plus, a new ken burns' documentary 10 years in the making takes on the people and politics of the vietnam war, and its lessons for today. >> i think a lot of the divisions that we experience today had their seeds in the vietnam conflict and we haven't really gotten over them. >> sreenivasan: all that and

more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions:

>> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: there's not a full-scale deal yet, but it looks like one's in the works. the president talked with top democrats last night on replacing daca, the obama initiative that shielded youthful migrants from deportation. that, in turn, touched off a long day of verbal maneuvering. john yang begins our coverage. >> yang: leaving the white house to survey hurricane irma damage, president trump said he wants to find agreement. >> well, we are working on a plan, subject to getting massive border control, we are working on a plan for daca. people want to see that happen. you have 800,000 young people brought here, no fault of their

own. >> yang: later, in florida, mr. trump said even a though a border wall, a signature campaign promise, doesn't have to be in a daca bill, it's still a requirement. >> yang: the president talked about the way forward on daca over dinner wednesday night with democratic leaders nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. an open mic on the senate floor captured schumer talking about the dinner. >> he likes us. he likes me, anyway. >> here's what i told him-- i said, 'mister president, you're much better off if you can sometimes step right and sometimes step left. if you have to step just in one direction, you're boxed. he gets that. >> yang: then, speaking for public consumption, schumer was measured in his optimism. >> there is still much to be done. we have to put meat on the bones of the agreement. details matter. >> yang: on capitol hill, the challenges to ultimately agreeing on those details were evident. democrats focused on mr. trump's

commitment to daca. >> it was a very positive step for the president to commit to daca protections without insisting on the inclusion of or even a debate about the border wall. >> yang: republicans focused on stemming the tide of undocumented immigrants. >> if we don't fix problems we have with border security and enforcement, we would only fix daca. we're going to have another daca problem a decade for now. >> yang: reaching a final deal is also complicated by divisions among republican lawmakers, especially in the house. after initial reports, representative steve king of iowa, an immigration hardliner, tweeted: "trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. no promise is credible." but, representative pete king of new york told the conservative freedom caucus: "trump base is the american people not a small faction of obstructionists." criticism from conservative

commentators was brutal: breitbart news, run by former trump advisor steve bannon, accused the president of "caving." and, ann coulter tweeted: "if we're not getting a wall, i'd prefer president pence." administration officials say the president's recent alliances with democrats are strictly pragmatic-- an approach even some staunch opponents of illegal immigration understand. >> does he have much of a choice? if he can't get things done with the republican party, then he has no choice to but sit down a talk with democrats. >> yang: democrats seem eager to respond. >> there are plenty of areas to find common ground. this is one of them. and maybe on some other issues, we won't find common ground. >> yang: the contentious issue of immigration will be a big test of how much common ground is enough to talk more about how all this is playing on capitol hill, we're joined by yamiche alcindor of the "new york times."

yamiche, welcome. always good to see you and talk to you. the president flying back on air force one from florida said, "if republicans are unable to stick together, i'm going to have to get a little help from democrats." you've been talking to republicans all day long. how did they respond to that? what does that make them feel? >> that common ground has left republicans on the hill confused and on the defense today. republicans i talked to said that they still support the president and want to see something that has to do with border security, but even a representative from the house freedom caucus told me he still is interested in having a wall built. so really the idea that democrats who don't control the white house, who don't control either house of congress, might be the people that are passing this legislation has a lot of republicans on the hill frustrated in interview after interview. people were telling me that they really don't understand why the president is in some ways going this direction, but i should say that leader mcconnell might

actually want this to happen, because if president trump owns the issue of immigration, if he is the one that then becomes the point person on this issue, he will own it if anything fails, and, of course, the last two presidents, both president bush and president obama, tried to pass immigration legislation and both failed. >> yang: i wanted to ask you about the leaders. speaker ryan said he wasn't briefed on this until after the president left for florida. leader mcconnell's statement rather snippily said, "i'm looking forward to seeing the legislative proposal." how are they responding to this? >> well, they're understandably frustrated. both of them are somewhat caught off guard. this does not look good if democrats are going to the white house and over chinese food and chocolate pie are talking to the president and making deals without republicans in the room. but paul ryan said today at his press conference, and his aides are telling "the new york times," that while the republican leaders might be

upset or even frustrated with what's going on, they're going to support the president and their members are going to have to support the president, and whatever republicans end up pentagon on the floor and whatever legislation is presented presented will have to be legislation that is supported by the president. i should say when i talked to aides for both of those leaders, they are telling me on background essentially that republican leaders are okay again with the president if he ends up owning, this because if it fails, it's his problem. so in some ways it's a double-edged sword. republicans don't want the look as if they're not part of the deal, as if they're not at the table when all these decisions are being made, but they also now understand they are protecting themselves if for some reason this falls through. >> yang: we have less than a minute left. are there any democrats who have reservations about this? >> yes, the members of the congressional black caucus and the congressional hispanic caucus and the asian pacific american caucus all met today, and the members of the congressional hispanic caucus

have a lot of reservation, because they're fearful they're going to have to vote for something that might enhance border security measure, and as a result hurt the parents of dreamers. i talked to the chair woman of the congressional hispanic caucus today, and she told me she would be okay with having two separate bills, one that deals spifically with the dream act and another that deals with border security. i'm told by aides that would be the case, because they would want their members to be able to vote for the dream act while not being able to vote for the border secure measure. >> yang: yamiche alcindor, thanks very much. >> sreenivasan: in the day's other news, power crews across florida worked all-out for another day, trying to turn the lights back on. by this evening, just under five million people were still in the dark. meanwhile, the confirmed death toll rose to 70, and president trump made a day trip to see storm damage up close. we'll have a full report, after the news summary. the president is also defending, again, his views on the violence at a white supremacist rally in

charlottesville, virginia. he drew fire last month for saying opposing protesters shared the blame. today, he said that since then, "a lot of people have actually written, "gee, trump might have a point.' i said you got some very bad people on the other side, also, which is true." in iraq, islamic state attackers killed at least 60 people and wounded 80 today. gunmen and suicide bombers struck near the city of nasiriyah, attacking a police checkpoint and a restaurant. burned out cars and debris littered the area after the assault. the sunni militants said they targeted shiite pilgrims. the trump administration has again extended sanctions relief for iran, temporarily, under the 2015 nuclear deal. today's announcement came as president trump said tehran continues to violate the "spirit" of the deal. in london, secretary of state rex tillerson explained it's about more than nuclear activities. he pointed to syria and other issues. >> their actions to prop up the assad regime to engage in

malicious activities in the region including cyberactivity, aggressively developing ballistic missiles and all of this is in defiance of u.n. security council resolution 2231 thereby threatening not ensuring but threatening the security of those in the region as well as the united states itself. >> sreenivasan: the administration is still reviewing whether to withdraw from the nuclear deal completely. russia has begun large-scale military exercises, putting its european neighbors on edge. russian state television showed tanks and missile launchers on maneuvers in belarus today. it said 12,000 russian troops, plus 7,000 belarusians are taking part. nato said the numbers of russians could actually be as high as 100,000. moscow insisted the war games are purely defensive. myanmar came under new international pressure today to stop the violence against rohingya muslims. aung san suu kyi, the buddhist nation's leader, faced appeals from both the european union and the united states.

separately, the u.n. pleaded for major increases in aid for rohingya refugees. some 400,000 have fled into bangladesh since late august. back in this country, motel 6 says it did not know that employees at two locations around phoenix, arizona were sharing guest lists with immigration officers. agents arrested at least 20 people at the motels, between february and august. the sharing of guest information was not illegal, but motel 6 says it has ordered the practice stopped. on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average gained 45 points to close at 22,203. the nasdaq fell 31 points, and the s&p 500 slipped two. and, the world's oldest giant panda has died in china. caretakers say the female named basi had liver and kidney problems. she was 37 years old, nearly twice the age that wild pandas usually reach. 30 years ago, basi visited san diego, on a good will tour, and drew more than two million visitors. still to come on the newshour: the slow recovery after hurricane irma.

millions still without power. the strange story of u.s. diplomats experiencing hearing loss in cuba gets weirder. making sense of how big tech companies shape the way we think, and much more. >> sreenivasan: the hurricane headlines out of florida tonight: new efforts to safeguard some of the state's most vulnerable, and, a presidential visit. william brangham begins with this report. >> brangham: with new urgency, emergency workers moved more elderly residents out of florida facilities that lost power, and air conditioning, in the hurricane. the state health care association estimated at least 60 nursing homes still lacked electricity. the state's main utility company said it's doing everything it can. >> getting hospitals and other critical facilities online is essential to getting a community back on its feet following a disaster like this one. >> brangham: all of this, after

eight patients died wednesday at a sweltering rehabilitation center in hollywood, florida, on the atlantic coast. city officials said a criminal investigation is still underway, and police executed a search warrant, but there've been no arrests. >> we're looking into the temperature inside the facility, the staffing inside the facility, and all of the conditions inside the facility in the hours leading up to this situation. >> brangham: president trump visited the state's southwestern coast, where hurricane "irma" came ashore last weekend. he got a first-hand look at recovery efforts in fort myers and naples. >> the job that everybody has done in terms of first responders, everybody has been incredible. by the way, that includes the people that live here because you see the people immediately getting back to work to fix up their homes. >> brangham: mr. trump also spoke of his well-known fondness for florida. he has an estate in palm beach. >> we are there for you 100%. i'll be back here numerous times. i mean this is a state that i know very well as you

understand. these are special, special people and we love them. >> brangham: the president was joined by first lady melania trump and vice president mike pence. together, they helped hand out food and water to storm victims in a mobile home park. to the south, parts of the florida keys remained inaccessible, but more reports emerged of extensive property damage. >> we owned a big house on the ocean which we thought was going to be safe cause it was three stories. the house basically caved in. we barely made it. >> brangham: meanwhile, the u.s. virgin islands are also in desperate need after being blasted by "irma," when the storm was at full strength. people on st. john and st. thomas have been living off military food rations distributed by u.s. marines and the national guard. >> it's not enough but it's better than nothing at all. you know, it's something that you can eat for the day. you know, it keeps you sustained for the day if you don't have much. much of the stores aren't still open. >> a royal caribbean cruise ship brought more than 500 vack wees into port today. it's loading up supplies to take to st. martin tonight. >> brangham: for the pbs

newshour, i'm william brangham. >> sreenivasan: the florida keys are still reeling from a devastating hit. they're largely inaccessible and conditions remain very difficult. to get a sense of what communities are dealing with, i spoke by phone this afternoon with the vice mayor of marathon, florida, michelle coldiron. >> we received a lot of damage. we currently do not have our electric on. we do not have water services. we do not have cell services. we don't have internet connections. so it is pretty sketchy right now. however, we do have a very collaborative structured team on the ground. they're working in collaboration with monroe county. we have a well-trained recovery effort in progress as we speak. >> sreenivasan: what are your greatest needs right now? >> right now our greatest needs are food, fuel, and water. our marathon airport has been cleared so that official planes

can arrive. they are coming in. we have c-130s that are arriving. with the needs our city is requiring to rebuild. we have the florida department of transportation is working tirelessly. the electric company is working. first responders. so we really are doing our best to get our city back open again. >> sreenivasan: are residents being allowed back in? >> no, sir, they are not yet. it is still too unsafe for them to come back in. currently we have, as you know, the florida key, we have one road in and one road out. we had to do a cut and clear to get all of u.s. 1 highway open. then the florida department of transportation had to check the integrity of all of those bridges. they're all cleared and are passable. now our crews on the ground, our city staff, marathon city staff and the utility department are going street by street to do the search and rescue and to

continue with the cut and clears. so until that is finished and until we get our electric and until we get our water running, i.e. toilets to flush, it will not be safe for our residents to return. >> sreenivasan: we've haired some -- we've heard some are angry trying to get back home, homeowners, business owners. >> i understand that anxiety level, as i too am off site. and it is very frustrating and it's heart-wrenching. however, we need to let the 2,000 volunteers that are professional volunteers, the linesmen, the first responders, we need them there so they can get our city safe to open up again. we currently... our hospital is not open right now. so if all of our residents came back in and somebody got hurt, there would be no way for them to get medical services.

even though we have set up a walk-in clinic behind marathon city hall, it is still too soon. it's four days. we need to put it in perspective. we're four days out of a catastrophe, and we're doing a remarkable job. >> sreenivasan: the folks who decided to ride out the storm, when you say there's no food, fuel or power, what's the condition of people in the shelters on the ground? >> they're doing all right. we have had some food delivery. we had fema on the ground now. red cross is on the ground now. we have a shelter set up. and we're doing distribution of food and water at the marathon high school. that's one of the stations. we do have a base camp set up in marathon. so there is some fuel and water. it's just... that is what is in high demand for all of the professional staff and folks that are there working on the ground. >> sreenivasan: michelle

coldiron, thanks for joining us. >> thank you so much. appreciate the call. >> sreenivasan: as we heard, there are still millions of people without power in florida and georgia-- close to six million as of this evening. the pace of restoring power has undoubtedly picked up speed. but it's a difficult situation given the magnitude of the outages. to help us unpack that, we're joined by scott aaronson of the edison electric institute, which represents investor-owned utilities. i have covered a few hurricanes and never seen a rollout this big with this many different agencies, this many volunteers. how's it doing? >> that's exactly right. it is a huge rollout. it was an historic storm. there is historic impact, and it's requiring an historic response. i want to update the number. you said close to 6 million outages. as of an hour ago, we're at 2.1 million outages. >> sreenivasan: are those customers or people? >> customers. so a little more on the people side, but we started with 7.8 million outages just three days ago. we're at 2.1 million now.

you see the pace of progress is really picking up. >> sreenivasan: i also realize that the last 5%, 10% are the hardest ones to get to. are there goals that you have on when everybody in this region is going to have their power back on? >> the estimated times of restoration, yes, in the less hard-hit areas, we're looking for most people by the end of this weekend by the latest. the really hard-hit areas, we're talking places with catastrophic flooding, places that hard tornadoes maybe toward the end of next week, but again, 60,000 workers from all over north america are descending on the affected area to respond to the historic storm. >> sreenivasan: give us an idea of the complexity here. we saw in some pictures, it's not just about getting the person. there there is a tangled web of things that have to happen in order for the light to come back on. >> that's right. it's an interconnected system. there are a lot of things that have to happen, if you almost first we have to make sure to the generation is on, up and running, unfortunately with this storm that was not an issue. but then we go for the biggest swath that we can possibly get.

and that's going to be the transmission system. the interstate highway system of the electric grid, if you almost then from there you get into the neighborhoods. and that's where the onesies and two sis that are going to take more time to get to. but because of the way that companies practice this and because of just the absolutely monumental effort from all across north america to come support the companies in florida and georgia, by the way, we're seeing that pace quicken. >> sreenivasan: what are the areas thatting are going to be hardest to get to. is it the edge of the keys? >> i think that's right. i think you're going to see some of those barrier island, some of the key, some of the places hit by tornadoes, some of those places hit by catastrophic flooding. there will be an instance where a customer simply can't take power because their homes have been damaged too much. and so we're seeing that in the restoration from hurricane harvey over in houston, as well. so much flooding, we're going to have the wait until the storm can accept electricity.

>> sreenivasan: it doesn't seem like it's just about the power poles. it seems like a lot of these trucks, the debris needs to be cleared before they can even get there safely. >> in this particular case with florida, mother nature had not done a house cleaning in florida in about a decade. we were seeing a lot of vegetation on the ground. in the business it's known as vegetation management. so what we're doing actually is one of the impressive things about this particular restoration, there was a need for more veg management folks in the business. we're able to bring them into the affected area, get more of them so we can start clearing that debris and that ultimately restores power. >> sreenivasan: scott aaronson, of the edison electric institute, thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: now, the latest from the northeast caribbean, where "irma" was at its worst. thousands of people are still desperate for help on st. martin and anguilla. we get more, from alex thomson of independent television news. >> reporter: the jetty's broken on this anguilla beach. most pumps are wrecked. so you fill up by hand.

but as we do, people arrive desperate to help their families over in st martin. >> it's not good news, what we're hearing about st. martin, so it's about getting my family over here right now. >> reporter: british anguillans keep saying that french st martin, up ahead, was far worse hit, but the french government responded quicker. we wanted to find out. waterside concrete buildings gutted, as if some passing army has done its worst and moved on. the entire green forest slopes burned brown by blown seawater, every leaf stripped by irma's passing. as ever, the poorest get hit hardest. >> i live in there. i was. >> reporter: what are you going to do? >> what can i do? nothing. >> reporter: are you getting help? >> how? >> reporter: government?

>> i don't know. we cannot tell you nothing. >> reporter: for now, francisco's sleeping at a friend's. his shock, bewilderment a week on, mirrored everywhere here. but here in the poorer, low lying suburbs of st. martin, the damage is worse because of two factors. first, the eye of the hurricane pushed over this whole area, which means they were hit by extreme winds from one direction, then a pause, a calm, then extreme winds from the opposite direction. but not only that. this low-lying area close to the sea was also demolished by a sea surge, at least a meter deep. the brutal calling card of the surge and tsunami everywhere here. cars thrown about randomly by the water then garlanded with debris. at the town's tennis court, thomas urigsa's vehicles, taken without consent by the joyriding

caribbean, then dumped. tell me, what's the most, your biggest problem right now? >> my biggest problem is now, that's my van to work, you no have a van, i no can work. no van no business. no business, everything done. all my material inside my van, all the things damaged. >> reporter: some may laugh at the sight of the playthings of the rich smashed by hurricane irma, smirk at the even bigger playthings if the even richer - also despatched. except, like the wrecked hotels, these mean jobs lost for local people who are not wealthy and depend on tourism. not quite so amusing. but rightly not a cleanup priority. no question damage on st martin's way worse than anguilla. but the scale of the french response is, frankly, startling. french warships patrol against piracy and secure their marine frontiers. you don't see british warships doing that. the french energy giant edf is

everywhere, trenching cables. we saw no british power company on anguilla. roads long since reopened, even bridge railings patched up, and already a vast operation to dump the continents of a shredded town and the plant to don't nothing on this scale in anguilla. and yes, people have noticed it. >> for now it's okay, now they start to clean the place, after they clean maybe today they open the gas station. >> it just start coming in, like the water, but no food yet, but i think it will come. >> reporter: the evidence of a difference in approach is all around you. this isn't scientific, but on st martin we couldn't find anybody who felt the french government had done too little too late. on british anguilla, with half the damage, it's hard to find anyone who doesn't feel that.

>> sreenivasan: headaches, nausea, ringing in the ears, even brain swelling: all symptoms of unexplained illnesses that have afflicted more than 20 american diplomats in cuba since late 2016. some have been left with speech, memory and hearing impairment. were they victims of some spy games gone awry? no one seems to know, but the f.b.i. is on the case. cuba's government is cooperating, and denies any involvement. for more on what's known, and not known, about this cuban mystery, i'm joined by associated press diplomatic correspondent josh lederman. are those descriptions accurate for the people you've been speaking with? >> those descriptions of symptoms experienced by diplomats in cuba are accurate. what we have to emphasize is they're not consistent. that isn't the set of symptoms that all of these people have had. and that's why this is such a difficult puzzle for investigators to crack. there's inconsistencies. some people heard things.

some people felt vibrations. some people felt and heard nothing at all. some people had symptoms like mild traumatic brain injury, permanent hearing loss, newsback but without a clear pattern where you can say, okay new york this circumstance this happened, investigators are really at a loss to be able to reverse engineer what might have caused this and try to stop it. >> sreenivasan: was there any consistency on where it happened? did it happen in their office? did it happen in their home, a hotel in. >> well, we know that many of these diplomats had these incidents take place in their homes in havana where they live with their spouses and families, but new details we're reporting today show that also there was at least one incident in a havana hotel. the hotel capri, which is a spanish-run hotel in downtown havana. >> sreenivasan: did this also happen to canadian diplomats? so it's not just the u.s. that were targeted? >> we know there were several canadian diplomats that were confirmed to have some type of incidents. some went back the canada. others were treated in havana.

it doesn't appear that the canadian incidents were as severe as some of the american incidents, but the fact that canadians were hit despite the close ties that canada has long had with cuba has made it more difficult for investigators to figure out, what was the motive for this attack. >> sreenivasan: we've heard about technologies like sound cannons before that militaries have used, but when you talk to scientist, what could cause something like this? >> that's really the mystery. nothing they've been able to pinpoint could cause most of this or all of it. there are sound cannons. there is an l-rad that beams high-powered song long distances, but it creates irritating noises. it doesn't cause traumatic brain injury, actually damaging brain tissue is something researchers say you can't do with sound waves. that's why the initial explanation of a sonic weapon has become so much less that onliable now that we know that there were people that

experienced mild traumatic brain injury or concussion. >> sreenivasan: and this wasn't over a large area at the same time? you describe that people almost felt like they could walk into and out of it. >> this is the part that really feels like it's ripped from a sci-fi novel. we had investigators telling us that patients would say, i would wake up in bed. i would hear this grounding, excruciating noise. i would jump out of bed, two feet to the left i wouldn't hear anything. it would disappear. i would move back, and then, bam, there it is again, as if there was some type of invisible wall that was separating part of the room from another part of the rooming. that really casts doubt on the typical speak they're you would think of in a room where the sound would go everywhere. >> sreenivasan: this also was only made public months after the incidents took place. what's the administration doing about it now? >> the administration is not doing anything different than they were doing before. the u.s. knew about this at least since late last year. they first raised it with the cubans in february.

they've been trying to get to the bottom of it. they have offered that if american diplomats don't feel comfortable serving in havana while this is unsolved, they can have a different job elsewhere, but meanwhile they're continuing to staff the embassy. they're continuing to have a full mission there, and people are going about their business while investigators continue to search every avenue to try to get to the bottom of it. >> sreenivasan: all right, josh lederman from the associated press, thanks so much. >> thanks. >> sreenivasan: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: 10 years in the making, ken burn's new documentary series, "the vietnam war." and fresh air host terry gross explains why she is on the radio and not television. but first, tech giants are increasingly under scrutiny from politicians, regulators and experts on the left and the right. some are concerned about their growing power, even calling them

monopolies. and the tension keeps building: whether over privacy, politics or the displacement of workers by automation. yet their role in contemporary life isn't shrinking. and we, too, at the newshour have worked and collaborated with facebook, google and many other platforms. a new book zeroes in on some of these criticisms. economics correspondent paul solman has a conversation for his weekly series, "making sense." >> google, facebook, amazon, apple are among the most powerful monopolies in the history of humanity. >> reporter: journalist franklin foer, former editor of the "new republic" magazine, author of the new book "world without mind: the existential threat of big tech." >> so the problem is that they have tremendous ability to shape the way that we think, the way that we filter the world the way that we absorb culture. and if they were just companies, maybe we would, maybe we shouldn't be so concerned about them, but they play an incredibly vital role in the health of our democracy.

>> reporter: "the most powerful gatekeepers" ever, foer calls them, the first, second, fourth and fifth most valuable companies on the u.s. stock market. microsoft is third. add them together, and they account for some 10% of the stock price of the s&p 500. >> and it's not just the size of these companies that we should be worried about. their ambitions are to essentially control the entirety of human existence. iknow that sounds outrageous but it's true. they're trying to stay with us from the moment that we wake up in the morning until the moment that we go to bed at night. they want to become personal assistants, they want to become the vehicles to deliver us news, entertainment, to track our health. they want to obey our every beck and call through amazon alexa and google home. they're-- >> reporter: and siri. >> and siri. >> reporter: but corporate titans have always wanted to control everything. john d. rockefeller. oil, but the trains that bring you the oil, i mean.

>> yeah. you're right, we've always had ambitious corporations, but we've never had everything stores and everything companies in quite this sort of way, and i think the crucial difference is that john d. rockefeller never really set out to control the way you think or to shape the way that you think. >> reporter: worse still, foer claims, we don't realize what's happening to us as a result. >> 50 years ago, the way that we consumed food was revolutionized. we began eating processed foods, and it seemed amazing. there were no longer pots and and then we woke up many, many decades later, and we realized that food was engineered to make us fat. i think that these companies are doing the same thing with the stuff that we ingest through our brains. they're attempting to addict us and they're addicting us on the basis of data. so, right now facebook wants to make money off of video. and so, even though i prefer words to video, it's giving me video constantly when i look at

my facebook feed. and even though i'm somebody who likes to read conservatives, likes to read people on the far left, it's essentially only giving me reads against donald trump because that's what, based on my data, it thinks that i want. >> reporter: so it's actually even funneling you. i mean, it's narrowing your vision in terms-- >> it's funneling my vision. it's leading me to a view of the world. it may not be facebook's view of the world, but it's the view of the world that will make facebook the most money. >> reporter: you use the word "pander" several times in the book, pander to our taste. but, what could be better, says economics, than that we get exactly what we want. that's consumer preference. that's the whole point. >> well, that's fine when it comes to picking out socks and diapers, but it's different when it comes to the information that we use to understand and process democracy. we exist right now in two separate political tribes, and those tribes are delivered

information that confirms their biases, and that does pander to their instincts. it tells them what they want to hear. >> reporter: well, wait a second. i've got the "new york times" here, you know. i'm subscribed. the "new york times" is a gatekeeper kind of pandering to my interests, isn't it? >> well, the "new york times," and pbs are gatekeepers of a sort. and they perform that role of gate-keeping with a set of rules and aspirations about where they want to lead their viewers and their readers. they value objective facts and they attempt to transmit a comprehensive view of the world. and they do have values. and they do lead their viewers and their readers to certain conclusions. but, it's different than these companies which are dissecting information into these bits and pieces which they're then transmitting to people. really, it's about clicks. >> reporter: a vivid example:" cecil the lion."

>> so, cecil the lion was killed by a hunter from minnesota who posted a picture on the internet, and this picture went viral. it became-- it generated 3.2 million articles according to the "new york times." >> reporter: articles, this is not. >> articles, articles. and so, every publication saw that this was a topic that was trending on facebook and they tried to glom onto it. and so everybody wanted their piece of this traffic rush. and so, even publications that we couldn't respect more, like the "new yorker" or the "atlantic," ended up writing pieces about cecil the lion. and the reason that this is important is it shows the way in which something that's kind of relatively trivial can go viral, and it also shows the way in which we have a certain amount of conformism in our culture, and my argument is that donald trump started off as a curiosity and a joke, but the media glommed onto donald trump and covered him perhaps even when he

didn't deserve coverage because he brought clicks. >> reporter: in your book you say this all began with hippies, basically. a hippy, stewart brand, "the whole earth catalog." >> yeah, so one of the fantastic things about silicon valley is that it's both the birthplace of technology and it was one of the birthplaces of the counterculture. the internet and the personal computer were going to be like the communes where we would all be networked together, and we would be able to achieve this state of global consciousness. >> reporter: and it was utterly benign. it was a benign vision, right? >> it was a beautiful vision. and so, the idea of this network in one context could be this hippy dream, but in another context could be the basis for the biggest monopolies in human history. >> reporter: and that's what we've got? >> that's what we've got. >> reporter: shortly after we talked, foer's fears appeared to be chillingly supported. the washington-based think tank"

new america," recipient of millions in funding from google, announced it'd fired scholar barry lynn, just after he criticized google's monopoly power." new america" denied that google forced the firing. but foer, once a "new america" fellow himself, wrote to say it's a prime example of the abuse of power he's worried about. finally, how do the tech companies respond to foer and his concerns? we solicited their thoughts on foer's book. amazon declined to comment on the record. google, facebook, and apple didn't respond. for the pbs newshour, economics correspondent paul solman, reporting from washington, d.c. >> sreenivasan: this sunday night, pbs will air the first of 10 episodes of the new ken burns and lynn novick documentary "the

vietnam war." it's been 10 years in the making and judy woodruff met with the co-directors at the vietnam memorial recently to talk about why this topic, and its resonance now. >> thinking about every single name here as a story. >> woodruff: that's the tall older of the latest ken burns and lynn novick documentary: "vietnam." >> just tell a few of them. >> woodruff: the team culled hundreds of hours of footage into 18. it's a flashpoint in history that's been examined countless times, but they say, is still not fully-understood. >> there's one way to think about it that there's really only one name on the wall here, which is your name, your story, your brother, your uncle, your father. that's the important thing. >> woodruff: vincent okamoto is the most highly decorated surviving japanese american veteran of the vietnam war. >> the real heroes are the men that died. 19, 20-year-old high school

dropouts. they didn't have escape routes that the elite and wealthy and the privileged had. and that was unfair. they weren't going to be rewarded for their service in vietnam. and yet in their infinite patience, their loyalty to each other, their courage under fire was just phenomenal. and you would ask yourself, how does america produce young men like this? >> woodruff: after tackling the civil war and world war ii, novick and burns vowed: >> we're not going to do any more wars! >> woodruff: but, as they realized hundreds of vietnam war veterans were dying each day, they decided to take on what they call "the most important event in the second half of the 20th century for americans." >> there's an interesting thing having done these three wars,

that the civil war and the second world war are really encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality. and that's not a problem with vietnam. and so in a way, we get it raw. nobody's going to sentimentalize vietnam. it defined who we were. it was this horrible loss. and i think a lot of the divisions that we experience today had their seeds in the vietnam conflict and we haven't really gotten over them. >> it's still with us in a very present way. we came across a quote after we finished the film that 'all wars are fought twice: on the battlefield and in our memory.' i think we're still fighting the vietnam war in many many ways. the great gift for this project was that so many of the people who lived through it are in their 60's and 70's and they're here today and they remember it very, very well and they told their stories to us in the most generous and brave way. people took tremendous risks to kind of open themselves up and just tell us what it was really

like. >> you adapt to the atrocities of war. you adapt to killing and dying you know. after awhile it doesn't bother you. let's just say it doesn't bother you as much. i was made to realize that this is war. that is what we do. this is war, this is what we do. >> woodruff: the documentary comes at the war from all sides: the divisions among americans, and the divisions among vietnamese. burns and novick say they wanted to include all voices, but avoid passing judgment themselves. >> in addition to a whole cast of american characters of every stripe, we've also got north vietnamese soldiers and vietcong guerrillas and north vietnamese civilians and south vietnamese civilians and south vietnamese soldiers and south vietnamese

diplomats. we're not putting the thumb on the scale of any kind of political agenda. we are just sharing the stories of a remarkable set of people. >> as many as 230,000 teenagers, many of them volunteers, worked to keep the roads open and traffic moving, more than half of them were women. le minh khue who left her home in the north with a novel by ernest hemingway in her backpack observed her 17th birthday on the trail. >> ( translated ): we all had to endure. the jungle was humid and we, bombs fell day and night. we women had to find a way to survive. we thought it was terrible. >> ( translated ): my brother, the seventh child in our family, joined the local resistance.

the americans came through on a sweep and killed him. another brother was ambushed while he slept. shot through the heart. >> i never considered the vietnamese our enemy. they had never done anything to threaten the security of the united states. they were off 10,000 miles away, minding their own business and we went there to their country, told them what kind of government we wanted them to have. >> woodruff: there have obviously been hundreds if not thousands of books written on this here and i'm sure in vietnam. do you think you now understand this war? >> no. i think there's something just like you can be married for years and years and years and that other person remains kind of inscrutable to the end. this is the arrogance of history and biography that we think that we can know, go into the past

and do it. everyday was a humiliation of what we didn't know. we always had not just scholars but veterans present and their b.s. meters are so fine and they would go, "you know what, i'm not so sure about that and they'd say, "in my experience, it was like this." >> woodruff: the documentary team shot about 40 times the footage they eventually used, and spoke with more than a thousand witnesses in the u.s. and vietnam. one-third of them, vietnamese or vietnamese american. research took them to almost 20 countries; facts were checked and rechecked. in addition to sorting through 5,000 hours of historical footage and photos-- one took a year to locate, they wove 120 pieces of music from the period in with original music, led by composers trent reznor and atticus ross, who did the soundtrack for hit movies like

"the social network" and "the girl with the dragon tattoo," as well as from yo yo ma and the silk road ensemble. the filmmakers say they hope that by airing this documentary, what happened will become clearer, even if the 'why' continues to provoke debate. the documentary comes out at a moment in american history when we're thinking a lot about america's role in the world and how important americans are and america compared to the rest of the world and judgements are being made. so there's a timeliness here, isn't there? >> yes, people ask us what does it feel like to have a film coming out in this moment. it's just the sense that we live in this extraordinarily polarized and divisive moment and we don't seem to be able to talk. we don't seem to be able to listen. we don't seem to be able to agree on basic facts. and yet so much of that really started escalating during the vietnam war. but the resonances of where we are in the world and how we are in the world, especially since we've been in several wars, not unlike the vietnam war, for the last 15 years.

>> woodruff: and inevitably, there are lessons from this war. so many lessons that may or may not have been learned. what do you think they are? >> they're legion. but the one that we could agree on is that we're not going to blame the warriors anymore. history is the set of questions we in the present ask of the past. if we can't talk about the current toxicity, let's go back and look at the other one and maybe with the kind of courageous conversations you can have, you could really begin to have something and not just the talking at or the shouting over that we do today. >> for years, nobody talked about vietnam. it was so divisive. and it's like living in a family with an alcoholic father. "shh, we don't talk about that." our country did that with

vietnam and i think it's only been very recently that i think the baby boomers are starting to say, "what happened? what happened?" >> woodruff: you can see more of my conversation with the filmmakers in our next piece. the documentary will air for the next two weeks. >> sreenivasan: and again, "the vietnam war" premieres sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on most pbs stations. now to another in our brief but spectacular series, where we ask people to describe their passions. tonight, we hear from veteran public radio host terry gross. she's celebrating her 30th season of fresh air this year, which is produced by whyy in philadelphia and distributed by npr. >> the only woman i ever heard on the radio when i was growing up was alison steele the

nightbird, who was an fm disc jockey in new york, on wnew the aggressive rock station. and she had this kind of late night, like, sexy voice, and i never listened to that and felt like, "yep, someday, that's going to be me." i fell in love with radio the moment i started doing it, i had everything i wanted. i was probably like 23 when i started, and so, i felt very young and inexperienced. and the earliest tape that i have of myself is from 1974, i kind of sound like this, i find it both like surprising and in a way deeply upsetting. when i listen to old tapes, because i think like, they put me on the air, how did that happen? and the answer is because it was mostly an all volunteer operation. when i'm preparing for an interview, i do as much research as i can in the limited time that i have. i like the questions to have a

narrative arch, so that at the end of the interview you feel like, "i've heard the story of somebody's life or the story of their work and how they came about doing it." it's pretty nonstop, but you know, on the weekends, i try to take time out, in addition to doing the food shopping and stuff like that, to go to the movies or to a concert, and of course, what i'm thinking is," who might i want to interview from this movie?" but that's a good thing because it makes the movie even more interesting, to think about the possibility of talking to somebody about it. one of the many reasons why i'm on radio and not tv is that when i'm listening, my face goes just slack, like this. when i was a kid and i'd walk around lost in thought, and i was usually lost in one thought or another, strangers would come up to me and say, "oh dear, what's wrong? are you lost?" and i'd go, "damn, no, i'm thinking, like, what's your problem?" my kind of interview, the kind i do, is about the person i'm

talking to, now, i've listened to a lot of interviewers, like marc maron, who talk a lot about himself in the interview and that's part of the reason why i listen, because i love hearing marc maron talk about himself. but if i were to talk about myself a lot in my interviews, you'd be hearing me like, talk on and on about why i love charles a lot, and then the hunchback of notre dame, and why i love stephen sondheim's "sweeney todd," and what it's like to be married to my husband francis, and as great as that stuff is, it would get a little old. >> i bet there's an audience for that though. >> there are several advantages to doing a long distance interview. one is, if you're a little bit of a coward, which i confess i am, and you want to ask some challenging questions, it's easier to do when you're not looking the person in the eye. another nice thing about long distance interviews is that you're not judging each other by your clothing like, i'm wearing my favorite leather jacket today, usually, i'm just wearing schmata because it just doesn't

matter what i look like and i like it that way. i'm terry gross and this is my brief but spectacular take on interviewing. >> sreenivasan: you can watch additional brief but spectacular episodes on our website, pbs.org/newshour/brief. a news update before we go: there's word that north korea has launched yet another missile. the south korean defense ministry said it came from pyongyang and flew towards the east. japan's government says the ballistic missile likely flew over their country. they warned their residents to take shelter. on the newshour online right now, a song that ruthlessly satirizes the sexism of bollywood has racked up more than 3.5 million views on youtube in just the last few days. you can watch it with our english captions on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday judy woodruff sits down with hillary clinton to discuss her new book. i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark

shields and david brooks. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh

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this season of "martha stewart's cooking school" explores treasured recipes from an extraordinary part of the world -- the arabian gulf. join me in my kitchen as i celebrate its regional ingredients. we'll make rustic breads, mouthwatering desserts, and hearty stews with spices made famous by historic trade routes, learn new culinary techniques and creative tips for serving arabian gulf classics, from preparing small bites to showstopping dishes fit for any festive occasion. with its bold flavors and strong traditions, i've been inspired to get into the kitchen and add what i like to call a good thing to an already delicious cuisine. enjoy. "martha stewart's cooking school" is made possible by... ♪ announcer: al jazeera.