captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% in april, but job growth was down a little from march. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the newshour tonight, we analyze the new numbers, and assess the prospects of work for college graduates and other young people entering the job market. >> woodruff: then, ray suarez examines the apparent easing of the diplomatic crisis between beijing and washington over a blind activist, as chinese officials said today he can apply to study abroad. >> brown: margaret warner talks with author peter bergen about his new book "manhunt," a look at the long pursuit and final days of osama bin laden. >> woodruff: mark shields and

david brooks analyze the week's news. >> brown: and we close tonight with a look at a national effort to engage young people at the local level through the music of marvin gaye and their own artistic expressions. >> brown: and we close we're like a broken down city. it's not just the economy that is causing cleveland the problem right now. it's the attitude; it's the struggle. we need to make a change. that's what i am expecting people to hear in our music. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: bnsf >> citi. supporting progress for 200 years. at&t and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. >> and with the ongoing support

of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: after a promising start at the beginning of the year, job growth in the united states slowed again last month. the labor department revised upward the number of jobs created in previous months, but reported only 115,000 new jobs came on-stream in april. new jobs were added last month, but fewer than expected. and the unemployment rate dipped to a three-year low of 8.1%, but mainly because frustrated job- hunters stopped looking. speaking at a virginia high school today, president obama focused on some positive signs.

>> after the worst economic crisis since the great depression, our businesses have now created more than 4.2 million new jobs over the last 26 months. >> woodruff: but the president did acknowledge that challenges remain. >> there's still a lot of folks out of work, which means that we've got to do more. >> woodruff: minutes after the april jobs numbers were made public this morning, the presumptive republican presidential nominee, mitt romney, appeared on fox news and criticized the president, calling the numbers very disappointing. >> we should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month. this is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery. >> woodruff: beyond the latest government numbers, a new report from the pew charitable trusts captured a portrait of long-term unemployment. it found nearly 30% of unemployed americans have been jobless for a year or more. young adults are particularly feeling the brunt-- more than

one in five people between the ages of 20 and 24 have been out of work that long. that's a statistic that this year's graduating classes are hoping to avoid repeating. >> i have two interviews next week. i've had a number. no bites, so far. i'm hopeful, but a little discouraged. >> a lot of my engineering friends have had jobs since january, but many of my other friends don't have anything lined up and they plan to move back home. so, it's kind of on both sides of the spectrum. hopefully, things look up for me. >> woodruff: even those fortunate enough to have already secured a job admit the process has become more daunting. >> it's a crapshoot, when it goes down to it, because you don't know what you're going to get. but you just need one interview. so, i mean, 70, 80 resumes, you hear nothing back, you get disheartened. but just you got to keep going with it. >> in my 12 years at g.w., this has been the busiest semester for student appointments. >> woodruff: brian rowe is

assistant director of the george washington university's career center. >> the students that are graduating now, they began their college careers in 2008, when things started, you know, being really bad. so they've been bombarded with messages of... pretty negative messages about employment and the economy. so they're very concerned. they're not demoralized, but they understand that it's a challenge and that they need to do something about it. >> woodruff: for some, that's meant being more flexible when opportunities become available. >> i'll move to colorado or new mexico or wherever you have to go. but yeah, i'll go to the job. >> woodruff: and while the overall economy struggles, college seniors may actually have reason to be a bit optimistic. a survey by the national association of colleges and employers found businesses expect to hire 10% more graduates than they did last year. >> brown: for more on today's jobs report and the outlook for college grads and other young

adults, we turn to catherine mann, professor at the brandeis international business school. and paul harrington, director of drexel university's center for labor markets and policy, which advises student career-planning organizations and consults with companies on their hiring needs. well, catherine mann, not a great report this month, right. give us an overview. >> right, jeff t was a little bit soft it was certainly much less than was expected by the consensus was for 1 of 0,000. we only ended up -- 160,000, we ended up with 130 at the private sector. i think that where we really saw some softnesses with in some sectors that in the past have been the robust once. there was softness in the temporary worker category. there was softness in health. there was softness in hospitality. all of those sectors actually added about half as many jobs as they had added over previous months. on the other hand, there were some bright spots too. business professional and

technical continued to be robust. so generally speaking, not what we would hope to see at this point in the recovery, especially given the rate of growth of gdp. but some bright spots. >> brown: all right so, paul harrington you've been out, even today talking to companies. what do they tell you about what they see in hiring? >> well, i think the outlook for college grads is a little bit better this year than last year but it's still not very bright. you know, firms preferences towards hiring new workers are not strong. they tend-- actually we are seeing a lot of growth in the hiring of older workers compared to young people. and the overall job outlook for kids is better than last year but just not great. >> brown: staying with you, are there certain majors or disciplines more in demand now? anything that gives us hints about the broader economy? >> yeah, i think there are. when you take a look, where we really had very strong

demand in my mind is around the information technology, computer science areas. you know, these really strong math proficient areas. you find across-the-board demand, health, health firms, insurance companies, finance firms, strong demand for graduates out of those very complicated information technology programs, computer science programs. and i also think engineering demand as we have seen that rebound in manufacturing, that has firmed up a lot as well. so those math-dominant fields really have been pretty strong. but for kids coming out in business, even the health fields now, we're seeing weakness. so outside of those really math proficient, engineering, information technology fields, we're not seeing a lot of strength. >> brown: well, catherine mann are you on a college campus as well as an economist locking at these thing, right? how has the downturn in the last few years impacted young people? who is getting work, what kind of work and when they get it? >> well, i think first we have to recognize that the unemployment rate for college graduates is at 4%. and that's half of the

overall rate for the economy. so we have to remember that going to college and coming out with a degree that's useful, you know, really prepares you for a job market that perhaps is soft for everybody else. so you know, stay in school, it still is the right thing to do in order to get a job. but i think what we need to be telling our graduates, is that there isn't a hiring season in june. you don't come out of college and say now i am ready to take a job. i think you have to be looking for your job starting much earlier, firms are simply not inventorying workers. they absolutely are to the going to have people hanging around looking for something to do. they will hire a worker when they get a contract. and then they need a worker right away. and what that moans is you have to be looking all the time. you have to be working your networks all the time. you need to be working with your alumni office. who works at the company that you might want to work at. because all these jobs that

become available and are open internal to a company, it's people who are already there, who know about those job openings. if you are in contact with them, you have first dibs. and that's the way that people are getting jobs these days. >> brown: well, paul harrington, do you see the young people you work with understanding this? do you see them adjusting to this? >> yeah, i think it's fair. first you need to point out that the overall unemployment rate of 4% for college grads, this is among college grads over the age of 25. the mall employment rate, the fraction of all kids coming out of college who don't get a job in the college labor market is between 35 and 40%. for those youngsters you are seeing them move into traditional high school labor market jobs in retail, insurance and the like. i think there is this realization among kids that they have to be more career-focused. when terms are engaged in hiring activity these are looking for somebody who is focused and directed. and who has a lot of work experience. so bringing, trying to figure out how to use your

kuric lar and extracurricular experiences toward focusing on a postgraduate outcome i think is absolutely essential now. we have too many kids streeting college like four years of camp. >> brown: mall -- >> mall employment. >> a case where kids graduate from college but don't get ago to-- access to a college job. so they get a much lower paying, retail, part-time salesmen, maybe a clerical position in an insurance company. when you lock at their experience experience, the gets who get professional, technical, managerial high level sales job in the college level market, the kids who work in these noncollege labor market segments, their earnings differences are 65, 70%. our research we find all the gains for college de groh accrue to those individuals that get a college later market job. >> brown: so catherine mann that leads into this fear that people who start late have a hard time ever making it up, right, in the job market? >> well, there are problems.

i mean you know, it's absolutely the case that your first job does matter. and the first job that you have can make a difference for your career earnings over your lifetime. so it does mean that when you go into the job market, you have to have skills that companies want right away. the notion that a company is going to train you for a job in that company, that's, you know, that's 1970s. and it may be very sad, but it in fact is very true. so having skills that are applicable in the workplace and presenting yourself as this is what i can do for you right now, is exactly what has to happen in this college labor market. >> brown: all right, catherine mann and paul harrington, thank you both very much. >> woodruff: for more on the jobs numbers, check out our web site for paul solman's own measure of unemployment, which includes the underemployed. that's on our "making sense" page. still to come on the newshour: chinese activist chen guangcheng's deal; the final days of osama bin

laden; the weekly analysis of shields and brooks; and young artists ask "what's going on, now?" but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: today's jobs report sent stocks plummeting on wall street. the dow jones industrial average lost 168 points to close at 13,038. the nasdaq fell nearly 68 points to close at 2,956. for the week, the dow lost more than a percent; the nasdaq fell nearly 4%. in pakistan, a teenage suicide bomber killed some 20 people today at a marketplace near the afghan border. five of the victims were local members of the pakistani security force. more than 40 people were wounded. the explosion damaged over a dozen shops in the town of khar. rescue crews searched through the rubble for people trapped inside. the pakistani taliban claimed responsibility. syrian forces opened fire on protesters in aleppo today, killing a teenager and wounding almost 30 others. the violence comes a day after four people died in a government raid on the main university there. activists reported today's anti-

government demonstrations in aleppo were the largest the city had seen since the uprising began last year. mass protests also broke out elsewhere across the country. fresh violence erupted in egypt today as thousands of people in cairo demonstrated against military rule. armed forces fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds. one soldier was killed and at least 373 people were wounded. members of hard-line islamist groups also joined today's rally to press the ruling generals to hand over power to civilian control. egypt's military council later imposed an overnight curfew around the site of the clashes. a pair of car bombs exploded overnight in russia's north caucasus region, killing at least 13 people. more than 130 others were injured. the twin blasts went off outside a police station in the russian republic of dagestan. the first explosion occurred when a car pulled up to the station for an i.d. check. the second blast came minutes later as investigators, troops, and firefighters rushed to the scene. local officials feared islamic militants were behind the

attacks. they frequently target police in the area, but major bombings are rare. the obama administration unveiled new standards today for companies that drill for natural gas on public lands. the companies will be required to disclose chemicals used in their hydraulic fracturing operations. the process, known as "fracking," involves injecting water, sand and chemicals underground to break up rock holding oil and gas. interior secretary ken salazar said the new rules would allow for expanded drilling while protecting public health. industry groups contend the process is already regulated by the states. defense secretary leon panetta reminded american troops today to live up to the strict standards of the u.s. military. his remarks follow a series of incidents involving u.s. forces that include the massacre of 17 afghan civilians, and images of marines urinating on dead insurgents. panetta told soldiers at fort benning, georgia, such misconduct could have harmful consequences. >> those headlines impact

the mission that we're engaged in. they can put your fellow service members at risk. it can hurt morale, they can damage our standing in the world. and they can cost lives. >> sreenivasan: panetta also warned that america's enemies could seek to turn such incidents in their favor at the very moment they are losing the war. rapper and hip-hop pioneer adam yauch died today after a lengthy battle with cancer. yauch, also known as "mca," was a member of the popular hip-hop trio the beastie boys. for over 20 years, the group fused together rock and rap to create innovative sounds. that led to three grammy awards and the sale of over 40 million records. yauch was only 47 years old. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: now to china, as washington and beijing made progress on a deal to get an activist who suddenly became an internationally known figure out of the country. ray suarez has the story. >> suarez: as police officers remained on guard outside the

beijing hospital where chinese activist chen guangcheng remains in treatment, the blind lawyer's wish to come to america received a positive signal from the chinese government. after three days of behind-the- scenes talks, chen will now be allowed to pursue a visa to study abroad. he's been offered a post at new york university. the concession was announced by chinese foreign ministry spokesman, liu weimin. >> ( translated ): chen guangcheng, as a chinese citizen, like other citizens, can apply to study abroad by normal means, and can go through the relevant procedures with the relevant departments. i have no further information. >> suarez: this seemed to point to a quick close of the eight- day diplomatic crisis that threatened to sour u.s. china relations, and all but eclipsed a visit to beijing by u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton and treasury secretary timothy geithner, as evidenced by a q&a with journalists in beijing today. >> madam secretary, it won't surprise you, i think, to get

the questions that you're about to get from me, which all have to do with the elephant in the room that's been dogging us. >> suarez: for the first time since arriving in china, after two days of strategic talks, clinton spoke publicly about chen. >> let me start by saying that, from the beginning, all of our efforts with mr. chen have been guided by his choices and our values. in that regard, we are also encouraged by the official statement issued today by the chinese government confirming that he can apply to travel abroad for this purpose. over the course of the day, progress has been made to help him have the future that he wants, and we will be staying in touch with him as this process moves forward. >> suarez: a previous deal between the u.s. and china to end chen's house arrest and

allow him to relocate to study in a chinese university town imploded on wednesday after chen told foreign media, in a series of emotional cell phone calls from his hospital room, he feared for his safety and wanted to go abroad. he spoke to the associated press by telephone this morning before the deal was announced. >> ( translated ): let me tell you, i can only tell you one thing. my situation right now is very dangerous. let me tell you why-- for two days, american officials who have wanted to come and see me have not been allowed in. >> suarez: embassy staff and an american doctor were allowed to meet with him today. but even as secretary clinton left china, there are still obstacles to getting chen out of china, though u.s. officials say they're ready to grant him and his family visas as soon the chinese process his application. for more on the latest developments surrounding the activist and the big power battle of wills, we talk to jerome cohen, a professor of law

at new york university who has been working with chen guangcheng since 2003. professor, we all that your friend has been through in the last several days what was your reaction on the statement from the chinese foreign ministry in. >> i was ecstatic. i woke up feeling wonderful when i saw that early this morning. it comes out of the blue. it's perfectly timed. it's a very good statement. it's succinct. it doesn't attack the united states. it doesn't attack chen. it just says we'll treat him like every other citizen. and that's what he has wanted. he wanted an assurance that if if released from the american embassy, that he would be protected like other chinese citizens, not those who were discriminated against. >> suarez: well, as someone with a personal connection to what has become a worldwide story, do you think that this allows the two powers involved to

disengaging gracefully, let's say? >> yes, they can get on with the many other difficult problems that they have to contend with. chen can apply. i hope his application for a visa will be approved. and i hope he'll have a chance for study, repose, exchange of ideas, and it will be a stimulating, useful experience for him. >> suarez: will you host visiting scholars from other places in china and other places in asia. are you confident given what the foreign ministry has said that they intend to allow him to leave? >> i think that is what we have to infer. of course they retain their independence of judgement. they have to see the application. he doesn't even have a currently valid passport. so he's got to apply first for a passport. but i think they want to speed him and his family on

their way here as quickly as possible. >> suarez: how long would a visiting scholar post be expected to last and what might be on the menu when it's finished. have you even had a chance to think that far ahead, you and chen together? >> we have visiting scholars come to us for a month, a semester, a year. we're quite flexible. these are not students, these are relatively senior people, usually mid career. some are professors. some are lawyers. some are activists like chen who had very valuable experience and we are a come dating to their own needs and we have had very good cooperation. most of them come with funding from the chinese government. >> suarez: well, this is going to be under very different circumstances, if not to say difficult circumstances. would you expect your friend to return to china when he's done?

>> we would be delighted to have him come. the idea would be if they could come for up to a year and at that point, he'll be more comfortable with himself. he'll be more adjusted to freedom. and he'll have to decide what next. and my hope is that he will be able to go back to china and take part in not only further study, but also further participation in the law reform movement. his experience is valuable. he understands that unique conditions of the chinese countryside and its relationship to an evolving legal system. he's got 40 more years ahead of him to use. and we want to make the most of that. >> suarez: what does this incident and it may not be totally over, tell you about the evolving state of play in china regarding the ability to dissent and speak openly about your feelings

about the government there. >> the situation now is very, very serious. ever since the 17th party congress in 2007 there has been an increasingly repressive atmosphere. and while chen's problem may be solved at least for the immediate future, i worry about other members of his family. i worry about some of the people who have given him legal assistance. one of those lawyers, for example, mr. chenguan without i met threw chen about eight years ago has again been locked up. he tried visit chen at the hospitalment apparently police have taken him in and beaten him again. he's a gal ant how many rights lawyer, a fine person and a friend of mine. and i'm very concerned about him. the problem is what about those without don't have the world spotlight on them.

>> suarez: professor jerome cohen of nyu law school, thank you for talking with us, sir. >> brown: now, the american manhunt that found its target in a pakistani suburb. margaret warner has our look. >> warner: for a decade after 9/11, osama bin laden was the most hunted man in the world. this week, on the first anniversary of bin laden's killing by u.s. special forces in pakistan, more details are emerging about the operation and the relentless, often frustrated, intelligence effort that led to it. journalist peter bergen has written a graphic and gripping account of all that in his new book, "manhunt." bergen himself has been tracking bin laden since 1997, when he produced the cnn interview in which the al qaeda leader declared war on the united states. peter bergen joins us now. welcome. >> thank you, margaret. >> warner: so in all this reporting you've been doing

over a decade and in preparation for this book, what was the most startling, telling discovery you made about the hunt for this man. >> one of the most startling anecdotes that i found in the course of reporting the book was michael morel, the deputy director of the cia, several months before the operation went down, went to president obama and said to him that the circumstantial case that iraq had weapons of pass destruction was better than the circumstantial case that bin laden was living in abbottabad. so i think that is, you know, that shows the level of uncertainty that existed about the intelligencement and for people who-- we have heard this week a number of people saying essentially anyone would have made this decision. that's very easy to say sort of post facto when you know how the operation turned out. another similar kind of anecdote, michael morel and his boss, leon panetta the head of the cia an hour before the operation had a discussion that they wouldn't be surprised if bin laden was there and wouldn't

be surprised if he wasn't. >> warner: so it was, i think you wrote that the president knew the intelligence was what, 50/50 but he had confidence in the operational abilities. >> yeah. i mean he had 100% confidence in the operation. and you know, there was some percentage of people through around about how confident they were but at the end of the day you are either 100% right or 100% wrong. >> warner: now you were the only, i believe believe, western journalist to be allow mood this compound before the pakistanies dimollished it. what did that tell you about the way he was living for the last six years. >> well, he was living, i mean the first abjective that leaps to mind is squalor. the place was, they were living in a very humble way. each wife had her own little kitchen, little bathroom. bin laden, you know, there were a dozen kids and grandkids with bin of bin laden on the compoundment they were growing their own crops, raising cows, chick bes, honeybees, rabbits, you name it. it was pretty cramped

environment it felt like a makeshift but very long-term camping site. i mean the beds they had were just piece of plywood hammered together. >> warner: it sound as if it was very confined. i think you said prison of his own making. >> it was a prison of his own making because he had, you know, he oversaw the building of an extr extra-- extra-- extra floor which was for him, it had very few windows it was great for people not seeing him but it was very bad the night of the raid because he couldn't see what was going on. >> warner: this confinement in a way, is this part of what made him so hard to track. >> yeah, we faced a dilemma which is-- i mean if he had communicated with absolutely nobody, you know, he never would have been found. but he wanted to retain some control over this organization. and we now, some of the documents now which i was able to look at for this book had been publicly released demonstrated he was a micromanager and wanted to send instructions to his groupment but if he could have just stopped communicating but then woe have become even more

irrelevant than he already was. >> warner: so what, some of the most fascinating chapters i think are just b i think one is called developing a theory of the case. and just about all these people, some of whom you name and many of whom you don't at the cia an elsewhere who worked on just for years. at what point did they realize that finding a courier or the courier was the key. and then that this particular fellow known as al kuwaiti was the courier. >> i think it was a matter of deduckive logic. relatively early on 9 couriers were something they thought were important, 2002, 2003, there was a memo written in 2005 which made the analytical case that that was probably the only way we without find him or one of the key ways. but then his name surfaced but it was an all ya, and then a taching the aliases to a real name, then a taching a real name tie real cell phone and following that cell phone back to the compound. this was, you know, moring athat christie than james bond. >> warner: so there was never an aha! moment.

>> not at all. it was a very long, drawn out process. and no one, there was, yeah, there was no magic detainee who gave information that was going to lead to bin laden. there was nobody who picked up a cash reward for information leading to his capture. >> warner: or had succeeded in becoming a pole. >> penetrating al qaeda is very difficult. one of the people i quote in the book is the head of cia saying quoting a soviet was easy, saying look what are you missing. an al qaeda motivated by religious is not easy. >> warner: there was a question of whether some of the breaks, the clues came through integratio integration-- interrogation and enhanced interrogation techniques many of which have been outlawed now. you detail a number of these. what is your conclusion about that, how much, one, how much of the vital info came from interrogation. >> right. >> woodruff: of captured al qaeda figures. and two, how much of that

was through the abuse of some called tortured. >> i have a chapter in the bock and there is ammunition for both sides of the debate. some people were coercively interrogated, gave up useful information about the courier that lead to bin laden. other people were coercively interrogated gave up information about the courier. like khalid chic mohammed and one other guy. at the end of the day, the interrogations produced some useful television but the other piece of the puzzle, and incredibly important piece was given by a foreign country that the cia wouldn't name but maybe pakistan in terms of identifying this guy's real name. the national security agency tracked down the location of this guy's cell phone so that signals intelligence and human intelligence, spies on the ground who followed this guy back to where he lived. so that is nothing to do with interrogations of any kind. >> warner: speaking of pakistan you write very compellingly here that in thinking and trying to decide whether to launch this raid, the challenge,

the thorniest questions confronting president obama and his team were as much political having to do with pakistan as they were technical, operational. >> sure. well, you know, i have had an on the record interview for the first time with admiral mullen, admiral chairman of joint chiefs and he said president obama was the person who said the premium is not on keeping pakistan happy. the premium is on getting our guys out and making this operation as big as necessary to do that. because initially the operation was conceived of doing it in a slightly smaller farx or actually much smaller fashion without as many backup helicopters and backup men, and obviously that was good because when the helicopter went down there was a quick reaction force that came in. >> warner: a couple of critics have criticized this book or part of this book in saying you were, they thought you were too quick they didn't use that word, but to accept the idea that the pakistanis didn't know

that he was living in their midst. do you, how confident are you of that? or do you think it's still a question that remains to be answered. >> it's impossible to prove negative. we recovered of,000 documents bin laden wrote in the six years he was there and if there was a smoking gun we would know it. and we would reveal it publicly because our relations with pakistan. >> warner: we meaning the united states. >> yeah, because it was not that our relation mrs. so good that we would keep that back. i talked to multiple people who read the documents and they say there is nothing there also deduckive logic, bin laden was disciplined, paranoid secretive guy. there were people live on that compound who didn't know he was there he wasn't going to clue in anybody who didn't need to know. al qaeda tried to kill pakistani president musharraf in 2003. there was no love lost between these groups. >> warner: well, peter bergen, fascinating book, the awe for of "manhunt" thank you. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: and to the analysis of shields and brooks-- syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist david brooks. gentlemen, welcome. so we have just been hearing the bin laden story, this was the anniversary this week of his killing, the white house, the president observed it by going to afghanistan and then his campaign, david, ran an ad pointing to the president's decision to go take out bin laden. what do you make of the white house handling, and the campaign handling of this. >> i thought they went a little far and then they did brian williams nbc interview and the situation room. i think he deserves credit, it was a serious accomplishment and as peter bergen gives you 9 impression, the intelligence community was ambivalent. it strikes me the intelligence community was a lot more confident there were wmds in iraq than about this. so the president has to operate in this zone of incredible uncertainty. and he made the right call. and i thought it was

perfectly fine to brag about that. i think it's perfectly fine to jump around in the end zone and say high, i i did it you are running for president, maybe they go a little over the top sometimes am what i didn't think was good was when the campaign ran this ad where they had bill clinton very effectively talking about the decision he tookment but then they jam in this negative ad using a quote from mitt romney from five years ago taken out of context which he has amp find many times to explain what he was thinking, they take it out of context and attempt to get a jab. and that is just the normal gangland campaign thinking, taking what is a good moment and then cheapening it with a stupid and cynical political jab. so that i would fought them on. >> woodruff: how do you size up the way they handled it, the white house and the campaign. >> i thought the president was totally appropriate. i thought it was a substantive agreement he had with president karzai. obviously president karzai want, the united states wanted. the war sun popular, remains unpopular. but i thought the president handled it well it was a

substantive trip. i didn't see any end zone dance. i didn't see any spiking of football, whatever jargon they wanted to use. i thought was totally appropriate. we totally-- is it only eight years ago that top gun landed on the u.s.s. abraham lincoln. george w. bush came out, perfect sunlight you will recall, as the white house referred to it, magic light at that magic moment with a mission accomplished sign, some 6,000 deaths earlier before iraq and afghanistan took that many american lives. and that was the sort of a magic moment. i thought that was spiking the football. silliest statement of the week was mitt romney's statement that anybody would have done it. it was just-- we heard peter bergen in his interview with margaret. david has corroborated it, anybody who has even reported on this remotely knows that there was a great division inside. wob bob gates who served for six presidents said this is one of the guttiest decisions i've ever even

seen a president make, you know that its with a tough call. and for mitt romney said jimmy cart wear have done it jimmy carter made as tough a call as any president has ever made with his attempt, failed tragically, the deaths of eight american brave warriors, to rescue u.s. hostages in the, held by the iranians in the u.s. embassy. i would add, i do think it was the ad was a cheap shot. on romney. you have got a positive that is the kind of thick you bring up in a debate. i mean if romney then, in the course of a debate says you know, anybody would have done it, this, and that, then you turn and you say then why did you say this and let him explain it. but it took, there was an affirmative, positive achievement of barack obama. why make it petty and smaller by taking a cheap shot at romney. >> woodruff: what about anybody would have done it piece of this. >> yeah, i agree with tham. i think it's impossible to know until you are there. you know, you can prepare, i

don't care what you have done in business, what you have done previously in life. as i say, government is operating under uncertainty. there is not to get pretentious about this. there is a great tolstoy scene where one of the generals sends his men into the fog of the valley, he has no idea we are is sending them. you have to make these calls all the time during government. so the president, when you had all the uncertainty surrounding him, he made the call and it was an aggressive call. and sow deserves credit for that and it's just impossible to know how we have done it, when he was campaigning, how mitt romney, mitt romney done know how he would make that call. >> woodruff: the other big international story this week is china, the dissident chen guangcheng. now it look, mark, as if he is going to be a la you had to leave china. but there has been a lot of discussion back and forth mitt romney a couple of days ago said, criticized the obama administration for what it was doing with regard to human rights. how do you size up how it's

been handled by the white house? you have got secretary clinton over there, secretary geithner. >> right, judy, unlike mitt romney, i say i don't know completely. from what i do know, mitt romney spoke saying, from the-- which was sort of his disclaimer and took a cheap political shot. we have been far better served, i think his candidacy would have been far better served if he said this stops atwater's edge. we're rotting for this we want a resolution. he we want the safe removal and the safety of his family. but he didn't do that. i would say right now it looks like a fairly mature, sensible, rational resolution of what had been for the chinese an obviously humiliating experience. the division, the fault lines between the security people, their foreign service people, between the federal, central authorities and the local authorities and the real tensions there.

>> woodruff: chinese. >> chinese were raw. and i do, i think credit has to go to gary lock, to the people, the u.s. ambassador china to secretary clinton, and to the chinese people involved, the chinese folks involved if, in fact, this is the answer that it looks to be right now. >> woodruff: but at the time, well to the put but at the time mr. chen was released from the embassy there was some question about whether that was the right thing to do. >> there was certainly a fumble in the middle there, letting him out, maybe to the being able to get him back. and so that was clearly a fumble. but i do think it's in the context of really six or seven years from the bush administration and the obama administration of pretty good policy toward china which made this moment apparent moment possible. because while we've been tough with china, i think one of obama's greatest foreign policy achievements is stationing troops in australia, making sure that we're going to be in the pas civic to counterbalance

china. that's pretty tough an tough all along the line. at the same time, being subtle and mature about various things so that the liberals in the chinese regime who want to have friendly relationships are not put in the corner. they have some power. they can exercise their influence and they can apparently do the thing which will help american chinese relations. and so it's been a pretty complicated set of policies i think over the past eight years which make this sort of deal possible, even in pretty difficult circumstances. >> woodruff: but in terms of how they have handled this incident. >> yeah, i think reasonably well. it's a characteristic of our policy that we have two tracks. we have what you might call the quitener track which is economic, which is pretty friendly. and then the clinton track which is diplomatic and military which is a lot less friendly. but so we're managing both those tracks and we haven't had them crash into each other. >> we have major interests in common. we want their help on iran. we want-- we want their help on syria. we want their help on north korea. i mean there are major economic.

there is an old line, judy, that says a banker can write a dozen bad poems and nobody says anything about it but one poet writes a single bad check and he's in trouble. i mean they are our banker. don't forget that. they keep the lights on, the chinese do. so it's not a totally equal relationship when you approach it from secretary geithner's point of view. >> woodruff: well, speaking, you bring me around to the economy. i will ask you the economy i-- question i ask you every month at the beginning of the month and that is when the unemployment numbers come out. david, more jobs were created in april, but not as many as everybody wanted. what does this is a about the economy. what is the effect on the campaign. >> let me get out what i have been saying for the last four years. which is first of all, the financial crisis it takes a low-- to recover. i say it on a monthly basis, i should say answer a, and there it is. the bad news is that the percentage of americans unploimd is -- employed is at a 30 year low, but the second thing to be said is that this suggests that it's not just the cyclical stuff.

there really are structural problems. a lot of people for demographic and other reasons leaving the workforce. a lot of unskilled jobs. i talked to somebody in the trucker industry, you can't find truckers. can't find people, even $50,000 a year jobs, take the skilled blue collar jobs, there just aren't people with those skills. we've got those structural problems. we've got overhanging uncertainty impingeing a lot of aggressive investment. we have uncertainty about health care. a a r09 entax code so to me what frustrates me. we are having big debates over what spending would help short term but over the last four years knowing we are in for a long problem, why hasn't there been and why in this campaign isn't there huge debates over tax reform, over entitlement reform, over middle class stagnation. in this debate we have seen it go into student loans and other stuff but pretty small compared to this size economic problem. >> woodruff: but romney criticized, you know, the numbers were out. and governor romney was critical of the president. we're going to see that as

long as the numbers, but what about, david's point why aren't we having this bigger debate about -- >> i think, i hope it will be forthcomingment i think it is going to be inevitable at some point. i just point out that these are disappointing and really bad numbers politically for the president and the democrats, make no mistake about it. i can recall, judy, in the great recession of 1982. when president reagan was in office and he was campaigning in texas for jim collins, republican nominee for the united states senate against lloyd benson. and the dow jones had been way down. and he cheered the fact that the dow jones was up some 30%. and had broken a thousand that day. and unemployment was 5910 boy 4% and the republicans got wiped out including jim collins that november. it isn't the economy, stupid, it's jobs. it is jobs. jobs, jobs. that's what it is. i mean don't talk about it as some democrats are. oh, dow jones did a five year high, and manufacturing

hiring is 9 highest since 1993. corporate profits are up, no. when americans look at the economy, it's the seminal experience of the great depris it is unemployment and jobs that they look at. >> well, governor rom know said today we need, the country needs to have 500,000 jobs being created every month in order to keep up. >> point out to governor romney that in the entire history of the bureau of labor statistics, there had been five months in history where 500,000 jobs were created. now maybe he's got a secret and i look forward to hearing about it. >> to be fair f this were nonfinancial service recovery and we were in a normal curve, we would be producing 400,000 and growth would be 4 or 5%. it would feel much different if there were a nonfinancial recovery. but the point is, the productivity of the american economy is doing pretty well. companies are doing a good job of producing stuff. they were just not using people to do it. and so that, that is the

structural problem so who has an answer for that. well, i wish i knew. i don't know. but that is a tough one. >> that say terrible quandary, we are producing the same amount of goods and services we did with 5 million fewer workers. this is a real challenge. >> woodruff: we're always going to need the two of you to talk about the news at the end of every week. we can't do it with anything other than the two of you. >> machinery, try machinery. >> mark and david, thank you. >> brown: finally tonight, reaching young people through music, media, and a social message. >> ♪ living with the facts the few that i know ♪ i start to wonder where the blue skies go ♪ how can i move forward in this cycle of fear? >> brown: on a recent spring afternoon, these cleveland students were rapping the problems of their city and, in many cases, their own lives. >> ♪ i stood up for change but

no one's there ♪ i look into the sky hoping god hears... >> brown: they're part of a ten- year-old progressive arts alliance, one of a dozen groups around the country that's teaming up with the john f. kennedy center for the performing arts in washington, d.c., in an effort called "what's going on now?" >> ♪ what's going on... >> brown: the reference, of course, is to the famous song and album released by marvin gaye 40 years ago that brought social problems of the day-- poverty, drug abuse, vietnam, pollution and more-- into popular music. >> ♪ what's going on... what's going on... >> brown: the kennedy center wanted to challenge young people now to harness today's technology to address today's problems. the responses, many featured on the web site whatsgoingonnow.com, include

performance, poetry, photography, video, and music. a contemporary music star, john legend, is helping lead the national effort. >> i think there is a lot of frustration out there, particularly among young people who are graduating from college and can't find a job, have all these massive student loans to pay back. and they sense that the american dream is in jeopardy, to some degree. their sense of fairness and equal opportunity that america promised feels like it's slipping away. >> so what we discussed was trying to pull in elements of the timeline with the the media, and then with actually listening to marvin's music. >> brown: for the cleveland students, the project meant getting together after school,

sometimes into the night, to craft their message. high school junior diandre byfield says, without artistic outlets in his life, he may have headed in the wrong direction himself. now, he wants to help redirect other young people. >> we're a broken down city. it's not just the economy that is causing cleveland the problem right now. it's the attitude, it's the struggle of just seeing your mom on drugs or seeing your father locked up in jail. we need to make change. we need to stand up and say, "okay, i'm not going to just sit down and watch tv on my couch. i'm going to go out to cleveland and go help out some people." that's what i'm expecting people to hear in our music. >> brown: daniel gray-kontar, an artist and educator working with the students, says the project is also intended to help them learn about the messages they're bombarded by daily. >> it's a critical media literacy piece, so what young people are learning is, number

one, what media is teaching them that they may not recognize on the surface, but how to look deeper into all sorts of media. and then once they can do that, they are able to then produce media. so we like to say that it's really counter-hegemonic, which, broken down, means that it's empowering instead of disempowering for them. they gain agency from it, so when they look at how they are able to create, it's inspiring for them and they believe that they can make change. >> brown: at another cleveland school, orchard stem middle school, students are also participating in the project as part of their class curriculum. after spontaneously warming up with song in the school hallway... >> ♪ where is the love? >> brown: ...they packed flip cams to document some of what goes on in the public housing complex where many in the group live.

they interviewed people in the neighborhood, including the head of a social service agency that feeds the poor and homeless. several told us about problems they hope to share and fix. >> people getting laid off and they really don't have that much, but the people like that, they do try. i think we should try to help people. >> if there is abandoned houses, then there is going to be more people in the streets trying to steal stuff, and there is going to be people trying to steal from their house, and then it's just all going in a circle. >> brown: founder and executive director of the progressive arts alliance, santina protopapa, said students jumped at the opportunity to use marvin gaye's songs, in particular one titled "inner city blues", as a way to talk about their own stories. >> this is the perfect opportunity for our students to have a greater voice in cleveland. our philosophy is always to keep art-making and arts engagement relevant, and using something

like hip hop is very relevant to students. but also can be very artistically rich, which a lot of people don't associate hip hop with. there is a very specific discipline to all the art forms of hip hop. >> brown: back at the evening hip-hop session, diandre byfield ran through a song the students had written called "think cleveland". >> ♪ no time to fly high no friends in the sky ♪ 'cause all i see is drug dealers, drive-bys and people getting high ♪ stevie, where's the ribbon in the sky? ♪ all i see is white lies and pride >> brown: and this week, there he was, in washington, d.c., on a kennedy center stage... one of more than 50 students from around the country brought in to share their work and talk about very current issues, including bullying and the trayvon martin case.

>> ♪ what's going on... >> brown: and last night, the students were in the audience for a concert by john legend, soul-singer sharon jones, and the national symphony orchestra as they reprised the marvin gaye original. >> ♪ what's going on >> ♪ mother, mother there's far too many of you crying ♪ brother, brother, brother there's far too many of you dying ♪ you know we've got to find a way ♪ to bring some lovin' here today... >> brown: the kennedy center's online what's going on now project will continue to be updated with new works through the end of july. you can link to the site by going to ours. also on our web site, you'll find my extended interview with singer john legend about this project and much more. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: the labor department reported employers added 115,000 jobs in april. and u.s. and chinese officials confirmed a chinese activist

will be allowed to travel to the u.s. and before we go, a correction-- last night, we reported that twitter, the micro-blogging web site, has 24 million active users. twitter says it has more than 140 million active users. and to hari sreenivasan for what's on the newshour online. hari. >> sreenivasan: on "art beat," jeff looks at the winning designs from a competition to restore three areas on the national mall. plus, tonight's edition of "need to know" features "the view from main street," how a small town in washington state is dealing with the tough economy. find a link on our web site to theirs. all that and more is at newshour.pbs.org. judy. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. "washington week" can be seen later this evening on most pbs stations. we'll see you online, and again here monday evening. have a nice weekend. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪

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