corporation. improvingussion about higher education with richard vedder, author of "restoring the promise." ♪ ♪ host: good morning. it is saturday, may 18, 2019. yourgin on the topic of news -- how much news consumption do you think is healthy? is following the news key to citizen or could it be a civic duty to tune out the news? eastern and central time zones, 202-748-8000. mountain or pacific time zones, 202-748-8001. you can also catch up with us on twitter and, on

facebook. a very good saturday morning to you. columnist for the washington post. he joins us this morning on the phone. do we owe itasks, to society and ourselves to tune out the news? how do you answer that question? guest: good morning. weaid in the article that needed to ask this question about how much time and energy we are giving to the news, particularly to the ego chamber -- echo chamber of the news that most informed citizens find themselves trapped in. i was taking off from a really

provocative longer essay in the guardian written by oliver berkman, who points out that for most of history, it's been relatively hard to find information. it was the duty of the good citizen to seek out that information in order to be informed. because of digital technology, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in the opposite situation. we are drowning in a sea of information. it is everywhere. the people who put information wayshere are competing in overt and sometimes covert to grab and hold our attention because that is a scarce resource now, time and attention. the way they do that, in many cases, is to feed us a steady diet of things they already

believe will upset us, make us angry, make us suspicious. deep human emotions that can be triggered by the news. situationthis strange where sometimes the people who spend the most time looking for information, trying to be divided, are the most the most upset, the most suspicious of fellow americans. result this perverse into news is making people potentially worse citizens than better once. -- better ones. host: a news item about a mayor and a councilman in a small town in georgia and the subject of race relations -- talk about

that. to be just happened talking with an acquaintance of mine who was very upset recently by news about an elected official in georgia who had said want people to races, god didn't like interracial marriage -- this coming in reaction to another elected official in --ir little city and rural in rural georgia that wasn't n african-american -- i don't want to say these were

healthy things for these public officials to be saying. acquaintance my was quite upset about the idea that racial hatred was so widespread and growing and becoming more common in the united states. another way of looking at it, until very recently, she never would have heard of this event. arguably, it's not a terribly important event in the life of an american living 1500 miles away from this tiny town of 1300 people, a highway exit in georgia. algorithm, her past newsng behavior let the

source know that she would be interested in this information, sofed it to her immediately that she started her day with further evidence in her mind that america was going in a terrible direction. algorithms make it hard to separate the reality from the background noise. host: you mentioned the oliver berkman column in "the guardian." he says some of the pushback that it's easier to tune out the news if you're privileged enough to not be impacted by what you're reading in the news. guest: certainly, that is true,

i suppose. i guess my pushback to that would be in what sense are you impacted. if you are simply upset by the news, it confirms the point. neither of us is saying that people should be willfully ignorant. the question is are you better informed by spending 8-10 hours a day in front of your screens hearing versions of the same thing over and over again? does that really make you better 30ormed than if you spent minutes or an hour a day getting a balanced diet of the news and going on with your life in other

ways that may be more may do more, that to build community, that may be more oriented toward solving problems rather than stewing over them? host: when should people turn down the volume and how long should they turn it down for? guest: if you get to the point at whereany people are they say i'm depressed all the do,, i don't know what to i've never felt so bad, all these expressions of an angst, despair, even, a over the state of the world. here's the real news today. the world is a mess.

guess what? it always has been. there have always been terrible things going on, people doing awful things toward another. it's always been our obligation as citizens to try to behave better, to show more love and respect to one another. argue,do that, i would away from our screens more effectively than sitting behind our screens. host: the headline in his piece from wednesday, do we owe it to society and ourselves to tune out the news? we appreciate you getting up early for us. we want to hear your thoughts for this first hour on "washington journal" today. if you're in the eastern or central time zones, 202-748-8000 . mountain or pacific time zones,

202-748-8001. tell us about your news diet, your thoughts on this question about whether following the news is key to being a good citizen or should we tune out the news sometimes. bradenton, georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. great to be up with you guys. i was a news enthusiast. i would get upset, i would go on social media. one day, i said i need a balance, this is crazy, this is not really reality. those are exactly my thoughts. i'm going out to the movies, i am seeing the community, it's really united. we have our differences, but we can be adults and talk about them. there's a lot of theatrics in the news media from both sides of the aisle. we are americans.

got soot goals, we've many things we can do. i was in an accident a few years ago. it really shaped my outlook. what's most important is family. go out there and be healthy. be informed in a smart way. do your research. host: as you try to do that, at this point, how much time a day do you spend paying attention to the news? caller: maybe i will tune into certain news outlets instead of just one committed outlet. being smart and taking in what they say. take some time to look at your own community. there's no riots.

the world is a bad place, but as an individual, we can make a difference. host: jim on twitter tweets this morning -- james in long beach, california. good morning. caller: i have been watching the news all day, every day since 1979. i'm very interested in the news. criticalhe news is so because i will guarantee you, in the next 14 days, we will have a hot war with iran. who's beenunkie following the news around the day for 404 hours a

have awe are about to war with iran. did you hear his thoughts on tuning out the news sometimes? caller: that's the opposite -- that's not going to make you a great citizen. you know what makes you a great citizen? understanding what's going on everywhere. you see those stupid people standing behind from clapping at whatever he says. you end up becoming a puppet for some idiot. host: sarah in wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. think, currently, you have to be very selective with your news. you have to see a balance. the caller said if you listen to trump, those are people who don't follow the news. i hate to break his bubble, but that's not the truth.

the majority of the news media follows the same book. it doesn't matter what channel except for fox. you will get the same information again and again. it's not necessary to use your day, 24 hours a day to watch. one form of media -- not television, necessarily -- it may be print or radio. then listen to the other side. and stay away from the candidates. host: you go online or on twitter at all? caller: i get it from the internet, from television and from radio. i listen to different people with different opinions. i especially stay away from the

television media. because it's all the same. the evening watch shows because it's all the same. it's the same thing again and again. becomes so skewed, i don't know how you can have any other opinion. i have a relative who was killed by the nazis in the concentration camps. she was my great great grandmother. they took her -- she was jewish, she married a gentleman who was jewish. they were taken there. babies,k out the wanting to see how they would live outside the womb. the babies died, she died.

my attitude about the news and andt what people talk about backrsonal history, i look to the past history to see what people have done. whether we are going to have war or not, i would think that down a littlecalm bit. i have gone on three different occasions to my sister's for lunch. someone came up to the table and said we don't like what you're talking about. we were talking about a gentleman who wrote a book about forming opinions. she didn't like that. you have to be a democrat.

she left. that is your privilege. we have the constitution, we have freedom of speech, still. waiting for you over there is embarrassed. go sit down. host: a story we are basing this conversation on -- do we owe it to society and ourselves to tune out the news? he ended the column by saying this -- john in oregon is next. good morning. caller: good morning.

i had to turn up the satellite -- i watch mostly documentaries. c-span.you, and link tv out of san francisco. i don't watch any american crap. -- way it is presented the news itself isn't the problem. it's the presentation. you see these lies. host: what was the breaking point for you? why did you turn the satellite off? what drove you to turn it back on?

two of my retirements were stolen by wall street. i'm very poor. it's economics. i was just frustrated with listening to that crap. i would rather watch a tree grow. host: you turned it back on this week? i had a couple friends i would see -- i even got rid of the radio. i'm ready to turn it off again, frankly. it is so full of commercialism. i can't watch commercials anymore. --t: on twitter

bob in georgia. good morning. caller: i hate to burst the gentleman's bubble who wrote the article in the post, but the problem of racial discrimination and issues of the south -- i've lived here my whole adult life said if we have an uninformed populace, we are hoping for something that is not or ever will be. ignorance is not bliss. thank you. host: linda is next in eureka, california. caller: good morning.

off what that person said. i kind of agree. we need to be informed. allon't need to go around uptight and screaming and upset and hysterical because of what we hear or because it strikes and emotional stimuli in us. i watch c-span. authors that are promoted. i watch the local news. i watch the network news. but i watcholic, the catholic news. i watch the christian news. they all have different biases. i tried to clean out the facts -- glean out the facts that way.

host: how many hours a day do you spend watching the news? caller: a couple of hours. several hours. host: you do that every day? caller: yes. i try to stay very informed, politics included. iraq, when there would be a allbomb that would go off, the networks would catch that and then it's like all of a sudden, all these car bombs are going off. it sound like everybody is upset about it. it might be less then 1% of the population that has a problem in that area. host: have you ever consider

taking a break from the news for a couple of days or a week? -- i can'tuess really say that i've taken breaks lately. part of that is because back in the 1970's -- i've been amazed much went on and i wasn't even aware of it because i was busy doing other things and living life and raising a family. now, looking back on those things, that's when the vietnam war was going on. began.also when abortion there's a whole lot of things that i was totally uninformed about at that time. so, no, i don't want to take breaks.

i'm good. letting some of it go in one ear and out the other and trying to catch all the facts. host: the pew research center routinely does surveys about american news consumption. three different surveys from three different years starting in 2018 found seven in 10 americans are exhausted by the news, republicans more so the democrats. 77% of republicans responded to that pole saying they are worn out by the amount of news out there. democrats saying the same thing. take that back to 2016. this survey found six in 10 americans worn out by the amount

of election coverage happening. 39% said they liked seeing a lot of coverage. 2014, a survey then found 87% of online adults said the internet and cell phones have improved their ability to learn new things. when asked if they feel reported that% they like having so much information. 26% said they feel overloaded. atpare those three surveys pewinternet.org. david in new york. tell us about your news diet. caller: the majority of

americans increasingly are resorting to reading news on the internet. as a university professor, i totally understand the culture. in terms of really receiving news, especially on foreign policy and international affairs, i primarily resort to hearing, watching or reading from sources with a dozen different languages out there. i put that together. here, it is corporatized media. i try to discern among them what the effect happens to be. -- fact happens to be. host: how long does that take you? 1.5-2 hours a day. radio stationsy

through the internet. use mys, i tend to scientific background to provide op-ed regarding issues. take the persian gulf fiasco at the moment. laypeople tor most discern what is fact and what is , ulterioriticized getting usen ideas tied up in another war. you have to go to independent sources out there such as c-span, trying to understand what the facts for publication happen to be that provocation happened to be -- f four provocatio -- facts for provocation happened t to be.

caller: these people have to get a grip. at 1600a newsmaker pennsylvania -- if he gets doesn't getf he reelected, it doesn't matter, he's going to keep making the news. news."keep saying "fake that didn't start when that man showed up. he's making the news every day. they don't want to hear about the crimes he's committing manuse they support this committing these crimes -- everybody knows. host: you say you love the news. our last caller said he occasionally writes op-ed's and

engages in other ways. how do you engage in the democratic process outside of watching the news? caller: i just have to turn it on. i have to listen and shake my head and be like "i can't believe this stuff." it's unbelievable. it is what it is. it's too bad that we are airing our dirty laundry. 1600 pennsylvania, there it is right there. host: have you ever attended a march or a rally or a protest, engaged in that way? caller: i don't do that kind of stuff, no. i just do what i do. i watch and listen. i'm not a democrat or republican. i've got common sense.

there's a lot of people that really don't have common sense. they are just followers. they don't have their own minds. couldn't just appear on fox -- i have to check the faulty materials. for the people, that's just the way it is. host: bernard in california. david said in our interview that his column based in part on another column by oliver burkman in the guardian from earlier this month. here's that column. asking whether engagement was fair. could endless notifications be harming democracy and our well-being?

he talked about engagement online as well, sharing on facebook and posting about news stories. here's what he writes in his piece -- if you want to read oliver burkman's piece in the guardian, from may 3. ma we want to ask about your news diet. are in the0 if you eastern or central time zones. 202-748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. david in valley stream, new

york. good morning. caller: good morning. to gos diet, i used theugh all the channels, sunday morning news shows, also look at international news sources like bbc, occasionally listen to c-span to get a sense of what individuals in america think. here's the problem. it's not just a question of citizenship. it's also a question of well-being. the news today causes mass hysteria. there's too many sources of news and its exaggerated. -- it is exaggerated. if everything is breaking news, you know it isn't true. it's half-truths. i completely turn off the news and then come back. when you look at it, you don't

know what's true and what's not true. sometimes, people are not able to decipher what is true. the media has an important role to play in democracy. the reality, it is now entertainment, exaggeration. there is no real investigative reporting. you you listen to the news, don't know what is truth and what is not true. host: when you turn off the news, how long do you stay away? stay awaymetimes, i for hours. i come back just a couple of minutes to get the headlines. host: what do you think that has done for you? what do you do with that time you were spending engaging with the headlines? caller: i engage in a lot of activities.

i engagewn research, in other extracurricular activities, doing chores around things thatriting, really helpe me. it's critical that the news media needs to look at the way they are reporting it. if they are not telling people the truth or getting to the bottom of the issues, most of the citizens will be confused and will not know how to respond when there are issues of natural -- national interest. host: more from oliver burkman's piece in "the guardian." he talks about that time spent away from the news --

allen in asheville, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. a couple of points here. i love c-span. i get a lot of my thoughts from c-span. i will watch the hearings on c-span. if i watch the evening news, it's like two different worlds. you are getting opinion when you are watching the news. news and opinion are not the same thing. i'm reading a book called "citizens of london." tv and saw her story about it. covers edward r. murrow, when he was reporting

from london in world war ii. point basically at that reporting for cbs. he started giving his opinion, which really was wrong, i guess, but he was saying we needed to get involved in the war. he was saying what we needed to do. now, when you read the new york times in the morning, the front page is stating opinion. they don't just say the facts. it is opinion. it's important that people understand that you are getting someone's opinion when you turn on the news, whether it is fox or cbs. you have to be able to separate those two things. the man from california who listens 24/7 to the news, he's listening to someone's opinion.

people have to be able to think for themselves. you will watch keywords being said about something or somebody every day, whether it is collusion -- you can think what whatever, but you are being told what to think. that is a huge issue. you really aren't watching news. your hearing opinion. that you are hearing opinion. -- you are hearing opinion. host: thank you for bringing up book tv. coming up at 8:00 this morning, jesse morgan owens talking about "girl in black-and-white." and "the vanishing congress." then, the gaithersburg book festival in maryland later this

morning. you can see all the details on www.c-span.org. melanie and ventura, california -- in ventura, california is next. news that is your watch. watchhed the hearings -- the hearings. i don't think the news is all that off. there's many organizations. --bc, i wouldn't watch fox there's quite a few agencies that have proof, that have backing, that have information on the mueller report. we now have a dictatorship. i'm very concerned about this. host: how much do you engage online about the news?

how much time do you spend on twitter or facebook sharing news stories, engaging others? day.r: 2-3 hours a 6-7.d to spend i had a heart attack over trump being president. so, i had to slow it down. host: have you ever changed your opinion after engaging with someone online about it? caller: i keep an open mind about things. it's really hard when you see it happening live. you know what i'm saying? middle-of-the-road as a democrat. i'm not far left or far right. i'm right in the middle. it is hard to distinguish the fake from the real news.

host: david saying maybe we should take a break sometimes. would you ever do that? caller: i've had to. i had to for my health reasons. thinking stressful america's democracy is a concern. host: do you think you would take a break again? caller: absolutely. i watch c-span. that's where i get a lot of my information. as far as watching the news, i'm backing off because i don't think it is fair and balanced. i disagree with that previous man -- they have proof, they have facts. host: joe is next from new orleans. good morning. caller: good morning.

i'm looking at your question, is following the news key to being a good citizen? i think you are generalizing news. the newspapers, some of the articles, your national evening news, evening shows, that is news. when you look at the evening shows on cable, those are opinion programs regarding current events. side of giving their current events. yes, you get an overload with that. there are times when i do not look at those shows.

because everyone is saying the same thing. c-span, when you ask questions, be more specific. don't lump everything together. everything you hear is not news. we will dive, deeper into exactly what you bring up. with ad corporation out new study looking at 30 years of news coverage across various media platforms. they looked at the rise of subjectivity in the news media and what platforms it's happening more and where it's happening less. jennifer kavanagh will join us in 20 minutes for that discussion. ruby in texas. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: i'm doing well. go ahead.

caller: the news, it got to where they are making up a third world country. the democrats are doing nothing think they canle , they areree indoctrinating our kids, they don't realize god is in control. donald trump is the best thing that ever hit the white house. damneds to clean that place up and get people in the re who want to work for the american people and do the right thing. host: how long do you spend consuming the news? caller: 24/7. host: have you ever taken a break? caller: yes. i take a break to talk to god about the situation. the democrats are trying to make

up a third world country. look at the idiots running as democrats. host: this is oliver berkman's piece in the guardian. i want to get your thoughts on what he writes about engaging with politics. the more you engage with politics, the more everything becomes political. research suggests the harder it becomes to understand your opponents as humans. what do you think about that? caller: let me tell you this way they are person thinks entitled to something because they are rich or because they are black or because they are brown or because they are white people are -- god's

the jewish people and the indian people. they were slaughtered for doing the right thing. go back to god. these people don't have a clue what they're talking about. roe v. wade -- god never said you can kill a child and that is legal and justified. you can live free and everyone will take care of you. host: joe in california. good morning. caller: good morning. hope everyone had a good week. of course, having a good weekend coming up. i like this topic. thank you, "washington journal," for bringing this up. keep in tunedt to to current events.

things are happening that will be history that will be taught to generations to come. we are seeing things all over the place from television to your cell phones. host: do you think it's too much? caller: that is a good question. know, i think seeing a i hear a lot of people talk about a lot of topics. much for a bit too that reason. ofant to go back to the idea studying the history, the good people, the bad people, even through europe and other parts of the world. tune, tolthy to be in

be discussing your points of view, where you get your information. everyone gets separate information from separate places. host: where do you go for information the most? caller: c-span. i've been watching it for 6-7 years. i do like rachel maddow. she has some good topics. she goes into good segments. where else? not cnn. honestly, seriously, c-span. hearings.st there is a close family friend who has you guys on often. i come over to discuss things with her. good to see what's going on these room, hearing what

senators and congressmen are saying live. to see the reactions. is answeringperson questions. then, once you hear it from any other news networks. it's like watching a tv series. you don't want to watch it through somebody commentating through it. host: appreciate you watching c-span. only 10 minutes left in this segment. eastern and central time zones, 202-748-8000. mountain or pacific time zones, 202-748-8001. joseph in new york. good morning. caller: good morning. what i find very interesting with your show is you have a great mix.

you have people calling from all over with different opinions and different ideas. light on puts a good the subject of news. i follow cnn, i watch fox, i listen to radio. journalism coming from all over the world. it's a good thing. also, i started watching the senate, the congress, our president live. it gives you a good idea of how people are thinking, what they are saying. ,ost: to that question we asked do you think following the news is key to being a good citizen? caller: i think it's part of being active. it is not a spectator sport, being a citizen.

a goodow else should citizen engage in the democratic process? where do you rank in following the news? caller: i rank fairly high. you pick the subject you want some expertise on. i was the negotiator for a union. value, iand the understand the people who are afraid of unions for whatever reason. you learn what you learn as you go. host: ted in north carolina. you are up next. go ahead. caller: good morning. i have a lot of different opinions about the news situation today. i agree with the washington post person you interviewed early in the show that news has become kind of overwhelming. us tok it's important for

be informed citizens by looking at various news outlets, not just the ones we agree with. override thes to national newscast. we heard it earlier. it becomes so polarized, they can't see another person's viewpoint. citizen, being a good a good citizen can be a wide range of things. citizen is getting involved, contacting congresspeople, helping legislate things to achieve better things in the country. majority of the news has changed. it's become more tabloid news

instead of information we need to function as a society. host: do you think so much news is keeping us from engaging in -- theser activities other activities? people are watching the news instead of taking that other step? caller: i agree, yes. this, myself. complaintely, i will or say things and then not do anything about it. if people get off the couch and local ande active in state that -- i love to get up and watch c-span. you bring issues to the biasednt that are not

and not politically motivated. news and watching getting involved on the internet, probably about an hour a day. i do like to be informed locally and see what's going on around me here. at the national level, there's been a lot of gridlock. host: when you're on the internet engaging with folks, have you ever changed your opinion on an issue because of that engagement? caller: all the time. that's why i think it's so important that we look at different news outlets, not just the ones we agree with. i don't agree with right wing fortics, but it's important me to be aware of their viewpoints. host: five minutes left in this

segment. we will continue the discussion in our next segment. discussiond for that with jennifer kavanagh from the rand corporation on the changes in the news media over the past 30 years. we will tell you about a study they did on that topic. vivian in springfield gardens, new york. caller: i just wanted to say hard sometimes to look at the news because of the opinion things being said. i like to decipher the facts from opinions so i can be more informed. it is too much opinion, opinion, opinion. i try to look at just the facts to make an educated decision.

host: thank you for the call. julius in chicago heights, illinois. good morning. caller: hello? host: go ahead. caller: there used to be a saying that you can trust the american people to do the right thing. that's not so. look of the american people put whohe white house -- look the american people put in the white house. fox news is just a bunch of people telling lies. host: how much time do you spend watching the news? caller: i spend a lot of time watching the news. host: have you ever taken a break for a while? caller: i take breaks. matches. watch pool host: when do you know it's time to take a break from the news? caller: the news is always

interesting. me how dumb in general the american public is. people in power are afraid to speak up about the sky and the white house -- this guy in the white house. : in theat post in th columnton post -- that in the washington post by david, talking about that column in the guardian. -- burkman writes this oliver burkman writes this --

that is the topic we are talking about, asking you if following the news is key to being a good citizen. joseph in california. good morning. caller: good morning. with beinghas to do a good citizen as it relates to the news. we have to know and understand our constitution, the federalist papers, the compromises that --e made, and how important why our constitution is different from any other in the world.

it's where the rights emanate from. europe, all of the rights emanate from whatever government they have. in england, it is parliamentary democracy. they have no codified constitution. can changeparliament laws to give rights or take rights away. that can't happen in our country. our rights are codified. the way we advanced with slavery, all the social issues, we advanced by amending our constitution when necessary. ist happens in this country

we have gotten to the point where if we don't get things we want to go around the constitution. that's why we want conservative -- judges who will interpret the constitution as it was written and as we go along, we modify the constitution by amending it, not by taking shortcuts. you take that and put it with watching news, i think watching c-span is absolutely imperative. then you get everything unfiltered and then you can watch all the news programs and

see where they take things out of context and then they repeat it as a it. that is what i think. host: you and others who called in will be interested in the next segment of the washington journal. stick around. we will be joined by jennifer kavanagh of the grand corporation. corporation. later today, college graduation season and we will be joined by richard, talking about his new book, restoring the promise of higher education. stick around. we will be right back. ♪

>> book tv, sunday, three new nonfiction books, starting at 6:20 p.m. eastern. clarence thomas and the loss constitution. myron looks at the tenure of the supreme court justice. >> in his view, there is no more just or more up to date purpose for any government if the framers had failed to realize that ideal because of slavery, the civil war amendments proved that their design was perfectible. unbecoming, a memoir of disobedience. ban on to overturn the women in combat. >> it was common that all women i talked to experienced some

form of discrimination and most had experienced harassment and many had experienced assault. that affirmation that we had experienced something, that desperately needed to be addressed and acknowledged and then changed, fueled the desire to take these issues to capitol hill and demand reform. >> at 10 p.m. eastern, where the light enters, former second lady biden united states, jill discusses her family and career. >> i was so nervous about getting in front of a crowd. when we were elected vice president, i thought, i have been given such a platform. i can talk about all my passions, all the things i love. education, community colleges, military families. i cannot waste this platform. i better get better.

>> three new nonfiction books, sunday, 6:20 p.m. eastern on book tv on c-span two. washington journal continues. host: jennifer kavanagh is on your screen, the lead author of a new report studying news media subjectivity over the past three decades. remindwe dive into that, us what you do. nonpartisan,s a nonprofit organization, founded in 1948. most people know us for national security. we have a strong portfolio of domestic work looking at civil justice, education, health care. our mission is to inform policymakers with research and analysis. we publish 1000 reports each year and they are all available for free on our website.

and.org, where you can find this report. report?you do this guest: a couple years ago, last aar actually, we published report on truth decay. we use that term to refer to the diminishing role facts, data and analysis play in our discourse. we look at this phenomenon. among the drivers, we talk about changes in the media ecosystem, anything from changes in the speed and volume with which we are able to get information, the rise of social media and the internet, algorithms that feed info to us non-subjectively and we want to quantify what those changes look like. in the first report, we describe them qualitatively and talk

about why we think they matter. in this report, we wanted to dig in and say, how has news changed over time? how has presentation changed? how can we measure it? that is important. if we want to understand implications of changes and develop solutions if we think that is a problem, we need to identify specifically, what changes happened. host: we will be talking about the report in the next 45 minutes of washington journal. how do you quantify the diminishing role facts play overtime? guest: in this report we collected texts of data entrance trips. -- wek at newspapers collected this data and used a software we develop at rand to do text analysis. software looks for patterns in words and strings of words that allows us to quantify things like level of emotion, amount of

argumentation, subjectivity, objectivity. we have 121 different characteristics we can measure. host: example? guest: the software searches were all those things. subjectivity, personal morality,e, conversation, anger, positive and negative emotions. text, splite the newspaper samples, we split the year 2000 and we can say how these different characteristics have changed across a dividing point. we can compare across platforms. newspapers versus online journalism. how have those forms of news differed along these characteristics? host: you look at specific organizations. 15 different news organizations.

times,ton post, new york st. louis post-dispatch, abc, msnbc,c, cnn, fox, breitbart, the blaze, daily caller, buzz feed, politico and huffington post. guest: the selection of the sources were different for each platforms. for newspapers, we wanted a long time span. that was the advantage of using newspapers. we can go back 30 years. when we looked for, we needed text data, we could not use archived copies. we needed text based data. we want to minimize cost because we do not have a ton of resources to do the study. we were limited. the ones we have the longest time horizon for were new york times, washington post and st. louis post-dispatch.

test the sameto methodology on other papers. television, we are in a better situation. we can collect the universe of broadcast news channels in the three major cable news channels. we can collect the universe of things we are interested in. for online journalism, we wanted to pick a balanced sample. three left-leaning, three right-leaning samples. we picked the highest consumption, so people were actually reading and using these. that is a measure of relevance. how many people are influenced by these outlets. we limited it to things that did not also have print or television analog. only online journalism. as we are having this conversation, phone lines are

open for questions and comments with jennifer. (202)-748-8000 for democrats, (202)-748-8001 for republicans, (202)-748-8002 for independents. to this question of subjectivity -- 2019.ears from 1989 who fares the best? comparisons, two over time and two across platforms. broadcast television and newspapers, we chose 2000 because that is when the internet past the tipping point. that is a good place to split data. newspapers did not change that much. changes were subtle. we see a shift to a more narrative form of news. storytelling. rather than, in the pre-2000 example we see context-based news, traditional reporting,

who, what, where, when, why. 2000, you seepost that same info but presented in a story. the story of a homeless child rather than just a blow-by-blow account of homelessness. we see that shift, but it is small. touse statistical analysis represent significance and size. we are most interested in biggest changes, substantially meaningful to presentation of news. for newspapers, changes are small. television, a little bigger, but still pretty small. you see a shift toward more subjectivity, personal perspective, stories being told less in an academic style, which is what you see pre-2000 and more toward conversations, unplanned speech, interviews,

more subjective personal perspective use of i and first-hand accounts. autobiographical accounts, much more post 2000. the biggest changes are across platforms. significant difference between broadcaster knows him -- broadcast journalism and cable. you see something much more subjective in cable, much more subjective,ch more which you would expect to find for the cable model. the biggest change of all was print versus online journalism. subjective, advocacy journalism is much more common online where people try to convince you of their opinion. those are the broad picture changes. the key point i would leave you with on this question is, over time changes are small.

what is driving the biggest changes are the platform changes. host: this report available at rand.org. check it out or call in about the changes you have seen in the past 30 years. gary, indiana, democrat. caller: good morning to both of you. i love that tie. looking elegant. maam, there is a thing called power of the press, you well know. winston churchill once said, with great power comes great responsibility. if you don't want to tell the truth, just say so. do not take a journalism job. let's be fair and honest.

let us hear all the truth or forget this thing. some of the history here. truth decay. hasn't it always been around in the news business? yellow journalism of the late 1800s comes to mind. guest: in the first report we talk about historical analogs. yellow journalism, tabloid journalism in the 1920's, distrust and propaganda in media in the 1970's around vietnam, for example. there are periods of time when we see an uptick of concern and objectivity of info being provided in media. host: it is it -- is it evan flow or constantly moving toward flow or is it constantly moving toward subjectivity? guest: it is hard to know.

if we could get more data, we could certainly measure. the concern now, the reason people are talking about this issue now, has to do with the scale and scope of changes we have experienced with the rise of internet and social media. this has revolutionized the ecosystem. there is not a comparable change unless you go back to the printing press. it is important to recognize the way and roll technology plays, we are getting different news and in different formats, being produced in different ways. all of these changes bring with them benefits but also unintended consequences in terms of the ease of which information spreads, with which that kind of information can get into the information ecosystem and spread quickly. host: jack, republican, south carolina. caller: good morning.

much of this is driven for profit? msnbc appealing to their fans. you have fox. always someone hawking a book. seems to me it is more about numbers than beliefs. guest: you bring up a number of good points. if we are talking about why changes have occurred, i would point to two main factors. they go hand-in-hand. economics and technology. economics have changed, driven in part by changes in the way news is produced and consumed. technological changes. seeomic changes, we increasing number and diversity of media outlets and the barrier is much lower.

anyone can be a source. ad dollars isr much more intense. cost is pressure to reduce and produce news in the cheapest way possible to increase the margin. what is cheapest is commentary or a blog, sharing opinions. traditional investigative isrnalism in previous eras much more expensive. you see that shift in terms of the type of news or info we are getting. the second change, a tendency to cater to niche audiences. if you tailor your message to your specific audience, that will affect how you share your info or frame your argument.

the third thing is providing information people will be attracted to. people like things that agree with them. they are attracted to things that are sensational/exaggerated or something that they can relate to, personal or subjective. those things affect the way news is presented. technology changes the way news is produced and the way we consume. it is different to read news on a mobile phone versus a newspaper. technology allows news to be crowd sourced, blogging, all different forms of news contributing to changes as well. host: when it comes to your sample for online news sources, it did not take into effect this impact of crowdsourcing, fact checking online, of citizen journalists. you talk about what role they play in the online media environment and is that something that can be studied? guest: it is different than

professional journalists writing articles. it is no worse or no better. we are not making a value judgment. you could study it. you need a sample of citizen journalism and compare it to online or print outlet, the process would be identical to what we did here, just using different sources. there is a range of things we would like to study. we would like to do radio transcripts and see how that has changed over time. thinking about images and the role video plays, because so much of our news is visual now. that would be interesting. host: marina del rey, california, robert, independent. caller: [indiscernible] industry,cottage starting with talking heads. and you and far right have paid contributors --

[indiscernible] -- apologize, you are going in and out. idea thateard the news is opinion based, basically an industry of sharing opinions. that is true for certain outlets. when we did the comparison of broadcasts to cable news, we knew we would find differences. we were comparing things that were aimed at the same thing. broadcast news is intended to provide news based information where cable journalism is much more a platform for opinions. that is true in certain areas. it is also true that all news comes with some filter. no matter how hard we, as human beings try to be objective, we will never be 100%. anything anyone writes comes with bias. if you look at national

newspapers, any other outlets still trying to provide it isased accounts, impossible to get rid of all bias. host: karen buchanan on twitter pointing out the differences writing, "a distinction should be made for following local news, national, world or political news. too much politics is bad for digestion and mental health." julie, springfield, missouri, democrat. caller: i have noticed ever since fcc rules were changed, like in the late 1980's, when the fairness doctrine was done away with, then going forward to the 1990's when the telecommunications act was passed in 1996 and in 2003, another fcc rule was changed,

where it enabled a lot of concentration and ownership. i have detected a lot of difference in the news in my neck of the woods in springfield. especially in the beginning of 2000, outlets were taken over by conservative media ownership. tone,notice a change in even though it did seem that what you were saying about the more opinionated news was already taking hold through cnn and that kind of thing. what do you think about that? the ownership. now that corporate media is very -- politico isn, owned by comcast or has some kind of tie to it and just the whole political, corporate atmosphere in the news. how do you think that has eroded

our truth? guest: there have been a lot of consolidation in media industry. interesting contrast with diversity in terms of number of sources at a lower level and the concentration of ownership. interesting contrast. that is the issue of corporate ownership. that is the biggest implication, some regional and local papers, regional and local news channels, as you referred to, they have really been taken over by these corporate entities and a lot of resources have been stripped away. if you think about local areas that do not have access to good news info, some people call these news deserts. it is hard to get access to good journalism whether local, national or any level. that is a concern. no mediaf its faults, outlet is perfect, information

is important. it is the foundation of democracy. areas that have no access to news, that is concerning and something we should think about, ways to ensure there is an economically sustainable model for local journalism that provides that info to people. host: truth decay, the term you will see often in this report on the rise of subjectivity over the past 30 years when it comes to various media platforms. truth decay, the increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data. what is a concrete example? guest: the debate over the safety of vaccines. we have increasing evidence that they are safe. an increasing number of people believe they are unsafe. vaccines,xistence of

vaccine skeptics have always existed but this divergence between the amount of good data we have and the trend in terms of numbers of people who reject that data. host: what about the blurring of the lines between opinions in fact? guest: look at social media or cable news, places where facts and opinions are mixed together in a way difficult to distinguish. when you see someone talking on cable news, if you are not an expert on the topic it is hard to know if what they are providing you is fact or opinion. that can be difficult for any kind of user. you see it in newspapers as well, online. you can see it pretty much anywhere. host: 20 minutes left with jennifer. the report available at rand.org. tell us what you think about truth decay. do you see it when you're watching the news? (202)-748-8000 for democrats, (202)-748-8001 for republicans, (202)-748-8002 for independents.

howie, california, independent. caller: good morning. up but it is not new. we went back 30 years in this study but you can go back, i have old newspapers that go back to world war ii. you wouldn't believe some of the comments in there about slant eyed, yellow comments made at that point in time. we have always had problems with journalism. i have a couple quick points. responsibilitynd of journalism. i remember watching election night, 2016.

i turned it off because i was totally convinced hillary had won. -- i did find it off not find it out until the next morning that we had had an election. rachel maddow had told us this was over, even if donald trump won every state that was close there was no way he was going to win. that was in news. i know rachel is in opinion. she was not expressing opinion. she was expressing fact. we have serious problems, ongoing for a long time. truth decay, we have to go a lot more than 30 years. we need to really stick with firsthand information. televisionlive on like c-span does, covering congress and the senate and the president and look at what is

really happening. host: we will take those topics. guest: you are right. unfiltered info is the best. if you can see it yourself, you have the straight facts. that is not always possible. some people don't have the time to consume all their news unfiltered and they need it packaged in some form. the key thing is recognizing there is nothing wrong with subjectivity in journalism. there is different types of information. we want a range of different types. based,sed, opinion personal perspective and interviews. one of the things that comes out of this report for a consumer is the understanding that different types of platforms are not replacements for each other. they are complements. de would include a range of sources from all

categories. you go into your news consumption knowing, i will watch cable news and that comes with these different biases, newspaper has different bias. you can filter that as a reader and come to your opinion or understanding of an issue by synthesizing these different types of information. morning, will. caller: good morning. i watch you guys all the time. internet effect. i am a computer person. when i first came across the public internet, it has positive effects, no doubt, but it also has many negative effects in terms of people having access to andrmation that they search

they have found this to be true, to search out information that convinces or confirms their views instead of local news or newspapers, typically in the past. it has only been 20 years. we have more of a balanced approach. the key reasons of the polarization of the country and people is that people guide themselves increasingly toward what they want to hear instead of being more subjective and open to ideas. instead of listening, they are getting it. yorke a railroad to new and technology, i am not a big fan of. i worked in it. everyone is on their phone. they do not talk. they do not listen. everyone is on their phone.

it is a bad scene to watch. that is all i want to say. host: how long have even making that ride? guest: often enough -- caller: often enough to see it changed dramatically. host: what were people doing on that train ride before cell phones? caller: reading newspapers, window, looking out the seeing what neighborhoods look like, what they are passing, what the weather looks like. talking. observing. being interactive. i used to be on a train, i would always strike up a conversation with a person next to me. people don't even fake it. they don't want to talk to you. every single person on the train, everyone is on their phone. that is very disturbing in my book.

that is how people are communicating these days. you sit at a bar these days, people don't talk. everyone is looking at their phone. it is a disturbing trend. adults and children, especially. host: thank you. technology has a big role in the changes we have seen in media, not only how they affect economics but also the way news is consumed and produced. you are right. online is easy for us to find info that agrees with us. we like to be right. that is our tendency. you have to choose to seek out information you disagree with in order to get that other perspective. today newspaper, you are more likely to be confronted, because of the greater balance we see on that type of platform. tohink this shift internet-based news fuels some

of these tendencies we have, cognitive bias that we have two seek out certain types of info over other types. host: advice for encountering truth decay -- what about for news producers? guest: this report highlights changes we have seen over time and ways platforms differ. what is unique about this report is the ability to measure. we are not just say we observe this qualitatively but we can put numbers on them and say which changes are greater than others. in the report we do not make specific recommendations because we do not place value judgments on these. that would be the second step of this agenda. do these different ways of presenting news affect how people interpret information? are people more susceptible to disinformation when it is presented in a certain style,

online, cable, newspapers? we can begin to say something about what these changes mean for the impact. host: will you take those questions on? guest: yes. we are planning to take it on. that report lends itself to recommendations for journalists. if we see that certain news has negative implications, then those types of news, what can we do to restore whatever it is that makes journalism have positive invocations? host: when do you expect that to be out? guest: we will have to get started first. if we start later this year, it will probably take us 1.5 years, probably late 2020, 2021. host: we will talk about it then. next 15 minutes, washington republicans, democrats and independents as usual.

go ahead. disturbing,nd most having been a journalist since the 1950's, the delivery strategies. someone yelling at me over the television -- the interruptions to the guests brought to speak their opinions and attacks on individuals and groups, i find most difficult to tolerate especially. i find that difficult with cable news. i wondering if these were found to be significant different over the past 20 years? host: how many hours a day do you spend watching the news? now so i am homebound spend a great deal of time watching cable news. i also do document searches.

way i use thely internet news. host: do you take a break from the news for days or weeks at a time? caller: i do indeed remove myself from cable for weeks at a time. host: when do you know it is time to do that? caller: when i am finding the behavior of the spokespeople so irritating that i cannot catch the news anymore. host: thank you. guest: we were able to detect those differences. we did not look at cable journalism over time -- we compared it to broadcast journalism. the networks. we saw the differences you are talking about. it is much more conversational, there is more emotion, there are -- it is very oral form of delivering the news,

very personal and interactive. that emotion element is key. capture that emotion and stir it up. there is other research, not by us but by others, that shows that outrage journalism is really prevalent on cable news. host: massachusetts, jason, independent. caller: good morning. interesting topic. i'm finishing up my masters thesis on entertainment values inc. into network news. in the 1980's, well, i was a teenager in the 1980's thinking i was becoming well-informed about the world by watching network news. one of the things in this, in my thesis that i found was, i wanted to believe it was

technology, that it was mostly occurring in the 1970's when media consultants were brought in to local news and then network news but what i found was, and this was from the beginning when network news was first introduced in the 1950's to when it became in the 30 minute context, the dramatization, overreliance on visual was baked in from the beginning. ton, when you marry that broadcast journalism that is born out of a capitalistic system, the end results are what we have now. the fairness doctrine, getting rid of it, didn't make much difference in news because someone could present, if you needed to put on the opposite opinion, you could put it on a 3:00 a.m., which would satisfy the requirement. i don't know if you looked --

you said you went back 30 years -- edward epstein's, news from nowhere, when he was able to be at nbc news in 1968 to really look at how the news process, how'd news was developed, how stories were selected, how film was edited. did you look at any of that? host: before you go, your thesis sounds interesting. what do you want to do with your masters? caller: i like teaching. i taught in grad school. i enjoy teaching history. my masters is in american studies. i like history. -- thesaid, the news other part, the reason i selected this was, because, the news, when you watch it, they or youu the opinion,

have the opinion from watching network news and you still have that today, from just watching television, television became way more trusted than newspapers and still is, you are well-informed, even though you were getting simplified stories, you still felt, i know what is going on in the world. even though there was no context to most stories. it did get worse from the 1960's -- i looked at nbc news, i took a broadcast from the vanderbilt news archive and put them against boston globe and the new york times, as to what stories were presented. host: thank you for bringing it up. familiar with the specific book you mentioned. we did look at some work, similar, about other new sources. how is news produced and how has that process changed over time? we go back to the role economics

plays. economics has forced media companies to come back with resources they have for journalists and editors and that hasn't locations for the type of implications- has for the type of news we see. you cannot spend three weeks deep diving on a specific topic. sources have to be spread more thinly. some of the changes we see in newspapers and other platforms is driven by the shift toward something cheaper. that does not mean we lost fact-based journalism. we can point to good examples of fact-based journalism in the past years that have provided insight into key issues. it means it is less common. we see an explosion on the other end of this objective, easy to produce journalism. because it is so easy to produce, and there is demand for. news jason said television

is more trusted than newspapers. is that something you have studied? television tends to have higher levels of trust then newspapers but that differs by demographic groups and changes over time. the lowest trust is for online journalism and news through social media. these trends change over time. there is some back-and-forth. me asing that struck interesting during research was the idea that people tend to report their most trusted source as the source they use most often. there is a close link between the news we consume and the news we trust. it is hard to disentangle whether we trust, whether we consume news we trust or trust news we consume. which is first? trust driving consumption? consumption, we set our levels of trust to justify consumption decisions?

that is a hard question to disentangle. that was interesting to me. poll, gallupting poll, tracking polls over many decades, this chart showing american confidence in newspapers, those who say they have a great deal or a lot of trust in newspapers back in the 39% in 1990the high and steadily falling through 2016 and shooting up again, 20% up to 27% in 2017. guest: 2018 data suggests decline. host: numbers from gallup polling available at gallup.com. peter, north carolina, republican, greensboro. caller: thank you for taking my call. interesting show an interesting guest. two things that apply to

newspapers. if you read any articles closely you can tell exactly bias your guest is talking about. it is there all the time. sometimes it is subtle. sometimes it is blatant. the way i pick up on this as i read the adjectives in sentences very closely. the thrusthey alter of the sentence totally. a marketing, i am in that has arge -- large newspaper but it is part of a group of eight newspapers in north carolina and virginia. they rely so entirely on the associated press for content every day. is, does anyone at a

toal newspaper bothere edit what comes from the associated press? the articles often have the person's name who wrote the article. most frequently it just says it is the associated press. i don't know who the hell that is. i get confused. i will hang up and listen to the answer. trade show. -- great show. guest: this goes back to corporate ownership of local papers. another trend we have seen in local journalism, because they do not have resources to produce content all the time, they rely on syndicated columns or newswires for their stories. i don't think it is a question of not bothering to do it. they don't have the resources or people or money to invest time in editing associated press stories. associated press and reuters are looked at as the trusted

newswires. they tend to be pretty objective. characteristic for passing them on to local papers. that goes back to larger concern about the lack of local journalism and the ability to have that deep knowledge of a given locality. i have talked to some reporters who started in local journalism who would move to the town and live there and experience that town and write about it in a different way than currently happens. host: chris, omaha, democrat. caller: the guy who called in, attributing the quote to winston churchill, with great power comes great responsibility, was actually uncle ben from spider-man. i did not want that misinformation out there. host: thanks. sandra, missouri, independent.

caller: good morning. i am enjoying this segment. i started listening to c-span, watching c-span and listening about two years ago. i enjoyed this guest and hope you have her back because listening to her responses to everyone who calls in and how she speaks on an intricate and nuanced comprehensive level, showing her knowledge, i just like her disposition. i wish i could sit at a roundtable with her and certain other people to discuss this topic in a longer discussion. it, quickly, i want to say liked when she pointed out that we should get, not only truth, but also opinions as well and get a good mix and different perspectives.

that is so meaningful. -- ofjust got truth only course i value truth, i don't want lies -- but i like to hear opinion pieces from certain people who seem even keeled, levelheaded, thinking people, independent, non-followers. i like the way this young lady is. i just want to compliment you for bringing her on but i also want to say, i think truth decay in american journalism is part and parcel of the way this country was founded. i hope you do not hang up on me but i just want to say, the way this country was founded, there are so many good things about this country. i love this country. with the way the land was stolen and the way lies were told and a certain narrative has been time, and propagated over

it almost feels like the top down problem is from the owners of all the media outlets, the top down problem is there is a and it isbeing pushed really not a good thing. it is, keep the people divided and fighting each other and confused so that we won't really deal with the real issues. host: we will take your point. we seeyou are right that in the media industry narrative coming from whoever is in charge, whether a specific journalist or corporation, that is not universal. there are media outlets that provide nuanced, fact-based information. we are subject often to narratives that come from various sources. this is not just a u.s.-based problem. focused on the united states but we are doing a

project looking at europe. we see those trends in europe, as well as elsewhere, in terms of the way in which media and the changes in the ecosystem have affected information and the way it is disseminated and consumed, having many of the same effects we observe here. the global context, we focused on the u.s. today but having the global picture and understanding this is a phenomenon occurring internationally puts a broader perspective on changes we have talked about today. more a subject to talk about down the road. tod.org is the website to go to take a look at the report. guest: thank you. host: up next on washington journal, stick around, we will talk about joe biden having his official campaign kickoff after he announced he is running for

president. for 30 minutes, we will talk to democrats only about which candidate in a crowded field best represents your views. start calling in on phone lines for democrats in the eastern, central, mountain, pacific regions. those numbers on your screen. start calling in. we will get your comments after the break. ♪ >> this weekend on book tv, live from the gaithersburg book festival, all day coverage begins today at 10:15 a.m. eastern. authors include vince hoten. at 11:15 a.m. eastern. playerm., former nba

with, we matter, athletes and activism's. also, susan page and her book, the matriarch. barbara bush in the making of an american dynasty. the gaithersburg book festival, live this weekend on book tv on c-span2. sunday at 8 p.m. eastern, david mccullough discusses his book, the pioneers, the heroic story of the settlers who brought the american ideal west. >> it is like going to a country i have never set foot in or going on a detective case. that is the adventure. i try to look at all of it with a fresh eye. very often, i have never not found something that had been ignored or not known about or discovered as yet.

in this book about the pioneers who established the first settlement in the northwest territory, it is all material that nobody knows much of anything about because it had never been looked at. >> david mccullough, sunday night at 8:00 eastern on q&a. journal available at c-span's new online store, go c-span.org and check out all the products. >> washington journal continues. host: joe biden holding a kickoff campaign for 2020 presidential bid, happening today, live coverage on c-span beginning at 1 p.m., expected to be 1.5 hours. the rally will take place near

the philadelphia museum of art in philadelphia. as we look ahead to that event, we want to hear from democrats only about which presidential candidate in a crowded field best represents your views. democrats in the eastern or central time zone, (202)-748- 8000. mountain or pacific time zone, (202)-748-8001. as you are calling in, we can take you through the news and events about those 24 candidates now in the democratic presidential race. one column. christine emba in the washington post asking whether that many democrats don't have anything better to do then run for president? additions bring the number 223.

, biden,invited gillibrand, harris, hickenlooper, klobuchar, o'rourke, ryan, sanders, williamson, yang. this could be a list of law firms, a football team or a mixup at the dmv. i am not arguing the presidency is unimportant but there is so much else these candidates could do to advance the goals they claim their presidential runs would achieve and with far greater likelihood of success." one column about the crowded field. democrats only in this first segment, let us know which candidate best represents your views and why. (202)-748-8000, democrat and eastern or central time zones. 8001, democrat in

mountain or pacific time zones. richard, you are up. warren elizabeth will not take care of atomic cleanup veterans. host: who are you supporting? still with us, richard? edward in florida. which candidate represents your views best? caller: right now, the field is so wide. 21 or 22? host: 23. caller: i am sorry. host: could be 24. blasio just got in. i am from boston originally. i am union in florida. amazingly. choice. a strong

gets toote for whoever the ticket. i will vote for the democrat. i just cannot handle the policies of what is going on in this country right now. for the strongest candidates , people to judge -- valuesiege has strong and he is highly intelligent. package.hat is a good lady. harris is a smart enforcement and knows the law and will follow the law like our current not.istration is host: you said you would vote

for any democrat who is the eventual nominee. who would be the toughest one for you to vote for? caller: during the last primary, when we had clinton, i voted for bernie sanders in the primary. but of course, i went with clinton. there was a hard choice there because of her baggage and things like that that was created by the news agency, i really wish i could have gotten a previous segment. i would have said something about that. would, you know, i would hope we can get, you know, instead of a one-sided country right now that we have, as in policies being handled, you know, with the epa being

destroyed in the education being destroyed and the cdc being destroyed, things that matter in this country, that need to be regulated, and, just being thrown into, into the field and while like that, i would rather see somebody who would try to work back on deficits and maintain order in this country again. disorderder, the daily of this country right now is just, very unbearable and hard to watch. emmanuel, democrat from carson, california,. caller: good morning. i will be voting for kamala .arris , you need herthat

to clean up all this mess. the rule of law, everything trump is doing, he is not totally about economics. host: why is kamala harris the best person to do this? caller: she is smart and knows the law. she was attorney general of this state. she is always about the law. justice. kamala harris is very smart. knows every issue. she does her homework. that is what we need. we don't need another trump. women are, sometimes, the best managers. this is the time to try a woman in that office and kamala harris is in my view, the most

qualified in this view, the most qualified in this now. host: lionel in california. here is paul in des moines, iowa. paul, good morning. caller: good morning. good morning, america. we take it very seriously. had candidates like hillary clinton and ted cruz in 2016, excuse me, 2015, when we voted first on the caucus. aller, have you met any of the candidates who have paraded through iowa? caller: absolutely. host: who have you met? caller: i met cory booker. i met bernie sanders. i am trying to think, there was somebody else, somebody really insignificant like amy klobuchar or somebody that won't even get, like, 1% or 2% of the vote. host: who has impressed you the most? caller: well, i will be real

honest. some of the people i have not met have been kind of impressive to me, you know, like elizabeth warren is putting down some policies. but you know, when i met cory booker, he is a very charismatic guy, and he is really easy to like. that said, it has been very differen disappointing for me to see his policies shift right, and i will get some crap from progressives about this, but the number one challenger to bernie s kamala is, let harris harris. cory booker has blue shifted or is becoming less progressive as ing. race is progress and she is really finding her laying in the middle somewhere joe biden and

bernie sanders. bernie sanders is who i would really appreciate. pete buttigieg is a ginge gentrifier. joe biden is a nut job, he cannot speak without putting his foot in his mouth or trying to grow someone -- grope someone. like i said, it is our super bowl. we are looking forward to the debates getting going. we will see a narrowing of the field. i think joe biden's popularity will drop out of the top three was you get the debates going. i really do not think he is the threat that cnn and msnbc perceive him to be. host: that is karel in des moines, iowa. joe biden had the kickoff for his presidential campaign in philadelphia, the outside of the museum of art in philadelphia.

c-span coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. today, if you want to watch that event. some of the candidates that carl brings up held events that we have covered as part of our road to 2020 here on c-span, including elizabeth warren, the massachusetts senator. a rally at george mason university in fairfax, virginia, just across the potomac river from here in washington, d.c. here is part of what she said at the rally about corporations in this country. [video clip] warren: understand right here in washington, terrific for giant drug companies, just not for people trying to get a prescription filled. >> yeah! yeah! mor warren: it works great for those in the financial field, but not those working paycheck-to-paycheck. it works are giant oil

companies, just not for people who see climate change bearing down upon us. [cheers and applause] warren: so when you have got a government that works great for those with money and is not working for anyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple, and we need to call it out for what it is. day, mayor pete buttigieg was at the city club in chicago, speaking about the abortion debate and the very new restrictive law in alabama. here is what he had to say. [video clip] buttigieg: their people i love, who support me, who view this issue differently than i do, but i must say that i do not think you are free in

this country if your reproductive health can be criminalized by the government. [cheers and applause] mayor buttigieg: this is not an easy choice for anybody to face, and i would be loath to tell anybody facing the situation with the right thing to do is, but that is exactly the point. i am a government official. i do not view myself as belonging in that conversation. and to see in alabama that, if someone is raped, and she seeks an abortion, the doctor who treats her will be penalized with a longer prison terms and herrapist makes me -- than rapist makes me question whether the discussion about freedom in this country has gone off the rails. host: the abortion of a shifting

to missouri, where lawmakers pass a bill on friday to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat is affected, what the "new york times" says is the latest intended to mount challenges to federal protections for the procedure. that is the story there from the "new york times" this morning. this is tina, a democrat in minnesota. tina, with democrat in the race best represents your views? caller: i am entirely for bernie sanders and tulsi gabbard. i think they would be a great team, with her as the vice president. and i think that all the other people that are running for president are just intended to cause confusion, so that when we have the convention to nominate to candidate, it has to go the second round, and then the

superdelegates can choose whomever they want. i have seen this happen in the state of minnesota. we had one who ran in 2016 that important,s that are the intereststing , wall street interests, and the superdelegates that came in, so the counties that came in on the state level, they just eliminated anybody who was not part of that corrupt head of the party. -- i do not know where this country is going, if we only vote for just republicans or democrats. next year, bernie sanders and tulsi gabbard are the ones who represent everything i care

about and a really solid future for this country. host: that is tina in minnesota. tina mentioning the democratic convention in 2020, 14 months from now. it will take place in milwaukee, wisconsin, and milwaukee, wisconsin is where c-span's cities tour takes place this weekend, focusing on the books the literary life,, and the culture of milwaukee, wisconsin, today at 5:00 p.m. on booktv, we will be talking about the story a the miller brewing company, milwaukee company since 1855. here is a preview of what is coming up today on c-span2. >> miller brewing was founded by frederick miller, an immigrant arrivedrmany who here in 18 to five your he set up the brewery just behind me here. in his first year, 1856, he made

1200 barrels, which is not even a morning's worth today. this was built here by workers , involvedwing hands-on. the primary purpose is to keep beer cold, which we did very sophisticated system call ed ice. each year, we would harvest blocks of ice, have it delivered, packet along, covered it with sawdust and straw. the nature of it being underground here was enough to keep the ice encased in a medium degreesure between 46 all your long at least until the following winter when we can harvest more ice to do it again the following year. that is how we kept beer cold for the better part of 50 years until the advent of mechanical refrigeration. host: that from c-span cities and milwaukee.

that event you just saw, 5:00 p.m. today on c-span2. where the democratic convention will take place in july of next year. we continue to hear from democrats in this segment, amid a very crowded field and on the day that joe biden is holding his official kickoff rally for his presidential campaign, we want to know which candidate best represents your views. david, thanks for waiting in canonsburg, pennsylvania. go ahead. caller: hi. good morning. thank you for taking my call. i appreciate it. i am very similar to your previous call for minnesota. a bernie sanders supporter. , ando like tulsi extent, andrew yang and elizabeth warren. it is funny because there is a poll that came out recently

about all of the democrat biden,es and have joe like, 20 points ahead of bernie sanders in the progressive field, but then, like, the narrative in the news media, i have seen on fox and other news saying, they were all joe biden is so far ahead, and he is the leader, and then i went and did my own research. i would go into digital news outlets. the survey.ut when he broke down the survey, he said that those responses are age 50 and older. so 67% of the respondents were 50 years old or older. went to look at the survey and make sure, and it was true, 68% of the respondents were 50 years old and older.

host: david, one place that you can go to that averages all of the polling numbers out there come all of the major polling, realclearpolitics.com. they take the average of all of those polls, and according right politics, itlear is joe biden, followed by bernie sanders, elizabeth warren 18.4%, pete buttigieg, beto o'rourke, 4.1%, and all others below the. below those polling numbers is best for visual learners, the green line at the top is joe biden's numbers in national polls, the poll of polls, bernie sanders' number

represented in the blueline, the second line. all of the other candidates below that. a great place to go, realclearpolitics.com, to see that poll of polls. john, good morning. caller: hi, my name is john. host: go ahead, sir. caller: i am college-educated. 72, and i am supporting pete buttigieg, because of his intelligence, this service, and overall representation of the nation as a whole and not calling point.ne we need a president who knows a whole love more than what trump has. all of our candidates would be qualified, but i think he is the

best. that is jim in kentucky. here is john in maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i think democrats are doing the same date like what we did last time. i do not want to see bernie sanders running as a democrat. bernie sanders is a democrat. the reason -- bernie sanders is an independent. last time is lost because of bernie sanders. the people who do not vote last who stayed home, that is why donald trump won the election. first of all, you need name recognition. joe biden does have that. i cannot not see all 20 of them running. those who -- nobody knows them. they know they cannot win. nameknow they do not have recognition. they do not have the financial to run as the candidate. i do not see why we let them even go to the stage and run. they need to tell them that you do not have enough numbers to run, you need to leave out of

the way. because what do we see right now? the republicans, what they are going to do is they are going to attack each other, and every weakness that that canada has, they are going to use against them, whoever we elect. so those people who keep saying bernie sanders, i get so sick of bernie sanders. if you want to run as the president, bernie sanders, go to sweden. there is no way that america -- host: john, you do not subscribe to the feeling that some suggest that the primary battles are a good thing because it sharpens the candidate and get them ready for the general election? caller: if you do not have named that first of all, you need to have name recognition. people, they should know who you are. some of these people, they are just running just to say hey, i am a candidate. it does not work like that. we have a lot of people. we cannot handle this. bottom line -- who:, john before you go,

do you think is running just to say they are a presidential candidate? caller: there are two people that i checked very carefully. elizabeth warren, she has policies that she put on the table. keep in mind, there is a governor of washington who is also environmental. he put something on the table. and also, i will say the three women that i would say, amy klobuchar and kamala harris and elizabeth warren. people, i mean, and joe biden, maybe bernie sanders can run, and what is this new jersey senator, cory booker. these, the rest of the people, they should leave the stage and do whatever they want to do, but they have no chance to win. host: that is john in maryland this morning. you mentioned the washington governor, jay inslee. the front page story on the front page of the "washington post" this morning about his environmental effort, calling his candidacy, which in large part is based on climate and

environmental issues, an uphill climb, if you want to read that story, today's "washington post ." that is going to do it for this segment of the "washington journal," but stick around. still 45 minutes left this morning on a weekend in which it is college graduation season. next we will talk with author richard vedder about his new book "restoring the promise of higher education." stick around. we will be right back. >> sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on "american artifacts," we are at the library of congress to said,about omar even cit ibn where he was sold and shipped into slavery. us his mary jane d shows autobiography and the

collection. this is important enough to carry it on. this was written by people who were enslaved. but this is the only known arabicg manuscript in written by a slave. >> watch "american artifacts" sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. ♪ >> c-span's newest book, "the presidents: noted hi historians rank america's best and worst chief executives," true stories gathered by interviews with noted presidential historians. order your copy today. ispan's "the presidents" available as a hardcover or as

an e-book at journal@c-span.or g /thepresidents. starting memorial, may 27, -- featured speakers include maryland representative elijah cummings, acting defense secretary shanahan, stacey abrams, president trump, and supreme court associate justice sonia sotomayor. our commencement coverage starts memorial day at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. watch online any time at c-span.org, and listen on the free c-span radio app. >> "washington journal" continues. host: with graduation ceremony second place of a on many college campuses, it is a good day to talk to richard vedder, senior fellow at the independent institute. he is also author of the new book "restoring the promise:

higher education in america." before we dive into the book, mr. vedder, remind viewers what the instan independent institutd how you are funded. guest: well, the independent institute is, i guess you could call it, a think tank, which is located in oakland, california. it has been in operation for several decades. it publishes books and other monographs, journals. it has a very fine journal called "the infinite review," for example. it is an organization that does that. my primary affiliation has been with universities. i am with ohio university as a my 50 fourthll, in year, but i do have a long-standing relationship also with the independent institute. where funding comes from, i do not know where funding comes from, frankly.

i have never asked the question. the interested in getting questions out and disseminated, and i am grateful that someone is contributing to the support. i am not sure who is. i am sure a large number of individuals and perhaps corporations -- or foundations, rather. host: we mentioned lots of students are graduating around the country. the minds ofon at least some of the students is student loan debt. in this country, the total of student loan debt now well over ,1.5 trillion when added all up which begs the question -- is college too expensive today? guest: well, i think it is. and i think, you mention that in conjunction with student loans, which i think is very appropriate. i think the student loan programs that were originally put in mainly in the 1960's and were greatly expanded in the

late 1970's, these programs were for a well intended reasons. they were designed to help low income kids who were having trouble financing college to make it easier for them, but they have not had that impact. they have pushed the price of education up. administrations say that kids can borrow money to go have been so they more aggressive than they otherwise would have been in raising fees, sophie's have been pushed way, way up. -- so fees have been pushed way, way up. college is about the only thing that is really harder to finance today than it was, say, a half-century ago. growth,of economic everything has become easier pay for some sense. cruises,tickets, electronic gadgets, televisions, all kinds of things, cars.

but one thing that has become harder and harder to pay for is college. host: as we are having this conversation with richard vedder, the author of the book "restoring the promise: higher education in america," special phone lines this morning. we want you to start calling it on those lines. college graduates can: at (202) 748-8000. parents of college graduates and faculty members, (202) 748-8001. hear fromly want to you. all others can call in at (202) 748-8002. mr. vedder, i am going to show viewers this chart here from the collegeboard.org. it shows the cost of college is from the late 1980's through today, private, nonprofit, the-year colleges used average $17,000 the year, today up to about $35,000 a year. that increase in expenses less so from public four-year colleges from about $3300 in the

late 1980's to over $10,000 now, and public two-year colleges, less of an increase than that. the question for you -- is the cost of college worth it these days? for many people, it is still very much worth while going to college. college graduates on average earn up to double what high school graduates do, and college, having that visa paper, that diploma, have a very significant value to it, but the risk of going to college are significant, and they are probably growing. 40% of the kids who enter four-year colleges full-time do not graduate -- at least within six years, not for years, but six years. four40% graduate in si years.

so a large number of kids going to college thinking they are going to get a good degree, live a good middle-class than above life, and they do not even graduate. those that do graduate, that do graduate, the 60% or so who do graduate, about 40% of them, if you believe the federal reserve bank of new york, about 40% of them do not ore very high-paying jobs highly skilled jobs very fast out of school here and there was the fed calls underemployed. that is to say they are doing jobs that high school were as often do or usually do, baristas working athops, walmart or home depot or somewhere like that. and these are jobs, and they are ok, they pay something, but you do not need a college education to have them. so for some people, a lot of people, in fact, college is a highly risky option and why many people are starting, i think, to

think of options other than college. maybe becoming a welder is a good idea. welders make very good money. it is much less expensive and less training to become a welder than it is to get a four-year degree. and many other jobs like that. so i think we are starting -- enrollments are down, too. we have fewer kids going to college now than we did seven years ago. and i think the public is beginning to become a little more skeptical, and rightly so, about the college experience. host: the title of your new book --"restoring the promise: higher education in america." what is the promise? how do you restore it? well, you know, the promise is that we are -- everyone sort of looks at college as the sort of ticket to success. is the way to achieve the american dream.

that is what we wanted to see out of college. and we are finding that is starting to break down. we obviously need some reform in higher education. i think quite a bit of reform. fact, aven become in little bit over invested in higher education in the sense that there are some people going to college who do not belong, who should look to other alternatives, and we should probably, the federal government should probably revisit its role in the financing of the higher education. besides that, there are other oo, by the way, th which i have not mentioned. kids are not learning as much today as they did 30, 40 years ago. that is an issue. the average college student spends only 27 hours a week and academic things, doing the academic things, going to class, studying, writing papers, taking

exams, that kind of things. that is in average. that is down from 40 hours a week 50 years ago. people are not studying as much. they only go to school 32 weeks. so they are in class or working on academics less than eight graders are. and maybe we should revisit that. is that the right way to do things? so there are a lot of issues that need to be explored. host: a lot of issues we are exploring and is last 40 minutes or so on the "washington journal ."again, phone lines from if you want to join the conversation with richard vedder, the number for college graduates, (202) 748-8000. for parents and faculty members, (202) 748-8001. and then all others, (202) 748-8002. we will let you speak first with baltimore, in from maryland this morning, a college graduate. nat, go ahead. caller: hi. thanks for c-span. i have call before.

i am a world war ii vet. in engineering and advanced degrees. my comment is, most of the problem lies with the arts degrees. the people who are taking science and technical degrees find no trouble getting jobs, because they are meaningful subjects. but if you take these abstract except, there is nobody foundation that is willing to pay you to work for them. what i would like to ask is why can't we specifically differentiate between the technically usable degrees and uh,sort of, uh, um, non, specific product. host: nat, thanks for the question. mr. vedder? raising a very

important point here at engineering graduates, science by the way come outside of the sciences, where this is true as well. , theseing, for example pretty well. my field of economics, graduates do pretty well. but there is a huge difference in vocational outcome of different kinds of college graduates, and one big problem is i do not think injuring students, students entering college, are fully aware of it. they just do not know that an engineer usually goes out and makes $60,000, sometimes even more, eight year, right from the it is ag, where sociologist or a psychologist or a gender studies major at trouble getting a job at all. they are the ones that end up being baristas and so forth, and if they do get a job in their field, it is likely to be a salary at maybe $35,000 a year theless, $40,000 at

most, a lot less money. there are huge differences there that are not being pointed out. i would maybe apply a caveat to what he said in that there are reasons that people go to college other than just to get a are sometimes some disciplines where people do not start out with tremendous salaries, but over a lifetime do pretty well. philosophers do pretty well. in midcareer, philosophers on average make as much as general business administration majors, because they know how to thank. they have good critical thinking skills. so non some of these nonscientific areas to prepare people in some way for the world to work, if you like, but they caller makes a good point. host: "wall street journal the "wall street journal" -- host: the "wall street journal" in one of their stories talks about a little are college in

vermont. and the "wall street journal" uses that story to know that small private colleges are struggling in the country. slow closure rate for nonpublic private colleges between 2004 and 2014 when triple in the next few years. more schools were likely merge with other institutions and non-arts programs like the list at green mountain college are the ones who seem most at risk. mr. vedder, your thoughts. yes, i think that is basically right. the only issue is how big of a closure of the problem is or is going to be or issues are going to be. there is a fellow at harvard, , who thinks roughly half will be out of business in the next decade or so. i once sat at least 500 will go out of business, which is a

lower percentage but still a healthy number. we will have a huge increase. it is going to because it traded amongst the not so well endowed or not very well-known liberal arts colleges, but also among state universities that ar reputations. the historically black colleges and universities are facing enormous challenges right now. a lot of them are in financial difficulty. so people are starting to say no oneslleges, and the without large government support or a large amount of drive an endowment are the ones -- private endowment are the ones that are particularly vulnerable. host: college graduate. go ahead. caller: hi.

thank you for taking my call, mr. vedder. i went to the university of wisconsin, and i love the that 1960's,and the late 1970's, and this is true throughout the midwest and elsewhere, felt that that was s sort ofhe state' charter, and they wanted to, quote, "have an educated workforce for the state," so they supported the state universities. and over the 46 years since then, they have walked away from, in my opinion, the state legislatures have walked away from state universities, and the students, much to my chagrin, have basically been left with -- holding the bag. and i wonder why that has not been, why the state legislatures have not been criticized for that. and if you agree, mr. vedder, that they have walked away from

their responsibility to educate their kids in their states. host: gary, thanks for the call. guest: well, it is absolutely true what you said, that governments are putting up a much smaller percentage, financing a much less, smaller percentage of the total bill for going to college than was the case a half-century ago. what has happened with wisconsin, which, by the way, is a wonderful school. i agree with you. i have been on the campus many times. but what has happened in medicin madison and wisconsin hs happened throughout the country. there has been a decline in public support for hiring. gallup polls with other similar, that thereolls, show is a declining public support for colleges. there is a disenchantment with

colleges. arei suspect legislators picking up on that, and they like to put their money where it will win them votes come up be popular with them, and they are finding that colleges are a little less appealing than they were 40, 50 years ago. added to that, there are some people that feel, and i think there is some truth to this, that the increased federal government role in financing education has led state governments to feel sort of like oh, we do not have to do much more than we used to, we can be sort of modest in our support, because the fed looks at the oak of the spending, and andrew they had, by their role with the pellnt loan program, the grant program, student tax credits and so forth. host: does that mean loans are too easy to come by these days?

guest: i think anyone can get a loan, practically. once, student loans were limited. 60 or 70 years ago, we did not have the program at all. the first federal program was the g.i. bill that came in 1944, sort of as a deferred compensation for veterans who had served us in world war ii. ,nd that program then led to after the sputnik scare of the 1950's, we put in a few of the loan programs to support science and the s.t.e.m. disciplines. what we have to take him out of the higher education act of 1965 and was modest in size at first. the extent of the current size for a while in limited to very low income kids.

anyone canlmost borrow money, some of it is so-called unsubsidized loans, but almost anyone can get at least some money from the federal government. people, we have a lot of , 8 million or so, who have $50,000 or more borrowing from the federal government right now. host: jane is next in north palm beach, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. you, ande word for that is social engineering. there has been an abrupt shift, in my opinion, in the policies toward higher education. my first two kids got a lot of scholarship money. they were very well prepared and everything, so there was kind of that push for the schools to get -- especially my second oldest child. and now -- she is 18.

applications and everything, and she was actually more qualified than my second child, and she got absolutely nothing. it is very discouraging to the kids, because it has been happening. and i work with low income people, so this is in no way a racial statement at all, but i can tell you that if you're not in a minority status, or most recently, be undocumented or the dream kids, all these other kids, they are throwing money at you. so unfortunately, if you look at them, as i said, social engineering. this is not just something that is happening by accident. it has been, like, 10 years. the kids who are adults going to college, the kids who are going

there, and everything that is subsidized and they get all the grants of everything, all of a sudden, overnight, if you are middle class and you're not in some social subcategory, some kind of a category that they are trying to fill the slots with, don't even bother. so in 10 years, you will see a massive shift in the lawyers, the doctors, getting grants for science or whatever. host: we got your point, jane. mr. vedder? guest: yes, this has become a huge issue. it has been an issue that has come up. the varsity blues admission scandal recently, and more recently, just a couple of days ago, the college board created something called the adversity score, which is designed to tell the colleges and universities, where kids take the s.a.t., where they submit those scores to, to tell

them -- are the kids living in a condition,economic commissi and so forth, low income, high crime, and so forth. so there is a growing feeling on the college park that we need to look beyond the merit of the student in terms of their academic preparation and look more at their background, and that college is a great equalizer. we should use college to help low income people get ahead, and we are not aggressive enough on it. there are many different aspects of that. concern, i caller's think, that we may be going way overboard in that we are losing sight of the fact that we want kids to go to college who are likely to succeed, who are likely to learn something, who are likely to perform well in and we later in life,

believe in merit. america is a nation built on merit. unfortunately, people in low income groups, racial have a small disadvantage. there is a greater issue in higher, sort of an equity versus sense, that in a if we push for equal opportunity to aggressively, we will lower academics an standards. and i think that is an issue. there is a big lawsuit that many of you know about developing harvard university, the judge is considering the merit, the arguments regarding alleged discrimination against asian students. asian students are

disproportionately underrepresented. they are underrepresented, it is alleged, in the harvard class. because they are asian. that is the argument. whether that is true or not, i do not know, but the attempt to try to equalize things, be sure that all racial groups are well represented, all ethnic groups are well represented, etc., we are compromising the concept of merit, and we are putting that at risk. and i think that that has some possible severe negative. host: implicationshost: -- negative invocations. int: about 15 minutes left our program. pomp,howing circumstance, virginia tech university in virginia. we're talking with richard

vedder about his new book, "restoring the promise: higher education in america." take a your phone calls to discuss the future of higher education. ruby, richmond, virginia, a college graduate. go ahead. caller: i am from bay city, michigan. i went to a school where they did not think that african-americans should go to college. if it had not been for the dean of women at the junior college, i would not have ended up getting what i got. i ended up getting a b.a. and a of her degree because help. i still have my paperwork were my loan was paid off. my dad worked at the factory, my mom was a maid, but they were really smart. they did not think people can do anything -- black people could do anything but the maids and butlers. ofppreciate what the dean the junior-college did for me. i went to her funeral and everything. host: ruby, thank you for sharing. mr. vedder, what do you think about that? very: ruby is raising a

important point, which goes beyond even the point she was trying to make, i think, and that his mentors or individual faculty members, the is of admissions advisors, and so forth at these schools can be very important in determining the success or failures of students. people need encouragement, particularly people from minority backgrounds, so people from low income backgrounds or people who had a poor educational background because they went to, say, a school that did not prepare them well. the students are at disadvantages, and they need help when they go to colleges. they haveoblem that among the faculty, and i am a faculty myself, 54 years standing, we put too much emphasis on publication. article in put an some obscure journal that no one rather than sitting down

and spending more time with the students, talking with them about internships and forth.nity and so i suspect that problem is magnified for members of racial minorities, such as african americans. host: to tom in lakeland, florida, college graduate. good morning. caller: hi. good morning. i just want to say of all the people that i know that went to college, myself included, no one does what they majored in, because it is not about the , it is more of the experience, and it shows a demonstrated credibility to a potential employer that you have the ability to see a path all the way through, from inception to its conclusion.

it does not mean you are all-knowing, all learned, it just means you have the ability to learn. and by the way, if you're able to navigate through the financial aid packet, it is not an application, it is a packet, if it were not for mine, i never would have made it, because the packet is worse than doing taxes. host: tom, thank you for the call. mr. vedder. guest: that last point is particularly important. you have to fill out a form called the fafsa form that the federal government provides before you can get federal assistance. as tom said, it is very elaborate, very complicated, and there is a very good bit

of evidence that low income kids see these massive forms they have to fill out and get discouraged and often times do not apply in do not go to college. true.t point is the other point that i thought was very profound, and by the way, john, you have very good callers. you have a very intelligent audience, if i may say so. host: we think so as well. guest: it is cool. i always thought c-span was the harvard are broadcasting, as it were. but anyway, the other thing that he pointed out in his that college is really more of a screening device than anything else. colleges sort of separate the people who are disciplined, who are hard-working, who think, from those who are less qualified in those regards and less intelligent, to be honest,

lower cognitive skills. it is a screening device. that these of paper does not are an expert in economics or electrical engineering. there may be some vocational training involved with your college, but most of the extra earnings that college graduates get is not really from what they learned in college, it is from attributes that they have, some of which were nurtured a bit in college and added a bit in college, but in many cases, even when they were in high school. these are the leaders in the high school graduating class is going to college. the people in the bottom of the high school class or not go to college, and they are not the leaders. there are differences in human characteristics, and the college degree, some people call it the sheepskin effect. you have this piece of paper, you are automatically considered to be a pretty bright guy or

gal, and you are worth a little bit more money. host: we mentioned student loan debt in this country. that number again $1.56 trillion is the total student loan debt. the default rate on loans about 11.4%. about 60 million borrowers are in default over a year and a liquid of their loans. that represents about $101 billion worth of student loans. mr. vedder, i wonder what your thoughts are about legislation proposed by elizabeth warren and others, the debt relief that is being talked about. guest: well, i am concerned about senator warren's proposal. there are some other proposals, by the way, that i think are more interesting. but senator warren's proposal is, let's just wipe out this debt, except for very high levels -- let's wipe out debts

up to $60,000. they would wipe out something close to the order of $1 trillion of debt. borrower student bankruptcy relief act of 2019, we can show some parts of that on the screen as you continue. go ahead, sir. guest: ok. well, you know, it is a well intended action i think to relieve people who have some distress, but for one, there is an inequity problem. is a lot of people go to college, run of debt, and worked very hard to pay off that debt, and they do pay it off. while there are 11% or 12% in default, there are another group of people, in fact, a much larger group of people who do pay off their loans and so forth. and if we start save people who have loans and have been very slow in paying them off, maybe not paying them off, ok, we're going to forget your debt, that

is terribly unfair to the people, at least i think many would argue, is unfair to the people who worked very hard to pay off their loans. they did not go out to restaurants and do a lot of -- take vacations and also that they could pa save money to pay off their loans. other people did go out to restaurants and then take vacations at all, or slow about paying off their loans, we will tell the latter group, ok, you do not owe any money anymore, but the former group, the one who worked hard to pay off their loans, tough. you paid them off, but we're not going to give you your money back, as it were. so there is an equity issue there. there is also another issue of -- involved here that with future people who borrow, would they ever bothered to even think

about paying back their loans if they think there is a high probability there will be a forget this program down the road? there are some serious -- economists call this the moral hazard program. there are several issues with the war in proposal. there is another idea that is kind of interesting, and that is maybe colleges should have some skin in the game, that when a college admits lots and lots of students, who the colleges are unlikely to rise way, the colleges take them because they want the tuition money, these kids do not pa graduate from school, they do not pay off their debt, maybe the colleges should be involved, runningthe colleges are

up these, there is a scholar, alex, who proposes -- i think alex is absolutely right about this. it is an idea whose time has come. it is time to think about new way deal with this problem. host: about five more minutes with richard vedder. the book is "restoring the promise: higher education in america." his new book that we have been talking about this morning. we also talk about the future of higher education. andy has been waiting in owensboro,. kentucky. good morning. caller: good morning. , ok, our colleges, i feel like they charge way too much, and there should be a cap on what they could charge for certain was to enroll and go to college. this,on the flip side of

it starts back in the elementary, because our young people, they are not being taught any respect, and when they took the discipline out of the schools of the middle school and the high school,, i mean, unruly,, they are very and we need to get discipline back in, and they need to start working with our young people and saying hey, look, you need to start running. i have run for city commission a couple of times in owensboro, and i talked to scott, a guy who works for scott, and he said kids graduating from high school are not even prepared to work in these factories, and that is set. a lot of the young people are college material. they ought to go to a trade school, where in a trade school they could probably learn faster in a traceable than -- trade school than they could college. a lot of them are not college

equipped. host: that is andy. -- caps on tuition and whether kids are prepared to go to college. guest: well, i certainly agree with andy on the second one, the point that he was making. there are a lot of kids trying to go to college that simply do not belong to it i also agree with andy that the colleges have to take what is given to them. and what is given to them are the students that graduate from elementary and secondary schools, and we have a problem in america with that. part of the problem is the disciplinary problem. part of the problem is a learning problem. and the colleges suffer from that. as to tuition cap, i have generally been against them, but i understand the argument for them as well. economists like myself do not like to try to artificially

manipulate prices from what the market forces say, but we do not highertrue market in education, and true free market in higher education anyway, and some states are starting to cap tuition and have been doing so for a few years, and it is forcing the colleges to cut their costs. colleges are extremely wasteful in their spending. believe me. i have been with one for 54 years. the number of administrators is way out of hand. there are a lot of things colleges could do to cut costs, and it may be that it will take somebody from the outside to make that happen. it is not going to happen by internal reform. host: one more call for you this morning. in kansas city, missouri, a college graduate. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to call and just to say my counselor when we were kids taught us that they were sending you off to colleges, and

we do not all start from the same place. you are going to go to school with kids that come from prep schools that come from backgrounds that are a little more affluent, but the mind has an incredible ability to catch up with hard work. and i have to say even with what we see of people that come from very affluent backgrounds and yet still kind of game the system, there is a disadvantage that has to be addressed with individuals that do not particularly start from the same place but who still have the ability to catch up with hard work and then the country is willing to invest, and there is a return that the country can expect from individuals that have now provided that investment or receive that investment and gone on to contribute to society. host: thanks for the call pure mr. vedder, i will give you the last minute. guest: yeah, the point is well taken.

we touched on that earlier. league,ook at the ivy the average income of a kid who goes to an ivy league school is as high as $500,000, some estimate a median income of $200,000 a year. maybe we have not done enough to allow others to get into these groups and to get ahead, and that this causes problems in america in achieving the american dream, but on the other that is want a system also based on merit, so it is a complicated issue. i think the caller raised an issue that we talked about earlier, and we addressed it before. host: the book again, "restoring the promise: higher education in america," the author richard vedder with us this morning. thanks so much for your time. we enjoyed the conversation. guest: thank you. enjoyed it. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] host: and a reminder here today, coming up at 1:00, we will have live coverage of former vice president joe biden, presidential campaign kickoff rally that is taking place in philadelphia near the museum of art art there. the events beginning at 1:00, expected to go an hour and a half. you can watch it live on c-span. that will do it for us today on "washington journal," but we will be back tomorrow morning at pacific.ern, 4:00 have a great day. ♪ announcer 1: today on c-span, the