representatives of the prescription drug manufacturing distribution and retailing industries testified this morning on the rising prices of drugs. c-span.org and our free c-span radio app. bedridden -- veteran reporter spoke with the executive editors of the washington post and the new york times about freedom of the press. this runs an hour and 15 minutes.

kalb: hello, welcome to the national press club and another edition of "the kalb report." i'm marvin kalb. on our program tonight, we are talking guardians of the fourth estate and our guardians are our guest. dean baquet, executive editor of the new york times and martin baron, executive editor of the washington post, arguably the two most influential editors of the two most influential newspapers in the country. dean has been in this job since 2014, having earlier served as managing editor and washington newspapers in the country. dean has been in this job since 2014, having earlier served as managing editor and washington bureau chief of the times. he also edited "the los angeles times" and won by a pulitzer prize reporting for "the chicago tribune" and started his newspaper career way back when as a young journalist at the times picayune in new orleans. martin baron, marty to most of his friends joined the washington post in 2013 after 11 years editing the boston globe. both papers under his leadership harvested 12 poster prizes.

-- 12 bullet surprises. blitzer -- pulitzer prizes. baron also in earlier times helped edit the los angeles times, the new york times and the miami herald. allow me to start our discussion tonight with a simple proposition, that in a democracy such as ours, if freedom of the press is jeopardized then democracy itself is jeopardized. each one is linked to the other. during the presidential campaign of 2016, candidate donald trump routinely criticized the press or the media, humiliating a number of reporters, bullying others, challenging the very concept of freedom of the press as written into the first amendment of the u.s. constitution. many said this is all campaign talk, if he won been this would inevitably change, that that is the way it has always been. well, he won and it has not changed, indeed it has gotten

much worse, even on occasion, frightening. and i use that word, deliberately. the word of the president is much more consequential than the word of a candidate. i know that other presidents have had their quarrels with the media, but donald trump crossed a bright red line when he accused reporters of being the enemies of the american people. forgetting that that phrase was a favorite of many 20th century dictators. he has gone further, warning that he might change libel laws, that reporters might have to reveal their sources on sensitive national security stories or risk imprisonment. even warning networks such as nbc that their licenses for broadcast might be revoked if their news stories displease the white house. stories called "fake news."

what is president trump seeking to accomplish in this running war with the media and what should the press's response be? so, dean, marty, welcome, good to have you both with us. how does one cover a president trump in a wild era of expending digital horizons? how do you do that without at the same time perhaps undercutting your own traditional standards of mainstream journalism? dean? dean baquet: first of all, you start by holding onto your standards of journalism, truth, fairness, aggressive, skeptical. i think you hold onto those things and obviously, you have to cover him as you would any

president at a remarkable speed and with him, you have to dodge the fact that yes, what you said with is true. i think what he says is an attempt to appeal to his base by making the press look like it is not fair, and by turning the press into a punching bag. i think over the long haul, if you tell the truth, if you are accurate and aggressive and fair and you hold onto your principles, i think in the end, you will recover. host: the question i am trying to get at is that this president has a very skillful way of dominating the environment, he is all over the place. he does that with his tweets, with his personality and his style. how do you keep up with that kind of domination of the

environment? do you have enough reporters? do you have to stick to your basic rules as dean was saying before and still be able to cover him? marty baron: i think so, i agree with dean. we have new ways of publishing, we publish at a greater speed, we have to publish immediately, people expect to get their news immediately, typically on their cell phone. the instant that it happens, that poses a challenge to us. but we still have our values, our mission, that remains the same. every day when i walk into our newsroom, we have the principles of "the washington post" on the wall facing me, and the very first which has been there for more than 80 years is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained. there is a sense of striving there, because the truth can be elusive but it says that there

is such a thing as the truth. it is not just a matter of personal opinion, there is a truth and our job is to come in every day and do our work and try to determine the truth. that is exactly what we do, it is nothing fancy, it is our work, the same work we have been doing for decades. host: you use the word truth. this is a president who has been violating the truth almost on a daily basis. we use the word lie now routinely to describe many of the things that a president of the united states is saying. you have your standards, and in my judgment they are the right standards, but how do you maintain them when the man you are covering is not dealing with the truth on many occasions? dean baquet: i actually chose to

use the word "lie" on the front page of the times. it was a controversial decision and i think a lot of thoughtful editors would disagree with it but we do not do it all the time, we did it that one time. i think the way that we cover it is, if he says x and it is wrong, you report out why. i think what marty said is true, i think you report aggressively and i think you sort of layout the facts, that is what we have been doing since i started as a reporter in 1977. i do not think it is different, i think it is faster, i think it is even more aggressive. we have done things, newspapers have done things like that uphold truth squad operations. we no longer wait the way that we did when i started for 2-3 days to evaluate whether a politician is telling the truth, we try to do it immediately. we set up systems to do it immediately. it is sometimes easier to check things today, the internet may

have perils but it also has great gifts. >> it's hard to check ally that a lieis hard to check that quickly, isn't it? >> if the president says he is going to cut the program by half $1 billion, i do not think that is easy. anything that is 90% of the things you're talking about. it is easy, you just challenge him, you reported out and you lay it out. host: marty, when the president dismisses some of your best reporting as fake news, when according to many polls, from 30%-40% of the american people are buying into that description, how do you deal with that? how do you fight back? marty baron: we do our job. i realize they are looking for something more, but i do not

think there is a lot more to it. the president on his first day in office went to the cia headquarters and said, i have a war with the press. the reality is we do not have a war with him, we are not at war, we are at work. we are doing our jobs every day the same way we have always done it. you talk about fact checking, we have had fact checkers at the washington post for a long time, well before the trump administration, in fact we doubled the size. we added an extra person. we have more people doing it who have been doing fact checks for a long time. they have to be busier these days than they were in the past, i have to say, [laughter] but they are doing the same sort of work everything all day. the very fact that the president is attacking us does not change things. we cannot just be reactive to that, we have to go out, gather the facts, provide the context and do it in an honorable and honest way.

that is what we endeavor to do every single day. host: what has been different about covering trump? >> well, it is a more hostile environment, there is no question about that. he was attacking us during the campaign regularly, even withdrew credentials from the washington post for a time. he condemned us, he sought to delegitimize us, even dehumanize us. garbage andcum and the lowest form of humanity. when that was not enough, he called us the lowest form of life itself. he has also threatened us in the way of talking about the possibility of litigation against us, suggesting as has been reported by the new york

times in his conversations with the former fbi director, the prospect of wanting to send some reporters to jail for leaks. particularly of classified information. so this is what is different, it is more threatening and hostile environment. dean baquet: i agree with marty, if i could add, it is also a significant shift in the culture of washington. there has always been a tense relationship, i was in the washington bureau -- i was the chief of the washington bureau of the new york times for five years and i never met barack obama the entire time. there was a notion that papers like the post and the new york times had a cozy relationship but i actually do not want to have a cozy relationship with the u.s. president. i don't go to the christmas parties. i don't go to the white house correspondents' dinner.

but, president trump turned up the volume, there is no question, he dramatically changed the culture of washington. i know that this is not the sexiest answer, but i actually think that calls for us to stick to our principles even more. it calls for us to hold on to the same values, the fairness, the toughness, but especially -- there are these traditional journalism standards that i think have been threatened in some institutions in the digital age, even before the arrival of donald trump. if anything, i think the last year has been a call to hold onto those and to hold onto them tightly. host: i want to tell you a story. back in 1947, when jackie robinson broke the baseball barrier on color, he still faced a great deal of prejudice and he got into a lot of fights. his boss pulled him aside one day and said, jackie,

don't punch back, just beat them on the field. turn that into journalism now, how do you adjust to the almost daily taunts and jabs and insults of the president, without punching back? you are all making it seem, both of you, that it is the same, your principles are the same, everything is hunky-dory, but it cannot be. how do you not? marty baron: you say that it cannot be, but it is. [laughter] i do not think it is true, i think we have come to expect it. it happens every other day, may be every day. to someas become degree, like background music. and it is not pleasant background music, but it is

background music. if we are going to react to this every single day and get worked up about it, spend our time making an issue out of it all the time, we would not be able to do our job. if that is what he wants to do, that is what he wants to do, we know what we want to do. we want to do our job and that is what we will continue to do. host: you and i and everyone in this room knows that there are people who argue that the two of you, the new york times and washington post are in a kind of unseemly competition. [laughter] to topple this president, to pull another watergate. what i would like to know from you, how do you respond to that kind of criticism which is not widespread, but it is there? dean baquet: marty and i are friends, friends, and we have a tremendous -- the only competition is between us, it is not a competition to topple the president. i sincerely believe that -- i do agree that "the washington pos""

and the "new york times" are at the forefront of the story right now. i cannot imagine what it would be like if it was only one of us because it would mean that the other newspaper would be under tremendous pressure. but i will say that one of the most under discussed and undervalued qualities in a journalism that drives much more journalism than anybody realizes is competition. i hate it when i get beat, he hates it when he gets beat, the thought that we could collude to do anything -- [laughter] it is utterly ridiculous, except obviously, if we could collude to fight for our values. to collude to talk about the first amendment. but the thought that we would be anything other than friendly and admiring but vicious competitors, while he is vicious [laughter] competitors? >> he had told me that it is better the both of us are in there, i have invited him to cede the territory to us.

we contested and we will see how it goes. [laughter] host: i would like to get your judgment on -- when the president keeps attacking the press, what is his ultimate aim? what is he seeking? to accomplish? you said before playing into his base, but is that it, is that all he is trying to accomplish? dean baquet: i will fall short of psychoanalyzing him, but if you look at donald trump's pattern through the campaign and as president first off, he clearly goes after his critics. and i think he goes after in particular critics and people of independent standing, which the press certainly does. early in his presidency he went after the judiciary. probably arguably the most independent and protected entities in society are the judiciary and the press.

first of all i think that all presidents are frustrated by the power of the press, the fact that they cannot tell us what to do and the fact that we at our -- and the fact that, at our best we push back at them hard. , but i think for a guy who grew up in the world of business, i think it makes him nuts. he is also a guy who grew up manipulating the press, page six was his playground. he famously announced a divorce to page 6 before he told his wife, i think. and he arrived in washington at the pinnacle of it all and here are these jerks who push and push them to do our jobs. host you do not see a larger : political purpose or ideology being served here? dean baquet: there is the obvious one, he plays to a base which generally might believe the press anyway but i think

there is frustration. his m.o. in new york was to manipulate the press, and he got away with it, mainly the tabloids. so part of it is strategic but i think part of it is he is just a guy who finds himself confronting a very different kind of press than he confronted when he lived in the role of tabloid journalism in new york. host: is it possible that by attacking the press, by creating this sense of fake news, by delegitimizing what it is you do for a living to the american people, that he may succeed? that at the end of the day his vision may triumph? one, do you think that is possible? and two, what is the price of letting this happen? marty baron: it has a corrosive

effect, no doubt about it. he is obviously saying something that appeals to a large segment of the population, approval ratings for the press are quite low and has continued to go down over decades. that is the same for major institutions of american society. we have the not great distinction of being a little ahead of congress on that front. [laughter] but the polls have actually shown a significant decline, particularly in the past year in the approval of the presidency as well, to the point where our

standing and the presidency check outstanding are beginning to intersect. so if you look at the polls, if you look at them more recently, we have actually begun to see a little uptick in the standing of the press among the american public. people see us doing our work in my view is that we have to look at this over the long run, will our reporting be validated over the long run. if you go back to watergate, for example, we had a president at the time was sharply critical of the press, spiro agnew before he had resigned was a designated attack dog and he embraced that will. the full ratings for the press jury the watergate investigation were very low. a huge segment of the american population saw them as an enterprise and then it turned out that the reporting was validated and the approval ratings for the press after the nixon resignation went up. to the highest point that we've seen, which is not always so high.

the mid-50's is about as high as we are going to get because we are always going to upset somebody. so i take the long view of our standing among the american people. mr. kalb: how does one reconstitute trust after you have eroded it. how do you gain back the confidence of the american people which you spend a lot of time and money doing is valuable and important? how do you sell that? dean: i may be naive, i actually think that when the press does its job, and it does its job which is to be an

aggressive questioning watchdog of government, even if it drops it comes back, the press does its job -- vietnam, or, the press did not do its job during the buildup of the iraq war -- i think when the press is aggressive and does its job, even if it temporarily loses trust, if it holds on to its values, i think history is filled with examples of where it comes back. i think as long as you get it right, as long as you stand up to power, as long as you aggressively question, as long as you hold on to all of that, i just do not think you lose. and i think history is behind us on that. mr. kalb: you do not feel, neither one of you, that the combination of presidential taunt perhaps actual action against you, and an atmosphere that gets clouded with doubt and suspicion, that is a tough thing to fight? dean baquet: action makes me more nervous. because we have not gotten into the realm of action. if you remember, the last white house was not so nice to the press when it came to leak investigations. if this white house chose to be more aggressive, that would be bad and it would be something we

would have to fight. if this president -- and i am not sure i buy the licensing issue, but i think that if this president chooses to go after reporters and jeff sessions has said that he has openly that he has opened leak investigations, that makes me more nervous. i think the taunts and the tweets have become background music. at a certain point, we would look at them and debate on how to risk on, he did 12 days ago on us and we do not even was on anymore. kalb: let me give you a little bit of history before i ask this question. when i was covering lyndon johnson during the vietnam war, they were a couple of occasions when he would call me on the phone, yell and curse and accuse me of all kinds of things, and was ahose calls ended, i

shaking leaf. it was tough. then during the nixon administration, i found list. on the enemy's into twice.s broken phones were tapped. yourry, do any of anyone checkeds back to you with anything resembling that kind of activity against the press?

marty: shouting? not an enemies list, that i am aware of, i am not aware of anything like that. [laughter] marvin: so even on the national security stories -- >> not supposing that it has happened, but i do not have any evidence that there is. marvin: let me take a minute now to remind our radio, television and internet watchers, listeners and readers that this is the kalb report, i am marvin kalb and i'm talking to two of the nation's top editors, dean baquet and marty baron. dean, can you tell me what is the single biggest challenge to your new super today? today?our newspaper dean: boy -- [laughter] dean: if you had asked me that

three years ago, i might have said the financial future. i do not feel threatened by that anymore, it is always a challenge but i do not feel threatened by it anymore. host: now? dean: i guess the single biggest challenge is to my mind, not just the new york times, it is whether local news, which i think is in the middle of a crisis, whether the country can survive what i think is going to happen in the next 4-5 years which is that many local newspapers will go out of business. one challenge for me is that i believe i have a obligation to make up for at least some of that, and an obligation to do what i can, to help some of those institutions survive. but if you ask me what is the biggest challenge facing journalism, to answer it that way, it is the inevitable decline and death of some of the great local news organizations. marvin: marty? marty: my sense is that people have a difficult time these days distant machine from what is true and what is not true. they are drawn to sources of

information that confirm a pre-existing point of view. not just in terms of opinion but they accept so-called information and so-called news that is coming from media outlets that deliberately spread false information and crackpot conspiracy theories. and people are open to those because of how it conforms to their view of the world. that is concerning, because now we have a society that used to be -- we used to be able to disagree on policies and we should disagree on that those things, what the interpretation and analysis of them is, and what the prescription for solving our problems are. but we would agree on a baseline set of facts. we could actually agree on what happened yesterday but we could disagree on what to do about it. now, we cannot even agree on what happened yesterday. it is not just a challenge for but a challenge for democracy. how do you have a healthy and well functioning civil society and democracy if we cannot even agree on a baseline set of facts?

marvin: i almost feel like i have to go back to the first question i asked you which is if you are dealing with a president who attempts to build up the concept of fake news, that only worsens your problem? marty: absolutely, no question. marvin: how does the newspaper today, you run two of the biggest and best new sippers in the country, that is a huge problem, how do you deal with it? when you say, what i want to do is do aggressive reported, honest, those are words, they are words of great importance. but is that it? marty: there is a limit to what we can do. we do not have all the hour, obviously, contrary to what most people say about us. we do have to do our job. we do not have all the power, obviously, contrary to what most people say about us.

we can tell people more about background, the people who write for us and produce video for us and do our graphics, all of that. i think people are entitled to know who we are, how to reach us. we can show more of the documents that we depend on during our reporting, and we can disclose full transcripts or audio, of interviews that we have conducted, we can be more open about that. i think that would help. i do not pretend to that is entirely going to do the job but it will not hurt and it might help. >> i think it could help a lot. one of the shocks to me when i was head of "the l.a. times," we did a focus group -- people did not know what datelines were. if a story said "name, alissa rubin," and it said "kabul," they thought it meant she made a

lot of calls to kabul. she is who she is. here is what she looks like. here is her background. and i think, if you do that, i think our previous era of sort of distance from readers was not good for us, and i think we are learning now to open the doors. marvin: dean, you mentioned that three years ago, the financial issue might have been a major problem, but it is not today. to the best of my knowledge, you have established a foundation in the newsroom to attract money to help you cover the news. how is that doing, by the way? and how much money have you collected? marty: we literally just started that. that is not why i feel more comfortable with the financial future of the new york times. that is brand knew. i feel comfortable because of the last year, and this is one thing i would point to for the people who say that news organizations like ours have been getting attacked and discredited. both of our news organizations

have seen dramatic rises and subscribers. people want to read strongly reported, well reported journalism. people are flocking to us. marvin: so trump has been wonderful! >> the revolution in the economics of the great organizations for news like ours, suddenly we are more dependent on readers than ever before. we are more dependent on readers than advertisers. that is a remarkable and terrific development. i think it ensures that institutions that are high-quality will survive, so i mean, nobody is sanguine, but i am more sanguine than i was three years ago. marvin: do you still make more money on advertisements in the hard news? dean: we now make more

money on subscribers and print and online than we do in advertising. when i started in this business, 80% of a newspaper's revenue came from advertising. if not totally reversed, it is moving in that direction. by the way, to be frank, i would much more want to be dependent on my readers than on advertisers. i think, because readers demand quality. they demand all the things we are talking about. i think that is a great development. marvin: marty, you have an owner with deep pockets, jeff bezos. does that mean you have no financial problems at "the post"? [laughter] marty: no. but we are having a very good year. we are seeing a dramatic growth in subscribers. earlier this year, we passed one million digital-only subscribers in addition to those who get it

subscription.er so, that was double what we had at the beginning of the year and trouble what we had one year earlier, so we have seen tremendous growth, and that have had a dramatic impact on our financial picture. official beneficial for us. we are having a quite good year. the objective is to create a sustainable business model for "the washington post." we are not a charity. he does not treat us like a charity, because if people were to get tired with this charity, we would be in deep trouble. what he wants to do is create a sustainable business model that will last for a very long time, many decades. >> have you done that as yet? martin: well, we are having a very good year. last year was our first profitable year in a very long time, and this year, we are doing far better than we did last year. that is not to say that all the issues are resolved. we still have a lot of things to work on, as does "the new york times." but the two of us are in better shape than major metropolitan newspapers around the country, and that does remain the biggest crisis in the press in this country right now, financial

crisis in the press. marvin: i was joking before when i asked you whether trump was good for business, but it occurs to me that maybe, i am sure you both thought about this extensively, maybe the reason the subscription rates are going up is people want to know more about a president who dominates the news. dean: sure. marvin: that gives you an opportunity to provide answers and insight into this new president. dean: i think both of our institutions were ready to take advantage of it, because frankly not every news organization has seen the dramatic increases that "the post" and "the new

york times" have seen. i think people come to us because they know we are covering them aggressively. if i can say, the thing i think trump has done most, at least for me as a journalist, i think there was a period when newspapers sort of lost a little bit of their confidence. our economics were more in turmoil. i am talking about several years. our economics were more in turmoil. not necessarily in the newsrooms, but newspaper companies and organizations, about what did readers want and how do we give readers what they want? which is a very good debate, but debates like that always make you a little anxious. i think that what we learned was they actually want what we do. [laughter] dean: and i feel more confident as an editor today -- i am a confident guy. i feel significantly more confident today as an editor, and more clear-eyed on what i am supposed to do than i did five years ago.

marty: i would add to that that there has been a shift, i think, in the thinking among the american public as well. i think the american public to press for granted for a very, very, very long time. that has changed. people do not take the press for granted anymore. they have a better understanding of the role of the press and american democracy, and i think that has helped us. people recognize today that they need quality journalism, and if they do not support quality journalism by paying a very little amount of money, actually -- if they do not support quality journalism, they will not get quality journalism. about: but we are talking from twoournalism very distinctive news organizations.

mentioning about the news organizations in the central part of america. perhaps you were saying yourself that some of these may have to go out of business. dean: i think local news is in deep trouble. i think the financial model that "the post" and "in your times" -- the "new york times" use, a lot of them have cut their newsrooms to the point that it is hard for them to charge the amount of our news organizations charge. i think there are entire sections of america that are not covered. i grew up with a newspaper in new orleans that is a terrific newspaper. marty: i am sure the staff is a tiny fraction of what it was. my guess is there are places like mississippi and alabama that do not cover their congressional delegations because they do not have washington bureaus, they do not have washington correspondent for it unless they're members of congress are very powerful figures that become national

figures -- i think those news organizations are struggling. marvin: what is the consequence of that? marty: the consequence of having entire parts of the country not covered? marvin: yeah. marty: by the way, there are other news organizations that will come in to take their place, but that is not happening yet for the most part. i think that is catastrophic. that means that there are school boards right now making decisions with nobody watching. it means that there are but getting past in places where the news organizations -- their staffs are too small to spend days going through their budget. i already think we are in the middle of a crisis that people have not woken up to. kalb: marty? marty: i agree. the press in the states has no one in washington covering their congressional delegation. nobody. in most states, perhaps the biggest taper in the states, as maybe one or two people covering

the governor, both houses of the state legislature, all the government agencies, the politics, and the policies. they are expected maybe to do an investigative piece. there are county commissions going uncovered, city councils going uncovered. forget about the other powerful institutions, and the powerpoint of in town who should be covered as well. it leads to a lack of accountability as dean was making reference to, and i think, a degradation into basically civil society at the local, regional, and state level. i think that it's usually concerning because who is going to step in to do that kind of work? marty baron: it also means -- if i can say -- when i was a reporter in "the new york times," there was a stretch when there was eight

or nine newspaper boxes. and if you got a beat on a story -- partly because a lot of them used wires and a lot were competing. each one was like a kick in the time i gotby the almost the bureau i was crawling. those days are gone. the regional news organizations that are really not factors in the way they were. marvin: let me talk to you for a ''sec about social media and how journalists are dealing with media which, you know, could be a blessing or a curse. i am not at all sure of that.

dean, you recently announced some guidelines on the use by your reporters of social media. why the concern? why did you have to do that? dean baquet: the first thing i should say about all of this, social media, the digital landscape, it is all actually great. we spend a lot of time as journalists sort of, you know, handwringing and debating. of course, it is all hard. of course, it is all perilous. the big news organizations like mine have more readers than we have ever had because more people can access us. the reason we changed our social media policy was i thought it was too easy. marvin: what did you change it to? dean: we always had a policy that said essentially "journalists should not say anything on other platforms and on social media that they would not say in the pages of the new york times or on our various platforms," but to be frank, we were not aggressive enough in making it a front and center policy, so we had just announced a front and center policy.

and the essence is, "don't say anything on twitter or facebook or anywhere else that you would not say in the new york times." because i think there is an entire generation of journalists -- we have encouraged them to have large followings. we have encouraged them to promote their stories. we have encouraged them to find audiences for their stories. and i want them to do all of that, but i was worried that there may have been instances where people went to far in addressing their opinions. and we are in a time when the press is being poked by its enemies, pushed to be provocative. by the way, even television news does that. we are in a climate in which everybody wants everybody to say strong stuff, have strong opinions, and it is really tempting, and what i wanted to do was make clear that i do not want the temptation to lure any people into saying things i felt was inappropriate.

marvin: i remember when abe rosenthal was the editor of "the new york times." you just said you wanted to get out. it is a publicity thing for you both, but on cable television -- >> and a transparency thing, too. marvin: but on cable-television, when you appear on fox or on msnbc, the environment itself screams a political point of view. your reporter is asked to discuss the story that will be in tomorrow's "post." i am not saying that the reporter goes beyond that, i am saying that the environment suggests to any logical viewer that that reporter is hooked in with the left or the right. now, how do you manage that? can you have it both ways? can you want the publicity without going along with the cost?

>> i am not sure i entirely accept your premise there. i think our reporters can behave in a very professional manner in those environments and that -- you are presupposing that just because they are there, they are assumed to have a particular point of view. marvin: you don't see that at all?

marty: i do not believe that is the case. we want our reporters to be out there. the people on our staffs, they have experience. they have expertise. we want them to share that. we want them to be viewed as authorities, the authorities that they are. these days, it is helpful if they make proper use of social media, and it is helpful if they are on television and radio, and that is where a lot of viewers are, so we would like to reach them. we would like them to be thinking about, for as, "the washington post." i don't think that they necessarily engage in risky behavior simply because they are appearing on the air. >> quite the contrary, i wanted to say i am not at all criticizing the reporters. marty baron: i am not sure they are perceived as such. dean baquet: it is not just for publicity. but i am in this business to have impact. i want, if i do and -- an investigative report, story, like i just did, i wanted to be discussed. i want it to have impact on the world. by the way, i want people to meet the reporters who did it. i think people benefited from meeting david farenthold and

seeing that he is a normal, nice guy. [laughter] marty baron: just to be clear. just to be clear. >> i feel the same way about the dea story. [laughter] marvin: talking seriously for a minute. dean: do we have to? ahead.go journalists around the world tend to look to the united states as a beacon for the expression of a free press in its broader sense. they look to us for that. and i am wondering if you think that president trump's attacks on the press have affected the way other governments deal with their press. dean?

dean: i want to say, one, it is easy for americans to get so upset about the way donald trump attacks us that we forget -- i mean, we still have these amazing freedoms that other news organizations do not enjoy. we can still write -- i mean, neither one of us controls our editorial pages. our editorial pages tomorrow can say whatever they want to say. i can publish a three-part series about anything. he can rail, he can complain. we can cover that and write and analysis about that. we have remarkable freedom in this country. marvin: i totally agree with that. i want to protect that. dean: but yes, i think it is almost inevitable. there has been some reported evidence of it, that if the president of the united states feels comfortable saying the list of despicable things that marty described that the president said about journalists, that has got to be empowering for countries that look for it uses to beat up their journalists and to beat us up. it is hard for me as we keep making the case to the chinese government that they should make our website more available, which they shut down after we did an investigative piece, if the president of the united states is trashing is all over the place. that is for sure.

marvin: marty, one of your reporters, jason, who was right here with us, and i am happy to say was captive in neuron for -- in iran for 544 days, and we are so happy that he is a free man and free journalist once again. how do you protect reporters who are in similar dangerous, very troubling environments? marty: well, it's very difficult. we try to take every precaution possible. we try to know where our reporters are at any time. we provide security counseling all along the way. what happened to jason was horrible and totally unexpected. i mean, it came out of the blue for us.

it is not where we perceived the greatest risk at the time. we are very concerned about reporters who were covering syria, reporters who were in iraq, who were in afghanistan, and places like that. now, journalists who may be operating in turkey, because turkey has cracked down on the press, including the foreign press. we get concerned about that. journalists who are operating in mexico, where domestic journalists are assassinated on a regular basis. journalists in venezuela, where they are imprisoned on a regular basis. we are concerned about the security of our people who operate in those environments. we do have people who advise us, experts who advise us on security. we keep track of our journalists movements so we

know where they are. marvin: if one of them was kidnapped and you had a ransom request of $5 million, would you pay it? marty: these are hypotheticals that we would never discuss as to what we would do and how we would respond as to anything of that sort. i am not going to discuss that. marvin: ok. one student from the university of oklahoma, who is with us tonight, asked me to ask you this question, this wonderful question. she wanted to know that we are all going through a temporary phase in our american democracy with president trump, and when he leaves office, whenever that be, we will all return to something that resembles a normal presidency and a normal america. would you think of that? dean: um, i don't know. but i would say a couple of things. i think that washington and the press and the government will be different in a post trump era. i think that there is just no question. i do not think, you know -- let us say donald trump is president

for eight years -- i don't think the next president comes in and all of the changes that have been made, all of the debates that have been had -- by the way, the one thing i would add, those debates, many of those debates were the reason he was elected. i don't think those debates -- i ini don't think those debates -- i mean, there are fears debates in the country about the role of the media, the role of the elite, the role of the coasts. those debates are still going to go on. i think if we pretend that donald trump is not a product of those debates, we are going to miss the opportunity to really monitor and understand a discussion that was going on in the country before him, and my

guess is we will go on after him. he is a byproduct of some fierce debates and he can make -- and economic upheavals in america that are not going to go away. kalb: you have 30 seconds to answer this. i want a detailed answer. [laughter] kalb: seriously, what kind of advice would you give to young journalists in the audience here, students who want to go into journalism, given sort of the negativity, whatever, going on today? what would you tell them, what advice? marty, start. marty: short and sweet, go into it, go into journalism. it is what you have a future. i am an optimist, actually, notwithstanding the enormous challenges we face at one person can make an enormous difference. one person. and if you want to be the person who can make an enormous difference, it is a great field to go into. dean: this is the greatest time to be a journalist. i mean, look, i grew up in a world where there was one platform, print. i called max frankel, saying "my god, i just ordered a

video." the best news organizations are one billion times better than they ever were before and the opportunities are greater. marvin: thank you both very much. i am afraid our time is up for now. in closing, forgive me, but i would like to go back to an earlier point about the relationship of a free press to political authority. and i would like to say that, in my career as a journalist, i spent a lot of time covering the soviet union. it was a country, at that time, governed by communists. they had little understanding of personal freedom, much less

press freedom. everything was determined by the reader, the guy who -- the leader, the guy from the kremlin. everyone from doctors to journalists had to stand up and salute, never rocked the boat, never be critical of him. i did not like that arbitrary style of governance then or now. what i have learned is that only a free press can truly protect us from authoritarian government. only a free press can ensure a vibrant democracy. the two are inseparable. if a political leader, for whatever reason, finds it to his advantage to attack a free press, to humiliate it, to disparage it, he is really attacking democracy at its core, and that has no place in this country. at least, that is my view. let me now thank our audience.

at the national press club in all over the world. want to thank our two editors, marty baron of "the washington post," and dean baquet of "the new york times," for sharing their experience with us and for giving us hope that their leadership will inspire a new generation of reporters to go out there and get the news without fear or favor. that is it for now. i am marvin kalb. and as admirable used to say and, as -- go, that as ed murrow used to say --y years ago, thank you to sayed murrow used

and years ago, good night good luck. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. we now have an opportunity for me to keep quiet, and for you to ask questions. and we have two cameras. one there, one there. if you have a question, go to the camera area. it is right there and right here. i will start over here with one young lady. give me your name. ask a question. don't make a speech, or i will be forced to cut you off, and i don't want to do that. go ahead. >> i would like to say thank you for your terrific reporting. especially on both the dea story and the harvey weinstein story, especially as a woman, frankly. you both talked about data, ok, and having more data about your readers. name is joany michel, i'm a reporter.

there is a balance here. we have to tell readers what they need to know, which is not always what they want to know, and sometimes, they are in conflict. so, how do you decide what to cover? how much of the readers' opinion and desires to take into account so you don't end up really skewing, you know, not covering things you need to cover and maybe covering too much of what in my opinion is superficial? how do you decide what the audience input is? marvin: thank you. >> i would say, in the old days of newspapers, we knew nothing about readers, and i think we gave readers sort of what we thought they wanted, and i don't think that was any healthier. i think in fact that's my guess is that readers -- you had to buy newspaper. right? you had to. you did not even know what the weather was going to be in the morning if you did not buy your newspaper. i think knowing what readers want, as long as you balance it, is better, and i think, sometimes, people misunderstand the use of data. they think we wake up in the morning and say "the readers of

this, and they did not love this. let's change it." 70% of the way we use data is "oh my god, people in asia want to read a story that is at their time in asia." or "people tend to want to read -- they read longer stories in the evening." riffing. sort of longer wnt to read weries in the evening and if ave a longer story that reporter has worked on for six months, i will certainly put it up in the evening. i like knowing what readers want. it just so happens, unfortunate, the readers of "the new york

times" want what we have been giving them traditionally. i don't think people want the kardashians from "the new york times." i don't think we would know how to do that. [laughter] marvin: i don't think they know who they are, "the new york times." [laughter] marty: they don't. i want to know, and i think it is healthy for me to know that, and i don't think we are going to do anything to chase clicks, but i want to understand my audience. i want to understand when they read. it is important for me to know, you know, -- in the print era, we all had this suspicion that people did not read past the jump. nowadays, if you know people don't read a story of a certain length on a certain day, run it when they won't read it. i want to be read. marvin: thank you very much. yes, please? >> idealives.net the largest corporate media, are they really to be trusted if

they have not been co-opted by the deep state, the deep church, or the deep temple as the hand and glove of the deep state? i will point to operation mockingbird created by the cia to spend money to kind of keep covered up some of the aspects of the kennedy assassination, which 50 years later, we are still waiting. >> please ask a question. >> well, i am. have either of you heard of operation mockingbird? or do we refuse the notion that the mainstream media is guided by the deep state? >> i will refute the notion that the mainstream media is guided by the deep state. [laughter] >> thank you. i do not even know what you find -- marty baron: i don't know where to begin. i really don't. look, i mean, the term "deep state?" i mean, you're talking about people who work in government, i guess. look, we are just doing our jobs the way we always have. the idea that there is some sort of hidden hand here is crazy. i mean, the reality is these days, as we talked about before, the bulk of our revenues, a growing amount of our revenues, is coming from subscribers. the people we have to satisfy day in and day out is our subscribers. what they want for the most part

is the kind of journalism that has traditionally been done, and that is they want investigative reporting. they want honest and honorable journalism. they want narratives. they want all of that, and they are willing to pay for it. and you know what guides us? our subscribers guide us. that is who guides us. >> at yeah. >> it yes, please. >> my name is casey decker. i am a senior now at gw. my question is about analysis pieces. you both have those who write analysis pieces. you think it do goes from objective to outright opinion? >> that is a good question. we work really hard. the analysis pieces have become

much more important. not only the upshot but traditional political analysis is more important today then it was before. it is harder to do because inlysis pieces were born newspapers in an aero when the newspaper was just the fact you need in a story that said, when the president does is he is reaching for a whatever symbol of foreign policy, whenever, but i think those stories -- if we police them, we are careful, i think they are really important and they are probably more important than they ever were -- because they illustrate the expertise of a newsroom. we have to do them and we just have to be careful. question. what we try to do as we -- i mean, i don't think we should be

stenographers. we don't want to just report what people say. we want to report what people do. who is responsible for those decisions. then you start getting into the territory of analysis. one thing we do is we label the analysis. we label things opinion. we label things perspective and things like that. that appears on all the digital platforms anywhere we are. yourer it is snapchat, mobile device, apple news, wherever it may be. it could be and is those places or more. we want to make sure that label is followed it wherever it goes. >> my name is jim. mckay.tion is for mr. will you comment on the james o'keefe video and explained to us whether you believe his word

investigative journalism or not? >> as people know, i think his investigative journalism. james o'keefe is a guy who happens to be a conservative who goes out and tries to trick journalists into saying inappropriate things and then he puts them on his website. a journalist has to have in his heart and her heart a desire to make society that her. all james o'keefe is trying to do is hurt institutions and get some clicks. he just did a video that i am not going to use the word -- despicable. he managed to trick a very young youngrapher, a very employee of the video unit of the new york times into saying some outlandish things because he was a young guide when the to have a conversation with a

woman. he said he was jim comey's godson. gatekeeper of the a video at the new york times. he made all sorts of outlandish comments. he was a kid. a james o'keefe did in jeopardizing that kid's career is awful. i do not think it is journalism. it is destructive. dishonest. he lied about who he was. his employees lies about who they are. that is not journalism. journalism has got to have some value out of her. societyire to make better and better informed. and that is not them. >> thank you. [applause] >> i am charlie clark. the trump people would assume the newsroom's you represent are a whole lot of liberal democrats who did not vote for trump and i am wondering, how confident are

you that you have a good diversity of political leanings in your newsrooms. >> i am not going to ask, never will ask. i interview pretty much every job candidate who comes through the post and i have done the same at the boston globe and that herald and a lot of at the l.a. times as well. , i never willsked ask. i know a lot of them come from different backgrounds. this notion that they only are coming from the coast, they are only part of the elite is it not correct. international editor grew up on a farm in western pennsylvania. her brother still muncie farm. we have an individual who grew --in a family of 12 schools kids and they were homeschooled. evangelical christian school. her roommate works for us covering religion.

level wife right of people of different backgrounds and that is what i look for. one thing we have endeavored to do is to hire more veterans into the post as well. we want to continue with that. that is important for us to do. i think that is part of the american experience. it used to be a lot of people in newsrooms had been in the military because there was a draft but there is not been a draft in a very long time and so i think now we need to make sure bring this into our newsrooms and we are endeavoring to do that. is important. to have a variety of backgrounds. them, theying to ask can go into the voting booth and cast their vote however they wish. >> thank you. we have just a little more than five minutes to go so please shorten up the questions a

little bit, anthony answers. [laughter] that for dean. >> i am a member of the board of club.ors at the press i am pleased to hear the pendulum is leaning toward readership instead of advertisements. however, why are there sometimes articles or sections in your doer from chinese media that not always meet the same high standard of journalism we hold ?ere in the u.s. >> so we have an advertorial section clearly legged as such from china daily. so that was a decision made -- clearly labeled as such from china daily. it is advertising, not labeled as news and you should consider it to be advertising. >> thank you. my name is joshua. i am a student.

one of the things that is really kind of getting into the nature of the new media age is compartmentalization. people are able to pick and choose the news they get. through theift noise of all of that and all of the fake news and otherwise to get your message out to the readers? >> i will be short. i had marty address that earlier. a lot is doing things like this, a lot of it is talking about who reporters are. some people think a certain mythology about who runs america's apron. marty is from tampa. i am from new orleans. i think it is letting people know we are honorable people who make mistakes sometimes but who have honorable goals and we hire veterans. newsrooms that look like america. we want you to know that. that is the main thing. >> thank you.

[applause] >> shows, please. ask my name is scale. my question is, how do you view the press coverage of candidate trump and how might we avoid reelecting him? laughter] >> in the next go-round based on all that free coverage? job is to give the citizens of the united states the information they need and deserve to know. so i think i am part of our coverage. i am proud of the coverage at the new york times. i think we investigated pretty much every aspect of donald trump's life and career. that said, there were networks that varied in live. all of the rallies without saying whether it was true or false for hours on end. i do not happen to believe that was the right thing to do, to

carry him uninterrupted rally after rally after rally. where i think we field, the press in general failed, was what we did not do before donald trump ever became a candidate. once we had him as a candidate, we took him very seriously as a candidate and did those investigations i just talked about but before he was a candidate, think we should've done a better job in writing about the level of anxiety agreements that existed. brought that to re. fou we should've done a buttered up to listen to all of america -- we should have done a better job of listening to all of america. rexam working on a paper about how print journalism and radio journalism can increasingly attract millennials to traditional journalism.

what are the times and posts doing in terms of data analytics question mark is your data say in terms of how many new readers are millennials and what are you guys doing other than increasing your presence on social media and online, what are you doing in the future to kind of stay relevant? >> i mean there are areas of that i think you can make yourself nuts, by the way, chasing every sort of demographic group. there are areas. i mean, think traditional organizations and some are red more by men then women. that is a reflection of the people that run in right for them, diversifying staff help. i think we just started a gender vertical with the idea that we want, that there are some subjects that were not present enough in our pages that we needed to get present and our pages and they are actually

starting to draw audiences. those are just examples of audiences we did not necessarily have before. >> hopefully our audience -- about one third of our audience -- we have something that is targeted essentially at millennial women and is quite successful. when jeff bezos to visit over, acquired is, one of the things we thought about in addition to think about how we become more national is, how do we appeal to younger people? because if we do not have younger people reading us, we will not have readership in the future. so we have a blog about the internet culture people are interested in. a blog about the environment that younger people are interested in. it is not done in a way that

panders to readers. there are wastes -- we understand there are things we are not covering that we should have been. >> time for just one more question. i apologize to the people who will not have a chance. one here, please. >> my name is alexis. i am at loyola university. my question is in regards to investigative reporting. your papers have released shocking exposes on however you weinstein and the da -- on harvey weinstein and the ta recently. how do your journalists overcome to produce such great stories outcome of how it is used afterwards? >> the harvey weinstein story has been the -- the reaction has been probably three times what i anticipated. i think as a result of bill o'reilly and the coverage of donald trump during the

campaign. i mean, how do you do it? that is like old-fashioned, banging on doors, convincing people to talk. trying to get them to give you documents. it is the same thing i did as an investigative reporter along time ago and my job is another is, give them the time. make sure the understand i truly value it. and just get the hell out of the way and support them when they do it. 1977.ted in interrupt thel issue of how our readership response to that. i mean, grew with everything you said but readers value at. i mean, really value it. we do a great investigative piece we see a tremendous result from our readers. they say thank you for doing this work. if there were not newspapers,

this would not be done. that is why we need to support journalism. this is why i support you. we need to keep doing this kind of work and reminding the public this is something we do more the -- anybody else and better more than anybody else and better than anybody else and if we were not there, this work would not get done. >> we are at the end. i want to think all of you for being here, for your questions, and i just want to say to our two guests that i cannot express my latitude adequately for the fact you took the time to be with us. i have enormous respect and admiration for the two of you and for the institutions you represent and for the broader sense of the concept of the free press which you both advocate big time and powerfully. i think were all very grateful to you and the work to you do. >> thank you. >> to i. eggs thank you for being here

for -- >> thank you. being here. for applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here tonight. please drive carefully. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: if you missed any of this program, you can see it later tonight in our program schedule. you can also see this and other programs on our website, c-span.org. of theesentatives

prescription drug manufacturing distribution and retail industries testify this morning druge causes of rising costs and prices. live with the senate health committee at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3, c-span.org, and -- and our free c-span radio app. >> live today from c-span, washington journal is next. the security of consumer information that credit agencies. and the nominee to be the next inspector general for the cia. then president trump addresses members of the heritage foundation. in one hour, c-span's year-long 50 capitals jefferson,ues in missouri. re: guest is jay asked craft on the security -- ashcroft on the security of voting systems. onn betsy mccoy