>> this is the problem. ais is what i see from patient and policy perspective. from an advocacy perspective. this is what will make the veteran's administration the ideal provider. >> sunday night at eight eastern. kalbrmer reporter marvin moderates a discussion with the executive editors of "the washington post," and "the new york times." this is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] marvin: hello, and welcome.

welcome to another edition of "the kalb report." program,lling this "guardians of the fourth estate." we have the executive editor of , and theyork times executive editor of "the washington post." the two most influential editors of the most influential newspapers in the country. sinceas been in this job 2014. he served as the washington bureau chief of "the times. he won a pulitzer prize for his reporting to the chicago tribune, and started his speaker courier way back when in new orleans. joined the washington post in 2013, after 11 years editing the boston globe.

he also helped edit the los angeles times, the new york times, and the miami-harold. rald.e miami-he in a democracy such as ours, when freedom of the press is jeopardized, is a democracy itself? one is eminently linked to the other. president donald trump routinely criticized the press, 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 was 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 he 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 digitalpanding horizons? have 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 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 on to your principles of old, i think -- in the end, you will recover. host: i am sure you agree. 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. at the instance that happens, that all poses challenges 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. kalb: 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 there 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 new york times."

it was a controversial decision and i think a lot of thoughtful editors would disagree with it that 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 lay out 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 set up hold 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 is hard to check a lie that quickly, isn't it yet ? basquet: if a president says he is going to get a program by half a 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. kalb: 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 you're looking -- that you 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. you are doing our jobs every day -- we are doing 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 have two people doing it who have been doing fact checks for a long time. they are busier these days than they were in the past, i have to say but they are , doing the same sort of work every single day. the 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. kalb: 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. during the general election as well. he condemned us, he sought to delegitimize us, calling us the lowest form of life itself. he sought to dehumanize us, and 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 one to just send some reporters to jail for leaks. particularly of classified information. so this is what is different, it is a 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 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 or 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 it 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 the digital age, even before the arrival of donald trump. i think the last year has been a call to hold onto those and to hold onto them tightly. kalb: 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, do not 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, we have come to expect it. it happens every other day, almost every day, and it has become, to some degree, background music.

it is not pleasant, 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 jobs. that is what we will continue to do. kalb: 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] 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 is there? dean baquet: marty and i are 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 post" 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 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] is utterly ridiculous, except obviously, we could collude to talk about the first amendment. but the thought that we would be anything other than friendly and admiring but vicious competitors -- he is vicious [laughter]

-- a vicious competitior. >> he had told me that it is better the both of us are in there, i have invited him to share the contest and we will see how it goes. [laughter] 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 best push back at them hard. but i think for a guy who grew up in the world of business, i think it makes nuts. he is also a guy who grew up manipulating the press, "page six" was his playground. he famously announced his divorce on "page six" before he told one of his wives. and he arrived in washington at the pinnacle of it all and here push him.who

kalb: 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 not believe the press anyway but i think there is frustration. his m.o. in new york was to manipulate the press. mainly the tabloids. part of it is a guy who finds himself confronting a very different kind of press than ofn he lived in the world tabloid journalism in new york. kalb: is it possible that by attacking the press, by creating this sense of fake news, delegitimizing what it is you do for a living, 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's 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 the past decade. 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 president's standing 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 and

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 who was sharply critical of the press, spiro agnew before he had resigned was a designated attack dog and he embraced that role. the approval ratings for the press during 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 high. the mid-50's is about as high as we will ever get, because we are always going to upset somebody. so i take the long view of

things. reporting has to be solid, ultimately i believe, and i am confident that we will be validated over time and i take the long view of our standing among the american people. kalb: if trust be lost to does onedegree, how reconstitute trust? how do you gain back the confidence of the american people, which you spend a lot of time and money doing, is valuable? that? you sell dean baquet: 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, watergate, 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. kalb: you do not feel, neither one of you, that the combination of presidential taunt perhaps actual action against you, and that getssphere clouded with doubt and suspicion, that is a tough thing to fight? dean baquet: action makes me more nervous. 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. 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 opened leak investigations, that makes me more nervous. i am with marty, i think the taunts and the tweets have become background music. at a certain point, we would look at them and debate on how respond, he did 12 days ago on us and we didn't even listen. 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,

there 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 when the calls ended i was a shaking leaf. it was tough. then, during the nixon administration i found myself on an enemy's list, my office was broken into twice, phones were tapped, and i worry, do any of your reporters, has anyone checked back to you with anything resembling that kind of activity against the press? marty baron: shouting? not an enemy's list, that i am aware of, i am not aware of anything like that. kalb: wiretapping? >> no. kalb: so even on the national security stories -- >> i'm not supposing that it has happened, but i do not have any evidence that there is. kalb: 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 newspaper today? dean baquet: boy. [laughter] that three sked me 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. kalb: now? dean baquet: 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. kalb: marty? your sense? marty baron: my sense is that people have a difficult time these days differentiating 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 events 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 the press, 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? kalb: 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 baron: absolutely, no question. kalb: how does the newspaper today, you run two of the biggest and best newspapers in the country, that is a huge -- today, you run two of the biggest and best newspapers 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 reporting, honest, those are words, they are words of great importance. but is that it? marty baron: there is a limit to what we can do. we do not have total power, obviously, contrary to what most people say about us. we do have to do our job the way we see them. we can be more transparent about how we go about our work, talk more about who we are, what we believe. 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 -- in doing our reporting, and we can disclose full transcripts or full audio of interviews that we have conducted. we can be more open about that. i think that would help. i don't pretend that is going to entirely do the job, but it won't hurt. it could help. >> i think it helps a lot. one of the shocks to me when i was editor of "the l.a. times," to my horror, 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. i think we need to tell people

she has been covering afghan and iraq for more than 20 years. here 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 distancing from readers was not good for us, and i think we are learning now to open the doors. marvin kalb: you mentioned a few really go the financial problem might be an issue. you have established a foundation in the newsroom to attract money to help you cover the news. doing and how much money have you collected? dean baquet: we just started that. i feel comfortable because, over the last year, and this is one thing i would point to for the people who would say that news organizations like ours are being attacked and discredited. both organizations are seeing

dramatic rises and subscribers. read strongly reported, well reported journalism, and i think they are flocking to us. marvin kalb: trump has been wonderful for you. [laughter] >> out of the complicated answer. -- that is a complicated answer. the revolution and the economics of the great news organizations is that suddenly we are more dependent on readers than we have been ever before. we are more dependent on readers that advertisers. that is a remarkable development. institutions of high quality will survive. i am more sanguine that i was three years ago. marvin kalb: do you still make

more money on advertisements in the hard news? >> 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. those numbers -- 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 kalb: marty, you have an owner with deep pockets, jeff bezos. does that mean you have no financial problems at "the post?" [laughter] marty baron: no, but we are having a very good year for the very reasons dean mentioned. we are seeing a dramatic growth in subscribers. earlier this year, we passed one million digital-only subscribers, that is in addition to those with digital access along with the print subscriptions.

so that was double what we had at the beginning of the year and triple what we had one year earlier, so we have seen tremendous growth, and that has had a dramatic impact on our financial picture. it has been beneficial for us. we are having a quite good year. you -- 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, and i am glad he does not, 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. marvin kalb: have you done that yet? marty baron: as i said, we are having a 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 kalb: 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 baquet: sure. marvin kalb: that gives you an opportunity to provide answers and insight into this new president. dean baquet: 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 don't think they were in the position. i think people come to us because they know we are covering him aggressively. but if i can't say, the thing i

think donald 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 going back several years. our economics were more in turmoil. there were debates in the newsrooms about not necessarily in the newsrooms, but in the 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] and i feel more confident as an editor today -- i am a confident guy anyway -- but 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 baron: 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 took the press for granted for a 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. marvin kalb: we are talking about quality journalism from two very distinctive news organizations. new york times and the washington post. you were 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 baquet: i think local news is in deep trouble.

i think the financial model that "the post" and "new york times" has managed their way through, the decline in print advertising, i think a lot of newspapers have cut their newsrooms to the point that ist -- that it is hard for them to charge the amount of money that are news organizations charge. i think there are entire sections of america that are not covered. i grew up in a newspaper in new orleans that is a terrific newspaper. i am sure the staff is a tiny fraction of what it was. you know, 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 correspondents, and unless their members of congress are very powerful figures that become national figures -- i think those news organizations are struggling. marvin kalb: what is the consequence of that?

marty baron: the consequence of having entire parts of the country not covered? marvin kalb: yeah. marty baron: 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 there are budgets getting past in places where the have steps toions small to spend days going through their budget. i think we are in the middle of a crisis that people have not woken up to. marty: i agree. havethan half the states no one in washington covering their congressional delegation. nobody. in most states, the biggest paper in the state has maybe one or two people covering the state

capital, the governor, both houses of state legislature, all of the state agencies, all of the policy, and they are expected to do an investigative piece. it is not possible. there are school boards going uncovered, city councils going uncovered, a lot of things going uncovered. and they forget about the powerful institutions in town that should be covered as well. overall, it leads to a lack of accountability. in civilradation society at the local, regional, and state level. that is hugely concerning. who was going to step in to do that kind of work? when i was a reporter for "the new york times" spending time in washington, there was a stretch new the metro where

there were eight or nine newspaper boxes, and if you got partly because, each one wasting, like a kick in the stomach. the time i got back to the washington bureau, i was crawling. that is gone. regional news organizations are not factors in stories. me talk about social media and how journalists are dealing with social media, which could be a blessing or a curse. i'm not sure of that. dean, you announced some yourlines in the use by reporters of social media. why the concern? dean: 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 hand wringing and , of course it is all hard and perlis, but the big news organizations like mine have more readers than we have ever had. more people can access us. we changed our social media policy because i thought it was too easy -- host: what did you change it to? dean: we always had a policy that journalists should not say things on other platforms, and on social media that they would not say in the pages of the "the new york times" or our various platforms. we were not aggressive enough to get a front and center policy. we announced a front and center policy, and the essences don't say anything on twitter or facebook or anyplace else that

you would not say in "the new york times." 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. i want them to do all. worried there may be instances when people went too far expressing their opinion. we are in a time when the press is being poked by its enemies, pushed to be provocative. even television news does that. we are in a climate where everybody wants everybody to say strong stuff, have strong opinions, and it is really tempting. i don't want the temptation to leeward any of our people into saying things. i remember when in the

times reporter did not want to appear on cbs, they could appear on it and leave the newspaper. it is a publicity thing for you both. and the transparency thing, too. when you appear on fox or msnbc, the environment itself political point of view. your reporter is asked to discuss the story that will be in tomorrow's post. i'm not saying the reporter goes beyond that. i'm saying the environment suggests any logical view that leftreporter is with the or the right. 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 -- your presupposing that just because they are there, they are assumed to have a particular point of view. >> you don't see that at all? dean baquet: i do not marty baron: 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 investigative report -- and investigative -- 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] kalb: talking seriously for a minute. dean baquet: do we have to? marty baron: go ahead. kalb: what i would -- marty baron: go ahead. kalb: 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 baquet: 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. kalb: i totally agree with that. dean baquet: 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 excuses 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 us all over the place. that is for sure. kalb: marty, one of your reporters, jason, who was right here with us, and i am happy to say was captive in neuron for -- i n 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 baron: it is 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. will what happened to jason was horrible and totally unexpected. i mean, it came out of the blue for us.

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 ' movement so we know where they are. kalb: if one of them was kidnapped and you had a ransom request of $5 million, would you pay it?

marty baron: 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 -- kalb: 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. what do you think of that? dean baquet: 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 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 and 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

it 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 an 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 a advice? marty, start. marty baron: 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 baquet: 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. kalb: 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 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. in only a free press can ensure a vibrant democracy. the two are inseparable. if a political leader, for whatever reason, finds it to his or advantage to attack a free her 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.

i 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. good night and 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. my name is joan michelson. 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 is superficial? how do you decide what the the audience input is? kalb: 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. 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." i like knowing what readers want. the readers while we have been doing them traditionally. i don't think people want the kardashians from the new york times. i don't even think we would know how to do that if people wanted that. i want to know and i also think

it is healthy for me to know that and i do not think we're going to do anything to chase clicks but i want to understand my audience. i want to understand when they read. it's important for me to know -- in the print era, we had us his fish in that people did not read past the junk. now if people don't really story of a certain length on a certain day, that's ok. run it when they read it. >> thank you very much. >> carl sullivan from the idea lives on. net.

has the largest corporate media not been co-opted by the deep state or deep church or deep temple as the hand in glove of the deep state. i am talking about operation mockingbird. talking live for example. covering up aspects of the kennedy assassination which 50 years later we're still waiting for. have either of you heard of operation mockingbird? refusing the notion the media as guided by the deep state. >> i will refute the notion the media is guided by the deep state. [applause] >> i don't even know where to begin. i really don't. determine "deep state." you're talking about people who work in government, i guess. look, we're just doing it our jobs the way we already have. the idea that there is some sort of hidden hand here is crazy. the reality is, the bulk of our

revenue is coming from people we have to satisfy day in and day out. our subscribers. you know what they want? they want the kind of journalism that is traditional. investigative reporting. honest and honorable journalism. they want deep narratives. they want all of that and are willing to pay for it. you know what guides us? our subscribers guide us. that is to guide this. >> hello. i am a senior at gw. my question is about analysis pieces. you have sections like the fix or the upshot were people of our staff writers provide their own insight. to what extent do you worry those analysis pieces create a slippery slope from objective reporting to outright opinion

when people are figuring out what is fact. >> that is a good question. we work really hard. the analysis has become much more important not only in the upshot but in political analysis. it is more important today than it was before. it is harder to do. the traditional daily news story now has to have analysis. analysis pieces were born in newspapers in an era when it newspapers were just the facts and we needed someone who said, when the president who does this , he is reaching for a symbol of foreign policy or whatever. i think we police them. i think we are careful about those stories. we slip sometimes. and i think they're really important and probably more important than they ever were because they illustrate the expertise of a newsroom and i think we have to do them, we just have to be careful. >> marty would you like to answer? >> tricky territory, no question about it. i do not think we should be stenographers.

i think what we want to do is we don't just want to report what people say, we want to report what people do and we want to explain why it is being done who , it might affect, who is responsible for those decisions, and then start getting in the territory of analysis. one thing we do is we do label it. we label it analysis. we label something opinion, perspective, things like that. that appears on all of the digital platforms no matter where we are. no matter whether on snapchat or your mobile device or apple news or where it might be. it could be any one of those places or more. we want to be sure that label follows it wherever it goes. >> thank you. >> my name is jim and my question is for mr. mccann. would you comment on the james o'keefe video and explained to

us whether you believe his work is investigative journalism or not. >> i think his work is not investigative journalism. >> would you explain? >> james o'keefe is a guy who happens to be conservative who goes out and tries to trick journalists into saying inappropriate things and then he puts them on his website. now, a journalist has to have at his heart or her heart the desire to make society better. all james o'keefe is trying to do is hurt institutions and get some clicks. he just did a video that i think is despicable. he managed to trick a very young employee of the video unit of the new york times into saying some outlandish things because he was a young guy who wanted to

have a conversation with a woman. he said he was jim comey's godson. he said he was the gatekeeper of video at the new york times. he made all sorts of outlandish claims. he was a kid. what james o'keefe did in jeopardizing that kids career was awful. i do not think it is journalism. it was destructive, dishonest, employees lied about who they were. no, i do not think that is journalism. journalism has got to have some value at its core. some desire to make society better or better-informed. and that is not them. [applause] >> thank you.

>> trump people would assume the two newsrooms you represent are a whole lot of liberal democrats who did not vote for trump and i'm just wondering, how confident are you that you have a good diversity of political leanings in your newsroom? >> i'm sorry, we do not have, ,- ask, i am not going to ask have a litmus test. i interview pretty much every job candidate that comes through the post and i have done the same at the boston globe and the miami herald and a lot of the l.a. times as well. i never ask. i never will ask. i know that people come from a lot of different backgrounds. this notion that people are only coming from the coast, are all part of the elite, -- our deputy editor grew up on a farm in western pennsylvania. her brothers still runs the farm. we have one of the individuals who covers health care who grew up in a family with 12 schools. -- 12 kids. she was homeschooled. she went to an evangelical

school for college. we have a wide right if people -- wide variety of people with different backgrounds and that is what i look for. one thing that we endeavor to do is to hire more veterans into the post as well. we want to continue with that. i think that is important to do given that the country is better war for so long. that is part of the american experience. it used to be that a lot of people in newsrooms had been in military because it was the draft. but we have not had a draft for a very long time. now, we need to make sure that we put the best in two hour newsrooms and endeavored to do that. i think the times is endeavoring to do that, too. it is important to have a variety of backgrounds. whatever their political views are, that is their own business. they can go into their own privacy and cast a vote however it a want.

>> with a little more than five minutes to go. please shorten it the questions a little bit. >> this will be brief. my name is eric melzer. i am a member of the board of governors here at the press club. i am pleased the pendulum is moving towards readership and -- readership instead of advertisements. however, why are there sometimes articles or sections in your paper from chinese media that do not always meet the same high standard of journalism that we hold here in the u.s.? >> we have an advertorial section week label as such that

is from china daily. that was a decision made it and it is not labeled as advertising, -- it is labeled as advertising, not news, and you should consider it to be advertising. >> my name is joshua. i am a student at college. one thing getting into the nature of the new media age is compartmentalization. people can pick and choose the news they get. how do you sift through the noise of that and all of these fake news or otherwise to get your message out to the readers? >> i will be short. marty addressed that earlier. part of it is things like this, talking about who our reporters are. some of it is, people think there is a certain mythology about who runs america's papers. marty is from canada. -- tampa. i am from new orleans. i think it is letting people know that we are honorable people who make mistakes sometimes but we have honorable goals and we hire veterans. we want newsrooms that look like america and we want you to know. -- know it. i think that is the main thing.

>> yes, please. >> my name is gail rubin. my question is, how do you view the press coverage of candidate trump and how might we avoid reelecting him in the next go round based on all that free coverage? >> look, it is up to the american people. our job is to give people, the citizens, the information they need and deserve to know. i think i am proud of our coverage. the coverage at "the new york times," i think we investigated pretty much every aspect of donald trump's life. that said, there were networks that carried him live at all of those rallies without saying what was true or false for hours on end because of the ratings.