to share the securities and exchange commission. the house returns tuesday at 7:00 p.m. eastern and will vote to postpone a 2% across-the-board cut to all medicare payments until the end of the year. during the week, the house will debate equal pay for women legislation as well as a bill on workplace violence against health care and social services workers. watch live coverage of the house on c-span, the senate on c-span2 , and any time at c-span.org. or listen free on the c-span radio app. >> monday starts the third week of the trough or derek chauvin, the former minneapolis police officer charged in the death of george floyd. watch live monday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, on c-span2, online at c-span.org, or listen live on the c-span radio app. you can watch anytime on demand at c-span.org.

joining us now is associate professor of journalism richard lee. interesting class you had, project that you recently had. your students did report on questions asked at white house briefings. tell us about this project, what you ask them to do and why you did it. guest: thank you, paul. this is a seminar course i teach in media and democracy where we explore the relationship between media and democracy. one of the projects i do is called media tracking. we keep questions asked by white house reporters so that when we have a discussion on a topic, we start with some facts with some hard data. when i was looking for something to do a project on this year, since the press briefings were back on a regular basis and back

to a normal sort of briefing and the transcripts were online, i thought it would be interesting to keep track of what the press court is asking about and see how -- press corps. looking at the president's agenda. i asked the students to identify their priorities. we are in the process of we are analyzing the data to see what it all means. host: 155 questions on the pandemic and health so far this year. 131 questions on immigration, 129 on international affairs. any of that surprise you? guest: the large number of questions on international affairs surprised me. i did the first days tracking. as i was tracking, i kept seeing

all of these questions on international issues. i thought that was an aberration. but it held true throughout the month. that was surprising. i think those are important topics. host: how engaged were the students? how did they first receive it? guest: i am teaching the course online so i do not have the direct feedback. i will get more of that we start getting into the analysis. everyone jumped right on the project. i think it was something new for them to see the back and forth white house briefings. that helps them understand the dynamics between the press corps and press secretary. host: what kind of questions do they ask you along the way? guest: they sensed some of the

journalists' frustrations. you can see there were follow-ups. especially when it is in the transcript, when the answer to the question or response is not really an answer to the question . i think that was something that -- you could see it clearly when you looked at the transcripts. host: we are talking with richard lee. did you note biases within those white house press briefings? guest: we did not really track the questions by he was asking them. -- by who was asking them. that might be something we dig a little deeper, we might look at. at this point, we just have the questions, topic of the question. host: what are the thoughts of yourself and your students on

the role of the white house press corps these days? guest: they are still doing a good job and you have to keep in mind that the job of the press is not just to ask questions about what the public is interested in. it is to ask questions about issues that are important. it goes back to what walt whitman wrote. when i look at immigration being right up there, the second most number of questions, and when you look at opinion polls, when the public is asked what they feel is the most important issue for the president and congress to address, immigration is in the middle. that is important. things that are happening in china, korea, ukraine are affecting us. host: pew reported earlier, top

priorities for the white house and congress, 80% folks say strengthen the economy. 63% say improve the political system. any reflection on those numbers, professor of? guest: they are pretty consistent. the economy was way up there. the economy is at the top of every election in terms of issues. health care with covid, not surprisingly, that was up there. you had a general health category. when i looked at some of the breakdown, 90% of the questions on health for about the pandemic, vaccines, getting kids back to school. host: the students watch these briefings live? did that you c-span video or

other networks? -- did they use c-span video or other networks? guest: a few of them watch them live. for many of them, it was the first time they watched a briefing. if you go to the briefing section of whitehouse.gov, there is the press briefing -- some of them had questions that they wanted to make sure they were tracking the right briefing. host: do they have thoughts on the team and how they are performing at this point? guest: not on this. we have been spending a lot of time looking at the biden administration's media policy and there has been some pushback from journalists that it is to controlled. -- too controlled. they seem to agree with what

they are reading. they are controlling the message and controlling access. host: let me ask you about your own background. you are a journalism professor and a former journalist yourself. you have spent a lot of time working in this area. tell us about your background. guest: i did a number of things as a reporter. i was a statehouse reporter in new jersey for a number of years. i worked for the news tribune. i later did -- i worked initially for the state legislature and worked in the governor's office for two governors as deputy director of can indications. -- communications. host: what do you think about the future of these briefings? do you think they matter? and will continue to matter?

guest: they definitely matter and we missed them during the trump administration. the press secretary is the voice of the president and it is important that the press be able to ask questions about issues that are important. and they relay them to the american people. host: what other takeaways do you have from working with the students? guest: i was a little surprised that race was not -- there were not as many questions about race. it may be if you think about the nature of press briefings, maybe questions on race are not the type where you can ask and get a brief response. i looked at the numbers in the stories the students tracked and

if you look at them in terms of percentage, it is not like a large percentage of questions were about immigration. it is about 13 or 14%. looking at what the press corps does versus what the public is defining as priorities, the press corps asking -- touching on important range of topics. host: richard lee, interesting research project you have. thank you for coming on >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. including media,. >> the world changed in an instant. internet traffic soared, and we never slow down. schools and businesses went virtual and we powered a new reality because the media is

built to keep you ahead. >> media, support c-span as a public service. along with these other television providers. >> coming up live monday on c-span, u.s. house meets at noon eastern for pro forma session with no legislative business schedule. then at 1:00 p.m., a discussion on supply chain vulnerabilities, hosted by the woodrow wilson center. at 5:30 p.m., house republican conference chair liz cheney talks about the future of the republican party the conservative movement at georgetown university's institute of politics and public service. and on c-span2 at about 10:00 a.m. eastern, the trial continues for former neapolis police officer derek chauvin, who is charged in the death of george floyd. at 3:00 p.m., the u.s. senate turns to continue work on nomination of the deputy

transportation secretary, the number two post undersecretary pete buttigieg. >> weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every week on c-span3. monday night, the space shuttle's 40th anniversary. on april 12, eight -- 1990 one, the space shuttle lifted off from florida's kennedy space injury -- center with two crew aboard. we start with the nasa film, where dreams come through, and much of the work depicted in the film relates to the fledgling space shuttle program. then two years away from its first mission. watch monday beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. c-span shop.org is c-span's new online store. oh there today to order a copy of the congressional directory, a compact spiral-bound book with

contact information for every member of congress, including bios and committee assignments, also contact information for state governors and the biden administration cabinet. order at seek -- c-span shop.org. ♪ >> for the first time. there was a tv set on. a commentator was saying, lyndon b. johnson