>> good evening everybody. whitehe president of the house correspondents' association, i cover the white house for bloomberg and i want to welcome everybody to tonight's fantastic program and to thank our esteemed panel here. marthayou know how great coomer is, but i want you all to

thank what martha does in terms of the scholarship and research, she is a constant resource for all of us who cover the white house and for any of the american public was interested in the presidency and operations inside the building. also want to thank the white house historical association for your generosity and support of our programs and of martha's work and of all of our studies in the interest in the presidency. before i turn things over to martha, i want to mention that last night, the w hca was in missouri at the truman library for what we hope will be the first of many partnerships and events with presidential libraries and museums across the country, talking with americans outside of the beltway and answering their questions about the presidency, the press, and the interaction between the two. we got a ton of questions and

interest, and it may veer our questions tonight -- but we just wanted to let all of you know enterprises is the rent interested and come anyone watching, yet was to come to your hometown, let us know and we'll work on it. we will be at the reagan library in may as well, none of these people need an introduction, but i will turn it over to martha, and thank you all for coming tonight. [applause] thank you very much, margaret, i appreciate it. i am martha kumar, and i am with the white house association, and we are a side who study the presidency and study the white house and prepare information for people coming into the white house.

steve thomas, executive director white house correspondents' association and market have been a great deal. [applause] -- information and getting what they think the public needs. i also want to thank carrie sullivan was the executive director of the white house transition project who worked on preparation as well. is aenesis of the panel belief out there that the briefing is the place where reporters get all of that information and that people think it is useless. we are going to show the many

ways in which the briefing is very important to reporters. it is important to the public, and important to the president as well. in the first panel, we have sarah sanders and mike mccurry who are going to talk about being press secretaries and the role of the briefing and also the role of the press secretary. and then there is going to be a panel of reporters who are going to talk about where they get their information so you can see it is more than just a briefing. to beporters are going peter baker of the new york times, steve holland of reuters, margaret, as president of the association will talk about access. so let's begin. ,n looking at the briefing

let's start with you, mike, because you bought the televised briefing. [laughter] mike: a bad thing. martha: why did you bring television cameras and and how is it useful to reporters, the president, the staff, and also to the public? mike: let me step back for a second. the idea that the president of the united states has someone on his or her behalf every day to stand up and be accountable and andnswer questions sometimes they are vigorous -- and not exactly the questions the white house wants to hear everyday, but that is a important part of our process. the respect for that and the respect for what we call the fourth estate and the media is very important. --ant to put you on the spot they are not the enemy of the

people. they are a critical part in the we come toh understand what is our government really trying to do each and every day. question, when i was at the state department in the first two years with the clinton administration in 1993 and 1994, we had televised leavings there and they got to the white house -- said, they don't televise that is bs, why don't we change the rules. no problem. it was fine until monica lewinsky. [laughter] as you remember, i wish that i had put in place a rule that we have at the state department, which is, you don't live broadcast these things.

they are raw material for journalists who are trying to gather information about the white house. they are not news events. -- have to go out [indiscernible] it is treated now as an entertainment product on cable television, and that is not what the white house briefing was supposed to be. it is a briefing, you get this information that the white house puts out. you as reporters check that against other sources, and then you report and give us, the american people, a more valid report. it becomes a life tv production every day, it becomes something else than what a briefing is supposed to be. that i did regret not put some restrictions on how

that briefing what happen every day, which basically said, it is a burden until after it is over. life, you can put on life, you have to go out and report life after -- but it would have been a different kind a event if it had not been theater production every day. i regret that mistake, but the cat's out of the barn on that, it is not going to change and you have to go live every day, that is the way it is. of the change in the media, the media has changed and the immediacy of social media -- it is part of the change. remember, as my daughter reminds me, dad, you were a big shot, but it was like, in the last century. [laughter] and she is right about that come up because when we

were doing this we didn't have social media or facebook, twitter, all the things you have to contend with now. it was a different environment. thought it if i had more carefully, i would have established different ground rules and different ways in which people could assess the information they get in that briefing because it has become something that it should not be if we are interested in keeping the public informed about what are the critical things they need to know about the president's decisions on the white house. that is not a popular view among some of you here, i know, but that is the way i think about it. it is nice though i am not the only unpopular person in the room. have taken long -- mike: we have news at the state

permit that you will go live with it until after the briefing was over, and they give journalists a chance to assess what was really newsworthy that came out of this that people needed to know. but now it is theater. you have to perform every day. you perform every day -- i like the pearls. sarah: thank you. it is theater, and it is not a briefing. need more transparency and more access to information, and more of the public hearing what needs to happen -- it is fine, c-span is here tonight, and we love them because they actually take the briefing and put it on lay at night -- late at night, and they could see the whole briefing. that tharatatat

stuff that goes on. martha: what do you think of the briefing, for letting the president know what is important, what can't be avoided, what the priorities are, in some ways it is a warning system so that having the president watch the briefing lets him know what is going on. did president clinton watch it? mike: thankfully not. to sarahl turn it over because i think our president is more attuned to it. martha: sarah, what do you think the uses of the briefing being? agree that i think the purpose of the briefing,

particularly how it was originally intended is meant to inform the public. public,informing the but two, informing the press to further disseminate information. i think it is a useful tool, and i do agree that a lot of times, the theatrics of it take away from the news component. most people at home don't care about a lot of the issues we spent was that our time talking about in the briefing. i have said that before and i am sure it is not going to be a popular answer here, but a lot of times we have topics that are -- make for better tv than they do for informing the policy and the substance of what is actually taking place at the white house. if there was a way to have more substance in the briefing, i do think it would be better for the american people. i know that, to echo the point mike made -- when the cameras

were off, there was a brief period -- i'm not advocating for the cameras going off, there is transparency and having them on, but i can tell you the amount of substance was much higher and the type of questions and the tone of the questions was very different in a time period from our administration where the cameras were off than on days they are on. i am not advocating we turn them off because i agree nice for thething american public to be able to see that interaction. had ado think if we little more substance it would benefit all of us a little bit. suddenly from the white house perspective and the media would benefit from it because i think there are a lot of serious journalists and reporters who showed to work every day and

actually try to put out good information. i think if there was more of that exchange and more substance discussed, then it would benefit both sides a lot better. quick point on that, in the history of televised briefings -- it began with carter in the 1970's during the hostage crisis. he first allowed to televised briefings at the state department, and they developed a practice where there would be a live briefing, and reporters on that ground session. it was a little artificial, people could tell who is doing the briefing and who is the senior administration official doing the briefing. but there was a way to get the public information that they

needed to have that was not consumed in this theater -- the televised briefing. is, you- part of it have got to have an administration committed to respect the role of the free press. you cannot have a president who declares them to be the enemy and goes out and describes them as fake news everyday. that does not create the environment which we have to exchange where talking about. part of that is political theater. if we can get away from political theater and get to the idea that the public has the right to know, they have a right to know what the government is doing, and there needs to be access to the information that we need to have. there needs to be different ways of conveying that information. life televised briefing at the white house is not -- it may be

entertainment for cable television news in the afternoon, but it may not be the best way to get the public information they need. tolong as you are working get critical information in front of the public and working with reporters and asking about this reporter that reporter, sometimes many of you here in the audience don't even go to the briefing because you say, that is not the best use of my time. time is use of my actually doing the work of reporting, that i need to do day in and day out. if you are working with them in creating an environment in which you are helping them get access to the information they need, then i think we end up in a better place at the and of the day. i am not try to be critical. martha: one of the things that iu all did particularly, and

would say in the first six months or nine months of the administration -- was to have briefings by administration officials and have them come in to the briefing room. so reporters and the briefing room could ask questions and it was not televised. informativeery sessions and ones where i thought that a team of reporters came. they all knew it was an opportunity, whether it was an opportunity to talk to mcmaster, tillerson, mcunchin. there was a lot of information in those briefings, and they still do some, but they are in a low-key, but information rich. sarah: it is interesting about

that up, we still do a number of those, but we have people who come in the front and of the re-think, and we can get that information out there. what is incredibly interesting, because those are very policy driven, it is interesting that rarely do all of the cable networks cover that first part of the briefing. on most occasions when i come in, i will do an opening, and then i will introduce a cabinet level official or subject matter expert, and the cables will cut away and don't come back until the q&a, and that is the point i am making, it echoes exactly what mike is saying. we have lost the purpose of what the briefing was intended to be. it meant to inform the public and inform reporters so they could further informs the public. getting further and further away from the component, particularly where the more

substantial parts of the briefing are the least covered. those are not the pieces you see plate over again, and they are rarely covered at all in the front end of the briefing, and that is a real missed opportunity by the press, but i also think it is a disservice to the american people and i think that is why you will see some frustration from this administration. or beld not support bigger advocates of the first amendment -- but there's a root level of responsibility of being a journalist -- there is a level of responsibility when it comes to being a journalist, and the purpose of what the to do their jobs, there are a handful of people that i don't think are as responsible with that information. i think that can be very inaccurate at times, and put out misleading information, and i do think that is problematic.

one of the other problems you see -- anybody with a phone or computer will call themselves reporters. i think that is a challenge that actual journalists have to fight with. we have a lot of people who applied for passes to come to the press briefing that may not thatlly have a true outlet they are rain, but we allow all individuals to come in and ask questions. i think that is a challenge that reporters are fighting between real reporters and real journalists and people who may have a blog, and those two things, that is a blurry line between them. i think the real news component gets lost in the shuffle. mike: i want to comment on that, i believe -- i did the same did theseactually

briefings, and martha, you may remember this on foreign trips. wet nog in historians, connection to the white house, but had knowledge of the countries we are visiting with the g8 or something like that, and we would bring them in. confess, for me it was stalling, because i had to answer some questions i knew, but the real questions at the but -- atvery day -- the end of the day, we knew we had to be accountable and we had to go out there and we had to deal with the press everyday. do this job in an environment in which you are belligerent and saying we are at war with these people every day in the media. sarah: i don't think i said anything similar to that. mike: no you haven't, and you get great credit for being

amicable, but your president has got to change the way he talks about the media. he has to. it is critical to how we hold our glue together and how our democracy functions. and he is creating an hard fornt where it is people to do the transaction they need and for us to go out and do the job as the press. i understand that this is part of the job, but there has to be thislevel of respect for critical role. the comments of the president sometimes do not seem to respect the critical relationship. sarah: it is a two-way street.

there is a level of respect that could be brought from the press, as well. the idea that you would lay the blame at the feet of the president is far-fetched. he is not popular in this room, but we do our best to present information that the press does not care about. they don't care about the information we are putting out there and would rather talk about the palace intrigue stories. isn'ti know, but that that isn't dis similar from what i went through. 90 3% of the coverage of

the president is negative. of what he has done, people have questions about. was doing well, there were a lot of success stories and you had positive news to talk about and only 10% covered.me, it was there should be a level of frustration. mike: i had that frustration. sarah: be glad that your numbers were better. think bill if you clinton had a great -- martha: there was a fair share of scandals he had to weather. mike: if you thought that bill clinton had the liberal press on his side, i wish they had shown up more often and been supportive. between thetension

press in the white house is always existed. the difference is that we understood that they were the fourth estate and we have to deal with them because they are the conduit with which we keep the american people and informed . for better or worse, and some days was worse, rather than better. did not declare war on them. and that is a difference and you need to roll that back. the president has to. arah: a thing -- martha: thing the president has been doing is speaking regularly to the press. mike: he is more accessible in exchanges. master data analyst and he has probably been more accessible van obama and bush.

in thatand clinton, first year, before you got there. mike: you mean when we got in our battles? martha: the jefferson memorial, he would stop. reporters got him. does a lot ofp short ones. mike: that is the form now. do many press conferences you do is artificial, compared to your measure of when do you interact with the press. this argues the point you are making that, if you don't have somebody who is being accessible and being held accountable by the press, but he

spent as much time interacting with the press as he does and it is hard to argue he isn't open to answering questions and being held accountable and i think that is a difference and a thing that is regularly left out of conversations. he interacts with the press often and he often interacts with the american public in a variety of different ways and that didn't exist when you were in office and makes things different and makes it hard to compare administration to administration because we are dealing with things that did not exist when you were in office and the comments on twitter and createk from both sides a different element, a different environment, and makes it hard to compare the administration's. - administrations.

mike: she made an important point that the job i had in the 1990's versus her job is different because of social of thend the immediacy 24-7 things. we could plan a news cycle with has 24-7 andsarah it probably keeps her up. sarah: some from reporters and some from the president. mike: the job is different and in the wayn changes the media covers the white house. i keep saying this to my friends in the media and many of them are here. this competition in the business

model of journalism has been how fast can you break a story and who can get that breaking news the fastest and i wish that would slow down to "who can get substantive?" i have heard all of this splatter across the internet, but i want to know where i can get the real truth about what is going on. element of journalism that people would invest in. that, but ive about believe that we need to reinvent the business model for economics because a lot of you work for organizations that are plundering and going out of business and you aren't going to have jobs.

profession ande do something that will make a difference at the and of the day. that, thereo echo is a race to be first and you have inaccuracies more often because of the level of speed and it goes to a point i was making about that level of speed so often and it was something that was meant to get out there quickly and it may not be accurate, but it drags news. inaccuracies run on the front page and the correction is in the c-section. you don't see the real reporting coming through. mike: we also didn't have a 7:00.ent who tweeted at

sarah: i can only imagine what the clinton administration with twitter would have looked like. mike: well, that is a good point. a white house reporter, what would be better than to wake up and know exactly what is on the president's mind. you didn't have that with clinton or obama, but you have that with trump. you know what he is thinking about and what motivates him, for better or worse. personally, i think it is for the worse, but on the other hand, as a question of covering the white house and understanding what motivates the president, this guide gives you raw material that is unprecedented in the history of

how we cover the white house, if you are a white house reporter. will refrain from partisan comment about what i think of it, but you cannot claim that it is not giving you more transparency. sarah: it gives a lot more stories. martha: we know our president well. when you areknow, trying to develop things, it is the to communicate it from white house and develop consistent storylines that gets people engaged and you are getting this rabbit going off of the trail and you lose track of how you stay coherent. that is a problem you have. and tor to be coherent

drive the central messages that are important and have to reinforce -- because people have to hear this over and again -- but the president sends out the rabbits on the trail and down go and youey are off. martha: if the briefing has not provided the kind of information would wants that you them to get and the messages you want them to get, you are available in many other ways to reporters and you bring in people and you serve as a facilitator to help reporters get information from people and, during the afternoon, you are always available to reporters.

can you talk about the way in which you inform reporters and the briefing is not accurate? can you talk about that. -- that? briefing isnk the one of the smaller ways we get information out and there are a number of people in the press andf who regularly talk visit reporters around the room walking through the details of a story or providing information on subject matter or somebodying talking to in the administration that can go in depth on a policy and we do that a lot.

most of the time, i like to say the first thing that wakes me up is one of my kids or twitter, for that matter. it is usually around 5:00 in the all thewith correspondence getting ready for bes or whatever else it may with the news happening or they want more detailed information with what the president is doing or the follow-up from the night before. with the phone calls and it will not stop until the evening and we have seen that the fastest way to get information to a large number of reporters quickly is to use twitter and, last week, when the president made his statement regarding the tragedy in florida, i put that out from

twitter because i knew that it and therestest way are a lot of different tools that we use to engage with the press and we do our best to make sure that we respond to questions and we may not have a lot of information, but we respond to them and the instruction i give is to respond back to a question, even if you don't have information list of i am the worst offender of not responding to emails because i will get pulled into meetings and there could be 200 or 300 emails have received that i have not responded to and getting through can be a challenge, but

we have tried to use every tool available and i have an amazing team i have worked with that facilitates and handles a lot of the requests. point, there is another untapped resource of the federal government's and all of the agencies that we have and the federal- of government and all of the agencies that we have. our -- noet one of sarah: i have the book. mike: a very good book. was a public information officer who worked in the federal government for a long time and there were a lot of people who work in the federal government who have the job of anding the public informed i have thought about this a lot.

the day to day reporting on the federal government goes through the white house and, if we could get that out to where the agencies are actually doing incredibly good work on behalf of the american people and we should put a spotlight on that. if we could figure how to do that, that would be to everyone's benefit. it is letting those people talk. ered because ofw the white house, but there are a lot of good people with access that -- ation and i wonder, in terms of information that you are going where the president comes in for the briefing.

you see him before the briefing. how many times a day do you see him and does he tell you what to say and how to say it? two days are a light and it will depend on what happens with the news of the day alikerah: no two days are and it will the penna what happens with the news of the day. i will try to make sure i have i do not sometimes ask all the questions that they later asked and it is a lot of things specific to his thinking and reaction and i will get beat p for not asking those questions, but it is hard to

know what they will ask and knowing all of the things i should check on before i go out. again, we try to do the very best job that we can. sometimes, it is from the president and it is sometimes from other members of the administration. drive ora legislative legislative session coming that day and we will meet with the affairs team to walk through some questions we think are coming to get a better idea of the background of the process. the news of the day can really determine the individuals that we talk to and meet with and try to involve in briefings, bu there are a couple of instances where i have not spoken to the speakent and i tried to to him before the briefing every day. it can vary, depending on the day. martha: do you hear from him after the briefing? mike: does he watch?

sarah: sometimes, not always. mike: if he had watched mine, i would have been a dead man. into everything top-secret, fbi? sarah: i am not allowed to talk about the security clearances. it has been a hot topic lately. --e: look, i mean, sarah: you can answer, but i won't answer myself. mike: a judicious answer. martha: we are coming to the end. mike: this is a critical point. i was in the room with all of the secrets in the basement. there is another room in the basement?

at the state department, it is the operation center. so, i would go and i would read the intelligence digest and the daily brief and i didn't have access to that at first and i had to kind of tell sandy berger that i need to read this and i'm not going to say anything, but i need to not screw up by saying when it iss red grey. is a fatal thing for a press secretary, saying something that ends up being t rue. sarah: i know nothing about that, mike. mike: i know. this is a critical thing, protecting this. i want to make a point about this. clinton was good about this and

would sometimes say, get mike in here for this meeting because he needs to hear what we are talking about. he didn't expect me to have an and talk about it, but he wants me to understand the contours of a debate to make sure i knew what i was deciding and that is critical for a press secretary. martha: do you have that kind of access? sarah: i do. the chief of staff has been good about ringing me in if there is going to be a meeting that has a lot of press interest and i have been in the room when the president goes on the hill and i am a part of those meetings there because we know there will tointerest and it is easier answer questions if you can say you are in the room and i agree

that the access is incredibly anyrtant and i have not had moments, so far, where it has been a point of contention. >> you keep at it. >> he has not kicked me out yet. martha: the president tweeted to president'slective day. about the presidents you served and what they learned. mike: i was not there. he totally screwed up the first two years. sarah: right until mike showed up. but i came in after he got hammered in the midterm election.

you may have the opportunity to deal at that . sarah: our numbers are pretty good. mike: we reconfigure the white house and leon panetta came in. i was at the state department. there was a learning curve about how to communicate. my point is that it was the last so many fewer had challenges than what this lady has to deal with, day in and out, in terms of the news cycle. journalists who .re here to slow down there is not a truth closets that you get to open up. it takes time and, as reporters, we have to work -- in some ways,

andress secretaries -- figure out what the truth is and how to accumulate the information and get it. fitzwater wrote that the greatest challenge of being press secretary is verification whatow you make sure that you go out and say is true. you work the government and different sources to make sure that you know that is true? we have unlimited access to sources and we can call and say, what is going on about this? sarah: sometimes, that goes that others.s -- better than as long as we steer

ourselves towards telling the , you have to keep it going to that and overweight from falsehood and that is your challenge. think: so, what do you the president has learned in the past year about communication? sarah: one of the things he talked about when we were actually in davos a month ago was a difference from approaching things as a businessman versus the president -- being president. that is a shift. as a businessman, the way you process information and you can make a decision and execute that cases,y, in a lot of

it's unilateral and different than how you execute as a resident. the government can be slow and difficult. it can move faster and he talks about that in a public way. that took a little more time to work through and i certainly think that is a thing we have learned over the last year as an administration. martha: thank you. our time for this is passed. sarah: stick around. you introduced the next panel with the reporters letting us know where they are getting their information from and i would like to know about the sources from these stories because i am interested. if you could drop names, that is

perfectly ok. i think that this is off of the record and you are safe. feel free to be an open book and share as much as possible and you may be comfortable with. mike: we may not have gotten that white flag of surrender, but sarah is showing that she is trying to work this through and it is a tough thing because the town is set by the president and the president has to be the one who changes the vocabulary. you are doing what you need to. the position of press secretary is the second most difficult staff job after chief of staff. mike: by the way -- martha: you have the four

constituents, the president, the staff, the press, and the public. is a you know that office great office and there is a backdoor and a front door and you turn right and you are in the oval office or the briefing room. it is the metaphor. you are halfway between the two groups. sarah: right. people don't use the back door. i am like, why not? to the othere shot side of the building and i don't know why it isn't utilized more. is the refrigerator still there? sarah: there is not a refrigerator in that office anymore. no phones, no refrigerators, no

fun. martha: thank you all very much. [applause] martha: thank you.

discussionthe tonight being hosted by the white house correspondents association and white house transition project. several reporters next. the president of the respondents association in conversation, moderated by alexis, who covers the white house for the hill. that should get underway momentarily on c-span.

announcer: this discussion, hosted by the association, white house transition office. we will let you know about our live coverage tomorrow, looking at ways to improve civics moretion to become politically engaged. the conversation will feature former florida senator bob graham. that begins at 10:00 a.m. eastern. tomorrow evening on c-span, castro.ousing secretary mr. castro said he is considering a run for presidency in 2020. he served as mayor of san antonio and a representative as well. tomorrow night at 8:00 eastern

on c-span. >> hello? is everybody ready? is dr. kumar would sit down.

thank you all for staying for the second panel. .fter that lively beginning i'm alexis and i am a correspondent with the hill. i am delighted to be able to talk to colleagues that i know over several known white house administrations. from bloomberg. steve from reuters. could each of you run down the row and remind us of how many presidents you have covered? i know you are really young, but go ahead. george w.overed bush's white house. i came in at 1990. i have covered five presidents. alexis: five.

i was here for the second part of the presidency of george w. bush. barack obama, his campaign i covered. i've been there ever since. two terms of obama. alexis: peter? peter: i came in in 96 -- 1996. this is my fifth president. to remind everybody, if you tweet, please tweet. let's start where we left off. i wanted to talk to margaret first. the white house communications

and white house correspondents association work together to try to enlarge access. they do that no matter who is president of the association. every president is different areas at the beginning of a first year, what are some of the newesses and educating a administration of what the expectations are and what their options are? what are some of the success stories? margaret: i think my friend. my friend. i would like is when man. any newth administration, you have the challenge of them wanting to do things their way and find their footing.

an additional couple of layers because the point of the campaign is i do not care how everyone does things, this is how i will do them. there is a part of the brand, part of the pitch to the president trump base. this is how we have always done it. just because it was done wrong, we will do it differently. win towardslitical the idea of him thinking about anything and everything. it was the same challenge with an added degree of difficulty. there is a reason for journalism and the american public.

there is an that incentive for a white house administration to continue those traditions as well. to bek the challenge was able to facilitate those conversations and encourage them to understand the process before making any changes without insisting on it being counterproductive. -- itwas a real tenuous was complicated by the fact that in a typical white house, the formation of that relationship monthsin the final five -- six months before the inauguration. ise you know who the nominee , we start having these in-depth

conversations with the transition team if they win about how you organize and how things work. it is a behind the scenes kind of thing that readers and viewers do not see. it is a for the state kind of thing. continuity.egree of haveesire was to try to constructive conversations behind the scenes, even though in front of the camera, we understood part of the president's approach was to say -- i do not care how things have been before. lot ofto say that a those practices remain. you can see that. we are still in the briefing room. there was a time when the briefing room went off camera.

now they are back on camera. areas that have been very frustrating? , and the reporter thinks it is a good idea when a tells people that they cannot believe facts that are true. that is not something we control, but it is something that we can say is not good. it has been a year since the last formal, official news conference, the sort of thing that is open price and lasts around 45 minutes to an hour. president trump did not favor those. he favors different kinds of

settings. a spray at camp david, a spray at the oval office. it turns into a 56 minute remark by him. say that weght to never get to ask him questions. they are not in a traditional setting. as a result of the venues he pool of favor, the about 13 people or 21 people, the poll has taken on disproportionate significance or point of access then recent years. it is frustrating to a lot of people in the pool. i think the association believes

it is better to have questions been no questions. the white house correspondents should have a shot at a give-and-take with the president. the one and only formal news conference was so interesting because i left the room thinking he enjoyed this. he called on the reporters of getting astead note from the press secretary on who to call on. i thought he would do this more and we have not do more of that. why do youk about think the president has not done what different kinds of reporters and questions is he getting in those short exchanges with reporters there every day as opposed to a more formal news conference, where you have various news agencies and outlets asking different kinds of questions?

does anybody have an idea why he stopped doing it? steve: this president does not like to be challenged in a one-on-one format. i think he prefers that the questions be shorter and less confrontational. do -- alexis: do you have any thoughts on it yourself? peter: whatever works for a president works for a president. i do not have a problem with that. thought was bad or that

we do not like about the obama white house is how they got rid of the regular interactions that we have with the president of the united states. by the time we got to have an actual news conference or in interview with a particular news outlet, we will have had three evente reiteration of an without having heard his voice. i thought that was a mistake. if i had to pick between acting questions three or four times a week versus having a big formal conference, i am in favor of hearing from them more often. alexis: all of you have interviewed president trump. we have numbers on how frequently he has done interviews. he has done 86 in his first year. president trump did 162.

about what anbit interesting, unique interview he can be. peter: my guess is that one of the 62 were more predominantly -- we had a few interviews with him early on. then he stopped talking to us. i do not think he talked to the journal or post or print outlets often. that is a good point. jeff goldberg, the people who had longer news outlets. alexis: talk about the interviewing donald trump. you have interviewed other presidents and he is an unusual

interviewee. steve: it is quite fun. you go into the oval office and you sit in chairs in front of the grand, resolute desk. tohas a wooden console summon someone. there is a red button on that. to order a push that diet coke and will offer you one. we focus on policy issues. he answers the question, but that he will drift away into other areas. you have to be careful to pull him back to the topic at hand. he will talk to you. he says you have 30 minutes. 55.lly get people come in and out. one time, vice president pence

came in and then walked out. it is a lot of fun. alexis: margaret? margaret: i have had one, formal sit down. i think i was standing the whole time. was like a drive-by interview. i just had the one real interview. is that heout to me is very gracious. hand.nds up, shakes her come in, make yourself comfortable. it is a big show of you being in his space. can -- you have to reel him back a little bit. it was a half hour interview. donenutes in, we had only two questions. my reporting partner jennifer jacobs and i had a lot of questions.

at a certain point, we said we have to do is be drowned. are you up for a speed round? questions in six minutes and we wrote the -- eight stories. we do not show any reaction and act like it is normal and then we can talk about it later. stories.like eight it was an insane day. he knew that he was flipping things up. you could tell he was enjoying that. it was around the 100 day mark. the one thing i remember, we wrote this kim story. 20 minutes later, the press office walks it back.

they were all different around that time. steve: the ones we did our largely opaques. .- hope hicks she is the trusted lieutenant. margaret: nobody tried to redirect that. he is in charge of his interview. did an interesting interview. there were three in the room and you were doggedly trying to talk about policy. he was easily diverted. peter: this was july of last year. michael ande and myself. maggie got an interview and she brought a couple of his -- her boys. maggie happened to be hanging around the briefing room.

it was very casual, much more spontaneous than private -- previous white houses. others have been very disciplined. . do not like to be interrupted his first answer would be 13 minutes. , he doesident trump not mind if you interrupt him. you have to keep him on course. he will be a ross -- veer off. you cannot be too inflexible because some of those tangents are pretty interesting. we knew from our own reporting that he thought that was a mistake.

the races about how jeff sessions should have never done that, it was a mistake and he would never have appointed him if he knew that he was going to do that. not what we went into the interview expecting to get. we walked out thinking that out of most presidential interviews, believed what is there? normally, they repeat the same thing over and over. they are disciplined about their talking points. with this guy, what is the lead there? eight things to be a lead. be aggressive enough to try to control the conversation so it does not completely go off the rails. also, give him a chance to talk. the last thing i will say, people say you let him off the

path. did thenterview, he loft the record from time to time. he was very conscious of what he was saying and that it was on the record. it was not like we were ambushing him into saying something. thing that i one began to understand after that interview experience, it has only been reinforced, is that you can have what would normally qualify as a great interview where he made a lot of great points. i the end of the week, half of those positions are not necessarily the decision -- position anymore or they were just a test. won't say there is no value in the interview.

it does not mean the same ring. -- thing. president, i did not think i would get anything out of it. and never got any revelation with interviews from other presidents because they are so disciplined. what mike said earlier is correct. you will get what he thinks. she is not holding back. is not holding back. interviews are more valuable than a lot of times. alexis: before the next question, some journalist have gotten phone calls from the president because he wants to revise or extend. have you gotten phone calls from him? peter: yes. this is embarrassing. steve: tell it. [laughter]

becausee wanted to call he was upset about everybody thinking that he was upset about the russian probe. he really wanted us to know that he was not upset about the russian probe. let it be known he is not upset about it. he called and i had never once had a call from a president in the 20 years doing this. i will confess i was on msnbc at the time. i hit the button. i cannot answer that. i am on television. ? was like, who is calling stop it. i looked down and maggie has been texting me saying answer the phone, it is the president of the united states calling you. i did not answer and he did not call back. a terrible story. peter, he will see this and he will call you. i get this question a lot and i

am sure that all of you do. ande is so much information different sources of information. we have been talking about access. everyday people talk about how do you as a reporter trust the information you are getting because you are trying to tell a story about something you described as having a shelf life of yogurt sometimes. when yogurt -- margaret: yogurt can last a month. peter: do not go to margaret's house. [laughter] alexis: when you talk to anonymous sources, have you touched all the different parts and say that i know the story? steve: look at the john kelly story. how much trouble is he in? you get a different story from various officials. you have to be very careful describing his situation. somebody said he was going to

resign. sure what heuite did. it is very hard sometimes. i am a policy politics reporter. the parlor games have never been my go to thing anyway. i never liked that about covering the white house. it is like there is a dread factor in this job because what you have identified is always true in any white house, but more true now because there are about five columns of different opinions, different desires, different royalty structures. people are still trying to kill people.

outside.side and it is not my favorite kind of journalism. i do not enjoy that kind of reporting. alexis: even if he wanted to do a substantive story about trade and you talk to people in the white house about trade, you would have 16 different versions of what the president's perspective is. margaret: you have to report it very carefully and with a constant sense of what you are reporting is only as good as the sources that you have. the matter who the president is, you should be mindful about this kind of thing anyways. alwaysund reporting is writes with these things. -- ripe with these things. , it mightre reporting be true.

it is your best effort to tell people what you believe is going on based on a thorough a job as you can possibly complete. those are the limitations of reporting. alexis: do you have experiences you want to share about that? steve: every white house has different perspectives. more so in this one. only one person that understands president trump and that is president trump. you one screwup. i will give you another scrub. in november, we love the paper with a story about the white house having a plan to push out rex tillerson and replace him. guess what? it is february and he is still here.

did we write the story wrong or did they have a plan that they did not execute #-- did not execute? you have to be careful because a plan today might not show up in the plans tomorrow. you have to make sure you give the reader the full limitations of our understanding. us have at one time or another the idea of a white house using the press as a foil. sarah and mike had an interesting conversation about that. can you talk about how you dealt of understanding that the president wants to use and talking a foil about signal -- fake news? talk about the concept how the president and the white house are sometimes preventing information that is not

accurate, that is inaccurate. there is the hostility issue and the back issue. alexis: talk about being the target? peter: he has targeted cnn and msnbc. the people who say this house a broad impact on society and the credibility of the media and so forth, i get their point. job, worrying about working as a reporter in the white house, it does not have much impact. it is all theater. news.s fake he calls us in and has interviews. i do not get worked up about the name-calling. theuld get worked up if

name-calling led to the limitations on access and ability to do our job. that would be a huge concert. , talking was in charge about kicking us out of the left-wing or limiting briefing, those are all concerning. the name-calling does not bother me that much. it is what it is. and give ae back rally in someplace. media this and people screaming at you to tell the truth. cnn sucks and all that. it is an intimidating moment. andomes back onto the plane asked if everybody had a good time. he wants to make sure everyone is having a good time. it is hard to take that -- it is genuine but also not too serious

at the same time. alexis: do you have more concerns, margaret? margaret: i do have concerns because i think it has a negative impact. we are reporters. we are not here to be friends with the president and have the president like you. it is not like that with any president. i have concerns about the impact on people's ability to trust information. back in her individual people who need the information most. it can lead to a breakdown of the fabric of society, but i also think that is not really our job. our job is to report the news. it is more important than ever that people who are journalism advocates and activists, people who are free-speech activists, regular people who believe in

support us.t and we need their support and everybody's support. we cannot always be talking about it and be doing our job. our job is to get information truthful,fair and wholesome coverage that is sometimes critical and always shines a light to help people understand the choices the government is making, decisions the government is making. it makes it harder to do our jobs, that is ok. that is what we signed up for. be a an important time to journalist. i worry about the impact of it. there is a segment of american society that we, as individual correspondence and the association hear from on twitter or email who say why don't you boycott the briefing? how can

you go to the briefings? how can you cover someone who has so little regard for you? --ppreciate the sentiment it sentiment, but it is a fundamental misunderstanding of our job. we are not there to be appreciated. we are there to get information to share with the public. if we have to do it under a pleasant circumstances, we will do it. it is a real mistake to somehow think that you should cover the white house more when things seem a nicer or easier. -- seem nicer or easier. that is not what the job is about. steve: there were some scary moments during the campaign. he would say these things and get the crowd excited. we would feel threatened at times. like peter says, we deal with rhetoric. he does not like us, he is trying to cover up.

he does not want to answer questions so he calls us big news. the accessibility is there. they have not kicked us out. we are still in the building. in that sense, we are getting good coverage. cannot be whater he says we are. that is not our role. that we play into that, we cannot do that. argue.ot our job to it is our job to cover him. alexis: that leads to this other question i was asking. more assertively taking on the role of opposition, to even say that the president is telling a lie or the white house is telling a lie. describe what you think the difference is when a press corps is holding public officials to

account versus labeling. peter: i think that is our job as independent tuition in society. it is our job to fact check. everyesponsibility is for president that i have covered. that we did not spend a lot of time examining and scrutinizing his words or what he did. it is more institutionalize now. we need to find ways of helping meters to sort through it so we have more institutionalize versions. the fact checking columns have discovered that this president has made more false statements thanore distorted things other presidents have. sarah wants to say that 97% nevecoverage following what we e

given. if he says things that are not true, we have to say it is untrue. it is not powerful. -- our fault. let me ask about the briefing. martha was talking about misconceptions about the briefing. you are saying how important it to beyou and bloomberg able to delve into substance in the briefing room or anywhere else. as we have colleagues here who would love to get their substantive questions answered and will not have any other venue to do that other than the briefing room, can you talk about the challenge of trying to if youstantive answers? do not get a chance to talk to the president and are trying to talk to others in the agencies

or departments, what is the technique? ask to talkwe do is to the experts. sometimes that will happen. one time, we asked about who is the expert on this when it comes to the fed chair. they decided to talk to us about it off the record. the national security council has been very good about setting up experts to talk about syria, afghanistan, iran. it does not happen often enough, but it is there. there is a way to get information. we do not hear as much from the principles. that would be helpful to hear from those people. as you can see, is dominated by theatrics. if it were longer, they might given to more substance towards the end.

as of now, that is how it is. margaret: i feel like the briefing is a valuable institution because it is an opportunity at least a few times a week to ask questions that the public can see and have the administration respond to those in a way that the american public can see. it will not be the most substantive or nuanced kind of response, but it is something. as you and martha point out, we take for granted that everybody knows this. everybody does not know this. it is a fraction of the way you do your job is that question. three or four people might ask that question. they say they will not answer that question that day. you get the answer in different ways.

in any body of reporting, as a white house is doing something and you are trying to find out what they're doing, you ask the white house, look through the federal register, asked people from the same party in congress, opposing party in congress, u.s. ask theagon -- you pentagon. everybody is turning on each other. that is how you do it. the briefing is a little part of it, but it is not the whole thing. public can see that. it is there for the record. it is happening. peter: the briefing room is more about accountability than information. it is one opportunity that the public has to ask questions and have the answer be recorded on

the record. it does not mean they will answer satisfactorily or that we will get as much information. the idea of getting rid of the so pathetic to the frustration, but i think it would be a terrible idea. this is the most powerful person on the planet being forced through his spokesperson to hopefully, today important concerns. they do not have to give important information. everything would be anonymous, background, whatever. there would be no accountability. alexis: let me ask a few more questions before we open it up to questions. i want to ask about technology.

in that time that we have covered the white house, there have been hard line phones, email and cell phones and encrypted texts. texts.uty of encrypted can you talk about how technology helps you reach the people that you need now, even if the president is trying to reach you while you are on a tv set? talk about how technology has helped you do your job. steve: it is really helpful to have been able to text people directly. you do not have to go through a little person -- middle person. when you think back to years ago when there were no cell phone, i was on a trip to japan with president george h.w. bush. he got ill.

marlon was out at dinner with reporters. the waiter came up to him and said i'm sorry to tell you that your president has died. we were back in the press center. we knew that something bad had happened, but we did not know what it was. we cannot call anybody because we were overseas. marlon came rolling in and finally got some answers. if you fast forward to now, we have everything but wi-fi on air force one. it has made it great. yes.ret: i feel there is no real substitute for an actual conversation, preferably in person. i think that is the most of buildingterms

some kind of relationship of trust with somebody, but also in terms of understanding the nuance of their language or what they mean to be saying. , youif it is encrypted -- you are having more linear conversations that way. they are not as thorough. the white house is not an exact science. there is a lot of stuff going on every day in any white house. did note things that happen on purpose and things that fell away. it is harder to learn about that in a text. peter: it reminds me of the story in the 1960's when the new york times was having an outing

at the baltimore orioles. the big jumbotron said new york's time call your office -- new york times, call your office. technology is an enormous resource in doing our job. it is also a ball and chain. there is no escaping it. this thing goes off at 5:00 in the morning now the president telling us what he is thinking. i wish we could sleep late a little bit. each presidency changes with the technology. in theeases the velocity -- and the pace. you have more access in ways. i call people. i take the phone calls. now i feel like i can the most never get people to take phone

calls. we are always going from meeting to meeting. one meeting and has about 150 emails. it is hard. i called them every day around 5:00 to see if there is anything breaking that i am not aware of. years since i had that kind of regular interaction with a press secretary. you brought up twitter. twitter is a full for all of us. for all of us, and certainly the president of the united states. about how you look of in your reporting tried to sift out what you are going to chase and follow-up?

read twitter can and see which one the president wrote and which ones were written by this half. s staff.ation is -- hi talk about how you sort out which one you will follow. steve: our first person in the office in the washington bureau would come in at 7:00, but when he started tweeting so early, we have someone come in at 6:00 to start monitoring the tweets. we can out of news breaking up to 11:00 at night. there is a brief window when something is not happening. the tweet storm over the weekend, you take that very seriously because you know he is bothered by the russian probe and the indictments. he does not feel like he is getting a fair shake.

you take this very seriously. he does have official tweets talking about the tax cuts and his visit to the whatever city. when he starts talking about fake news, he is just blowing off steam. you have to ignore some of the stuff. those are the ones i board. isgaret: what occurred to me the tweets give you this unprecedented window into what the president seems to be thinking. it also allows one individual to control the narrative. .uch more than before when somebody blames the fbi for the death of children, you cannot ignore the tweet. that is a news cycle for a day and a half. what a president says has always

been very important, particularly in their first term. dominance of this one story, it has basically obliterated any other news, if you watch news on tv or you get your news from holding a paper and looking at the front page. if you are interested in energy policy or what is happening in your area, you can find it. but if you want it the easy way, -- overwhelmingly, all news is about what the president said. journalists interested in other subjects, it can be frustrating. it must be frustrating for news consumers as well. the complicated effects of twitter that we have not come to terms with yet. peter: sarah said she was rescued it that we did not focus

on substance. i get your point. i can only imagine what it is like to be a press secretary. that will never happen. we focus on something other than the substance they want us to focus on, it might be because we want to respond to what the president is saying on twitter. the first point of changing that, if they wanted to change that, would be about twitter. you cannot realistically say you want me to to talk about the medicaid policy, even if the fbiident just accused the for being responsible for the shooting of children. i'm sorry, we not going to ignore that. we will not focus on what ever you decided to be the talking point. we will always lose to shark week. we just will. i sympathize, but i think they are looking the wrong direction.

sarah bringsthat up the subject matter. it is not my interest to discourage the tweets. andtweets are very newsy revealing. when is the last time we had a president talked to us about what he really thought? alexis: it is original. let's stop there and take a few questions. this is eric. [indiscernible] >> do think you are adequately staffed to handle the news

coming out? peter: good question. hadhe washington post, we to white house reporters -- two white house reporters. four aroundhe -- the time of obama. we are up 50% total staff. do i feel like we have enough? no. there are other stories we could be doing. i wish we were. it is like a triage situation. which to pick and choose would have the bullets of head, which has a bullet to the chest. it is never enough. margaret: we have six full-time

white house reporters on my team. acrosss also -- it is the newsroom effort. we set it up so that at any hour of the night come whichever editing desk is in charge. if it is a trump tweet, it is flagged to see whether it is important enough for her -- and alert. i feel great about the resources that my company has dedicated to really fill coverage. not just what is happening at the white house or the news of the day, but the deeper more substantive stuff. alle is a lot and we are really tired.

nobody sleeps. i will sleep about four or five hours. it is a large operation, like the global newsroom operation. there has been a redirection of assets to rise up to the public. i really sympathize with my who weres and friends what band bids or to ban bids for a regional paper or who work for a publication where the only -- i house correspondent think it would be almost that youe to ever feel could get your hands around all of it. it is such a firehose of information to be one or two people. i have hundreds of people in my company to help me with there is a major, breaking story about

the white house. even then, sometimes it is like how will we manage everything? alexis: reuters is also reaching out across the world. can you talk about that? steve: we have stories that we work with around the world. -- seol.ith soul about serious stories. it never is. just and i covered there are five of us at the white house. every department in our bureau gets sucked into the story during the course of the day. separate trump investigation team to handle just that story. it touches the whole bureau. hands? any other

tell us to ur. who you are. like if you take a day off he will miss everything? have you had a break? i am a believer in vacation. i believe you have to check out. i took a week off or two weeks off. it's only a couple days to realize there will be more. do not worry. when you get back, something will happen. i think you are right about the mental health. stop thinking about your job for a while. alexis: let's go to another question. over here. i'm just wondering that if it

is harder to use that because the white house has internally divided about some of these questions about what the facts are. steve: we will say that. ofwill also add the context different opinions within the administration over trade. we make note of that in the story. it is not like an opinion piece that we write. it is context that lets you understand that there is a division of opinion on things. during the campaign, there -- there was not one person who did not know his date. a lot of people said he got a lot of off and from the press of the reporting of what he did all the time to -- time. do you feel like the press is

helping trump? steve: we are just covering the news. there is a lot of it. you were asking about the campaign. question.at is a fair can you call it to a boarding morning they just -- show in they just take you? not one of 17. he is the one. he is adept at understanding how to shape and narrative and a something newsy. we are in the business of covering news. it is not a question of whether or not to cover it. it is how to explain to readers what is rhetoric, what is

[inaudible] earlier this president relies heavily on events that are not accessible to most of the press corps. what would you suggest to those of us who are not fortunate enough to work for outlets that have that level of regular access and are not a priority for this press office? how do we supposed to do our ways,hen, in a lot of people who are getting the access our content with it and the rest of us are routinely ignored? how are we supposed to do our jobs just as well? realret: i know that is a

frustration. say. a few things i would you should always encourage the president, press secretary, whether it is the hind the scenes or twitter -- behind the scenes or twitter. the reports are document for all journalists. it is for all of us. it is for the public and reporters to use. i would not say people are content with it. i am not content with it. given the opportunity for some people to be able to ask questions of the president versus no people, there is value in some people asking questions. some associations, continuously

urging sarah sanders, the administration to expand access to hold full news conferences, to make the president accessible to all of the press. that is not something we have ever stopped asking for and i find there is value in it. importantlso the most reporting of any white house that you don't have to be in a room with the president to ask him. there is investigative reporting, the narrative and expository reporting, the analysis reporting that all of us can do. i want to up everyone to be able to get access to ask the president questions that matter to them. i know it is frustrating -- >> [inaudible]

a lot of the times the questions being asked are not the questions we would ask. alexis: that is not a new problem. margaret: it is not. every president handles -- did slightlyma more news conferences but president obama did not encourage -- the pool did not get the questions either. -- there is --n there are a few venues which are open press. elbowve to wear your pads. if you go out there at 7:00 in

the morning or whatever, there is a decent chance that he will stop on his way out to the chopper. it does not feel dignified to do that. it is an incredible time suck to do that. but having a chance to ask that question, it is a way to do it that did not exist with barack obama. for whatever it is worth, as an association, we are committed, and board is committed to asking for this administration to make the president more accessible in briefings or news conferences, and i do think sarah does deserve some kudos and credit for bringing cabin officials to the -- cabinet officials to the briefing. they do not only take questions

of the first row. they go all around the room. in general, i agree with your frustration. factoas become the de news conferences, i would rather than become accessible to the rank-and-file. alexis: that is a good place to end. i want to thank the white house correspondents association, peter baker of the new york times. thank you very much. i learned a lot. [applause] [applause]

>> coming up tonight on c-span, two panels from the unrig the system summit. jennifer lawrence interviews trevor potter.

the effort to move from the electoral college to a national popular vote. after that, from the united nations, remarks from palestinian president and you and in bassett are nikki haley -- and united nations ambassador nikki haley. >> washington journal, live every day. wednesday morning, we will discuss u.s. foreign relations administration with jake sullivan. we will talk about rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. we are alive in oklahoma city, oklahoma, for the next stop on the c-span cities tour. be sure to watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern wednesday morning. join the discussion.

night, former housing secretary speaks to the young democrats of new hampshire. , who served in the obama administration, says he is considering a run for president in 2020. you can see his speech starting at 8:00 wednesday. represent.us posted the inaugural unrig the system summit. the opening session included actress jennifer lawrence interviewing former federal election commission chair trevor potter on how politicians push legal limits. this portion of the event from new orleans is just over an hour. [applause] >> it is an honor to introduce