captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, president trump's lead lawyer handling the russia investigation is stepping down, the latest shakeup in a defense team grappling with a possible interviewf mr. trump the special counsel. t then, uncertain fate of the iran deal-- i sit down with o rmer u.s. secretary of energy ernest monizscuss what c houldpen if the u.s. drops out of the agreement. then, defending missouri-- py the statelic defender system is failing both lawyers and their clients. plus, we continue our series inside the world of junk news. tonight, how one media publisher uses facebook to build viral hyper-parsan content. >> my goal at one point was to

de,iver to them what they l and unfortunately, the reality of that is just that people a prone to go for the lowest common denminator. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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world. more information at macfound.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. tha you. >> woodruff: the new u.s. secretary of state says it's time to solve the north korea nuclear problem, once and for a mike pompeo spoke this morning after his csemonial formal aring-in by vice president pence, with president trump wating, at the state department. >> right now we have an unprecedented change the course of history on the korean peninsula. i undersce the word opportunity. we're in the beginning stages of the work certainly yet unknown. the american people are counting on us to get this right. we are committed to the

permanent, verifiable, irreversie dismantling of orth korea's weapons of mass destructions program and to do so without delay. >> woodruff: meanwhile, china's fi oreign minister wangrived in north korea for possible talks with its leader kim jong un. he's expected to press for a larger role for beijing in the new round of nuclear diplomacy. in libya, two suicide bombers killed at least 14 people at the nelationation commission in tripoli. the islamic state group claimed responsibility, saying it was trying to prevent a nation-wide vote later this year. video posted online by libyan television stations showed smoke rising from the building. thelection commission said its electoral database was undamaged. tahe u.s. has transferre prisoner out of guantanamo bay, for the first time under p.resident tru ahmed al-darbi was sent to a rm ehabilitation prog his native saudi arabia. he pleaded guilty in a 20

attack on a french oil tanker. 40 deinees are left at guantanamo. protesters re out in full force across armenia today, after parliament rejected the opposition leader servi as prime minister. his supporters blocked major roads and ministry builngs in a national strike. this on the heels of weeks of protests against corruption. lopater, thsition leader called off the protests after the ruling party said parliament will vote again next tuesday. palestinian president mahmoud abbas is under fire after suggesting european jews have brought persecution on themselves. in a monday speech, abbas said hatred of jews was, "not because of their religion, it was broecause of thei in usury and banks." today, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu called abbas a "holocaust denier," and his foreign ministry joined in.

>> what we have heard from mr. abbas is a series of anti- semitic accusations of an ugly nature. mr.bbas accuses actually the jewh people for being responsible for its own for its own tragedy. those are things that we cannot accept. >> woodruff: the u.s., the u.n. and the european union offered t.heir own critici abbas' spokesman declined comment. the palestinian leader has previously questioned how many jews died in the holocaust. btek in this country, the s of iowa may implement the nation's strictest abortion law. overnight, the republican- majority legislature approved a ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected that's around six weeks, and efore a woman knows she is pregnant. republican governor kim reynolds opposes abortion, but has not said whether she will sign the measure. in philadelphia, two black men arrested in a starbucks last

month have settled with the city government, for $1 each. city officials also promised $200,000 dollars for an entrepreneurs program in high schools. images of rashon nelson and donte robinson being led away in handcuffs sparked a renewed debate over racial profiling. starbucks said it has reached a separate settlement with the men the british data firm embroiled in the facebook privacy scand is shutting down. cambridge analytica declared bankruptcy today it said it has been unfairly vngilified for collecacebook user information to build voter profiles. ama british lr warned the company not to delete its data history, as investigations continue. the federal reserve announced today that b's leaving its chmark interest rate unchanged. but the central bhak said again further increases are expected, as inflation on wall street, the news dida

little to stote-day sell- off. the dow jones industrial average lost 174 points to close below 23,925. the nasdaq fell 29 points, and the s&p 500 slipped 19. and, the boy scouts are changin their name to "scouts b.s.a.," because starting next year, they're also aepting girls. today's announcement said the parent organization will remain the "boy scouts of america,." "cub scouts," for younger will still be known as cub scouts. still to come on the newshour: a former energy secretary on wulhat happen if the u.s. exits the iran nuclear deal. missouri public defenders overwhelmed with clients now in a catch-22, and much more. >> woodruff: president trump today tapped a veteran

washington lawyer to join his legal team. emmut flood, who represented president bill clinton duringmp hischment, will replace ty cobb as the lad white house awyer in the special counsel investigation. here to walk us thrgh the latest developments is robert costa of "washington week" and t "washington post." ght costa, i'll get it eventually. >> i'm wearing many hats. >> woodruff: yes, you are. so why is this hapning? why is ty cobb leaving? >> it comes down to president trump. this is a major shift, judy, in the president'legal strategy. e wants to be more combative, talking to white house advisors tonight. he wants to have a team around him that counters robert mueller and the special counsel investigation, that moves away from ty cobb and his strategy of cooperation. with rudy giuliani, the former new york mayor in there, emmut

flood, a veteran rawier known for taking a tough line on impeachment proceedings in federal investigations, just shows you where the presidentts wo go. >> woodruff: there's been a fair amount of shuffle ling. i've lost count on how many attorneys have come and gone on the president's various legal teams. does this reflect change or a different moment in this investigation? because, up untseil now, ied the president was content to follow this cperation strategy, but something changed. >> something dichange. y colleagues and i reported yesterday that, in early march, mueller threatened to subpoena president trump if he decided to decline a voluntary interview. ever since then you've had theof rai michael cohen, the president's long-time lawyer, presidentushed th away from cooperating with robert mueller. now he has a big decision to make, will heit f the interview or not? today i talked with giulianit length and said if the president sits for the interview, b i

it will be about two hours max and a narrow set of questions. you see a lot q ofstions negotiated through the press and privately. >> woodruff: totre's been a f reporting as to what extent the mueller team has tt'elegraphed to the presids lawyers or told them what he wants from them, what questions he will ask or not. do we now have a good sense of what mueller wants to knowrom he president? ue we do. mer's team has informed the president's team that they'd like to know about key decisions he has made as president, including the firing of former comey.director jam what they really want to learn from the president and why it's so important, t federal investigators say, for the president to sit down before them is they want to know his intent -- did he have corrupt intent when it came to certain decisions, like comey, to get rid of comey bibecause of badme mana in his eyes as president of the f.b.i. or corrupt intent to rupture the investigations into russian

interference? that's what the special counsel is trying to figure out, and they el they need the president to speak directly to ouem about that. >> woodruff: its as if the white house, especially for the president, the antennae are up and on alert and wrried where this could lead to. >> very much on alert. red flags going up. immut flonot the kind of lawyer who would encourage a president to sit down for an interview, ty cobb was that kind of lawyer. these kind ofag dements have consumed the respect's inner ceaircle for months,ng to the resignation of john dowd, president's lead attorney on russia in late march. >> woodruff: what is it about flood that you think was appealing to the president? >> flood is close to white house counsel don mcghan. flo isry of opening up the white house to scrutiny. you have mcghan, flood as

someone who understands it's perhaps the white house prerogative to exert executive privilege and prote itself in this investigation, at least more than it has been in some of s the eer the insiders. you were reporting in the last o w minutes on what was going on with regarde president getting more and more concerned about the failure of the justice department, specifically deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, to cooperate to turn over documents that certain republican members of congress want from him fill us in quickly on that. >> it's a complicated story. briefly, there's a paper fight between kong and the department of justice related to documents in the russia and a few other ovestigations. the cloud over alit is they're trying to go after rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who also oveees the mueller probe. so as they fight over documents, it risks putting the russia probe with bob mueller at riskf d rosenstein is removed as the manager. there's a lot of political esand legal going on and you

have to read up on all of it, but that's what's happening.ff >> wood so rosenstein rday, before a group yes we saw clips of it on television, it was record, essentially he was saying i'm ggng to let the invesion go forward, what the justice department should be doing. he didn't sound as if he was preparing to turn the documents os ver. >> ht. the department of justice said today they're not giving congress the document that shows the scope to have the mueller investigation, something that's come up in the paul manafortd trial, at has alarmed trump allies c oitol hill like mark meadows, who speaks regularly tpresident trump, nd they're warning of impeachme proceedings again rosenstein if he doesn't comply. so we're if a tense moment between the d.o.j. and the house g.o.p.

>> woodruff: what the rod rosenstein was removed? >> it's aon way away.s aker ryan could prevent it on the house floor, bdut it wo be unprecedented to have a federal offiusal who wasn't acc of bribery, the usual impeachment proceedings for a judge or something like that, for a document fight to lead to impeachment. it would be to say the least historic. >> woodruff: bob costa, "washington week"e and " washington post." so much to follow. thank you very much. >> thank ou. >> woodruff: a may 12 deadline looms for president trump: he must decide whether to maintain a suspension of crippng sanctions lifted on iran as part of the 2015 iran nuclear deal. if they are put back in place, that would be a violation of tha greement, which froze iran's

program. omonday, one of the deal's harshest critics, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, edllhat documents, stolen by israel from tehran, show iran retai restarting its program. so wh from the deadline?ays ffoor answers we turn ter energy secretary ernest moniz; he american negotiating team that struck the deal. he is now c.e.o. of the nuclear that initiative. ernest moniz, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> woodruff: so you're heard, you're very familiaith what the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu had to sayh he described all these documents, these computer disks taken from iran. what do you make of all that? >> well, first of all, of course, we all knew iran had a weapons program. our intelligence agencies declared that if 2007, the i.a.e.a. the international

inspectors said they had a structured program. so there was no deception here in the sense of their having program, and i might say just up fronthat weent into the negotiation, of course, knowing that and, last week, secretary mattis said i read the agreement and it sounds like an agreement made for a cheater. so this is not untrust. now, what the prime minister p forward, of course, may have some additional information on people, on places, et cetera, and all of those must b run the ground, and the j.c.p.o.a., the iran agreement. >> woodruff: the iran agreement. >> -- puts in pce the process to do that. so indeed, my view, the prime minister's presentation provides more reason why we need, in fact, to stay in the iran agreef:nt. >> woodr so when the prime minister says this is just proof that te iranians are goin be able to make a bomb once this

deal expires, is he not accurate about that? >> no, he is not, for a couple of reasons. first of al you don't make bombs with papers and c.d.s, y tou makehem with nuclear material, and the agreement didi not, t just say, just freeze the iranian program, it olled it back dramatically to the point where, eve if they went full out, no subterfuge whatsoever, it would take them at least a year just to assemble the nuclear material for a bomb. that's the first point. the second point may be even more consequential. 15 years after the agreement, restrictions on iran's peaceful nuclear activities go away. but we are neot back to wh we are before. now we have the world's most intrusive verification regime, and that's really central. if you think about it, if iran

wanted a nuclear weapon, they're not going to it in the open, they're going to do it covertly. the agreement what gives the international inspectors the tools to go anywhere in iran and have access ani want id to ask you about the so-called sunset clause which is whatpe h after the deal expires in effect because the argument is, by the critics, that all be are off and iranan go right back to what it was doing to what it was doing before. your point is tt they won't be able to do this. >> correct. there is no sunset in the agreement. what does phase out in various yteps trs, 15 years, 20, 25 years, are various specificme es of what they can do. but what remains in place forever is first oftheir commitment to not have a nuclear weapon, secondly their foresg weaponization activities, but most important they mustom followhing called the additional protocol.

basically that meane international inspectors can go to undeclard nuclear sites and, uniquely, iran must provide accesin axed time period. >> woodruff: let me cite a ormment made in the last day or so by the fr deputy head of the international atomic energy agency. you know him very well, the i.e.a., his name is ali honin. he says some of the images the israelis hshow pieces of equipment directly related tons nuclear weaork that had not been previously disclosed. is that your understanding? >> so, actually, the same gentleman also said, upon seeing the presentation, that he just saw a lot of pictures that he had seen before. so, again, as i said, the fll cache of information may certain contain information on individuals, on equipment, on places that maybe we didn't know ebout before, but, again, knew they had a weapons program, number one. number two, we need to run allf

oose elements he refers to into the ground. iran is, frankly, in a toughs pot. they've got to explain all of this, and that's why we need the process thauthe agreement pt in place with the i.a.e.a., with se omething called int commission of the negotiating countries and, ultimately, the u.n. security council. >> woodruff: well, another point ali honiny is making, he said what you're looking at is much mor extensive than what was known before. he said now it's clear iran has new locations at the i.a.e.a. definitely has not visited before and he's going to on to say a country party to this trel nonproliferation treaty should maintain as because it violates the spirit of the terreaty. in oords, he's saying there are troubling pieces of information that come from what the israelis turned up. >> again, i think the iranians have to be put on the spot to explain why theserchives were

maintained after the ty, inhe agreement and the supreme leader said, we will never have a nuclear weapon. >> woodruff: what if president trump says the u.s. io withdrawing the nuclear deal? >> i think it would be tragic for a couple of reasons. one, it will take away the process at the we need right now, in fact, to explore the information in the israeli information. two, it will drive a wedge between the united states and ur allies in europe, and it will be very, very messyn because,e one hand, the european governments, uk., france, germany, have all made it clear while iran is in compliance, we should be working with em to keep them in compliance. at the same time, their own companies will be subject to sanctions from the united states, and this is a ver very

poor -- >> woodruff: these are private companies doing busin iran? >> exactly. >> woodruff: so i'm asking y, because we just saw in washington last week president macron of france, chancellor merkeerofny both mere talking to the president, seems it's been reported they ie working on some sort of fallback pl the u.s. does pull out. so that's a possibility. >> i think the president put forward a bunch of desires in terms of the european actions with the united states. most of them, the europeans, i think are quite prepared to goit us on and, very importantly, and i think it was shown if the joint strikes ins ia with the u.k. and france that they want to work with ussh in g back on iran. but they don't want to violate the agreement. >> woodruff: very, very quickly. totally different subject. similar subject but a different north kore world, you followed these nuclear itvelopments around the world. i your -- do you believe that the north koreans may be

dy to denuclearize, as they are suggesting to some negotiators? >> at a may. they made statements about having deterrent complete and now focusing on the economy, i think we have to play it out, but it's the same as iran, don't trust and verify, ever have, verify. for north korea, thl be, i might say, etch a greater hallenge, the verification, than with iran. >owoodruff: ernest mz, former u.s. secretary of energy. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: new revelations about the e.p.a. head's questionable dealing with lobbyists. nd an inside look at a website that churns out hyperpartisan ontent picked up on soci media. when someone is charged with a

crime but can't afford an attorney, the crt provides a public defender. t what if that public defender already has too many clients to s competent representation? that's a situation playing out in many states, including missouri, where public defenders have started refusing cases, throwing a wrench in the machinery of the criminal justi system. john yang has that story, produced by frank carlson and with sport from the pulitzer center on crisis reporting and part of our continuing coverage on "broken justice." >> yang: in decber, rayshod shton was arrested in platte county, missouri, charged with r aesistiest and assaulting a police officer. unae to make bond, he'd already spent four months in jail when his public defender told him that his caseload was so heavy, he wouldn't have time to take his case to trial for another six months.

>> like six months now i could totally repair all the damage done from the four months already been-- you know this is mery life rightright here. i mean there's a room full of 40 guys here who haven't been sentenced. they're all just waiting on the n it's a waiting game. i'm just sitting here waiting. >> yang: the sixth amendment of the u.s. constitutioguarantees every american facing trial the right to lawyer, even if they cannot afford one the supreme court enshrined that right into law with i landmark 1963 ruling in the case gideon vs. wainwright. one way society me responsibility is with public defenders.ou but across thetry that system is being stretched to the breaking point, underfunded and overworked.

missouri may well be ground zero, the state's public defender system widely seen as nearly broken.. the state ranks 49th out in per capita spending on indigent defense. last year, its 320rsublic defenandled 80,000 cases; on average more than 240 cases eh. listen to these lawyers in the pndublic defeers office in jackson county, the state's biggest district, which includes kansas city. >> over the next six weeks i have some very, very serious trials. >> they deserve a lot more attention than give them. >> i think i have six murder cases right now. >> tomany for me to be prepared for. >> yang: do you fee you're able ive them all the time they

deserve? >> i don't know if this is a long answer that you're asking for here. no is the simple answer. >> yang: michael barrett is head of missouri's public defender system.da >> defs routinely sit in jail for weeks just before they meet their attorney and we tell hem that we are very eager to work on your case but it's going to be a while becaus awful lot of people in front of you. >> yang: in 2016, barrett nvinced the republican- legislature to grant him more money for his office. and when then-governor jay nixon slashed that increase, barrett too sk a bop. >> i wanted to bring attention to this matter because so many people were be carcerated without competent representation. but beforee i pointed a priv lawyer who didn't cause this problem i thought i'd start witn the person with a law license in the state whoould dmeo ing to fix it.

jay nixon has been recruited to be a state public defender. >> missouri's lead public defender ordered missouri governor jay nixon to represent a poor >> yang: the courts said barrett didn't have to power to do that, but he made his point. now, the courts are considering a $20 million class-action suit the american civil liberties union filed against the staai. the five iffs, all represented in criminalc ourt by pubfenders, say their constitutional rights were violated by long delays and barrett acknowledges that when defenders are handlg as many as 200 cases at a time, there's no way they can fulfill their professional and ethical duties to their clients. >> you have to go visit with your client. you have tt o looke charges that your client faces. you have to investigate the case. w you have to meh witnesses you have to talk to the police officer you have to file motions you have to receive the evidence that the prosecution has and then discuss the evidence with

your client. to think that you can do each ne of those steps in 150 cases is absolutely ridiculous. >> yang: as a result, defendants like rayshod ashton often end up pleading to crimes they say they didn't commit, just to get out of il. it's called "pleading to daylight." >> i was in jail four months already and by the time they isme with a deal that was probation, i just took it, pretty much knowing i wasn't guilty of the charges being brought about. >> yang: after resolving those charges with his probation plea ashton remains detained, waiting for his public defender to help him aress other charges. the issue of overworked public defenders office has been building for years. now, it's come to a head. lt summer, the missouri supreme court sent shockwaves through the system by sanctioning a public defender for neglecting clients. david weigert has been a public

defender in jackson county for six years. >> this whole thing is a ticking time bomb for all of us. it is probably due to our clients inexperience with the system that they don't know how to file proper bar complaints against us that allows us to keep going with the system in e don't give them proper service. >he> yang: onay we visited, 16-year defender laura o'sullivan was heading to court to tell a judge that, given her workload and ethical responsibilities, she couldn't take on another client. >> most of the time they're denng our request to decline the cases. i t thire's a there's a bit they don't know what to do. yang: that's because judges themselves are graded on how quickly they move cases, putting public defenders and sitting judges at odds. some judges and prosecutors say

turhat the problem with mis public defenders offices isn't too little money or too few people. they say it's too much mismanagement. >> and i think that you have to do more with less. >> yang: dwight scroggins served as a public defender before becoming the prosecuting attorney in buchanan county, north of kansas city, 28 years ago. he puts the blame for delays on the public defenders. >> i think the public defender's thinking is limited to we have a lot of cases we need more money. we need more attorneys. and guess what? they've gotten over the years more money and more attorneys and what are they saying? you have to start looking somewhere along the line at efficiencies. >ng: while it's true that since 1994, funding for the state public defenders office has continued to grow, so has the number of cases the office handles. which leads to the question, how many cases are too many? >> missouri is the epicenter of this whole movement to end this

abandonment of the rule of law. >> yang: stephen hanlon is a ngtime pro-bono attorney who serves as counsel to the national association for public dseefwhose membership iluncdes 16,000 public defende t. by auditi work of both pivublic and prate defense aouttorneys in mi, and three other states, he's developed a soutandard for how many should be spent on a case. t results are striking. >> defenders generally have between a third and a fifth of the resources that they need. if an obstetrician has three to five times as many cases as he or she can handle competently terrible things will happen. a public defender with people's liberty attake has three to five times as many cases as he can handle confidently. terrible things will happen.

>> yang: he hopes his data will euaventy lead to reforms in what he sees as the systematic, unconstitutional and racist underfunding of indigent defense across the nation. >you cannot do mass incarceration unless the whole justice system rolls over and plays dead. >> yang: in the meantime, defendants like rayshod atoton continuait for their day in court. >like we are-- we're your sons and your cousins and the whole time. and there's a whole bunch of pods over there that are your daughters and moms. i don't understand how this is e overuing to be the cas and over again. >an> yangll-too-common refrain for those who must rely on public defenders to represent them in court. for the pbs newshour, i'm john yang in kansas city, missouri.

>> woodruff: e.p.a. administrator scott pruitt has been under heavy scrutiny for the way he has spent money on tanravel, securitpay raises for staff. he's facing at least 11 investigations related to a number of such matters. now, as william brangham tells us, pruitt's in the spotlight yet again, this time over trip to morocco. >> brangham: the "washington pt"nd others reported that pruitt's trip to north africa last december was arranged in part by his longtime friend, former comcast lobbyist, richard smotkin. a few months after the trip, according to the post, smotkin was awarded a $40,000-a-month thontract he moroccan government. federal laws prohibit public officials fromsing government resources to financially benefit their friends. but the e.p.a. has insisted the trip was proper and that pruitt did not fully know about smotkin's ties to the moroccan gerent.

pose of the trip has bee publicly questioned by some lawmakers, and so was its cost, which reportedly topped $100,000. juliet eilperin of the "washington post" helped break this most recent story about scott pruitt. welcome. >> hello. >> brangham: what else to you tell us about the trip to morocco and the questions about it? >> dollar lot of interesting aspects of this trip, but irt would sith the fact that first of all many people, as yo notestioned why the administrator was going there. it is true he did spend part of his time working on bilateral trade agreement between morocco and the.s. however, according to the y porting at the we've done, he was vcused on the issue of natural gas exports from the united states to morocco, that's what he focused on in the runup to the trip and also while he was there and,ain, much of this trip was arranged by richard smotkin. as much as a friend of his

who has worked as a lobbyist in different capacities and both some of the information we got today as well as yesterday shows that he was intimately involved in essentially serving as a liaison between the moroccan government and pruitt's top aides, both as they were trying to decide what he would do and once they arrived at block o he joined them, whether a constantc presence atl events as well as some of the official meetings on the itinerary. >> brangham: the question would be, i guess, smotkin helps arrange the trip and in some way helps pruitt get to morocco and a few months later smotkin gets this lucrative contract. that's the ethical question >> yes, the most pressing atere? ethical question raised on this. he registered as a foreign agent last months butac retve to january first, so two weeks after they returnedo the united states and the liaison he worken with in the to the trip

who is on there is the person who ultimately gave him the contract. >> brangham: shifting gears a bit. two of scott pruitt's top aides recently resigned. who were they and the timing of this? >this week two of pruitt's top aides are formally leavin the e.p.a. including albert calkelly, one of hs top ai who oversaw the superfund program and the initiative mr. pruitt has been pursuing which he has been very focused on and pas paschal prada, bh top advisors to the administrator, both who weighed in on issues as hiring andtregy. mr. prada was scheduled to meet with hovestigators and has come under great scrutiny for some of tmm redations

which led to mr. pruitt's firstl class tr and other activities. and mr. kelly who by all accounthad taken a serious role, a policy-oriented role at the department is under scrutiny for some of his financial dealings back in oklahoma.> as we said initially, scott pruitt isd under 1ifferent investigations, and many wondered why he is still in this job, but obviously the president still has full faith in him. many pointed out this isbl probecause he has been so tenacious in undoing present obama's environmental regulations. one has been lowering, appareny, the fuel emissions standards for automobiles. this was a big part of the obama legacy and something that scott pruitt has been rolling backn. this week california and 16 other states said they are goini t suit to try to block the e.p.a. from lowering the national standards. from an automaker perspectiv if you are looking and wondering

at california and some states anand e.p.a. arguing something else, it has to be tough on the industry. >> yes, a few years we're talking about model 2022 which goes on sale in 2021, sonen level they didn't initially ask the trump administration to potentially roll back the standards but n, givenhat california and the states allied wit compose a tired of the nation's auto market, they're trying t of cars they will be producing and for whom and that makes these decisions difficult. >> woodruff: juliet eilperin, thank you so much for helping ua t through all this. >> you're welcome. >> woodruff: now to our deep dive on the continuing problem of false or misleading news, or what you might call junk news. much of the attention has

centered on facebook. ae nd yesterday, mpany's founder and c.e.o., mark zuckerberg, told "wired" magazine it may take up to three years to fully prevent all kinds of harmful content from affecting people's newsfeeds. tonight, miles o'brien's latest report profiles a man who's been a leading purveyor of junk newsd inow he has been exploitg facebook to reach an audience. it's part on the leading edge of technology. >> there has been a shooting at a high school in parkland. >t > riw we have 5,300 people and change on the website. >> porter: it was a busy day at the office when we met one of the internet's most prolific distributors of hyper partisan fare. >> actually, iken a story this, we do actually beat the mr ainstream media ese sorts of breaking new events. >> reporter: it was the day the high school shootings in parkland florida, and as the

horrific events unfolded, cyrus massoumi was spinning facts reported by others to fit the worldview of his audience. >> you can see that like he is wearing a make america great again hat, and he has lots of photos of guns, so obviously, this is going to be a very controversial issue. >> reporter: his site is called truth examiner. and it caters to liberals, with headlines like this designed to entice clicks on stories with little substance. his writers are among the five most successful at luring those clicks on facebook. people want to read those lines to reaffirm their beliefs, right >> correct. >> reporter: and that is not rocket science, is it? >> it's not rocket science, but doing it faster and better than your competitors is an art. >> reporter: lately, truth examiner has added something else to the formula; a steady sy tream of conspireories;

ironically, accusing the trump administration of peddling fake news. masumi has thrived in this murky world for eight years, hedging his bets, serving up gibrist forals and conservatives through various facebook pages. >> they want 250-word, little -- hit them and go! just give me my little-- it's like basically like a coke addict. like a coke addict, ious like everyhe just needs to get that little dopamine rush. like a fan on the conservative side or to take out their phone, look at it, "oh, trump sucks. trump sucks, so bad. all right, all right, i'm done, i'm done" and then-- right? like, that's it. that's it.er >> repopeople don't care about the facts. >> yeah, of course. people don't care abot facts. ake it to the bank. >> reporter: he estimates he hai spent over ion dollars in ads, reacheover 100 million people, and has made several million dollars by selling that audience to advertisers on his own site and on facebook. do you create fake news?

>> no. no, i don't. >> reporter: tell me what it is, t >> always inflammatory, excluding facts from the othere side, but ver fake. my team, they don't cover news angles which are favorable to opposition in the same way cnn would never cover a favorable angle to trump or msnbc. >> reporter: he lives in the home where he grew up, on a nine acre vineyard in napa, california. >> we grow a brand of cabernet which is, i'm told, very nice although i'm not a wine person. >> reporter: he is a self described cultural libertinian, free thker and lover of politics. for him, it all started in high school.an he was sellin-obama t- shirts and decided facebook was a good way to reach more custors. it worked-- he learned how to build an audience on facebook, dropped the t-smrts and created

r. conservative, his first hyperpartisan site. >> so, i'm a marketer with a love of polics. and you know, i contend that marketers will be the king of the future of media. i think that the danger is not the russians or the macedonians. but the actual danger is when you have a marketer who doesn't love politics. >> reporter: hoducer cameron ickey found cyrus massoumi during our 16 month investigation of hyper partisan misinformation on facebook. cameron's key reporting tool: swroftware that he ote that analyzes social media, looking fator the sources of e call" junk news." >> it's clear that a lot of the publishers are domestic, and i hink we've given a lot of attention to russian disinformation or macedonian teenage profiteers, but both of those group i think, learned it from these guys. they've learned it from agmericans who have been l profiting on partisan information or other kinds of junk.

>er> re: social networking allows us all to bypass the traditional arbiters of truth that evolved in the 20th century. >> historically, our information landscape has been tribal. we turn to the people that are like us, the people that we know, the people around us, to make sense of what is real and what we believe in. >streporter: computer scien danah boyd is president and ftaounder of society. >> and what we're seeing now wdiith the network landscape is the ability to move back towards extreme tribalism. and there are whole variety of actors, state actors, n-state actors, who are happy to move along a path where pare actually not putting their faith ion institutions or inform intermediaries and are instead turning to their tribes, to their communities. >> reporter: cyrus massoumi's first big jackpot exploiting this trend toward tribalism was linked to yet another mass shooting at a school, this one i, n sandy hooknnecticut in 2012.

in the midst of that horror, he bought a facebook ad that asked a question do you stand against the assault weapons ban? if so, click like. those who did became subscribers to his page, insuring his content would rise to the t of their newsfeeds. he had bought thousands of fans at a very low price. >> i felt subsequently that i built my first business, sort of if you want to call it, "on the graves of young children who "ere killed." >> reporter: well, how do you feel about that? >> i don't know how do people feel about thinb that they do ly? i feel bad about it, but i mean we do what we do to pay the morage, right? the strategy massoumi lped pioneer spread like virtual wildfire. by 16, marketers, political operatives and state actors were oll using the same playbo hyped headlines, political propaganda and outright falsehoods. >> they were all in an

environment togethera melting pot, if you will. and with a whole set of really powerful skills, when they saw a reality tv star start to run for president and that's pretty funny, that's pretty interesting. and s spectacle.n to create >> reporter: the stage was set for the 2016 presidential election and an unprecedented misinformationampaign waged on several fronts. back in napa, cyrus massoumi was doing well, running a conservative page called truth monitor along with the liberal truth examiner. massoumi says anger is what generates "likes" and the conservative stories were more lucrative. >> conservatives are angrier people. >> reporter: tell me about that? >> do you ever seen a trump rally on ? >> reportes. >> yeah, it's gold. >e> reporter: but since election, the conservative side of massoumi's business has dried up. his site that used to offer that content has moved into feel good

stories. he says competition among conservative hyperpartisan sites creat a junk news arms race, making the content too extreme to be ranked favorably by the facebook newsfeed algorithm. >> on the conservative side, i think that we were at one point publishing low-quality clickbait. thehat's what conservative devolved into. >> reporter: is it unpatriotic to do it? >> to publish low quality clickbait? i think that people like what they like. and my goal at one point was to deliver to them what they like, and unfortunately, the reality of that is just that people are prone to gfor the lowest common denominator. >> reporter: but for cyrus massoumi, thtarget really doesn't matter, so long as he hits the mark. s atirring er, no matter on

which side, is very good for business. ahead as we continue our series, you'll meet two of the fans bought by cyrus massoumi: a deep blue liberal from brooklyn and christian conservative from indianapolis. for the pbs newshour, i'm miles o'brien in napa, california. >> woodruff: miles' series on facsook and junk news contin next week. you can watch part one and find simore reporting on our w pbs.org/newshour. >> woodruff: now to our newshour s, something that caught our eye that might be of interest to you. workers at a constructiosi just miles from the nation's capital recently unearthed somee long-forgottenures dating back to our nation's founding. our julia griffin explains.

> o> reporter: inld town alexandria these days, the pulse of progress means helmets, backhoes, and 18th century ships? >> behind us is construction in progress but also archaeology in rogress. >> reporter: eleanor breen is acting city archaeologist for historic alexandria. when developers want to dig on culturally significant land in the city, her team ensures archaeologists are on hand to identify and help preserve any discovered historical artifacts. >> with a lot of scrapes of the trowel and scoops of the shovel, there's history on unearthed. but what's being found here is really particularly remarkable. >po> er: remarkable because in addition to old building fatouns and paved alleyways, the archaeologists at this site dreisconot one, but three ships from the 1700's hidden in the dirt. bhuut the 12 to 25-foot wids are not long-forgotten shipwrecks. >> itas actually a fairly

common practice going back centuries to take derelict ships and chop them up and actually use large fragments of the hull as part of a framework fill n ground and make new land that didn't exist before. >> reporter: this map, drawn by a young george washgton, shows alexandria's natural shoreline with its shallow mudflats in 1748. b'sy the early 18 alexandrians added 10 new city blocks to the waterfront that continue to exist today. >> to be a premr port city, hey needed to get more land closer to that deeper channel of the potomac river. it was much easier to get the cargo off of the ships if you can bring the land to the ship aers opposed to smahips to the land. >> reporter: today, the trio of unearthed ships, likely cargo vessels, sit just south of what had been point lumley. now exposed, the once- ber's must beim kept moist at all times to

prevent warping and degradation. archaeologists are now removing the hulls piece-by-piece and storing them ks of water, just as they did with another revolutionary war-era ship found ain block awa015. that ship is now at texas a&m londergoing a year conservation process to prepare gile beams for study and display. where the new ships end up has yet to beetermined. but for breen, the painstaking measures to preserve them e well worth the effort. >> i think there's something in os ur culture about tafaring days of discovery that captures people's attention when they see such large fragments of vessels in the ground. >> reporter: city officials hope all the ships could one day be put on exhibit for modeyn- alexandrians to enjoy. for the pbs newshour, i'm jul griffin in alexandria, virginia. >> woodruff: on the newsur online right now, a newshour

reporter spends a week only consuming media from radio sputnik, a russian government- funded outlet widely seen by experts as a vehicle to disseminate disinformemion for the in. that and more is on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday, "the assault on intelligence"-- we talk with former c.i.a. director michael hayden about the agency in the trump presidency. i jy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs prnewshour has beeided by: >> consumer cellular believes that wireless plans should reflect the amount of talk, text and data that you use. we offer a variety of no- tract wireless plans for people who use their phone a little, a lot, or anything in between. to learn more, go to consumerceular.tv

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wes: we're the history detectives, and we're going to investigate some untold stories from america's past. tukuis: in this epode, we investigate a mystery e surroundinath in a hail of bullets of bonnie and clyde. a woman in wisconsin thinks she might have some of those bullets. so can we tell from these images make and model of the gun that they were fired from? gwen: we investigate this ordinary suburban house to fd out if it's part of an important but largely forgotten phenomenon that revolutionized the way amicans built their homes. elyse: we discover wh wher or not thconsin movie theater was a key player at the birth of the movie industry.