it was like couches people had thrown away from other places. it wasn't nice. i was supposed to staff this briefing. i went and sat in one of the chairs. a man came up to me and said, get out of my chair, and that's how i met mark mueller. [applause] [ applause] >> it's not in mark's record, it didn't happen. i just want to make one final point before we conclude this panel, which i wish i had made a two-hour panel because i really enjoyed your story telling and really great advice. the white house is engaged with us in these conversations about these changes we want to make and these standards that we're drafting. they understand that in the wake of last december's public nversation we came in with a few very small asks from separate parts of the media. i understand we were not on the same page with what we asked for. you got a little flavor

earlier. each of our media formats has a conflict with another media format about how we want things practiced, right? e have to work that out. then we have to go to the white house as a group and stand behind our document. that sometimes means advocating for things that don't make a difference to you daily in your practice of journalism but they matter to the whole group. ironing out for example the difference between the photo journalists and the tv cameras on pool sprays, it is just the tip the iceberg. that's why i really want everyone if you're willing to come here on a saturday i know you're willing to put in more time. please join one of the small groups that the board members are going to be cop veeng over the next six or eight weeks and sit down with people who are ot in your media group but representatives of different media and go over these ideas and look at this document and let's put together something we as a group can really stand behind. with that, let's thank the

ontributions of the panel. thank you. >> now, more from the white house correspondents association with the panel of reporters covering the obama administration. they discuss stories they've covered, access to the president, and efforts to change restrictions placed on the press. panelists include jonathan carl of abc news and peter baker of the "new york times." this is about an hour. >> hey, terry, when a.p. sits down, everyone sits down. >> there we go. >> thank you. thank you, everybody. we're going to start the second panel. this is a group of my favorite white house correspondents. that's what you get to do when you moderate a panel.

and so we have margaret, who covers the white house for bloomberg and has covered politics, covered the obama campaign, worked in california, florida, and also did some, a stint in congress. john carl with abc news, who is the chief white house correspondent since december of 2012, and has covered congress, foreign policies, state department, and politics. and peter baker of the "new york times," who has covered three white houses -- the obama white house, bush white house, app clinton white house and was moscow bureau chief and recently wrote a book about bush and cheney, which everyone should read. and steven collinson, who is a white house correspondent emeritus. he recently left us for cnn but covered the white house for asp for a number of years and also did a number of stints overseas in asia and europe.

so i'm delighted to have all of you here. you're definitely among my favorite white house correspondents. selfishly, i decided to start the panel off by one of the things that i am most interested in as a white house correspondent, particularly given all of the access limitations that our previous panel talked about. i'd like to know how these guys get their stories and where do you get that information from and how does it all come together? i've asked them to each talk about some of the -- the one big standout story they've done on the beat and just give us a little window into how they came about it. so i'll start with margaret if that's okay. >> no pressure. >> actually the story that i want to talk about is probably not like the biggest story in the sense of shedding major light on a foreign policy scandal or something like that but an access story, which is why i thought of it. one of my favorite stories i did on the beat was the spring

of 2012 and it's a story about how the white house has stopped releasing the list of the wine they were pouring at state dinners because the wines had gotten expensive and it had become scandalous in the middle of a deficit. instead of just admitting it, they were denying that's what they were doing while doing it. and so, honestly, like the world would have turned without anyone knowing what they were going to pour for the u.k. state dinner, but i was so mad they wouldn't tell me that i made it my mission and spent three weeks, swear to god, as a wire reporter probably -- >> did you just badger them into it? >> all of the above. i went to the press office and asked them. they referred me to mrs. obama's office. you know how that works. you go to mrs. obama's office. they blow you off for four days. they refer you to the press office. thus it went. so i started calling the embassies for all the places that had been part of the state dinners, going on wine blogs,

looking for wine trade publications that might have written about somebody who had a wine pour. calling major vendors in california and specialty vendors in california. and because i was a bloomer i had to write a ton of stories at the same time. that's fine. i just was so mad at them. i just went nuts on it. it was one of my favorite stories. and they continue the practice of not listing the wines up until the last state dinner where very quietly they began listing the wines again. [ applause] and i think if i remember right i went to bill at a certain point during this conversation really because i just wanted an excuse to talk to bill plant but also to talk about wine. and he was, like, a fantastic resource. -- hen there was, i was they hired a new editor a guy whose name i had known from "the wall street journal"

because he and his wife had written the wine column for many years. one of my editors said you should call john bretcher. i'm like i'm trying to do this story. it's a coverup. they won't release the names of the wine. he was like let's get dottie on the phone. i ended up talking with his wife and he became like a mentor to me at bloomberg. it ended up being a win-win all the way around. i have all of these new friends who are wine makers in california. [ laughter] >> what about you? that. n't beat i remember the wine which goes about $400 a bottle at auction which is probably the time they stopped it. that's phenomenal. you know, i don't know, if this is the kind of beat that's very rare to blow open one big story but there are incremental developments on big stories that you really push for. i mean, immediately one i think of is when the boston bombing happened and president obama came out and had that, you

know, came to talk to us in the briefing room like 9:00 or 10:00 and after they got tsarnaev. we weren't getting any information at all from the white house and, you know, as one of the correspondents, a television correspondent, i have to stand up and everybody always wonders why we're waiting, why those guys are always standing up. i have to, you know, two minutes before he comes out i have to give a little spiel and lead into the president. i've got nothing to say because i have no idea what he's going to say. so the first thing you have to do in a situation like that is go around the white house because it is going to be completely useless. the press office is shut down. you try, do whatever you can there, but by and large you realize you're going to get nothing there. you have to go around. and i got just, you know, in that case just a little bit of a thing, gave my viewers a little added information which was they had initiated the high value interrogation team to go up. this was this thing that was set up to kind of be post

enhanced interrogation. if this were a terrorist situation, a combination of f.b.i., d.o.d., the intelligence community to go up and do the interrogation, figure out if there were any other -- anybody else is part of this plot. that was just an added piece of information. there was no way in hell i would have gotten that out of the white house. i had to go around. the same way with one of the big stories this year of course has been isis. and, you know, initially we had isis taking over mosul and as you remember there was that thing, is the president going to order military action at that point? it sure seemed like he was getting damn close to doing so. ended up not happening. did we, you know, get further on toward the summer and, you know, obviously we've -- he has initiated air strikes. we know he's going to do that. he announced the primetime -- it's not always an indication he is going to do anything. but, again, you get no information coming out of the white house what's going on.

but, you know, i was able to get some information that, you know, in addition to air strikes you'd be announcing these groups of advisers that would go over, you please, which would be essentially they would have boots. they'd be working on the ground but they would not be boots on the ground. [ laughter] but the way i've always done -- the way i've learned on this beat is you've got to go around, and having covered the pentagon, having covered congress, having covered the state department, having covered the intelligence community, each one of those places is a lot easier to get information than the white house. it helps on this beat to go back to those places when you want to get something on the white house. >> peter, what about you? >> i think it's great -- both are great stories and both make great points. i'm going to flip your question a little bit and talk about a story i remember screwing up. how about that? i wish i had it to do over again and the lessons you get from that. i remember in 2005 going down to texas to cover president bush on vacation as so many of us did in crawford.

it was a great place. we loved it. he decided to go off to arizona to give a birthday cake to john mccain on the tarmac and to san diego for some anniversary. of course this is when hurricane ike happens. he -- this was when hurricane katrina happened. he packs up and we're heading back and he flies low over new orleans to get a look at the devastation as we all remember. for those of us on the plane, it was incredibly moving. it was a half hour worth of seeing the devastation on the ground. they flew very well. you get a very good sense from that altitude, even, of how awful it was. and i got off the plane and i wrote a story on bush taking charge, blah, blah, blah, and everything like that. completely missing the story to which i had been a part of. right? and the lesson there is we can fight for access and we should fight for access. we have to get close but let's not also get in the same bubble he's in. remember that sometimes the story is not the way it looks to him but the way it looks to the rest of the world.

and we should try to find a way to keep that perspective. the best sources are not in the white house. i had the great good fortune of working very briefly with ann devereaux as people in this room know is one of the best around. she had that place wired. she must have known every janitor and secretary in the place. she knew things before white house officials knew them. they'd call her to find out what was happening. i asked her once. what's your trick? she said, there are three levels of sources of the white house. he agencies, congress, and "k" street. none of them work in 1600 pennsylvania avenue, exactly what john and margaret were just talking about. >> steven, what about you? >> i agree with you. sometimes you have to be -- come in as an outsider to do that story about how the rest of the world sees what the president is doing.

one occasion i remember was the first trip to china, which was in 2009. and the president -- it was a bit of a disaster. the president did a town hall meeting in shanghai, which half of china couldn't even see because it was blocked off and the chinese wouldn't let half the people come in. didn't go and see any dissidents for example. when reagan went to moscow he went to see dissidents, etcetera, etcetera. and then he had this press conference, which was not really a press conference at all but him and hu standing there kind of looking around and it went into this massive discussion of mutual cooperation and that kind of stuff. the chinese often talk about that in public. the president was staring around looking at, catching people's eye in the front row. he was very bored. the press coverage was absolutely brutal on that. and i kind of didn't do that

story because i figured we were all flying around in the same plane. everyone is going to ride over the disaster. i have to come up with something different at least as a foreign journalist working for mainly foreign clients. so i kind of thought i'd done a little bit of reporting about what the chinese thought about the president and if you think about it, the biggest nightmare in china is that there would be some kind of charismatic leader probably from the agricultural heartland who builds a grass roots movement who sort of loktionov fys students and then goes overtakes the east coast political establishment. if you think about it that is exactly what the president did in the united states. one, i think one of the reasons the chinese treated him as they did because they saw him as a threat and were frightened of him. frightened is perhaps too

strong of a word, but they were very concerned if the people of china saw what the people of the united states were seeing, basically this is when hope and change was still a viable concept. and they would be inspired and you might get some copycats. i wrote the story that way and pill rid by rush limbaugh and the right wing blogs for carrying water for the obama administration. there was one other issue, you know, mark landers has written about this. the president is not in the kind of line of post nixon american presidents who see china all in the same way. they all dealt with china in the same way. the president sees china i think and mark has written as from the kind of experience in southeast asia. he sees china as a big country with all of these small countries. if you put what i was talking about before and that together, you can see how the chinese might have seen the president.

i think that story stands the test of time because it's really told you the story of what's happened between the united states and china in this administration, which is, you know, relations aren't particularly good. there is still a lot of mistrust, miscommunication, and china sees, you know, most of these stories about the asia pivot is kind of just a rhetorical device. but it's not seen that way in asia. i was talking to an asian diplomat yesterday who was saying it is actually quite a success. and the chinese see the president -- the president can say a hundred times this is not something that's aimed at china, but the chinese don't see it that way. i think that was evident from that first trip to china. >> and that was something that you were able to pick up on because of your experience overseas? >> i guess. >> peter mentioned "k" street, the hill, and the agencies, but the foreign diplomat circle,

too, must also be a point of access. >> you've got the commitees on the hill, but often the foreign diplomatic community you can, you know, work out what a story is going to rise -- when it is going to come to the point where you can actually report on it and you can go to an official and say this is what everyone is saying. is that true? another good way of doing it, there are all these think tanks around town and these people meet with administration officials all the time. often they won't give you exactly what their conversations were about but if you talk to enough of these people you can pretty much get a good impression. you did a story recently of the experts meeting with the president and you can get a good kind of idea of what the white house is doing just by hearing the chatter around town. that's the way you have to do it. when, you know, you can't get people -- people just don't phone you back -- >> depending what news agency you work for. >> i guess so. >> that is true across the

board. i'm certain that certain agencies obviously get phone calls back faster, but the truth is the frustrations that we feel are pretty much across the board. i mean, i was fascinated when politico magazine did a poll of white house correspondents and i'll confess i suggested some of the questions. one of the questions was, how often, you know, have you spoken -- how many of you have spoken to a noncommunication person at the white house in the last week, right? somebody who is not paid to talk to you but is a policy person, somebody actually involved in running things. 53% said, are you kidding? we're all in that 53% at some point or another, and i think it's telling that we all feel so excluded from the people who actually do the job that we're interested in talking about. >> there are different levels, though, app, margaret, you covered the white house and then you went over to bloomberg which has a permanent seat on airforce one and second row in the briefing room. you're in the mix of any secret background briefings that you probably didn't used to get into when you were with

mcclatchy. so with the stories that you've done versus, you know, the access that you had -- >> one of my favorite stories about that happened in 2006. barack obama had written a book that had just come out. i was at mcclatchy and one of the editors wanted me to do a book review or q & a. they wanted me to interview him. they were like, do you think he's running for president? i was, like, no. so i'm calling tommy vitore and i'm like hey, can i get an interview with senator obama? he's like, whatever. i'll get back to you. they were blowing me off. so one night i went to the senate, outside off the elevator outside the senate and it was obama's night to give some speech that nobody was going to listen to. and then turn the lights off and leave. he was the last guy in the senate. so i'm stalking him outside. he comes out and i said, hey, i've been trying to reach you. can i hop in the elevator with

you? he's like, i guess so. we get in the elevator and i say, look, i've been calling your office for six or seven days in a row and no one called me back. i'm trying to get an interview with you. he's looking at me like what's your name? i said, listen, i work for mcclatchy newspapers and we happen to have some really influential newspapers in north carolina, south carolina, basically like, a handful of states that were big money states or pivotal states in a primary or swing states. i said, so, you know, if you want to call me back -- and he literally called me back the next day. i had my interview with him. that's one of two interviews i've ever had with president obama. it is different though. and it sometimes feels personal, but i think it's usually not personal. it's completely transactional. it's like, what do we need them for? when i was at mcclatchy they always needed us. they loved us, if there was something happening in florida, north carolina, south carolina, you know, a couple other states where our papers were, if it was going to be raising money in california.

and, you know, at bloomberg they're obviously much more interested in doing business with us on stories that affect wall street, consumers, the financial industry, and i think that's really how they look at all the outlets. so after a while you kind of figure out what you can do with access they'll help you with and what you just need to write off from the get-go and say i'll go get this another way. >> you know, i mean, it's true that the -- it's probably the first two rows. we get invited to these briefings others don't get invited to. i don't know. >> they're not that frequent, by the way. >> they're usually pretty useless. we're not allowed to actually quote anybody. i think we're all still going to learn something but it's not that useful. you know, of the major beats in this town, there are only two left that you can actually walk

the beat. this gets to how you got to senator obama. it's congress, and it's the pentagon. >> what was that like when you came from congress to the white house? >> it was brutal. because that's how i did my reporting on the hill. about the only place i wasn't allowed to go, imagine that, about the only place i wasn't allowed to go without permission was the senators only elevator. i almost got decked by senator bunting when i tried to walk in with him once. they can't avoid you. you know when the votes are. you know how they have to go to get to the votes, you know what doors, what hallways, which stairways. they've got two floor offices in hart. you have to have somebody in the upper floor and somebody in the overflow to help you out to triangulate the doors. you can get these people. they cannot avoid you. i mean, i worked at the white house for months before i had the chance to ask the president a question. >> i haven't asked him one in four years. >> it's astounding. >> yes. >> think about that. how is that possible?

>> is this the choir? we're preaching. >> peter, you covered, app stephen did, too, you covered a little bit of bush but you covered clinton and bush. one would think that starting on day one of the obama administration, they're trying to figure out where their lockers are. you already know and you know what the code is so you would seem to know more than them. are there advantages and disadvantages to having had that experience? >> yeah. i do think it's important cause i think you see things repeat. history repeats itself and often it's farce. we are definitely in the farce. here we are with the president in the sixth year of his administration. about to head to mid term where things are not going to go well presumably. you can write the story with more authority, with more context, more perspective. you can also, by the way, you know things they don't. just the other day we had this interesting back and forth with mark smith and the press secretary who tried to suggest this is the first time any

administration had ever done this or that. mark said, wait a second, no. that's not the case. it used to be different back when we were covering clinton or whatever. they don't have the historical memory most of them and it helps to have people like mark and bill and mark and the other mark and ann and so forth in the room to help us keep them honest because every administration thinks history started the day they took office. everyone goes through this painful, wrenching realization that it didn't. >> at what point does that sink in? >> right around year eight. >> what about you? what differences do you -- >> i think the bush administration and the clinton administration before them were much more astute in dealing with the foreign media especially. they had the same attitude in the obama white house about foreign media as about domestic media. they're just going to go straight over your head. they're going to, the president will do an op-ed in a newspaper in, you know, paris or

somewhere instead of talking to any journalists. when bush used to go abroad, he would have three prominent journalists from each country into the roosevelt room. he would kind of do a -- he was very good. he was very charming. he used to get really good press from these guys. he'd allow the wires in at the same time and you'd be able to take down all the quotes and then once it kind of hit the newspaper or the tv station where -- in the country that he was going to, you could report that. so they had two bites of the cherry. they had the newspaper article and then they had every other foreign media outlet in that country took wire copy and had the story, too. it was a much bigger sort of penetration of the media market. i think also that, you please, this whole n.s.a. business, i think the president could have asily tamped that down if he had gone on german tv.

still very popular in europe. they didn't engage, i understand there is a question of intelligence. >> something you think bush would have done? >> i think he might but bush was very unpopular in europe, so it wouldn't really have helped him. but like the people that worked for bush were so much more astute. i just think they were in this media mindset that they know best and they're going to go -- like i still don't think there's a better way for a president to talk to the american people than just giving it to the a.p., right? it's like he does these interviews -- but he does these interviews with local anchors, right? they all come to the white house and get their picture taken with bo and it's very nice and they get good coverage but they get like one station in, i don't know, toledo or denver or somewhere having that. if you were a national outlet, okay. you might get tougher questions. it's going to be in every newspaper and tv station in america. i don't understand. >> although, isn't part of the

reason why they do that is because when they do that, we write about it? i don't know about your news organizations but when they dub hat we journal-palooza where they have local anchors set up in the rose garden we go through and read the interview -- >> right. set up overnight with these quotes. >> -- not that well equipped to know what's going on in the white house and came in and carney gave a nice little sitdown, this is how we work and she came out and reported, this is how they work here. the journalists give their questions before hand and jay gives the answers and then we -- no. it doesn't work that way. >> did you want to say something, mark? >> sort of a sensitive topic, but on the question of how access varies by outlet, to me, one of the best parts about being regularly in the travel pool and traveling on airforce one is that president obama

does have, as you know, a tradition of coming back and doing some off-the-record time on the way home, usually from foreign flights or sometimes domestic trips if there's a reason to do it, right? and although we can't write about what he says, you can see it's often reflected, he came back for 15 minutes or whatever. and to me that is some of the most valuable time. because when you're covering somebody, it is really nice to have some face time with them and to try to read their body language, their inflection shun, what's on their mind, whether they can laugh off a question or whether they're prickley about it. something that maybe we didn't think to ask that he thinks to bring up. and whenever i had the privilege to be in one of these, i often wonder why he doesn't do it more often and not just on the plane, because -- >> and maybe on the record? >> on the record would be great. you know, but even when it's off the record, i think it buys

him a tremendous amount of good will and some empathy if not sympathy and understanding of how difficult it is to run the country and how complex your decision making is. and he's obviously like rhetorically more skilled than if you added most of us up in the room. he can figure out how to deal with us. i've never understood why he is not more comfortable or they're not with him doing more of these. i know there have been times when he kind of spoke off the cuff. it's usually, by the way, o know a podium with a microphone and you end up having a beer summit or something. >> the hot mike. >> yeah. the hot mike. so it's true that there is less risk when you're not out there, but there's also less reward. i think that to my mind often after one of these long trips where he'll come back and do this there will be some interesting stories that are often sort of sympathetic or nuanced that come out in the days after that there are no quotes in there but, you know,

i'm there and either have written the story or reading the story and you know where it came from. actually can be journalistically sound and i don't know why he doesn't do more of it. >> peter? >> okay. so that kind of is a nice segue to talking about some of these practices and principles that we were talking about. i'm curious what you guys think about some of the different things that we're batting around, for instance, how important do you think it is that we see the president every day? would that be, you know, john, maybe since you were on the hill, is that something that would be useful to you in your day-to-day coverage? >> yeah. absolutely. i want to -- andrea and i have been together on trips in places like saudi arabia and sudan and china and places that have a slightly less tradition of press freedom than the united states. and the practice i think in virtually every trip we've gone on together has been often in

these less press open societies they will try to say, let the cameras in. you want the picture to go out but no producers, no editorial presence. it is usually the american public affairs official who is going to bat saying, no. we're not going to allow this. now suddenly we have this new practice at the white house where cameras go in, including video cameras, for these -- this wonderful new term the photo journalist spray. with no editorial presence. and i know that the bureau chiefs have agreed to do this in limited circumstances, but i think it's a terrible idea, a terrible precedent, because it lows them to kind of further and further push away the actual pull. the people that are there for editorial reasons. >> well, the one thing that i wondered about that is, and this goes to the idea of seeing the president every day or just

seeing the president is that it is for the editorial, the writers on the panel is seeing the president -- do you feel like something gets lost when editorialists are taken out of a situation like that in the sense that it doesn't acknowledge what you do as a writer, which is also pick up your own color and different pieces of the scene, and that that's part of the editorial role as well? >> yeah. i think especially as reporters, the person we cover most is the person we know the least. right? we've all covered senators and mayors and governors and those people you see so much that you really just have a sense of who they are, right? yeah. they're guarded just like any other politician. but you walk across the way with a senator or you ambushed a governor because you know he's going to lunch or whatever. you always have a sense of who these people are and you have not a clue with this president. i get asked the question all the time. what is he like? i don't know. i mean, i don't. >> do you feel like you knew what clinton and bush were like?

>> i know like i've known each successively less. i wouldn't say clinton was -- you ask these folks and they tell you how much bush 41 was more engaged, you know, just even kind of dropping by the break room from time to time or seeing them in a casual kind of setting. and carter would do all of these things. ed walsh talked about that. that wasn't the case. the very first airforce one trip i took with clinton in 1996 he came to the back and was telling these southern hick kind of stories in his funny voice imitating, you know, rural folks and you can't imagine that today. it just -- obama does come back but even then it is very calculated honestly. there's some lecturing going on. >> exactly. so i think that what we miss, though, give this president credit. he does more interviews than the last two predecessors. but often -- i'm not for that.

i'm not getting these interviews. i'm just saying give him credit for at least doing this. what he is not doing and what i think is the bread and butter of what the white house correspondents do is pool sprays where you take day in and day out one or two questions, what's happening today, how about this? that's just where you hear the president day in and day out about the main issues of the day. we go weeks without being able to hear his voice and ask any question that we might ask and whole issues come and go especially these days with the velocity of things without ever having gotten his perspective on what he thinks about this or that. what he thinks should happen, anything. it's just so different than the last two. >> stephen, how does that impact how you cover the white house? >> well, i agree. i think the loss of the question of the pool spray is the biggest, even more important than the big news conference. >> absolutely. y think we collectively have lost. >> the reason we stopped doing

it was the president kept making news. he kept setting deadlines for the end of settlements, you know, or off-the-cuff stuff. and they don't want him to make that news. you know, that's a real problem. there is also the difference in atmosphere between those. you are standing around and fire off quick question and often that is more useful than getting to speak. you have a formal news conference and you see him once every two months or whatever everyone stands up and asks these seven-part questions, you know, which allows them to first of all pick the piece he wants to answer and then he can just kind of ramble on. i think we also have to be a little more perhaps disciplined. if it was this week, it would be what do you think about ebola and by the way the islamic state campaign is a real disaster. next week you have the mid terms. you think your administration sucks and basically -- >> i can't imagine wanting to do that. >> everything kind of boils down to a question of, man, things are just terrible. your presidency is going down, you know, down the tubes.

he'll just talk for 20 minutes. i think you're better off saying, okay. is the operation a failure? then he has to answer it. but the pool spray is the thing i think is most important. my worry would be if we just saw the president, said okay. we need to see the president every day they'd just give us an endless line of pointless -- ou know. >> a list of questions at least a few times a week. the other thing i would say is we spend a lot of time focusing on whether we get a chance to talk to him. the secrecy of the aides, this background, this double secret super probationary background or whatever they keep making up these guys have been innovative in the way they have decreased transparency. >> explain the rule. it's bizarre. >> my god. they have a briefing with 40 reporters in the room and they call it background. we're talking about deep

secrets. this is a bunch of guys giving spin that you can't quote. now, tell me what makes sense. >> we're allowed to use the information but not write quote. >> you say administration officials say the president is great but you can't say the president is great, said one administration official. >> then someone will go on morning tv and say exactly the same thing. >> would one of your asks be to put those briefings on the record or to put them in a traditional background kind of setting? >> i'm sorry. i would say the default should be on the record unless there is a reason not to be. i got an e-mail two days ago. i sent an e-mail to the press office, ebola, blah, blah, blah. they said on background the president has been briefed. we have nothing else for you. why on background? the president has been briefed. that is really secret. make sure we don't have name attached. what on earth is the mentality? honestly it's we as a town collect ively have gotten this idea that the background is the default not the other way around. by the way, we are guilty of this, too.

we as a profession ought to be pushing these people more and more saying, so, that is wrong. i am stunned when i hear reporters sometimes call me a -- okay. can we talk about background? why would you ask that? i haven't asked to be on background. we should assume we're on the record unless there is a reason otherwise. i'm sorry. >> it kind of suggests the official isn't convinced that the information is true. that's why they want their name attached. i remember coming to the hill when trent lott was going down and it was getting worse and worse with his strom thurman comments and his spokesperson at the time, you know, if he felt really good about the information you could quote me by name. a little bit less, i could tell because he'd say, you know, as a lott aide. and then when it got really bad he'd say just quote a lott ally. you know? [ laughter] allies finally, lott a to give the impression he had

more than one. >> another thing on our list is the use of embargoed information and the way that the administration uses that. i know the "new york times" has a full on war going on with the white house in terms of its use of embargoed information. did the bush administration used to do that? i don't know if everyone is familiar. they'll put out something in the evening that's under an embargo that's really lame. >> you know if it's embargoed it's not news. >> like it's trying to manipulate a news cycle. i don't understand it. >> so, i mean, would that be something that would be on your list? >> yes. >> of things you would -- >> i think so. it actually never turns out to be something real and substantive. we are handcuffing ourselves in terms of reporting on something that might actually be out there. if they told us embargo until 6:00 a.m., they've told the

hill, people around town, we ought to be aggressively reporting it out if it's something real. most of the time it's just nonsense and they're trying to feed us stuff we might bite on and we do too often. i think in the old days embargo used to be for the budget, something genuinely meepingful. state of the union you'd get an advanced text with a 9:00 deadline. all of that makes sense. this idea i'm going to put out a report on how our job training program evaluation might be finished two months from now and that is until 6:00 a.m. tomorrow i don't need that embargo, you know? we're in a war. we're not in a war but we had a couple occasions where they put something out in embargo and we found out from other sources and we're not going to stop reporting because they decided embargo with other people who are not subject to it telling us what goes on. so they get mad and take us off the list next time. whatever. this invites that kind of conflict where they're mad because they think we busted embargo. we didn't do it. it should only be for cases that make sense like being on

background. >> stephen, you have recently been out of the white house coverage press corps bubble. is there anything that since you've left that you've noticed or that's different from being a wire hack sitting in the press -- [ laughter] >> it's amazing how little you miss it. [ laughter] >> there is a honeymoon phase. fplgts like a really good job to have had and there were lots of things you miss and when you're a white house correspondent you're watching history unfold and everything else. you certainly don't miss e-mailing people at midnight oping to get an e-mail back. and it's kind of nice to go outside the white house and actually people return your calls. you know, i'm covering the

campaign people now and these are the people that right at the beginning when they still have their careers before them, they hope they've latched on to a guy that's going to be president. there is a massive difference. but the comparison between that and the white house where everyone is exhausted, you know, they're mad at the press, mad at the republicans, mad at everything, right? and it's amazing how that changes in six years, because back in 2007 you didn't have any trouble getting someone from the obama campaign to phone you back and talk to you. you know? it's kind of really interesting to see. >> i want to -- we have a little more time. did anyone have any questions in the audience or do you want me to keep asking? i see hands. > you wrote a while back a story where you interviewed some colleagues of yours or at

east peers and these off-the-record segues with the president. what is your take on those? do you think this is a good thing? i just want to hear your position on these times when he brings in journalists off the record and the whole thing tays off the record. >> look, you know, he invited i think 15 or 17 journalists, columnists and magazine writers, not any of the reporters covering regularly to come talk on the day he was going to announce the isis campaign. he invited a couple days before, i've forgotten, foreign policy people who worked in both administrations and i talked to people to try to get a sense of what he was saying

and what was on his mind. the off-the-record restriction did not apply to me. i can't be held to a ground rule i didn't agree to or profit from. and, you know, it's our job to find out what he's thinking. if members of congress had gone in and talked to him about this i would have called them and hopefully they would have told me what he said as well. you know, i agree with margaret that the off-the-records are in some ways useful. i think you can't have 15 or 17 in at a time and expect that's going to be an off-the-record thing that stays. that's not a confident, you know, background briefings of 40 people, off the records with 15, 17 people, these are public events in effect. and, you know, that's not the same thing as i'm going to bring in two to three reporters to the back of the plane for 15 minutes. i also think they use it as a substitute for on the record which they shouldn't be. >> i'm also not saying that i don't think we should be able to talk to the president on the

record. that's always my preference. but all i'm saying is that we have such little access to him as the people who cover him day to day anyhow. when we do have the opportunity to talk one-on-one or in a small group with him, which tends to be off the record, i think it's a valuable experience not just for the reporters but kind of for him. he gets a vibe about what reporters are interested in in talking about. we get a vibe about how he's feeling just because we have proximity and the kind of signals that aren't conveyed through a press aide can be conveyed in person with somebody. but if i give the impression i'd favor that over on the record session just to clarify that's not all i'm saying. i just don't think it is as risky to talk to us as his team has convinced themselves it is. >> i don't think he means for this to get out. he is not saying off the record he doesn't want to be part of the conversation. he just wants it to be on his

terms. right? if you have columnists in he's hoping to influence the columnists. he wants them to understand how he's pleasinging and write stories and columns that reflect that. so be it. this is not an off-the-record like i'm going to talk to you about my daughters and i don't want anybody to know. this is his intent to influence and shape the discussion in washington. well, that's something we should report on. >> a quick followup on that. >> can you hold on and use the mike so we can hear you? >> the off-the-record -- [ question inaudible] >> i think there are different interpretations. i think if you're involved in those things you should clarify from the beginning how that is intended because i, you know, we've had that happen where i think one of my colleagues saw some people going in for an off-the-record report or the fact of it got reemed out by the white house and so forth that the very idea it was off the record, you know what?

i just think it's the president of the united states. what he does is not off the record. especially when he is talking about war and peace, things of great interest and importance to the public. it is our job to find out what he is doing and saying and who with and, you know. >> did anyone else have a question? >> i do. >> okay. >> can we go to alexis and then come to you? >> question inaudible] in the experience of all the administrations -- can you offer the younger reporters good advice about how to deal with that administration figure, white house official control things --

--.you just is rst of all, i mean, it intimidating when you walk into that beat and you report something and then they come down on you, like oh, my god. i mean, i've had senior officials go to my bureau chief as if that was going to, you know, make a difference. but it's tough. and i think the advice is that first of all the simple thing is you can't be intimidated. you have to charge forward. you also need to be a responsible reporter and you need to be trusted by those, by your sources. you can't, you know, you need

to deal with your sources in a responsible way. you need to be able to be trusted by them to deal with the information in a responsible way and understand the divens between what's on the record and basic stuff and also be fair when you're going to write a really tough story and you're calling to get them on something. i'm -- i've not always lived up to this, but i think one of the basic things is don't surprise people. if you're going to really nail somebody with a story, you know, give them a chance to respond before you have gone up with it. and don't surprise them with it. let them know it's coming. that's a big part of it. sometimes you know it's not going to be any response but let them know they're about to get hit with something. and so i think if you deal with the -- those officials in a, you know, reasonable way, in a trust worthy way, it's a lot easier to ignore it when they decide to go off on you.

you know it's going to pass. it's going to pass. they're going to -- you're going to think, oh, my god they'll never talk to me again. no. they'll talk to you the next story because it is in their interest to talk to you. question inaudible] >> i guess i should probably -- no, you know, i think that, i mean, and josh has certainly mixed it up a lot more. i think it's good to get a mix of people asking questions. i also, you know, we've gotten into this habit of going down the line and people ask multiple questions and multiple topics. i mean, i've been in, you know,

other white house briefings and divent white houses where there was a different style, where the first subject is ebola. everybody goes around and screams out their ebola questions and then we'll get to this. and then you get people following up on each other's questions. i think it's the most important thing is always in the followup. not only you following up but like if peter asks something and me being able to jump in and follow up. i would like to see maybe the white house briefings done more like this panel. you know? >> put carol up there. >> i'm wondering, maybe it applies more to the networks. are not sending correspondents out -- going ourselves -- coming back to the

whole argument about the president as much as possible in public settings, addressing audiences, i can recall, i n't know, i remember clearly watching cars go in and out while having dinner and there was no question -- [ inaudible question] we had to be there. today our bureau chief said you've got a 70-year-old whatever president --. the premise was you had to be there ready to go at any moment. i think we, ourselves have gotten -- i don't know, with we really uts, but need to be at every speech --.

>> bill clinton wasn't scripted for his evening fundraisers and you would be sure to go. you would start to hear what was really on his mind. >> at 2:00 in the morning. >> often. i remember getting a number of stories by going to these that nobody went to. they weren't news per se but a week later you'd realize he's talking a lot about bosnia. maybe we should write a story about what he is thinking about bosnia. obama is a little more disciplined i think. but i agree with you. >> networks don't go on the domestic trips regularly. mean, w, but it's, i it's a problem. > i do think that a lot of this conversation today is going to be putting the white house's feet to the fire in terms of how much access they're voluntarily giving up but with all of these things we can do a lot of inward looking about are we running the white house photos? if we are doesn't that

completely undercut our premise for them not doing that? are we skipping events? doesn't that completely undercut our premise for why we can't be there? we have to hold ourselves to the highest standard. >> i have one question of this panel. i'll go very granular, but the two of you, peter and john, were getting at a really important thing we need to resolve as a group. so i want to ask you a really simple question. if you knew that you would see the president in the briefing room once a week taking questions, would you agree that the photo journalist sprays could go in without editorial presence? or whatever you want to add in there. but let's just say, like if it is really -- this is really a thing. like we, the white house has offered us more visuals on the president, which means a lot to the tv cameras and to the photographers. but those of us in print push back because we want editorial presence in there every time and we want to increase the number of times we get to ask

spontaneous, unscripted questions in a real reporting situation. okay. so setting aside -- agreed, stipulating that we all agree the principle that editorial should always be in there, the full poll for everything. if you knew you would see the president once a week taking questions in the briefing room, would you have a different view ? would you relax the idea that there always needs to be editorial presence when the pool goes in? >> i would say no, because, you know, the news conference might be on friday and the news you want to get the president to comment on might be on a tuesday. so it may not be -- i mean, it would be great to have him there on a friday but unless he is going to agree to come when we want him to come, i don't think it'll work. >> remember that the pool, the pool is going to be a spray. we can yell and scream, really loudly, and sometimes that means we get a question, a setting where there is a

question, but a lot of times it doesn't mean that. and we still don't get the weekly chance to grill the president in the briefing room. >> the last time a president actually gave weekly press conferences of like eisenhower or kennedy. if he actually would have come into a real news briefing, i mean, not just one question or two but the way he was in the summer until he decided he didn't have a strategy, then, you know, to me that's a trade-off worth thinking about. that would be an extraordinary commitment. i'm not convinced they would make it but the idea we could ask an hour's worth of questions once a week would be pretty -- >> i mean, i agree. i think it's a -- this inciple of having editorials is very important and is, i mean, i just feel very strongly about that. but if you did have access to the president where you could ask, you know, multiple questions ev week it makes it a little easier to consider something like that and it

makes the off-the-record stuff a little easier. if you have access, i always thought of it like a bed rock principle. if you have on-the-record access, you please, the off-the-record stuff is fine and very helpful. but not if you don't have the -- so this is a variation of that. but i just agree with peter. i can't imagine that they would agree to weekly press conferences. i think it might make that promise just -- we'll see if it actually happens. >> well, you never know. >> i would applaud -- we will make you -- >> we'll re-elect you. [ laughter] >> correspondents president for life. >> can we quote that in your story? >> exactly. just kidding. >> i think that exactly like the panel said, i think if that were to actually happen it would alleviate a loft the pressure for there to be someone with a pencil and a notebook staring outside of the window and then which is something that's useful for photographers and not for us. but i think it can't be an

absolute promise like we will never ask for access during the week because something like yesterday with the nurse, the ebola nurse, is ridiculous. of course there should have been full pool access. that's just silly. t doesn't make any sense ch. if that is off the deal because we cut some deal about friday availability i think we've traded something really precious away. i mean, not that we have it now. >> we don't have it now. right? >> but at least we haven't -- >> we have the right to complain about it. >> we haven't agreed to what's been happening. wh's been happening is not good for democracy and life as we know it. it's not. we shouldn't help them do it. >> hear hear. [ applause] >> fantastic. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> let me say a couple words. first of all, i want to say thank you to this fabulous pool. applause] >> this was tremendously

helpful and thank you for giving all your trade secrets. i want to take a moment to thank the national association for broadcasters, which is the host of this event today, or is the, has given us the space, which is beautiful. when you go and see what their bar looks like, you'll like it even more. abc and cbs were supportive as was our member who just really felt strongly about the symposium and wanted to give her financial support so she made a financial contribution. and so now after talking about the practice of journalism we're going to go celebrate great journalism. please join us in the bar and that's where we will have our tribute for our wonderful, esteemed, inspiring colleagues. thank you. [ applause] # >> thanks, guys.