does that have drawbacks and problems that are not immediately apparent? >> i am sure it does. i think it depends on the institution. there is the idea out in the

journalism world that we can all become like teaching hospitals. universities can become teaching schools for journalism and put real information out into the world. i think it depends each year for us. some years we have an amazing group of students who are very engaged. as with anything, you might get a year with that is not the case. there are ups and downs, but there are more pros than cons , at least for us. being at a academic institution has tremendous benefits -- insurance, the university pays the rent. there are many benefits, but it is definitely a different way of working and involves a lot of time and mentor ship beyond actual reporting and a different type of fund raising, too. >> have either of you collaborated with universities in any of your work? >> i have not had success with it yet. that does not mean we could not figure it out. >> there is a project we worked

on -- one of our bigger investigations was done with claremont-mckenna about food stamp distribution in san diego county compared to other counties in california. they helped us with the data for that. there are ways with specific projects. >> i hear more about that, and a partner of zocalo, the lane center of stanford, has a spatial history lab. that has allowed journalists to do more with data, deeper data mining. the journalist is almost the translator of what comes out of the data. is that sort of the great potential in that? they have computers and -- >> a partnership always works best when both partners realize

they cannot do something. when the journalist realizes they have a problem they can solve if only they had a camera or data or geography, then they can do anything. but it is very important that both partners realize they cannot do what the other partner can not. >> if journalists have always been conveeners, they find people, translate experts -- do we get, the army puts the work through the boot camp. you get to the point you have to train experts and people on how to do journalism? that is the next thing -- the journalists, it will be like early vietnam, folks come in to train the citizen or the expert, essentially?

we are on a training mission? >> an exciting front will be a version where the prosecutors become journalists, and military experts become journalists. the idea that journalism school just produces journalism, there is probably a role for storytelling as a profession. i am really excited to see some become experts and polling and finance writing and stuff like that. i am excited to see that at the local level, and if we could ever afford some real accountants to investigate facebook and stuff like that, we would know how to write. that would be an expensive purchase. >> i am not worried about good storytellers. i think that is a really exciting idea. one of the things that allows

me to sleep at night is when you spend a lifetime working on being a storyteller, i may not be an expert but i am smart enough to know when i do not know something and talk to someone in that particular field. something like planet money is a great example. it is an hour of reading radio about hard economic concepts and they do precisely what you have been talking about where you take something incredibly complex and you boil it down in a way that makes sense. it is all told through the power of narrative. i am feel like i am not an expert and will fully on agitated about vast pieces of american life. as a storyteller, i understand i need to go here and put those pieces together. >> i wanted to follow up on something you referenced, the notion of the journalism school, teaching.

you are seeing more journalism schools asking, a bunch of foundations getting together recently who wrote a letter that you are not supposed to use in newspaper leads, slamming journalism universities for not using that model. what are journalism schools producing? part of me wonders, is part of what is going on we are trying to keep labor costs low -- those are people who do not need to pay, but they are paying you for the privilege of doing the work. >> this is completely my opinion. i think the world is changing so much faster than academia is accustomed to.

journalism, even just a few years ago, we would not be having this conversation. we will be having the death of the newspaper conversation. we had that for five or six years. i feel like things change so quickly. the technology has changed things so rapidly that i think academia has a hard time keeping up and knowing what to tell young journalists to do. i am reading a slew of our lists saying, i want specialist's again. that is partly what is happening. the world is moving at such a rapid pace. >> we have a switch that with such a robust media industry for so long, the goal of academia as it applies to media was to protect quality and talk about best practices. whither the death of the media industry, and it is the death,

the role has to switch to innovation to figuring out how to protect those values and other things we care about. that itself has to have some element of innovation and creativity. it cannot just be about best practices, these great stories we wrote, that sort of thing. >> if you want to become a documentary filmmaker, where do you learn how to do that? where do you go train? do you pick up your camera? what advice do you give to someone who says i want to be like bernardo ruiz. >> the scared straight documentary, the ex-con goes to talk to a kid. i sometimes feel like i go to documentary talks and give that lecture. i go to a new program, a social documentary program, a two-year

program in new york. there are two routes. one i took like running away to join a circus. a minor league ball player. you train with people who are really good at what they do. >> to train you? >> i was lucky enough to work for a couple great filmmakers. i worked for orlando bagwell for a few years. a pbs series. he had come out on a series looking on civil-rights issues in america. that was a fundamental place for me to learn. i also worked on a documentary series for a long time. i learned by working in production and by immediately working on things of my own. i do think there is a benefit to the best practices, the thing that happens in an institution where you are not just struggling to make the thing.

you are talking about it and you also have community and resources. if you can afford it, that is a powerful route. i happened to learn the hardest way possible, which is by working in production and not doing anything else. >> is that an issue here, the kind of methods, the institutions and the pattern and career that allows people to be trained to do watch-dog type stuff, whether they are journalists or do similar things, are those drying up? >> documentary films are interesting. in some ways, that still exists. in journalism, the apprenticeship model the newspaper used to offer is definitely going away. you have a staff of 10 and you might be able to mentor some

number. it used to be the copy boy or girl. you really could not rise through the ranks. i do not want to put a quality judgment on that. everything is different. >> it brings up possibilities for other people to a rise that would not happen. >> exactly. >> where is your summer internship? all that. >> it is a defined path. i was in the path and watched its struggle. that was difficult. it offered opportunities. >> it used to be, when there were not so many institutions, the bigger, more diverse array of things, where people wonder

who is a journalist anymore, it seemed like there was a stronger, commonly, publicly known ethics of what a journalist was supposed to be and how to behave. should there be a training of what a journalist should be? >> they always talk about rules and ethics. the broader public, they never took the time to actually narrate that and enroll the public in their own narratives. people knew the editorials were separate from the newspaper. but there is nothing very stark in the actual paper explaining that every day. we just assume we do a story three months ago, we assume they read it. this is a problem in our industry. one thing's these new industries have to do is enroll people in the high standards they have,

talked about constantly why they should be trusted. it is a constant enrollment. >> i want to say one thing i feel like has been lost is, while there has been more room for new voices and more innovative voices, by the time the newspaper's collapse, most of them had made a strong commitment to diversity. that still exists in some of those newsrooms. you see the nonprofits come up, for reasons that are mere survival, they are not there at that point. we are losing a lot of diversity in our journalism. that is one very big red flag i feel strongly about, figuring out how to support these nonprofits in those goals. >> when a newspaper was an institution you could complain to, that was a way to solve the problem. with the institution falling

apart, you have to solve the problem itself. >> some people do it and have made real commitments. some organizations do not. >> let's open it up to the audience. >> thank you. it is time to take questions. there are two people with microphones. jennifer and i will take your questions. please speak into the microphone. we are recording and c-span is here. the first question is right here. >> i am looking at a state of open mind, a public square, all these terms you use. the name that comes to mind is wikileaks. do you support the work? is this something you will support in the future? i find journalists do not ask good questions.

it is very frustrating. we are not getting the truth, no transparency. what is your opinion of the work of leaks? >> we have had a guest for a couple years, both on skype and in person. that is a complicated issue for many reasons. one of the problems is it is hard to parsecs the figure from what he is actually doing. i do not have a clear answer to that. in a lot of ways, i support what he was trying to do. i do not know if i support it in the way he did it. most journalists believe in the public access of information. he is an interesting figure.

>> i support and defend his right to do what they did. there is some discomfort with his personality, his figure. i think this is an example of another formula being applied to the journalism problem. i think homicide watch in washington d.c. is another one. instead of everything having to go through a story on the front page, this is a way to apply formula to solving a problem. it is interesting to watch and i defend his right to do what he did. there are questions with regard to how he did it. >> i was wondering if there was more to the question. the professional norms and ethics, there are certain

things you cannot do and places you cannot go. the conservative who dresses up, do you think it is valuable to have those people? this era gives those people a reach. there are certain things the rest of us cannot do. they almost do anything. >> absolutely. it is a great question. is he a journalist? is he a hacker? i personally have a slightly more conservative take on what a journalist can and should do. i would prefer to have a trusted force that can synthesize some of that information for me. someone i can follow over a period of time.

over time, that writer gains credibility for me. somebody i respect over time. then again, you have to ask yourself, did it have an impact? all that information at different times, did it have an impact? it did have a huge impact. we are having a conversation about ethics and standards that, to some people, feels old fashioned. in some ways, the journalism that is being practiced harkens back to an old school investigative print journalism. not that i was being romantic, but i wanted to still see it in practice. >> as documentary filmmakers, have you ever gone undercover? >> no.

>> i have always had to be upfront. >> good questions are not being asked. someone gets a response a journalist knows is not true and they are not responding in a way that is not satisfactory. i want to empathize with that feeling. >> hello. i used to be a journalist a couple years ago. i have not seen your documentary. i am very interested in seeing it. i am out of the journalism business. i have a startup. what we are doing is working on the video medium for overall

video use. especially information-based communities. i want to ask you, where do you see journalism in 2020? where would you like it to be? >> everybody is waiting for what is next, what is the new reality. the new reality is constant evolution. to the point where what we see in 2020 is incomprehensible. that is scary and hard. unless you try to take control and build something like you are talking about, i do not know. i do not think anybody who says

they do has any clue. it will be good. every time there is a new -- there is an amazing talk. every time there is a new printing press or something, everyone thinks it is the end of the world or it will all bring perfect peace and harmony. it does neither. we will watch it get better and worse. >> the question on your right. >> hello. i came tonight because i think not only are the questions not being asked -- what? i am getting to it. if you do not have a facebook account, you cannot comment on a story, if it allows comments. what we am faced with is a bunch of sound bites on stories and we are supposed to read that. in my point of view, we have to

see people like walter cronkite, real reporters, what we are seeing now is a place to go to news that is imposed. they got bought out, and now twitter is the big thing. there will be something else when twitter gets bought out. nobody in san diego is even talking about it. >> do not touch that. >> it is a real scary. >> that is fair. we did a poll in a magazine. you could not comment on the posts in the past, but now you

do have an interaction with reporters that is exciting. but you are right. we need better, stronger, more interesting coverage of these institutions, of these big changes, and of these scandals. you cannot pick and choose in outrage. twitter is not delivering the information. do not think of it as 140 characters as information. think of it as 140 characters to invite people to get deeper into a subjects. every tweet has a link. it spreads a lot faster than it would have in the past. >> question to your left. >> hello. i am curious what you think occupy wall street's tactics

have changed media about inequality, income distribution, and they talked to people about how to document what was happening. training psittacine journalists how to videotape police, and we have tremendous problems with police breaking up the occupied demonstrations in san diego. it was overwhelmed by a lot of other things coming up. we do not have a physical place to camp out. i am curious how you think about how occupy has influenced the process? >> i think it had a huge impact. if you look at the election right now, the way we discussed so many things, it has become a part of all of our vernacular. similarly to not being able to comment, 30 years ago, that would not have been the exact same case. we had an enormous impact.

it shows what an exciting time it is. they may have trained people to use journalistic techniques, and there is some reporting that happens, but i think we are at a moment where we are asking ourselves, is journalism something that is unbiased, showing what is happening, verses have a point of view. i still make a distinction. i do both. i feel there is still a distinction. >> i am excited to see what groups of filmmakers are going to tell the occupy story. it remains to be seen what impact they have had. they certainly impact the conversation.

in 2012, we are still not talking about income inequality and poverty and structural inequality in deeper and more profound ways. that is not occupy's failure. it is something we still struggle with. we have volunteer lawyers to help. there is all the fighting going on. journalists have cameras they take with them. there is fighting about what you can and cannot shoot. do you work with a lawyer when you are out there?

do you have a lawyer you consult with often? >> that is the reality of being a documentary filmmaker. people, rightly so, are so much more sophisticated. because of things like reality television, people are much more aware of media and in some ways more comfortable with it. there is a sense of opportunity sometimes. it is a necessary -- i will not call it a necessary evil. i like my attorney. it is a part of that puzzle. occupy is a social movement. i personally think it is an important one. i would agree i do not necessarily see what occupy is doing as journalism -- it is a kind of social vigilance. i do not see them as journalists. i am looking at independent sources to provoke and tell stories in a different ways.

>> when i look at occupy, it is not an example of citizen journalism as much as an example of what a group of citizens can do to influence journalism. there is always this mentality that the media is doing its thing and it drives the narrative. to some extent, it does that. there have always been really good pr people have formed that narrative. occupy has an interesting discussion. >> we have time for one last question. i would like to thank our sponsors and our hosts, and c- span for being here recording tonight's event. thank you so much. the reception will be right outside the door and immediately following the last question. thank you for being here.

>> i like a model for being transparent, exposing your methods. what would you do or say to somebody who has never written but wants to be a vigilante? what motivates somebody to be a vigilante? the follow up is the craft of reporting, as you were saying, that getting lost. >> vigilante. >> you need to start. we all started somewhere. you have to start telling a story and see if you can get into networks that support you. >> i am talking about motivation, the logical motivation for somebody to do that. >> you never write as well as when you are mad. you have to read it after you do that. [laughter] it seems to flow. to tap into that, whether it is

mismanagement, or something greater about society, tap into something that fires you up and do the work to make a good case about it. lawyers do the same thing. it is a process that being effective at making a case. >> what motivates you? >> good question. the storytelling takes a lot of different forms. you have a goal of having an impact. it is a sense of civic duty, what ever is. one thing i will say about all of us, investigative reporters are obsessive people and they are very curious.

it is the case for most of the people i know. a real obsessive curiosity about the way the world works and hopefully trying to make it work a little bit better. >> for me, i would very much agree. but it is also trying to get at what makes people tick and not understanding myself how institutions work sometimes and really trying to ask those questions and figure out those questions. i think "the wire" did a masterful job telling a story about the inner city, baltimore, the drug war. it is not a piece of journalism, yet, it is so

informed by a long and interesting career in journalism, local journalism, that something like that, to me, has tremendous power. narrative is the way we absorb information. at this moment in time, for me, when i see those projects that can impact culture and the frame how we think about something, that is what gets me excited. those are the types of things i throw myself toward. >> i remember on the college paper, a big deal reporter at politico, he liked to go through the trash of the board of overseers at the university after they had their meetings. he wanted me to come along. the fact there was something you could do for a living that had even a tiny bit of respect to run their involved diving through people's trash seemed so interesting.

is the dumpster diving over? >> there are a lot of locks on dumpsters. >> that is too bad. please join me in thanking everyone. we will see you at the reception. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> watched the presidential election results tuesday night. along with key house, senate, and governor races. coming up, washington journal" looks at the swing state of colorado in the 2012 elections. journalists talk about working in, -- conflict areas. that is followed by the illinois 17th district congressional debate.

>> wednesday, ohio senator rob portman and the state governor campaign for mitt romney on a bus tour to encourage early voting down. live coverage at 5:30 eastern on c-span. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, mitt romney is joined by former governor jeb bush and rep connie mack at a camp in -- campaign rally in florida. >> i would like to ask you a question similar to that asked of the vice-presidential candidates -- as a catholic, how has your view on abortion and shaped by your faith? >> i am not catholic. i am episcopalian. i cannot answer that question, -- >> your husband is catholic. >> my husband is catholic.

an episcopalian. my children are catholic, my grandchildren have been baptized in the catholic church. we raise our children as catholic. i am happy to talk about my view on abortion. my view on abortion is that it should be safe, legal, and rare. >> here is something that is a valid point and is a difference between us -- is not manufactured. that is the act. we have babies in america and in iowa being aborted simply because they are little baby girls, because the mother once a boy instead of a girl. we have evidence of that, coming from the asian community as well. legislation before congress prohibits sex selective abortion. my opponent thinks this is ridiculous to talk about. i think it matters. for the little girl's being aborted. >> the election day is one week away -- find key races around the country on c-span, c-span radio, and c-

span.org/campaign2012. >> these are the stories your textbook left out. great stories about real people with an american history. a very important moments with an american history we do not know about. the first pilgrims in america came 50 years before the mayflower. they were french. they may wind. they had the good sense to land in florida in june instead of december in massachusetts. then there were wiped out by the spanish. we completely left the story out of the textbook. the most famous woman in america -- she was taken captive by indians in 1695 in new hampshire. in the middle of the night she kills her captors, realized she could get a bounty for indian scalps, went back, stopped them, and made her way to boston where she was a heroine. they erected a statue to her, the first set to to an american woman. a statue in one hand and stops

and the other. >> kenneth davis, taking the calls, e-mail, and tweets. he is the best-selling author of the "don't know much" series. what to live at noon on book tv on c-span to. >> a look at colorado as a battleground state. this is 25 minutes. we have been focusing on the nine swing states. this morning, we put the spotlight on colorado, where it looks like it is a close race for the presidential election. you can see the state of colorado there. its corridors. the battleground point fall state of colorado has nine electoral votes.

president obama won that state in 2008 by joining us from denver this editor with the "denver post." what are the top issues for colorado voters? guest: like everywhere else, it is the economy and jobs. energy is a big issue and immigration is a big issue as well. host: what are the demographics of voters in colorado? who votes? guest: 52% are women. 48% are men. republicans have about a 20,000 vote advantage. the state is equally divided. one-third are republican, one- third are democrats, and the

rest are unaffiliated. you try to figure out which way they are going to break. they will talk a lot about appealing to women, appealing to latinos. throughout the course of the 2012 campaign, we have heard a lot about the strategy of appealing to women and latinos to eke out a victory for democrats. host: where are the traditionally democratic and republican areas of the state? guest: denver and boulder tend to be democratic. the fifth biggest county for democrats with voter

registration is el paso county. that is typically viewed as sort of a republican stronghold, and it is. increasingly, we have seen the ski area communities start to turn democratic. host: a lot of headlines and focus on early voting in this presidential contest. does colorado have it? guest: we do and we have mail in voting about two million people voted early absentee in the 2008 election. that is expected to grow to two 0.5 million this election cycle. keep in mind that colorado has

about 2.8 million active voters. about three-quarters of the vote should be conducted in colorado. host: on election day, how do people vote? guest: there are three ways, optical machines, scanning machines and paper ballots. host: can there be tampering? we have heard about that in other states. guest: in colorado, there is a mandatory recount if the challenger finishes within half a percent of the primary vote

getter. host: we are talking about colorado as part of our battleground series. if we could go through the denver post endorsements, who did you endorse, and why? guest: we endorsed president obama. especially on the debt and the deficit, the president's proposal was more realistic and it would have less of a shock to the system in the country and lead -- in that it would balance spending cuts. we like is more balanced approach to energy. we are in favor of obamacare. the editorial board was in favor of a public option so it did not go far enough for us.

on social issues, immigration reform, women's rights, birth control, the editorial board aligns more with the president's policies. that is where we came down. we said that the voters are being asked by both candidates to take a leap of faith. given what we know about the previous four years, we decided that it was going to be an easier but to go with the president for four more. host: how many times have you seen president obama, governor romney, or their surrogates in your state? guest: president obama has been here eight times this year, governor romney has been here 6. paul ryan may be eligible to vote, he's been here that much. joe biden has been here once. we have had a lot of its from michelle obama. we have seen plenty of action this cycle.

host: bill clinton could be coming to your state. he is scheduled to campaign for the president today in colorado. he was supposed to be in colorado springs tuesday but cancelled due to the storm. guest: pending the outcome of the storm on the east coast, we will see both candidates later in the week. governor romney was here last week and held a rally at red rock and thousands were turned away. the following day, he held a -- president obama held a rally in denver and drew a crowd estimated at 16,000. the governor this week has reserved an amphitheater in the southern suburbs of has a capacity of 18,000 people. there were looking at going to boulder to hold a rally there. they're certainly trying to turn out a lot of voters with momentum.

host: one week to go and looking at the momentum in colorado. the numbers are on your screen. with every special one from colorado residents. kathy from pueblo, colorado, an independent scholar. -- caller. you're one of those unaffiliated voters that both campaigns really want. what are you thinking about in this presidential election? i caller:. the election has been bought by the democratic party, by all those trillions of dollars that obama has borrowed to give to the state of ohio. we cannot buy a coffee pot that is now bought in the united states. of the can talk about our autoworkers, teachers, and firefighters.

there are a lot more people out there than that demographic. host: curtis hubbard? guest: it sounds like she is unaffiliated but not undecided. she has made up her mind in this election. host: what about the amount of money that is being spent in colorado by the presidential campaigns and also outside groups? guest: we have seen significant spending by both campaigns and their surrogates. wesleyan university did an analysis of television and ad spending in the denver media market and it led all in the country as far as television time and the cost of advertising. we have seen significant attention here in the presidential race and we have a congressional race during signet attention as well. host: here is a breakdown of the numbers. obama for america spent about $9

million on spots. aziz said the congressional races getting some attention as well. democratic caller. caller: mr. hubbard, who chose ashley mosier? so many people around this country are being shot. a lot of young kids, teenagers. why is no one talking about gun violence? not just about guns, but why are we treating people so bad? why are we planning to be on afghanistan for two more years? young people come back from

afghanistan and we are the spending all this money, poverty everywhere. the guy who wins in the theater and shot it up, the university near he was kind of crazy and we are a better country than the situation we are in. you have a good day. there are people out there who are depending on a real review of where the country is going. host: curtis hubbard. guest: you mentioned a really sorry tragedy for us, july 20th s, the gunmen in the theater in aurora. he killed 12 people and injured 58 at the midnight showing at the premiere of batman. there was a discussion in the days after that about what can the nation and colorado do as far as the gun laws. we on the editorial board at "denver post," we supported reauthorization of the weapons ban and we support the

elimination of the high- capacity magazines that people use for those guns. there's a point made here by the democratic gov. which is that gun-control laws will not stop someone who has an ill intent from acting on it. it's a difficult position for democrats, particularly in the west where second amendment rights are held tightly by voters across the spectrum. democrats have learned in colorado across several election cycles that running on gun control is not a winning proposition for them. we saw several pieces of legislation passed in colorado after the columbine massacre, but since that time politicians, especially on the left, have been loath to take part of the issue. host: republican caller from st. augustine, florida. caller: i would like to see them spending more time letting

people know about other things going on in the government and have been mentioned. the activities that they talk about are not necessarily all the things we should be concerned about. there's hardly any mention made about the comments joe biden made to the man who came to pick up the body of his son. i don't know that these are the kind people that we should ever presented last but no one will touch these issues. guest: if nobody touched those issues, you would not know about it. there's no shortage of information these days. these campaigns are being covered like never before and you can get a lot of the daily horse race aspect, but there's plenty of coverage of what the

candidates are saying of the campaign trail and how that equates to the previous statements, policies they have enacted. i think that there is plenty of information for people. they just have to be willing to sit down and find it. host: here is "the bloomberg insider" take on colorado put out on august 27th. can you explain? guest: in our last legislative session, for the third time, lawmakers tried to pass a bill that would recognize same-sex of unions. for the first time, they got republican votes in the house, the chamber controlled by republicans in a one-vote margin. it was essentially filibustered and the final night of the regular session and did not pass.

the governor called a special legislative session in order to address several pieces of legislation. it was killed in committee there. the democrats, especially a prominent democratic fund-raiser come the founder of a court software put money into state house races to find candidates who would pass that issue. gay marriage works into the conversation here. as many of your viewers may know, we passed a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana. in the last four years, we have seen huge growth in the medical marijuana industry in the form of dispensaries. their places where people who have been authorized by a doctor to use marijuana for medical care can get their marijuana. subsequently, for the third time since 2000, we will have on the ballot an effort to legalize marijuana. we're one of three states this

year without on the ballot. in early voting, it was polling above 53% support in favor of legalizing it in colorado. it has dipped down in some polls recently, but that is something to watch on election night. there is a theory of their that a lot of young voters especially are motivated by those two questions and that they will drive them to the polls whereas they may not be as interested in the presidential election. host: who would that help in the presidential candidates? guest: it would help president obama. i was talking to someone on the issue of colorado amendment 64. it is a republican stronghold but support for legalization down there was high among both democrats and republicans. that is a testament to the libertarian spirit.

it's really not the government's business what i do in the privacy of my own home and a lot of them look at the nation's war on drugs, specifically marijuana and things were a lot of money has been wasted on the effort. people were pushing the legalization efforts here equate marijuana and alcohol and the measure calls to regulate marijuana like alcohol. our newspaper has supported legalization. we came out in opposition to amendment 64, the legalization piece this year, because we did not think this was the right vehicle. host: what about third-party candidates in colorado? guest: a lot of us in colorado who have already received their ballots and saw the number of candidates on the balance were surprised. we have 16 here. former new mexico gov. gary johnson running as the

libertarian candidate is the most prominent of them. it depends on who you talk to. some people say governor johnson's it support for marijuana legalization could cost president obama votes. others say they tend to pull unaffiliated voters that could go republican, so he is one to watch to see what kind of vote totals he will get. the biggest third-party candidate in colorado history was ross perot who pulled in, i think, 23% of the vote. host: curtis hubbard, what will you be watching for on election night? guest: the suburban counties around denver. you will hear a lot of talk about arapaho and jefferson counties in terms of which ever candid it will win those counties. they will have a much easier path to running the state of colorado. i will be looking closely at the number of republican votes coming in from el paso county,

douglas county, mesa county. another swing county is a larimer, northern colorado, fort collins, colorado state university. we are going to see if they get the numbers the way they want to. they will pay considerable attention to the southwest corner of the state. durango, fort lewis, so we will see how they are doing in that corner of the state as well. host: off twitter. larry in colorado, democratic line. go ahead. caller: i just want to give a shout out for obama. i'm a pretty strong supporter of his and i think is a real no- brainer when you consider that

he pretty much saved us from a depression. the american recovery act was obviously a success. of course, the auto bailout. i do not think anyone can vote against obama because he had not save that the auto industry would have been lost.

and is 50 minutes. >> thinking for the introductions. i would like to thank you in advance. we are talking, the ethics of journalists. i am not a journalist. i am a historian. what you guys call this? do you refer to being embedded

as -- how do we talk about this? >> i am indebted. yes. -- embedded. yes. >> you do not say, i am on an embed. >> an embed means, you could be with the military and not be embedded. i signed a contract with the military. as far as i know, this is pretty much invented by the military and all this terminology, before that, you would just say, i am reporting with the army.

>> there is an indication with embedded that you are living with them and you have sheltered food and are with them. >> you can rely on them for food and security. to embeds asred tt far as the military. >> it is about journalists who are working toward -- working towar for thduring world war ii. when did you first hear the word and added -- word embedded.

>> journalists were given a rank. the word embedded was not called that. it fell out of fashion for many years and the military, the pentagon, was not sure what to do with journalists and they would exclude them from certain operations. i think the invasion of panama raised it again because, while it was supposed to have imbedded journalists, it was a fiasco and they were held on the base for many days. that prompted much discussion

between the press and the pentagon about what to do for the next conflict. ground rules were agreed upon. in 1991, that is when it was instituted again. the difference in that conference -- conflict is wit was instituted on a pool basis. camera people, journalists who were embedded with the military were expected to share all of their material with all of the other major outlets. that created a pool operation to ir content.of there that morphed in the events after n embedded situation that was not pulleooled.

>> when we first heard ramping up to 2003 the afghanistan invasion, the u.s. troops on the special groundwork special forces. it was such a small force. the issue really came up again in 2002 as people were preparing to embed in iraq. i heard about it and many of my peers already in the field thought, no way, we will not do that. our impression of the 1991 embeds is that they were stuck in a room and could not get anything done. a lot of us chose not to embed and many of us went to iraq into the north. i would say we were shocked and

appalled at how much play the embedded reporters were getting. there were good stories being reported. they were reported well. it worked so well i felt like i was worried news organizations would start just sending embeds and not reporting the other side. class with the security system, a basically became like that. with iraq, it got to the point where you could not be in unilateral anymore. in afghanistan, that is typical. >> that is the term for non- embedded. unilateralist. >> you are unilateral. >> what was important for me in the iraq war was working for the

l.a. times we had people and bedded and non-indebted people. -- non-embedded people. we had three or four and pollock -- photographers. you could not go from one side to the other. in other conflicts, you can move from one cop -- from one side of the conflict to another side of the conflict. what was important was having people on both sides. >> what happened both in iraq and afghanistan after a time was that it became very hazardous to have non-arable or non-iraqi journalists. there was an increasing reliance on iraqi or arab journalists to be able to tell the other side

of the story. the unilateral side. >> i am sure all of you have many stories. could we get to some of the at the local issues -- the ethical issues? were there situations where you came across an ethical dilemma and you look back on it today and you think about it still? >> i can think of one fairly recently. we had a photographer embedded with the marines in afghanistan a couple of years ago now. she captured a scene on her camera of a mortally wounded u.s. marine corporal. the rule of the embed state was if you photograph a wounded combatant, you must get their permission to use imagery of

them. if you photograph people who ultimately die, you must wait until their families had been notified before you can use that imagery. in this particular case, the corporal, his name was joshua, was fatally wounded. he was being attended to by medics. he subsequently died in a field hospital. we waited for his family to be notified. once they had been notified, we decided to not just run the picture in isolation, but to do a whole series of reports about who he was, personalize his story, humanize his story, we went up and spoke to his them family. where he came from, what his relations had been, his father was a career marine, and we ultimately made the decision we would use this picture in that

context. it included the journal and l exurbs from the photographer's journal. the reaction was for us to not. the ceo asked we not run this information. we thought, after much consideration, that it was in the public interest to humanize a story that is often reduced to casualty figures in a newspaper on a website. ultimately, we decided to run the information. we created a tremendous amount of controversy about, was that the right thing to have done? what with the conflict -- what were the consequences?

they flow in the face of the family's wishes and the secretary of defense's wishes. we felt and still feel it was the correct thing to do, but it was clear the a subject that caused a lot of debate. >> it is very awkward because you bond with these people. you can be with them for a couple weeks. they are feeding and protecting you. you hear their stories and their shattered dreams and they tell you about their families and you bond with them. then you see something you feel needs to be recorded that puts them in a bad light. you may go ahead and record it, but it always feels like a sense of being slightly dirty. they do not college and embed their, they just call it reporting with the colombian military. i had to go with them because it was where there was fighting. that is the traditional territory. they like to kidnapped

journalists. you really cannot go with them. i did not have excellent contact with them. with the military. one day, there is a day off, and they have a barbecue. they play this music. it is mexican music that glorifies the drug crash -- the drug traffickers. these soldiers i was with in colombia were trying to wipe out the trade. that is one of the reasons they were fighting. it was an incredible irony. i felt dirty about putting this in a magazine piece. it was the right thing journalistically. these guys trusted me enough they felt they could play this music in front of me. you are constantly self- questioning yourself when you are on one of these things. am i leaning too much in their favor? am i being too hard on them?

i constantly feel i am examining, and iraq -- am i doing the right thing. >> some situations, you could sit down and argued the ethics of it. sometimes, you know the right thing to do but you feel uncomfortable. i was embedded with some strikers in an armored vehicle in northern iraq in 2005. i had been out with a different company every day for a couple weeks. you want to be friendly, you want to establish your report. you write it as you saw it. sometimes it is less than warm. watching some of these guys in iraq.etainee-in ira

it was not a horrible offense that he committed. i saw them roughed him up. i reported it but i felt uncomfortable about it. i was not said it was also the same day i was slated to leave. the report came out after i left. that is the way the timing worked out. it puts you in an awkward situation with another embed. going door-to-door patrol with troops as they do a search. a close up a block and searched every house. there i was, still bartending to be an impartial reporter and i parted to these people's houses after nightfall with a bunch of american troops. in the 10 minutes allowed, before we move onto the next house, i have to explain, i am

not with them. i am a journalist, not a soldier. what do you think about the trial of saddam hussein? give me your honest opinion. do not mind the marines. it is silly. there were a couple of years there where that was as close as i could get to talking to civilians. >> the largest embed i went on was in 2004 in iraq. my father was a former navy captain. i had respect for the military even before i went on my embed. when you are on the embed, you rely on soldiers for your own safety. any measures to take, you are taking away from a gunman. you are aware of that when this is happening. i also know the reason i am there is that -- is as the eyes of the american public. i have always gone ahead and taking the picture.

-- taken the picture. i did get kicked out of then because there were three or four americans being killed and they were brought into the magic. -- medic area. i tried to photograph that. i was basically expelled. luckily, the marines took me on and i was able to complete that embed. the other issue that came up during that was that the final days of the battle, the marines were right on the front line and they could get into a situation where they are running out of food and water. i was in a situation where i did not want to take any food and water away from the other soldiers who were there. i became a little bit of a problem -- it became a little bit of a problem for me. those are the issues that have come up.

>> it raises an interesting point. we refer to the military as some sort of monolithic organization that is identical throughout. there are personalities and attitudes and different branches of the service have different attitudes toward different things. you will find reactions will ary. the situation i mentioned, the colonel charged -- in charge was fine with it. other people were not fine with the above and below him. it varies. everybody has his view. even policies can be interpreted and implemented in different ways. >> the other thing is that for a photographer, unless you are in the most forward position, in the most dangerous position, you are not really showing what is going on at the most critical point of war.

you are all -- you are always pushing to get to the front line. you cannot be in a back position and expect to cover the story. >> the risks are very real. we have had a couple of cases in recent months and years where photographers, a photographer was on a strike and lost one of its legs. more recently, from "the new york times", a man lost both his legs. it is a very -- while you enjoy some level of security and safety because you are with armed individuals who have very highly developed medical evacuation facilities and all of that sort of thing, that stuff can still happen to you and sometimes does. >> would you say that serving as an embedded journalist is safer

than being knocked embedded -- not embedded? >> safer from kidnapping. less safe from gunfire. >> if a man had been without a medic he would have died. >> that is what happened, there was no medical attention from four -- for journalists. >> i felt like it has evolved around me in the last year. in afghanistan, early on, the places i drove without even having a flak jacket in the car, that kind of thing, would really terrify me now. the same sort of thing with being, getting into northern iraq and waiting for the war to start and realizing how far we were from the city medical care,

which we had to discover a couple of times. -- from a decent medical care, which we had to discover a couple of times. there were a lot of legal concerns about a to the point where now, the last embed i did was in the spring and i was going in there with gear that was similar to what the troops were carrying, up to a personal first-aid kit that had very advanced medical gear in it. >> you raise an issue about some kind of reaction getting kicked out of embed. i am wondering if any of our -- other of you have faced anythi kind of pushed back from the work you have done when being embedded. >> the people who take you on still expect you to write

something positive. there is that expectation on their part. among some people. it really varies unit to unit. going out with the military in the early 1990's, because it was the only way to get access to the fighting in that country, they are getting very upset with the reports i was writing because it did not put them in a very positive light. you take somebody, you have to accept they will write what they see. a lot of times, people do not expect that to happen. >> we have interesting situations in afghanistan last year where we were allowed to put photographers on to medical evacuation helicopters whose job it is to go into the battlefield and scoop up wounded and dead combatants from both sides. the reaction in some of those scenarios and talking to the

photographers, on a couple of occasions, the photographers were attacked physically by soldiers who were delivering their dead colleagues to be evacuated. we captured the most horrific images of the corpses of american military in all different states of damage. in those cases, we make judgment calls about what was acceptable and what we wanted to put out and how valuable it was to tell a story in the heat of battle, a things get quite dramatic. the reactions are not always measured on either side. >> the embed contract you signed, i have not read one carefully for some time, because i think everybody understands if you sign this, you will do your job. if you cross a line doing your job, and they think you violated

the contract, it will probably the journalist -- you'll probably not get on another embed. the thing they require you to sign up to, not giving away positions, they are nothing you would ever really do. a few people have slipped up, but it is never really is essential to the reporting. you come up with people who will not get this embed. it is very tricky. in order to get to the front, it takes days. "why have you not filed in a week?" "i have been sitting in a helicopter." when you finally get out to do reporting, it often takes days

or weeks to get back. they have an ability to deny that. in the summer of 2009, when news got pretty bad, someone stepped on and i e ed. about the newsng was decided that it was not good. some are very forward leaning on embeds and want to get the story out whatever it is. others feel as though this is just one more weapon in their arsenal in the war of public perception and the use it. >> the issue spoke a lot of

colleagues. a tremendously experience and brave and dedicated photographer was always on the sharp end of the stick in multiple conflicts, and a guy like that gets taken out and it was the fear of god into some many people. >> it bothers me sometimes that people do not realize that just because you are reporting on the military that you are anti- american for some reason just because you are trying to do your job showing what is going on in that arena. the fact is is that, as a witness, you are going into all kinds of different situations and you might be on the american side, the iraq quayside, and viewers seem to think you are sympathetic, more sympathetic, or less sympathetic, depending on what photograph you take. that has happened to me. they do not look at the journalist as an objective person.

>> the program i run deals with journalism ethics and we talk on -- touched on embedded journalism. can you put this in perspective? are the ethical issues you face as a journalist when you are embedded, are those different and more powerful and more important than the ethical issues you face when you are just doing the rest of your journalism career? >> that is an excellent question. if you look at business journalists, they are often very withholding of information or not aggressive enough with investigating. they have to have the confidence of their sources. it is an excellent point you raise because on a certain level, one is always indebted and you are -- embedded, and you are only as good as your sources. they will not talk to. it is an awkward dance. political reporters face the

same thing. they will be frozen out if they write something whatever political person or agency or whatever they are covering does not like what they are doing. it becomes all the more intense and this role when it is an embed because it is life and death and you are living with these people. in pretty tough conditions. >> in conflict situations, the example that comes to mind at some point in iraq, if you recall a group of black water security contractors were ambushed and set upon by a mob, killed, and their bodies were burnt and then hanged from a bridge over a river. that was a scene no westerner could get to.

we had a photographer, a very brave iraq photographer, who scene, tookay to the the pictures, encouraged -- was encouraged to leave, and he left. what to do with these pictures? ultimately, we chose to use some of the pictures we felt were appropriate and tell the story, but i think the ethical challenges we face as journalists, i would like to think rise above the circumstances under which imagery is gathered. we are trying to make balanced decisions based on the idiosyncrasies of each individual circumstance and each individual situation. i do not think the fact that you are embedded necessarily should skew that too much in one direction or the other. >> it is like having a policeman

older it -- over your shoulder. you have somebody who is monitoring everything you do and has the ability to control your situation. i know people who have been not take off the embed but told they are no longer welcome to the food and water. that kind of thing. most of my work was abroad in areas where the people i was interviewing, afghan farmers, i raki shopkeepers, they did not have any of that ability to hold me accountable. the question was was i as good with them ethically as i was when i had the kernel ready to throw me off the embed. i would hope i was as respectful to the people who would probably

never read what i wrote about them, or there would be no recourse, i hope i treated them with as much respect as i treated the people on the embed where there was accountability. >> the beauty of then embed -- an embed is it is short. if you are covering business, you are probably covering the same beat for a year or two or longer. i think it doesn't terribly happen but there is not that level of self-questioning that a journalist on and embed would -- on an embed would indulge in. >> you mentioned before about one of the biggest ethical dilemmas that all journalists face is about when they should intervene. i am wondering if you all have

stories about when you face that kind of decision. >> i have plenty. i was on a u.n. plane. the rebels were firing. as we corkscrewed in a to the area, there were bodies everywhere of people who had been hit. without thinking, i hope the guys get people on the plane. when we got back to the capital, there were no ambulances in those days and very few people had cars. without thinking, i offered my car to get these civilians to the hospital. i helped a family come to the states. i worked with the u.s. embassy. we really check into them and

they were fairly clean. i have gotten people medical aid. i do not think that should be held up as what we should do. i think it is very much an individual decision. i do not judge anybody who does not intervene. that is not our job. it is how you can sleep at night and how you feel about it. i do not think it is our responsibility to. oftentimes, i think people do because a situation moves them or they feel it is the human thing to do. >> i have had those situations like you just mentioned. in the field as a photographer. point, your some role as a human being taken over and your role as a journalist becomes secondary. you see somebody who is clearly in need and you are the only person around who can give them the assistance they need to survive, in my case, i have no

issue at all doing that. is that my job? no. is that my responsibility as one human being to another? i believe it is. other people might take issue with that and decide not to intervene. it is obviously an individual call. i do not have any problem with doing that and i sleep better at night for having done those sorts of things. there is no one size fits all with these sorts of things. >> i agreed to step in when you are able and there is no one else to help. people forget that usually in these conflict situations, there are groups there, other organizations that are there who are helping. it is not all reliant on the photographer, the reporter. if there is nobody around, i will step in. there was a case in haiti where a mob when after a man in retribution with a machete. a group of photographers stepped in to try to calm the situation.

there have been many situations like that. if there is something small i can do, that is the least i can do to help people in these kinds of situations. >> you do get into these gray areas. if i am embedded with a unit, will i pass a guy the water. of course. what i pass and first aid materials? of course. what i pass him the ammunition? there is the line. i am embedded with him. he is trying to kill the people who is trying -- who are trying to kill him. i have not been in that situation and i know people who have and people who have picked up rifles because they're going to be over run. there is a reason we are journalists and not lawyers appeared we have flexibility there. you have to follow your own conscience.

with rebels in colombia, for example, in the time before 9/11, you felt like there was an easier line. i used to go into terrell it -- territory in colombia in the files wearing one of those photojournalist vests, even if i wasn't a photographer, they would know i was a journalist from a great distance appeared i was pretty comfortable in those days that they would not shoot. that was fine. in those days of taliban, al qaeda, in iraq, the insurgents in afghanistan, there is really just no impartiality left. do you wear a blue flak jacket or will that make you stand out to the eye of the rifle scope?

there are a lot of issues where the line is blurry. >> that is a good point. in the 1980's in central america, the first thing you did was take tape and write letters on your car in big letters. as a journalist, you were afforded some level of respect as a non-competent. those were the days before the internet and for the rapid flow of river mission around the world. many of the people whom you were photographing or interviewing had no idea what the results of the work you do work. now, with internet cafes everywhere and access to the internet being increasingly common, the same militiaman you might have come across 20 years ago who would not have a clue what you do, that militiamen today can go down to the local internet cafe and see the results of your work. as a result, the power of information has been

increasingly elevated and recognized and i think that has made journalism a more dangerous job than it once was. whether it is journalists being targeted because they are on one side of a conflict or the other war, in the case of many people in countries, journalists being targeted individually because of what they write and the results of the work is out there and more broadly spread for everybody to see. >> i think we are coming toward the end of our time. i want to allow time for questions from the audience. is there a way to provide a microphone to -- for anybody to who has a question? >> hi. my name is larry.

i would like to address my question to you but i did not get your name. everything that was said today was really interesting. i want to take exception to one thing in particular. it is something that basically was lost over. that is what you said at the beginning. it is about joshua, the corporal. personally, i think what you did was despicable. to use your words, and i will twist them, primarily, you are a journalist, and second -- secondarily, you were looking at it at a human point of view. why? it was a matter of sensationalism. you were looking for the journalist story. you got your story. you're not sure what to do. from what i hear, the secretary of defense chose not to run it. the family did not want to do it, forever particular reason. you chose to do it. i hope you are happy with it.

i do not know how it was received. i never read it. i ought -- i hope you are happy with your decision appeared i would love for you to comment. >> thank you. it was a very difficult decision and a very difficult set of circumstances for the reasons you raised. we are dealing with somebody here who, on the one hand, is a son and brother of his family members. on the other hand, we are dealing with somebody who is a public servant. they have enlisted in the u.s. military willingly and they are being paid by taxpayer dollars, and they are acting on behalf of the united states government. our thinking was that we should take this story of the corporal

who made the ultimate sacrifice for his company and humanize it and put a face on it in order to avoid casualties like him, of which there have been thousands, being reduced to mere statistics. we felt that was very important journalistic thing to do on behalf of our leadership around the world. readership are around the world. we were very careful of around a .or we did not run that photograph by itself.

the effort it to give some context. we went up to his father, his sister, his mother, and we only spoke to his father. we spoke to the other combatants who were involved. we spoke to the photographer who had witnessed this terrible scene. we tried to really give this some context in the overall mission in afghanistan with the reasons i mentioned. i do not think this was sensationalism. quite the opposite -- quite the opposite. it was an effort to tell a compelling story of somebody who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in a respectful manner in order to help inform

the greater public pier that was our rationale. we understand there are people who take issue with that. not least of all his family and other people such as yourself from what i understand. i think that is part of the debate. we are fortunate in some ways where we live in a society where we are allowed to do that and we are allowed to have that debate. we do not expect everybody to agree with it. far from it. journalistically, i think we were and are comfortable with our decision. >> hi. i am sophie. i am wondering how you balance a moral imperative to be unbiased as a journalist when you are in situations where you could immediately have an emotional reaction.

it is hard to go into those situations on bias. anybody. >> i do not think by helping a vulnerable civilian you are necessarily showing a political bias in any way. the point made by my colleague is quite valid that one intervenes when no one else is there to help. you are not intervening every time you go to a refugee camp. it is a very strange situation. it does not mean you are taking political or ideological sides either way. you see a vulnerable child who need immediate medical attention -- needs immediate medical attention. i do not see how that shows a bias. >> i want to thank you for the dedication in your roles in these important situations. my question is premised on the notion that if you are there

embedded or unilateral, d.c. ethical dilemmas that are different between the two and is ding the way to go? >> it has become an essential part of covering these stories. even after the military have taken moms from us, they are willing to do that when they know they might take more lumps. i should mention i got criticism from the other side who say you are just talking about these great american heroes. i think embedding is

essential. there were other times where i was embedding primarily to see those parts of iraq i would not normally get to. >> is the premise, do you perturb the situation? it's a valid premise? compare unilateral verses embedded and how that differs or does not. >> it is impossible to bid -- to be there without a trace. you never say, will you take me over there? that has happened on embeds where people have been killed as a result. reporters said, and i am not waiting -- blaming this reporter, the reporter said, can we go see that? that is a rule i have.

this reporter is here, show him around. sometimes i find myself in a truck or on a chopper and suddenly i am saying, are you just taking me over there for me? this is not an actual mission? it is impossible. on the other side, you are involving iraqis or afghans or wherever you are, those people taking you there, they may be people you have hired to take you there. everyone has an agenda. you try your best. >> sometimes what i notice in africa working with very undisciplined militias and what not, particularly in south africa with the barricades in the early 1990's, people would play with the cameras. bbc really struggled with this. the cameramen would just put down their cameras and say, it you are playing with the cameras and we will not your accomplices.

when you are on embed, and any type of reporting, unilateral or embedded, you are constantly analyzing what your role is and how your reaction to the situation is and how other people are reacting to you. >> that is your job. to try to distinguish what is real and not real. it is a case by case situation. you are watching a situation watching allu are of the people in that situation relating their and it is -- there and it is up to you in those situations where it does not look real. >> thank you. can you talk about how the soldiers you know have

responded to you? >> he is as pretty happy somebody gives a damn. "thank you for coming out here." i have been out there for two weeks. you have nine months to go. i have been two units who have recently been burned by a journalist. it was very frosty. i found there was a lot of monotony. a lot of times they were happy to have somebody to talk to or grateful someone is out there seen what they do and they will get their name in the paper or on the radio and they are just happy because a lot of them feel like no one back here -- there are thousands of u.s. troops in afghanistan right now. once i have talked to feel

forgotten by a lot of the population. they are glad somebody will send a note home. >> sometimes they are genuinely surprised. "you do not have to be here? you are here of your own free will? are you crazy?" the work they are doing is often thankless and anonymous. they are glad on occasion to have it recognized in some small way. for some large way. -- or some large way. >> we have reached the end of our time. i would like to take a moment to thank our panelists. thank you very much for your comments. i would like to remind you all that the issues touched on here are also issues that resonate with the exhibition upstairs. just a plug for my own program, if you know some journalism

graduate students, please encourage them to apply. these are some of the issues we talk about in the context of the holocaust when we are traveling to poland, to germany, going to auschwitz and talking about, what kind of graphic images could you show? what does the journalists have a responsibility to cover? these are the same kind of issues we get to. i hope

>> my grandchildren have just been baptized in the catholic church and we held waste our children as catholics -- we have raised our children as catholics. >> here is something that is a valid point -- that is this, the act. we have babies in america and in

iowa that are being aborted simply because their baby girls . we have evidence from that period is coming in the asian community as well. she says things it is ridiculous to talk about it. i think it matters. it matters to the little girl's being afforded pierre >> election day is one week away. find key house, senate and government races across the country. >> the illinois 17th district debate between rep bobby schilling and his democratic challenger cheri bustos. this hourlong debate is hosted by wtvp, the league of women voters and the institute for principled leadership in public service.

>> thank you for joining us this evening. the 17th district is newly redrawn. it begins in northern illinois. it extends westward to the mississippi river then turns south were. then it turns southward and head down to the quad cities, continues south along the river to henderson county. then turns eastward and includesfulton county. and the southern half of the city of feioria. we have a live studio audience here this evening. i have asked them to refrain from out or expressions during the debate, except when i introduced the candidates, which i will do now. first, the challenger, democrat, from illinois, sherry bustos. -- cheri bustos. [applause] and the incumbent, republican from illinois, bobby schilling. [applause]

the format for tonight's debate requires 75 seconds for opening statements, then it will have 75 seconds to enter the initial question and up to 30 seconds for rebuttal. statements will also be 75 seconds in length. we have people on the illinois league of women voters here this evening to time the candidates. i am your moderator for tonight. asking the questions of our candidates will be alex. in his reporter at wbcu fm. also asking questions is the news director at wvik fm. we have solicited questions from the internet and the public, asking those questions will be camille odonnell, a journalism student.

we thank them for being here this evening. we asked the candidates to support their statements with details when appropriate. by flip of the coin, we determined that bobby schilling will begin with opening statement. >> thank you. thank you to all the viewers tonight watching this debate. they are very important for us to have. i would like to thank them for the endorsement this week and the registered stars endorsement. i think them for that. my wife and i have been married for 26 years. we have 10 children. for the last 16 years, we have run our small business.

a couple years ago, i decided i would take a look at running for office. i did not like the country are dark -- the direction our country was heading i felt the only way to make a difference was to throw my hat in the ring. we have led by example. we cut our budget by $150,000 with this congress. i returned money back to the taxpayers. i rejected the congressional pension and bought my own health care to washington and in looking forward to a nice debate tonight. >> thank you. now, cheri bustos. >> i am a lifelong illinois resident. the daughter of a social worker and the public servant. the granddaughter of a farmer and a nurse. my husband and i were taught from a young age the importance

of making a difference in giving back. we have done that you are life. my husband is in law enforcement. for many years i was an investigative reporter and fought public corruption. i spent the last 10 years of my career in health care, making sure it is accessible and we offer quality health care. this election will get down to parties i see this is a different set of priorities from where my husband and i come from and from what congressman schilling stands for. i pledge to give it my all and work on behalf of the middle class families that have been under attack by the last two years of congressman schilling's tenure. we have to make sure progress are there for students to go to college and the balance the budget with the right parity. not on the backs of the middle class but with the middle-class in mind. thank you very much.

>> now it is time for questions from the panelists. >> welcome to both candidates tonight. congressman schilling, you are from colona and ms. bustos, from east moline. those cities are 7 miles apart yet members will have to represent a district that is over 85 miles wide. how would each of you best represent people in peoria and rockford, and given the physical size of the district? >> excellent question. if you look at the gerrymandering of the district i currently represent, this is something we need to make some adjustments to.

and fit the mapping system. we need a fair map. it is ridiculous what the politicians do, pitting the voter vs the voter picking the politician. i have been to this week and 37 times to date. i have gone out and made relationships with the mayors -- mayor dave. it's called hit the ground running. we have to go out and tour facilities. i have gone to the heartland clinics in town. this is about getting to know people and seeing what is important to them. i think we have quite a bit of that throughout our time that we have been coming back and forth to the area. a lot of things they're doing in peoria are being used in rockford and vice versa. so tied in those areas together and making sure we're getting the best bang for our buck. >> the same question to request that is a good question. we do get out of the travel of around the district.

i said from the start of our campaign that should i be elected, i will open an office and into the quad cities in peoria and rockford. i will look into the feasibility of a satellite office for the rural areas. they will reflect the makeup of the communities. and that is very important. constituent services are among -- they have to be among congressman's top priorities. make sure we listen to residents and with their concerns are and be responsive to that. another part i think is important for serving the entire district is we have said that with in the first 90 days of being elected, we will host an economic summit. this will be done annually but i see that as helping to set the foundation for what we need to accomplish for job creation,

making sure we're serving artistic as best possible. >> we allow up to 30 seconds for rebuttal. congressman. >> we will have an office here in peoria, one in rockford and the illinois quad cities. we will have a rover, somebody that has specific days where we go to the smaller counties making sure they're getting proper representation. constituent services is the key to any office out there. that is one of the things we pride ourselves on. but the same 30 seconds for rebuttal. >> thank you. i see that is very hands-on. making sure that you have accessible office locations, making sure you have hours that reflect the community's needs. a lot of hands on individual interaction. i will throw one thing out there quickly and we can get back to this. congressman schilling is number one in congress for spending on taxpayer funded mail.

that is how he is chosen to spend his funding. it is something i would pledge not to spend. almost half million dollars in tax payer funded mail. to communicate with constituents. let the candidates will respond in an alternating fashion to the questions. ms. bustos will answer the next question first. >> everyone is talking about cutting federal spending and reducing the federal deficit. i will let for both of you to talk about programs are spending in the 17th district that he would be willing to sacrifice and help lower the federal deficit. >> the budget is the defining issue. i see it as getting down to priorities. we obviously have a budget problem. we have to balance our budget. how are we going to do it?

on the backs of seniors? as my opponent opposes, where it would charge those of medicare and extra six to $400 a year. i talk to people all over this district. they cannot afford an additional $6,400 out of pocket. are we going to do it on the backs of workers such as those upton to freeport to jobs are getting set to china? because there are tax incentives to do that? or are we going to continue to give tax breaks for big oil at the expense of middle class families that are going to be asked to pay $2,000 more under the ryan budget plan that my opponent supports. $100 billion and a savings every year. the report is sitting on a shelf. it has a proposal such as merging the small business administration with the department of commerce.

it has proposals like getting rid of redundant services. for instance, job training programs. there are 44 redundant job training programs that we can do away with. >> the same questions with specifics justice, schilling. >> i believe you start with the top and lead by example. my opponent talks about the mail as i said. i invested less than 50 cents per constituent in the district. we spent money communicating with our constituents but at the same time, we spent less on office is that what my predecessor is spent on 1. my payroll was about $40,000 less than my predecessor. one of the cuts, asset and the agricultural committee. one of the cuts saved $16 billion.

what the cut does, i believe he did not take anything away from those that chilly needed if you get a dollar's worth of heating assistance, you automatically qualify for $200 on us in nutrition, food stamps. we said we would have folks allowed an application to capture those abusing the system. somebody that has won the lottery, we get those folks of the system. >> thank you. >> they ask for specifics. i am happy to address those. the other thing we need from my hat to the balanced approach. part of that is the undue burden that we're putting on the middle-class. the tax breaks for those making over $1 million, they need to go

away. this is about middle-class working families. this district, the 17th congressional district, is made up of working men and women. >> i want to rebut the medicare scare. for 30 years, politicians have been scaring seniors, telling them medicare will be ended in evil lose your social security. everyone i talk to so far still has the medicare and social security. the $6,400 amount that might opponent has put out there has already been debunked by the wall street journal. with the tax hikes, what will happen is we will lose 31,000 jobs in illinois. 700,000 jobs in the united states.

>> the next question comes from camille about the university. >> what do you believe is the role of congress in regard to gas prices? does congress play a wall in such policy, what specific tactics to use a port to lower gas prices? >> they do play a role. one of the bid will they play is to pass laws to make it where we can make -- we can act as our own domestic energy. this administration has made it illegal to get a permit to access natural gas on public grounds. the keystone pipeline is another thing that this administration has put a halt to. my opponent supports the pipeline yet she has -- she is endorsed by one of the biggest firms out there that says you cannot do anything that will put a pipeline in.

the key thing here is to get the government -- the overt regulation is crushing our economy. those are the facts. we have to have clean air, clean water. at the same time, when you have the federal government telling the american farmer that your 17-year-old daughter cannot drive a tractor, who will take better care of the farm kid? mom and dad or big government? the key thing is to have both parties coming together sharing ideas. not one party telling us what we cannot do. let's look at everything and do it in a responsible way for our economy, for our environment and also to make sure that people are safe on their jobs. >> we need to get away from our reliance on foreign energy. we are taking some good steps in that direction. we have some great examples right here in peoria. with the ag lab.

they are researching something that has great potential. as higher oil content than soy beans. it can be planted in the off- season. and has great potential to be used as an alternative biofuel. within the 17th congressional district, we have examples of solar farms. we have examples of wind farms. and did a favor of keeping the wind farm subsidy. that is currently being fought by the republican presidential nominee. i am at a favor of that. we have a district that can be a leader in the united states for helping us come up with alternative energy sources and get away from the rely on foreign tule. i'm very excited about the possibility. very excited about how the ag lab can play a major part in that.

i think, let's use this area as an example that we can hold up around the rest of the country. >> rebuttal from congressman schilling. >> i would agree. i am a big believer in all of the above. my family and i built a green home. green is a red light and blue -- red, white, and blue. it saves us money. we have to put all options on the table. >> to what i was not able to adjust the to my first response also is a very much supports the president's proposal to increase the mileage on vehicles that are manufactured. another part that was just one -- an ounce within the last week is what is going on at caterpillar. that's part of this as well. we have tremendous innovation going on back and play a major part in helping the environment and helping us to be a leader in this area.

>> alex has the next question. >> i would like to turn to an issue that both candidates have participated in earlier this week. ms. bustos, he held a rally earlier this week. today also added to east moline, the international union of local operating engineers endorsed you, congressman schilling. going into specifics, what can you detail about how you would specifically help organize workers? >> we need to get the economy going again. that is number one. our job creation plan involves about manufacturing in the very folks dimension. i'm very proud to have the endorsement. my father in law as a uaw retiree.

my husband was in the uaw. this is family. this is personal. it means a lot to me. our job creation plan is this -- that we caught the manufacturing triangle. we have major manufacturing. geographically it makes up a tying goal. we need to partner with community colleges to look of the skills gap. we have jobs that we cannot fill right now. that is where community colleges can come into play. we need to make sure we are addressing these policies that incentivized businesses to send jobs over to places like china. i hope we will have an opportunity to talk about the workers at the bane capital plant in the northern part of our district in how they're being hurt by the still policies my opponent supports.

>> the same question regarding organized labor to congressman schilling. >> it is really clear my opponent is against the free- trade agreement that came out last year. in this district, it is used. caterpillar can give you an idea, at one of their plants they have 3000 workers. 80% of their products shipped outside of the united states. if you do the math, that is a% times 2000 employees. what we have to have in this country is a level playing field. we have the highest corporate tax rates in world. administration has put a more regulation than george bush and bill clinton combined. that is how you ship jobs overseas, when you over regulate

and overtaxed. the labor folks will get their jobs. but as they continue to put more regulation and more taxes on our american companies, they will ship more jobs overseas. we create an environment in washington and springfield. we know best in illinois what bad environment and that politicians do to our state. we see here. we see caterpillar with four or five plants not been built here. there is a reason, because of hothouse environment. >> we can get into the free trade agreements later on in this hour by going back to the organized labor groups, given both of your support, why should a factory worker earning wages just above the family poverty line vote for you? if you can talk to someone out there who might be watching or listening, what could you do for them?

>> are we getting a full 75 seconds to answer this? >> i will give a full 75. >> this is about middle-class and working families. it is making sure that we support the policies that support working men and women. that means that we agree to fair wages. we have lily ledbetter supporting our campaign because we support equal pay for equal work, no matter who you are. to receive the endorsement of nearly every labor organization in this region is an indication that i am on the right side of organized labor and it is where i come from. my opponent's voting record on organized labor -- 7%. this is one of the heaviest labor -- organized labor districts in the country. we have 90,000 labor households in this country. we have to make sure we're looking out for what is important to working-class men

and women and making sure they have a right to organize. making sure we have, we agree to a private labor agreements. i have a track record on the city council where i have approved this. in my career, i have been involved in $100 million in private labor agreements. i am proud of that. i have hands-on experience doing that kind of thing. >> there will be no rebuttal because of the following questions. we turned to bobby schilling for his answer. >> the key here is it will back to the environment we create. john deere or caterpillar probably cannot get started today. we are continuing to penalize folks that want to get things off the ground. with the government need to do is make sure we give them proper regulation, clean water, clean air, ct the employees.

it is one of the key things. the person that might be building something in the roster they might turn into the next john deere to put these people to work making 30, 40, 50 an hour. one of the things that is great after visiting people here is the training facilities they have here, the labor folks know well that when they get that job and the people that actually hire them, they know the heart -- the quality will be there. this is where we have to get the skills sets to our community colleges. get these folks working together to where they are tied in with the businesses. one of the shortages we have is engineers. across the board. getting everybody working together for the common good would be big plus.

>> the next question goes to, schilling first. >> a recent campaign at, congressman i learned that you hate old people and that ms. bustos [unintelligible] you have seen yourself bullied on television. how might you change this current situation? >> when we do our ads, when i say i am bobby schilling, i approve this message, that is one that i approve. kwqc tv factchecked it and said it was accurate. the big thing is when you look at the ad bobby schilling is going to end medicare as we know it, it was the politifacts lie of the year. what we have to do is do our

best with our assets. and try to do some type of reform to where you do not have people putting up at that neither party approves. >> every major print publication into the 17th congressional district has criticized the ads that congressmen schilling just try to hold up as being factual. was called reckless fiction. so what you're saying is not true.

i'm proud of the campaign be run. there has not been anything i've said nor anybody on my staff that said that has not been accurate. i said from day one that we are going to run an honorable, honest campaign. i'm proud of the fact that i can stand up here and say we have done that. it is not fair as congressman schilling's ads have been towards me, not nearly as un fair as he's been towards middle-class working families and the policies he supported. i will answer your question now. i support campaign finance reform to the tee. having run for the first time for congress in -- i can tell you this system needs correcting. we spend way too much time having to raise money. i'm proud of the groups that support of its bid to support

us. we should be out talking to everybody and that audiences like this, going door to door every day. wish to be having economic summits before we debate. >> 30 seconds for rebuttal. >> i will go back to the paid for my opponent ads. the $6,400 medi-scare to our seniors is not true. it has been debunked by the wall street journal. along with her telling people it will end medicare as they know it. we definitely need reforms there. this is what both parties have to do, come down and sit together. it has to be fair for both sides. i would like to see this money go to charitable organizations.

>> the nonpartisan congressional budget office has confirmed the $6,400 figure. that said, this is what the despises about politics. the nastiness that has emerged. we have a party that said it will not let fact checkers get in the way. this has to stop. if we're going to end the gridlock in washington, we need people who understand the part of the telling the truth. >> what would you do to create jobs for the 17th congressional district? >> thank you for that question. i will be able to spend a little time getting into our jobs program then. i like to talk about that in more depth. it does evolve around manufacturing. why manufacturing as the basis for job creation? because the jobs pay well. why do they pay well? we organized labor to thank for that. retail jobs, we need retail jobs but they will not support a family. we have heartland community college, we have rock valley college.

we have a very strong community college environment. when you're talking about these jobs, the skills gap that exists, the only way we will be able to adjust that is to make sure that the many factors we need to fill the jobs are working with those in a position to train people. that is the basis of it. you cannot do that without looking at tax policies that will incentivize jobs to stay here. support an act called a bring american jobs home act. that would incentivize companies to bring jobs home and ship goods overseas, not jobs. >> same question to congressman

schilling terry >> that same jobs act, you cannot judge the book by the cover. tonight, the register star said it is a good meeting bill but it would not do what they say it is intended to do. you can read that online. a couple things we can do right away -- i am a big proponent of repatriation. we have about $1.70 trillion sitting offshore. america has this backwards. companies from other countries have come here to america, they pay the federal tax and then what happens is when they want to bring the money home, they get to bring it home and it does not cost them anything. an america, let them pay the tax and when it went to bring it back home, which charge them a 35% tax. so we intent -- incentivize them to grow jobs offshore. another thing we did for 10 years, we did what my

predecessors could not do in 10 years by working in a bipartisan fashion with dave from iowa. we got it done -- we got done in five months. 200 jobs double spin off another 800 jobs. >> the bring american jobs home act takes away a tax incentive for companies like a capital to send off to china. i would like to take a moment to talk about the 170 workers up in freeport, illinois. their job by christmas time will be sent to china. this is because we have tax policies that actually pay the companies in tax incentives to pack up and shifted jobs over to china.

i selected those companies to bring the jobs home. >> rebuttal from congressman schilling. >> my opponent continue to talk about how she does not want to ship jobs overseas but yet she invests thousands of dollars in overseas funds. so you cannot have it both ways. what this bill will do is it will incentivize companies to go offshore and build a facility for maybe $1 million ticket tax incentives for $2 million to bring those back. another thing it does is it will into the bus companies that are fully automated to come here to america with no jobs. >> can we address untruths on the spot? my husband and i have for one case. it was one that had one quarter 1% in an overseas fund. as soon as we found out, we divested. it is not true. you continue again to spread lies. >> i do not know what you would not understand when you invest in an overseas fund, you would know you are investing in overseas fund.

the fact of the matter is that happen. the big thing is we cannot continue to put more regulations and more taxes on our american companies. double incentivize them to leave. >> please direct your next question to the congressman. >> this has been touched on earlier this hour about free trade. free trade agreements have been a topic in this race. can you state where you stand on free trade? >> i am a firm believer in the free-trade agreement. 5% of the world customers reside in america.

95% of our customers are outside of the usa. given the level playing field, we can beat anybody out there. when you look at the free trade agreement, does for example two weeks ago, the exports for construction equipment in america jumped by 24% because of free trade. but the president -- this is where senator durbin and i and the president of the united states agreed upon this. we can beat anybody if you're given that level playing field theory the president did a good job on these. he put lovers in their to wear if things got out of control, we could pull back and do some changing -- he put levers in there as to where if things got out of control, we could pull back and do some changing. there is not one country we are treading with that we do not have a trade surplus.

the only place is in energy. that is really important. >> the same question to cheri bustos. >> nafta and the nafta style trade agreements that my opponents supports, he voted year ago for other trade in panama colombia and korea. they have resulted in 91,000 illinois jobs being shipped overseas. that is why i cannot support something like this. it is hurtful. i am for trade. i want caterpillar to do well. and ship its goods overseas. that is critical. but we need to be focused on sending goods overseas, not the jobs. nafta has been hurtful to illinois. i support plans that have come out of the sun at under senator sherrod brown, the 21st century trade act. it allows congress to have more oversight. it is not a one size fits all. it is -- it looks countries to find out where there are markets for goods.

it also keeps a that the mind human-rights. the empowerment -- it also keeps in mind human rights. the environment. it is common sense trey that i support. >> along with senator durbin and the president of united states, the st. agreements not cost -- these trade agreements the not cost that. is not true. we can verify that with caterpillar. the only thing that has cost the jobs here is why we have companies attacking clean coal and not allow us to go in and act as it. so caterpillar cannot build the big trucks this across the world. >> i would turn to maytag.

not long after nafta passed, 1700 jobs went to mexico. that company received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds and move the jobs over to mexico. i talked to somebody like they've lost his job there. because the city was so devastated, he had to move away from the community to find work. >> next question directed first year cheri bustos. >> republicans have opposed cutting federal money for public

broadcasting. do you favor eliminating the superb pitching? >> i cannot favor eliminating that. -- do you favor eliminating that? >> i am not in favor of eliminating that. if we can look at that example, wvik -- it is the only radio station in that region that covers news. we are fortunate to have alex over here working and covering news but that would go away under a proposal like this. my kids, my husband, they were an age where they grew up on sesame street. i am not only a fan of public radio and television but i am an advocate for both as well to reflect the same question -- as well.

>> the same question to congressman schilling. >> it is such a huge asset. my kids watch it all the time. herb, there is some emerging to broadcasting there at your station. that goes down, people will not know what to do in the event of a disaster. we have to take a look at where we can come in and do some cut. try to cut -- we have to cut. for every $7 america brings in, we spend 11. this of the fourth year in the row that we have had trillion dollar deficit. we keep going this way, we will not have to worry about funding because the will not be anything. we will go the way of other countries. we have to make sure cuts you're going to be doing a mixture you did not hit things.

separate once versus needs. addis ababa will have to do. focus on getting this -- that is something we will have to do. full employment takes care of a lot of the problems. it cannot be as the employer and then for the employee. >> the question somewhat evolved to what i would see as priorities. we have a vested -- we have a deficit problem because but, why you want to make sure that tax cuts stay for millionaires and billionaires and big oil and corporate outsources? i would rather have big bird the making sure you are making it allowable and profitable for companies to send jobs to places like china and mexico.

>> it is important to hear what my opponent is saying. all we hear of the talking points. big oil, millionaires, billionaires'. hear the facts -- the tax increases to is for -- she is for are the ones that president obama said bobby went to increase taxes on the job creators. >> with the deficit just mentioned, a freshman asks with the federal deficit climbing to over $16 trillion, how do you plan on reducing the deficit without burdening the middle- class? >> the big thing we have to do, we put together cap and balance which would cap the spending. we are spending $1 trillion more every year. we have to look at the baseball spending. there are billions of dollars. we talk about taxing millionaires and billionaires.

where are we going to get the other twin dollars to balance the budget -- the other trillion dollars to balance the budget? if we put more regulations and taxes on american companies, they will either shut down or leave the country. we see it here in illinois all the time. the more people we put back to work, the more that are paying taxes, then we can pay toward the deficit. >> the same question to cheri bustos. >> i think the first step is to approach it in a balanced way. get rid of the tax cuts for the millionaires.

that is a huge part of starting to balance this budget. the fact that congressman schilling is continuing to work so hard and is not willing to even take a look at that, that is a big part of the problem. yes, we have to compromise, reached across the aisle, make tough decisions, but let's start with at least some of the things that make sense. i will get back to the government accountability report. it sat on the shelf two years now, two years, $100 billion of annual savings. i would propose, should i be elected, legislation to enact that. i think that is a step in the right direction and investing in education. for every dollar that we invest in education, we get a return on that because people get out of high school and go to college and get jobs. for congressman schilling want to cut pell grants by $12 billion, that is not where we want to cut. that is where we get the return on investment.

>> the tax increases that my opponent is talking about will cost illinois 31,000 jobs, america 700,000 jobs, the same tax hikes that president obama kept from happening in 2009. pell grants, lookit, washington, d.c., is the only place where you have baseline budgeting that is going up 7%, keep the pell grant the same. washington, d.c., is you cut the increase and they say you are cutting pell grants. it is simply not true. >> again, it's down to priorities. you want to cut head start, programs, keep tax cuts for millionaires. you want to charge seniors and extra $6400 per year, which can be fact checked. we are looking out for the middle class. that is why i am running. that is my family's background. his dad had an eighth grade education, and he was able to succeed, with the help, he was able to have his family grew to middle-class existence because of uaw and john deere.

>> this topic has been touched on tonight. you each have criticized your opponent's stance on medicare. congressman schilling said the current national health care reform would mean $700 billion cuts in medicare, while ms. bustos, you say the plan that congressman schilling supports would drive up medicare costs through roof for seniors. voters may be more interested, aside from what your opponent thinks, how do you think medicare should look if elected? >> medicare is run efficiently. the overhead costs on medicare are much more efficient than any private insurance company. it is run efficiently. i spent the last 10 years of my career in health care.

i know medicare pretty well. here is what i would propose changing. medicare can be here for the current generation, for the next generation, the generation after that. we need to make sure that is a solemn promise we have made to seniors, and that along with social security keeps seniors out of poverty. we need to make sure medicare, just like the va, can control prescription drug costs. we electronic records used to the full advantage of making sure patients are not getting over-prescribed drugs, word that the health care they need is not redundant. electronic health records help do that. lastly, we coordinate care with the help of electronic health records, with help of the provisions of the center for

medicare and medicaid innovation. we can do that. i have seen great successes and i know that has great potential savings for the medicare system. >> congressman schilling? >> the fact of the matter is medicare is going broke. it will be insolvent in 2024. i am the only one sitting up here who has backed a plan to save and strengthen medicare. 55 and older, you would keep the same medicare that you have. 54 and younger, you can continue on traditional medicare or pick and choose from a list of approved providers. the key here is one of the frustrating things for me in washington is, you know, it is one thing to come to the table with a plan, but it is another thing to not come to the table with a plan and just demagogue. that is where washington is broke. democrats and republicans need to come together and figure out solutions to problems. this has the independent payment advisory board that will kick in. it will be the bureaucrat hand- picked that will come between the patient and the doctor.

that is wrong. medical device taxes, another incentive to ship jobs overseas. we have to stop this and have people who are willing to comment and have the guts to do the right thing and strengthen this. to come to the table with no solutions is just wrong. >> a rebuttal. >> i am glad that i had the solutions for heading toward solvency. however, i will not balance the budget on the backs of the seniors. your plan would call seniors an extra $6500 per year. i happen to be under 55, you are under 55, there are a lot of people in this audience. what about them. we're going to cut this program for the next generation? >> i have been paying into the system since i was about 13, 14 years old.

but i think it is out and out wrong to bury your head in the sand and not have a fix for this. lookit, my grandmother who is 90, i did not want a bureaucrat coming between my grandmother and the doctor. we have to fix this. i am willing to sit down with anybody, as i have proven in my last year-and-a-half, year and three-quarters that i will work with anybody on the other side of the aisle because this is the right thing to do. this is serious stuff and we need to stop playing games. >> in order to allow sufficient time for closing statements, we will have one more question. >> this is an issue near and dear to the hearts of the people in carroll county and the far north part of the district, thompson prison.

since house republican leaders have said it would block any effort to open talks in prison, is a vote for you, senator, a vote to keep times in prison clothes? >> i have been working on that for quite awhile. last year i brought senator mark kirk and representative don manzullo to the prison. i fought tooth and nail to get out there and work with these people. this is why relationships in congress are so darn important. i don't look at a person as democrat or republican, is about building relationships to get things done. i think this happened, you know, the prison was sold, but now the real work happens because now we have to go in and try to get folks to give us the funding that is needed to get it open. i will do everything i can to continue. that is 1100 jobs, $20 2 million of economic impact. and we will not have a problem of filling up. >> cheri bustos? >> the thompson prison is the epitome of dysfunction in

congress. the fact this person was sitting vacant, that we had very much a consensus of wanting to open this, phil 1100 jobs, get this to cut a billion dollar economic impact, and my opponent gets behind this phantom controversy that there will be guantanamo prisoners brought there. it was a phantom controversy. there was not fact behind it. so senator turban made this statement, and i think it is very telling about how this person is not in the hands of the federal government, hopefully on the cost of opening. he said i asked congressman schilling to do one thing and cannot get it done. that was to convince his republican colleagues in the house to move on this. one congressman was blocking this a number of years. now we are on the cusp of all these jobs and economic impact that politics got in the way of. should i be elected, that will not happen.

>> thank you, both candidates for your answers. it is time now for closing statements. because congressman schilling went first with opening statements, ms. bustos, you get to go first with closing statements. >> thank you. this election, and i think you have seen it tonight, gets down two priorities. i believe there is a clear choice. i also believe my opponent is part of the problem in washington. priorities have gotten upside down. i go all over this district and talk to people nearly every day about how they are hurt by washington's priorities. i visited a senior citizen center, they cannot afford extra payments on medicare. i talk to carol, who attended bradley university and today is an engineer because of pell grants.

she fears that program will not be available to students down the line. that is not right. and then the worker. dot turner is 61. she has worked at that plant 43 years and her job is gone to china. she is training her chinese replacements. these are the wrong priorities. i want to make sure that medicare and social security are there for future generations. i want to make sure that the incentives that are sending jobs to china go away. and i want to make sure that we balance the budget but with the right priorities. i respectfully ask for your vote. i hope that you will find that i am worthy of that. and i will never stop fighting for the middle-class and working families of this country. >> i like to tell people this fight came to me. while we were running our small business, raising my kids, watching what was happening to this great state and this country, i decided to throw my hat in the ring.

look, i don't come from party royalty. my dad was not a lobbyist. my dad was a bartender. this is about doing the right thing. this is about the fight for america. i have set my business and family off to the side to comment surf. i think far too often what happens is folks get out there and forget where they're from. we're here to serve the people of the district. i rejected the congressional pension. i brought my own health care to washington, d.c. i am leading by example, giving 110,000 others of my budget back to the people is the right thing to do. we have to lead. there is no more time to follow. if somebody would have told me five years ago i would be here, i would say no way. but with my business background, my labor background, i am understand this. i respectfully ask each and everyone of you for your vote and i will continue to lead by example. thank you, and god bless.

>> with that, this concludes this debate. i want to thank both bobby schilling and cheri bustos for coming in. i like to thank the panelists. and thank you to our viewing, listening, and studio audiences for also enjoying the debate this evening. thank you so much, everybody. i am reminding you to cast your ballot if you have not already done so. host: >> i would like to ask a question similar to that asked of the vice president of candidates. as year -- as a catholic, how does your face it your opinion -- your faith shape your opinion? >> my grandchildren have does

been baptized in the catholic church. we have raised our children as catholics. i would be happy to talk about my view on abortion. my view on abortion is it to be safe, legal, and rare. >> here is a valid point that is instructed and the difference between us. we have babies in america and in iowa that are aborted because they are little baby girls. because the mother wants a boy instead of a girl. we have evidence of that, coming in from the asian community as well. we have legislation that prohibits sex so let the abortion. ms vilsack said she thinks it's ridiculous to talk about. i do not. >> thein key races from across the country on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. radio and c-span.org.