judy: good evening i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, heeding the call of the white house. more republican lawmakers attack the impeachment process, but steer clear of declaring the president innocent of claims that he tied military aid to political gain. then, prisoner of conscience. a conversation with pastor andrew brunson, held captive in turkey for two years on false charges. and by the numbers. as creative industries rely more on data they gather from consumers, concerns grow over privacy and the line between artist and computer begins to blur. >> the author is not bringing

something out of nothing, the author is conjuring all of our preferences, taking them into account and reflecting ourselves back on us. judy: all that and more on pbs newshour. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by bnsf railway. consumer cellular. >> and by the alfred t 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 and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org.

and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. ♪ >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. judy: taking on the impeachment process. more republican lawmakers are speaking up against how the impeachment inquiry in the house of representatives is being conducted. this follows testimony from the top u.s. diplomat to ukraine, who on tuesday directly linkied -- directly linked president trump to the witholding of u.s. military aid in return for political favors. here to report on where it all stands, our own lisa desjardins and yamiche alcindor.

hello to both of you. lisa, i will start with you. you were talking to a lot of people. what are republicans saying as they push back against the impeachment inquiry? do you have a sense of how much pressure they are feeling to defend president? lisa: tremendous pressure. i think republicans especially yesterday struggled to understand the testimony of the top diplomat from ukraine, bill taylor. today, we heard the sound of a resounding defense of the president. part of that came from a white house lunch the president had with republican senators including lindsey graham. he told reporters at the capitol today that the president said he feels in his bones the process is unfair, and he demands republicans push back. here is how he describes where he is on the process. >> when you are talking about removing the president of the united states, seems to me you would want to have a process

that is consistent with who we are as americans and consistent with what bill clinton is allowed to do, richard nixon was allowed to do, and the process in the house today, i think, is a danger to the future of the presidency. if you can drive down a president's poll numbers by having proceedings where you selectively leak information, where the president who is the subject of this is pretty much shut out, god help future presidents. lisa: he said quite a lot. let's break it down. we are talking about bill clinton and nixon. he is asking for the chance, saying the president should be able to see the testimony against him, have his own counsel and his own witnesses. democrats say that is coming. they say the closed-door process is the initial investigation phase. when lindsey graham talks about poll numbers and leaks, he is

talking about the testimony we have seen, the opening statements from witnesses. lindsey graham admitted he is not sure where it is coming from. he suspects house democrats are putting that out there. a bigger picture here, when i talked to house republicans in particular, they say they feel such pressure that fight for the president because their base is telling them to fight for this president. they have been told by statistics that this president is not just the one controlling the message, he is the republican message. they have to storm committee hearing rooms to show they are behind the president. one source said they think that isn't going far enough, they want to tell their base they are fighting for the president. judy: yemiche, you are talking to folks at the white house. republicans on the hill are getting signal from the white house. yamiche: the white house and president trump are pushing republicans to defend him privately and publicly. as lisa said, there was lunch at the white house and the

president wanted republicans to say he did nothing wrong, to make sure they make it clear he feels like the process is mick mulvaney told lawmakers that the white house is trying to get its plan together on impeachment. the white house is trying to tell republicans, we will eventually get a handle on this and bear with us until we do this. publicly, the president made statements. monday, he lashed out at republicans and said you need to get stronger. democrats have their stuff together, they are sticking together and i have to deal with mitt romney of utah, tweeting it going on tv criticizing me. that is not what i want. i want more people getting on tv and defending me. then we saw the republicans storm the secured facility and do exactly what the president's head. that is what he saw as getting tougher, the kind of loyalty he has been seeking. judy: what are you hearing about the president's attitude towards this?

anger, frustration? where do they put it on a scale of what every? -- whatever? yamiche: the president is angry. the issue of ukraine has been something that has stuck to this presidency and has been a headline for so long. the last 4-5 weeks have been filled with this. we have seen this president go away from scandal and controversy and this one isn't going away. i want to walk through the president's responses to the impeachment inquiry because it is something that we should be the holding. let's look at what the white house has said. they said at first there was no pressure applied to ukraine on the call. then they said aid was delayed to ukrai but it wasn't about the investigation into the bidens. then they said aid was tied to the investigation of democrats put -- but ukrainians were unaware of that. the white house responses have proven to be untrue time after time after time.

with the no pressure campaign, we saw the call where he says i need you to do me a favor, joe biden needs to be investigated. they said that aid was not delayed because of the bidens but there have been multiple people that have come to capitol hill to say a was tied to the bidens. you have the fact they say ukraine wasn't aware but multiple reports say ukraine new as early as may to theresident one of them to influence the election. judy: lindsey graham was asked about that today. he said, you noticed that? republicans know. judy: getting back to the process, what republicans have been focused on. what do we know about how the normal regular process is for these kinds of investigations compared to what is happening now? lisa: this is important, there is so much spin. let's lo at what we know about the hearings going on. right now, republicans on three

committees, 47 different house republicans, do haveccess to this testimony if they want. that includes about a dozen of those members who protested yesterday. they didn't need to storm the facility. they had access as it was. democrats say this is a regular practice. they point to a few things. let's talk about the benghazi investigation run by the house oversight committee under trey gowdy. they had closed-door hearings and they kicked out republicans as well. lindsey graham is saying this is higher stakes and this needs to be public sooner. he thinks this is a derailment of the impeachment process but impeachment is how you define it. democrats say they are moving to a public scenario soon, but the pressure to do that is mounting and republicans want to put pressure on them and they want to make the process look like a circus emma which is what of the reasons they did that yesterday. democrats are trying to make it look serious. judy: two forces heading in each other's direction. we would -- we will see where

this ends up. thank you both. ♪ stephanie: good evening from newshour west. i'm stephanie sy with the latest headlines. multiple wildfires are threatening homes in california as high dry winds sweep the state. in northern california wine country, a new wildfire reignited old fears. flames raced across 15 square miles in sonoma county, pushed by winds gusting to 70 miles an hour. some 2,000 people were ordered to evacuate. pg&e, which operates power lines in that area, reported that one of its transmission towers had problems near the origin of the kincade fire, but officials have not confirmed what started the fire. and in southern california, a fast-moving brush fire on a hillside north of los angeles burned at least two houses in its path and is threatening more property. fires in that region have forced

40,000 evaations and closed a major interstate. meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of californians are without power as utility companies impose precautionary outages during red flag whether. governor gavin newsom condemned the outages. >> it is infuriating beyond words to live in a state as innovative and extraordinarily entrepreneurial and capable as the state of california, to be living in an environment where we are seeing this kind of disruption and these kinds of blackouts. it is about corporate greed meeting climate change. it is about decades of mismanagement. stephanie: pg&e, which is facing tens of billions of dollars for wildfire liabilities, says it expects to restore power to all residents by friday evening but there may be additional shutoffs this weekend. late tonight, media reports emerged that the u.s. justice

department opened a criminal investigation into the origins of its own russia investigation. under attorney general william barr, and administrative review had already begun. now, the justice department will be able to them panel a grandeur -- grand jury and issue subpoenas. trump called it an illegal witchhunt. in northeastern syria, the syrian government and kurdish led forces accused turkish troops of violating the cease-fire but ankara made no apologies. instead, president erdogan urged kurdish fighters to leave the border zone or else. >> our soldiers and the syrian army are patrolling the area of the operation inch by inch. if any of these terrorist scum across us, it is our --, cross us, it is our national right to fight them. stephanie: the kurds must withdraw 20 miles from the president of lebanon urged protesters to accept economic

reforms and and mass demonstrations. crowds in beirut listened to the appeal on speakers, and rejected it. protesters closed roads, lit fires, and rallied into the night for an 8th day, in an ongoing revolt over economic collapse and official corruption. chile's governmentas offered new concessions after a week o unrest there that has left 18 dead. president sebastian pinera announced today he will freeze a hike in electricity rates. but protesters in santiago were back on the streets anyway, angered over living costs and inequality. chile's military has taken over security in santiago. riot police used water cannons to disperse protesters. >> this is a tragedy for chile. theajority of people who don't protest and destroy everything, i think they feel differently. these things don't do anythin good. stephanie: protests in honduras turned violence peer -- turned

violent. protesters demanded that the president step down. british police confirmed today that all 39 people found dead in a container truck were chinese citizens. the truck was discovered early yesterday in an industrial park, about 25 miles east of london. the victims included 31 men and 8 women. the 25-year-old driver is being held on suspicion of attempted murder. in spain, the remains of the dictator francisco franco were exhumed from a muzzle liam and reburied in a private crypt. his family carry the coffin away as supporters gave the fascist salute. others say the man who overthrew a dramatic -- a democratic government didn't deserve a place of honor. back in this country, ohio congressman tim ryan dropped out of the 2020 democratic presidential race. he said he will run for re-election instead. ryan's departure leaves 17 democrats vying for the nomination.

former president jimmy carter is at home in georgia recovering from a fractured pelvis. he was released from hospital today. his fall monday night was his third injury since last spring. the u.s. census bureau is out with new projections of dramatic change. they show a population of 400 million by 2058, up from the current 326 million. it will also be more diverse, with non-hispanic whites dipping below 50% of the population. and there will be more senior citizens than children just 15 years from now. in the middle of the world series, the houston astros have fired an assistant general manager after a report came out about him shouting offensive comments at female reporters. the "sports illustrated" report led to an investigation by major league baseball, and the team said today it has parted ways with brandon taubman. today, congress put aside its divisions over impeachment to join and honoring -- join in

honoring elijah cummings. the democrat died last week. an honor guard brought his flag covered coffin to the u.s. capitol. fellow lawmakers, friends and family looked on as leaders from both parties remembered him as a moral compass. x elisha -- elijah was a master of the house. he helped shape america's future. i have called him our north star, our guide to a better future for our children. >> he is defined by the character of his heart, the honesty of his dialogue, and the man that, the man that we will miss. stephanie: cummings lay in state in the capital into the evening. his funeral is tomorrow. still to come, captive in turkey. pastor andrew brunson on his two

years in prisonn false charges. cambodia tracks down on the growing orphanage industry. privacy versus precision. how data is driving novel legal challenges. ♪ >> this is the pbs newshour from weta studios in washington and from the west, from the wall clerk cronkite -- the walter cronkite school of journalism. judy: we plan to have a conversation with mike pence tonight but that was moved to monday. do -- we want to hear from lawmakers who have access to the secure room at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. we reached out to all the republican members and none were able to join us. we turned to representative jackie spear, a democrat from california. she sits on the intelligence committee and oversight

committee, both involved in this phase of the impeachment inquiry. thank you for joining us. we appreciated it. i want to ask you first about the push back from republicans who are focusing, as we have heard, not so much in defending the president and what he did, although some of them say they are sure it doesn't amount to anything, but on the process. they say it is unfair and it damages the presidency. >> first of all, when you can't speak to the merits of an issue, you then direct yourself to something less and that is why they are looking at process. the interesting thing is, during the benghazi committee meetings, there were over 107 interviews that were held privately before there was any public hearings. the committee was created and operational for four months before the was the first public hearing. if you are comparing the two efforts, we are far and away

going to see open hearings happen much sooner than four months, and much fewer than 107 private interviews. judy: one of the most vocal opponents today or critics was senator lindsey graham of south carolina. i want to play for our audience and for you part of what he said at a news conference. this is senator graham. >> what they are doing is selectively leaking information to drive the president's poll numbers down and to drive the momentum for impeachment up. everything coming out of this process is being leaked by democrats. they said some a you heard bill taylor, i was breathless. the point is, you don't know what bill taylor was asked. we don't know if he was cross-examined. what you have here is a hearing, a process, that is, to me, not sufficient or due process, it

and being used in a politically dangerous fashion. judy: he is calling it a star chamber. he is saying it does not due process. >> i would say first of all that that is a reckless description. he is -- he hasn't ventured into those committee rooms,ut i can tell you and tell him that those interviews that take place are very fair. the democrats have one hour to ask questions, the republicans have one hour to ask questions and they alternate back and forth for the duration of the interview. secondly, most of the transcripts will become public. third, the statements that have been released for the most part have been released by the individuals who were being interviewed. so i don't quite understand why mr. graham, or senator graham, is suggesting such vitriolic language. judy: why are the hearings being

held in private? >> they are not hearings, they are interviews and it is fact-finding. when you are trying to develop your facts, you don't necessarily want persons to corroborate their testimony before coming in. if we did in fact make them public at the outset, we would not find the inconsistencies that we have already found. judy: that is an essential -- an essential point republicans make, this is so critical, we are talking about the survival of the president himself and the public needs to know what is going on. >> they do need to know when they will get to know that. the transcripts are going to be made public, and there are going to be a series of public hearings, as well, where many of these witnesses where -- will come back and testify before an open committeeefore -- so everyone can hear their testimony. judy: how does the public have

confidence that the questions what these individuals who come before the committee are telling the truth? >> they swear under oath. by doing so, if they perjure themselves, they would be suect to a criminal trial. judy: how would you -- >> that is how michael cohen is spending time in prison. he swore under oath and he was lying and he is in prison. judy: when republicans compare this to the process leading up to the impeachment of president clinton and recalling what happened under president nixon and saying this doesn't follow the process back then, how does it compare? >> there aren't any specific rules. in those cases, there was a special prosecutor who was identified. in this situation, the department of justice under attorney general barr declined to pursue the whistleblower complaint because a didn't think

there was any evidence there. we have to do the evidence collection at this point because the department of justice declined to do so. judy: one of the other criticisms we heard from republicans is that you didn't have a special prosecutor. maybe it is connected to the point you just made but they say, robert mueller spent all that time investigating russia connections. he ended up not finding anything. democrats are disappointed a couldn't impeach the president over that. they are turning to this, but in this case there has been no special prosecutor. >> i would beg to differ with the conclusion. in the mueller report, there were 10 incidents of obstruction of justice. robert mueller believed he could not file any because there is this department of justice ruled that you can't charge a seated president. in volume one where they looked at the intervention by the russians and to what extent the campaign of donald trump was

engaged with them, there were over 250 contacts by the trump campaign and russian operatives and 32 in-person meetings. judy: look ahead for us if you will, where do you see this process moving? how long is it going to take to interview all of the people you want to interview? and we are hearing there will be public hearings next month. when do you see that beginning? what will it look like? >> i can't give you a specific date when the hearings will gin,ut i would be confident that we will be having public hearings with than a month. i think -- within a month. i think they will be run like any other hearing where democrats will ask questions and republicans will ask weston's. it will be very -- ask question will be very fair like all depositions. the benghazi committee had over 107 behind closed-door interviews before they completed

their work, and four months before they went to their first public hearing. we are way ahead of their schedule. judy: do you know how many more witnesses u will be hearing from? >> i can't tell you a specific number but i think we probably have another two weeks or so of interviews to undertake. judy: congresswoman jackie spear of california, who serves both on the intelligence committee and the oversight committee. thank you. >> thank you for having me. judy: american evangelical pastor andrew brunson spent two years in prison in turkey on what the u.s. calls bogus charges. his case created a crisis between the u.s. and nato allies. for brunson it called -- caused a crisis of faith and a warning. there will be a brief mention of

suicide in the segment that is upcoming. brunson has written in your book about ordeal it is titled "god's hostage." we sat down with him and senator jeanne shaheen who played a key role in his release. >> before pastor andrew brunson became an unwilling media sensation and flashpoint of u.s.-turkish hostility, he lived quietly in turkey for 25 years. he built a small congregation near the aegean sea and help refugees from syria. in july 2016, elements of the turkish military launched a failed coup. president erdogan crackdown on the military in society. he arrested hundreds of thousands he accused of terrorism. the brunsons were both arrested. they had spent every day together in turkey but when maureen was released, andrew was

isolated and shuttles between prisons for two years. she visited the prison every day and kept vigil. turkish tv kept brunson in the news, accusing him of being a cia agent and supporting gulen, and exiled cleric. turkey wanted to trade gulen for brunson. >> release pastor andrew brunson now. x the trump administration refused and imposed sanctions. congress maintained bipartisan pressure. >> the charges we have seen, to me, are specious. i think we have to continue to support the family. >> democratic senator jeanne shaheen pushed erdogan for brunson's release. he was released almost two years to the day after his arrest. last week, i sat down with brunson and shaheen.

>> we were arrested to be deported. somebody decided to hold us and i think that was to intimidate other missionaries so they would self-deported. at some point i became obviously used for leveraged to try to gain concessions from the u.s. there is a human story and the god story. when god completed what he wanted to through my imprisonment, he caused my release. ask the first night, you describe being locked up behind a big metal door, hearing the keys turn and the bolt slam for the first time is sobering. it is a sudden loss of control and plunge into uncertainty. can you describe what that felt like? >> a total loss of control. it was very scary. i was saying, god, you are keeping me here. i am desperate to get out and full of fear. you could release me and you are not doing it. you are doing this to toughen me

up. it was taking me into a crisis of faith. >> do you think you lost your faith? >> no. i was desperate to hold onto it. i wasn't wanting to walk away from it but i was afraid that i was going insane at times. >> did you feel forsaken? >> at times i did. i was very surprised, many of the biographies i have read of christian heroes, my heroes, they show very strong people. i expected that when i was suffering, i would also have that strength. instead, i felt very broken and weak. >> you write very honestly about not only your crisis of faith, but your crisis of depression. how deep was your despair? >> at one point, the turkish government wanted to give me three life sentences in solitary confinement with no parole, so i thought i could waste away here and spend years in this terrible

isolation. i would rather be in heaven than spend the rest of my life in a turkish prison. that was what led me towards thinking of suicide. i'm glad i didn't do it. the combination of despair and anxiety is very dangerous. i thi i may not ever get out, i just wanted to escape the situation. it is not that i wanted to did -- to die, it is that i couldn't imagine living in these circumstances for a long time. >> senator, how important was this case to you and how did it become a bipartisan issue? >> the passage you read in the beginning that andrew describes, where it felt like locked in the cell, is sothing no american citizen should have to deal with in a foreign country, especially someone trying to do good, whose family has lived there, who is taken into custody for no reason. those were totally trumped up charges.

there was no spiting -- spying. >> the charges against me had no basis. i knew i could be released through the judicial process, but this was not being driven by the courts. >> it was driven by the top. >> yes. i knew that there was one person in the end you would make the decision to release me or not. >> the president. >> yes. >> during the trial, when you had to defend yourself, you describe how you found your voice. >> i chose to forgive people, which i have to forgive them anyway because that is what i am required to do as a christian. jesus said we are supposed to rejoice when we are persecuted for his sake. i said, i am blessed to be suffering for his sake. that is when i felt almost a holy defiance, i would say. we didn't know when we went to the final court session that ended up being the court -- the

final court session, i didn't know i would be released. i packed two bags, one to come to the states and the other to return to prison. in the court session, they declared me guilty of terrorism, but then they said we are suspending this for time served and while you appeal it, your travel ban is lifted. that basically means, please leave as soon as you can. it was such a roller coaster, to go from being convicted of terror, inking i am going back to prison, then rushing to the airport to get on an air force plane and leave turkish airspace as soon as possible in case they changed their mind. within 24 hours, i go from being convicted of terror to visiting the white house. overwhelming feeling of gratefulness to all the people who were involved. congress and the administration,

and how wonderful to be back with my children, with my wife. >> do you give president trump credit? >> i do. this is the way government is supposed to work. people are supposed to work together, both houses of congress, with the administration to accomplish whatever the goal is in the interest of the american people. we shouldn't -- we should be able to weigh in for every american who is falsely imprisoned around the world to try to make sure we can get them released. >> was the president's personal involvement important? >> i think so. clearly he has a relationship with president erdogan, and i think the more pressure we can put on turkey, the better. >> after everything you have been through, how do you feel about turkey today? >> we still love the turks. i don't really like the turkish government, but i feel like they stole two years from me but god has redeemed it. i believe that what i went

through, what i suffered, is actually going to bring blessing to turkey. so i have no regrets. my faith has deepened as i went through this. it has been, i would say it was severely tested, and because it was tested and i came out of it, it is proven now. it was tested and proven. >> senator, andrew brunson, thank you to you both. ♪ judy: the concept of orphanages has long been considered outdated in developed countries, but these institutions still house hundreds of thousands of children in the developing world. surprisingly, most of these children are actually not orphans. our special correspondent

reports from cambodia as part of a series, "agents for change." >> 60 world -- this six-year-old spent years in an orphanage. on this day, his mother's fingerprint made it official, he was going home. they waited with toys for him and his siblings. >> i am happy that i can see my mom and my sister and my brother. >> he was one of thousands of cambodian children who live in facilities commonly called orphanages here. like him, the majority are not orphans. neither parents nor the facilities are looking to offer the children for adoption. parents, many in dire poverty, are easily convinced to place their children in so-called residential care facilities, says the cofounder of a nonprofit called the cambodian children's trust. >> most of them think that in an

orphanage, the child will have a better life, access to food, education, and medical care. >> now, the boy and his mother are part of an effort by several aid agencies working with cambodia's government to return children to their families. >> i feel like i have my child closer to me. i feel happy. >> happy that she now has all three children together, but this was a day of mixed emotions . guilt for sending her son away, worry about the future. she is single and has no formal education. >> my life has been very difficult. we just survive day-to-day. >> under the new campaign, she will have helped for at least two years. the trust provides a safety net for two years for the families it serves. >> if they have domestic violence, mental health issues or any children who are not going to school, we will work with a social worker.

we provide support in terms of food. >> the challenges for this family, and for the broader campaign, are daunting. it begins with the image cambodia can't seem to shake, off the khmer rouge genocide, immortalized by hollywood. >> cambodia 2019 has nothing to do with the cambodia of 1979. >> sebastian founded a vocational training charity 25 years ago that has helped thousands of marginalized children and their parents. >> the killing fields and all the movies about cambodia is about death. when people think of cambodia they think all the children are not, they are all victims of destruction and everyone is awful. which is far from the truth. >> with the civil strife over, he says there are far fewer orphans. many children still live in poverty, but their number has dropped amid robust economic

growth, notably in tourism to cambodia's famous temples. there may be fewer orphans, but orphanages have become a growth industry. there were about 150 in 2005. today there are more than 400 housing more than 16,000 children. often, they are put on display, dancing for tourists who are coaxed to leave a donation. talks i learned to dance. we performed for foreign visitors. it is not fun. it is exhaustion. >> 14-year-old dara and his sister were reunited with their mother after six years in an orphanage, where they recall the lives of physical abuse and insufficient food. >> it wasn't fun. >> there is profit in pity. >> it is an easy sel a child in a terrible situation, give me

five dollars a month. for that -- if he were that easy it would be fantastic but it is not. >> then there is voluntourism, where students pay agencies to place them in orphanages. tens of thousands of young australians, europeans, north americans come to cambodia to volunteer. they will spend a few days, sometimes weeks in orphanages, mostly teaching english to children. child development experts say not only does this not help the children, it actually harms them. >> it comes from a good feeling that i am helping but realistically, would you like to have your teacher change every week? >> children thrive on long-term relationships with adults come of it -- with adults, the kind found in the family. >> for young children, they are hindered by being in an orphanage by the lack of personal attention, by not being

in a family. >> this is where the younger girls with black to ted, it depends on the family and the orphanage. he is an american evangelical pastor who, with his wife, founded foursquare children of promise, the largest of several faith-based operators of residential care facilities, or as he calls them, church homes. some older religion-based groups have joined the campaign to the institutionalized children, but others, like foursquare, have resisted. they say they opened their first church home in the early 1990's because there was a pressing need. >> we didn't come here intending to take care of orphans. we came here to build a church and we wound up having these kids dumped on our doorstep. >> the need has only grown, he says, to 106 homes driven by family dysfunction that is widespread and social mores.

>> our biggest source of children's children that had mothers who died in childbirth. those children are considered cursed. >> widows are also marginalized in cambodia, he says, and they are brought in to staff the facilities. each has about 25 children. >> these widows, they live with the kids and they are there with the kids, their entire life that they are growing up in the orphan homes. >> many profess their christianity, not a requirement, he says, but a good outcome. >> i am a proselytizer. >> unapologetically? >> unapologetic proselytizer. >> sebastian says he is exaggerating the social ills and says his mission would be intolerable if the tables were turned. >> i'm sure they would be very upset if a muslim organization

open centers in the u.s. or france and started taking children from communities to turn them and you nice little muslims. that is what they are doing here. it is a buddhist country. >> he says orphanages are an outdated concept closed long ago in france and the u.s. in favor of foster homes and adoption. that is the goal in cambodia, but it is not easy, given the poverty that keeps life fragile for many families and limited resources for family reintegration, which ironically is the cheaper option. >> it is about0-15 times cheaper to support a child living with their family rather than to bring them into an institution. >> the spam -- they say their institutions are family and they have no plans to scale back. e government's goal is to reduce the number of children in orphanages by one third by next year.

for the pbs newshour, this is fred de sam lazaro in cambodia. judy: that important reporting is a partnership with the under told stories project at the university of st. thomas in minnesota. ♪ judy: a major transformation of affecting the global economy is the way big data and artificial intelligence are being used in commerce and business. what has gone less attention, how this decision is driving changes in the creative industries. in the second of two pieces, special -- our special correspondent looks at some of the fundamental questions this is raising for artists, designers and other creators. it is part of our series "making sense."

>> this bright, cerful clothing line is a hot commodity worn by the likes of michelle obama, taylor swift, and beyonce. tonya taylor is undoubtedly creative, an artist to paint's original prints for her clothing but she is them -- in demand partly because she gives customers what they want. >> the biggest part of being a successful designer is listening to a customer and knowing who they are. >> she knows what they want because they tell her, quite explicitly. what do you do with the closet space now that you rent the runway? thanks to the feedback she reviewed -- receives from rent the runway, which allows customers to rent designer clothes. >> infinite possibilities. >> we have harnessed millions of data points over the last decade. >> sarah is rent the runway's chief merchant officer. >> every clothing item we have is tagged with over 60 attributes, things like color, fabric, silhouette, length.

we also have millions of customer interactions we collect and photo reviews. >> the data helped them refine the inventory and predict what the typical customer will want next season. >> last fall we noticed lasers really performing truly well. we source brands like veronica beard that we launched on site. she likes to outfit in suit sets so we brought in this veronica beard set. >> when we think about the customer -- >> the data get fed back to designers like taylor, who use it to nip in the hips are let out the buster choose a different color or fabric. >> this is our ines dress, the most rented dress of last season. we learned people love the stretch linen but they look -- didn't love the snap neckline.

people love jumpsuits, so we were like, let's combine that information. we took away the snap and it is a little jumpsuit shape. >> in a dark neutral print because that is what the data advised. access to this feedback significantly improves the chances that a creation will succeed. >> the biggest risk is the risk that what they create will fail. >> these law professors have researched how the harvesting of vast troves of data is changing creative industries and what it might mean for their legal protections and economic rewards. >> human creativity is always risky as a business. if data can lower the risk, it makes creative endeavors easier to invest in and potentially more rewarding. >> it is not a guarantee that they will place a better bet. >> creative industries have traditionally had difficulties predicting what will sell and what won't, as this screenwriter put it in his 1983 memoir. >> simply, people go to see hits

because they want to see that movie. they don't go to see flops because they don't want to see that movie. the problem hollywood has is, they can't figure out why. >> that is why we see so many sequels. it worked before and it will probably worked -- work again. >> big data helps companies figure it out with more precision which can mean more precise pandering. >> these processes tend not to give you something wildly different. they give you more of what you already watched or listened to or liked. there is a bunch of literature on how mucnovelty people want. the answers relatively modest amount. people like paintings that looks somewhat like the paintings they have seen. people like movies that are somewhat like the movies they have seen. >> that said, data has been used to overturn at least some of the conventional wisdom about what and who audiences want to see. >> an example is netflix, which not long ago produced a film

called "bird box." ty cast an older female lead, a diverse cast. that is an adventurous choice that paid off. the talk among netflix people was, they did that in response to data. >> 800 data, pulled from -- a ton of data, pulled from millions of viewers. >>ize, scale. you have to collect a lot of data. >> how replicable is what you do? could an upstart produce the high quality data and analytics you do? >> it is not easily replicable. we have a decade worth of data along with a lot of technology that we employ to analyze it. >> this hunger for data might be driving consolidation in creative industries. take the merger of time warner and at&t. >> they went to the judge and said, time warner is a programmer, at&t has a platform.

we need to link these things up so we can get data to time warner that allows them to produce better content. >> if the returns to data keep growing and growing we could have a pretty strong impetus towards monopoly or significant marketower and that is a concern. >> also a concern, privacy. consumers may not know their netflix watching habits are being closely monitored. >> most people don't know how much data about their activities when they are stopping and starting, that is being gathered and spit back at them in different ways earth -- or sold to trd parties. >> on the other hand, some customers turn this information over willingly. >> 98% of our customers give them -- give us feedback after every time they rent something. so we can understand the customer loves an item, how it fits her, how many times she is wearing it and where she is wearing it to.

>> the customers provide all of this information to you voluntarily? >> yes, believe it or not. we built this incredible brand community. >> there are legal questions that arise from this use of data, like whether we should rethink copyright law, which exists irt to incentivize artists to create. >> copyright is a way of lowering the risk of being creative. f data driven creativity is lowering the risk, it will be a helpmate for a stand-in for copyright protection. >> who deserves to own the copyright to a work if it is created by algorithm rather than artist? >> the author is not bringing something out of nothing, the author is con -- conjuring our preferences, taking them into account and reflecting ourselves back on us. if this shifts people's views of who is responsible for the creative work, where it is more of a community project, then this might shift some of the moral supports that undergird

copyright protection. >> do i own my consumer preferences or do the companies whose stuff i buy own my preferences? >> that is a very current debate as to whether we own the data we transmit to these companies. >> artists argue they are still running the show. >> the algorithm is it really teus how to create art. i think it is optimizing the art we create. >> it wasn't like the data was fed into a computer and, like, the algorithm spit out this. >> i don't think women's minds work like that. i wish it could be that easy. it is more intuition. you have to read between the lines with the data. where women are going next is hard to predict. >> at least for now. judy: it is estimated that as

many as 2.5 billion people around the world need prescription eyeglasses but don't have them. untreated, poor vision keeps people from reaching their potential. tonight, and i dr. is looking for new ways to solve the problem. >> when i was 12 years old i was told by my teachers that i was slow and not paying attention. i was taken for a night test where they found i had really poor vision. when i put on glasses, i saw trees had leaves on them for the first time and my life took a different course as a consequence. i was aware that the thing that happened with a pair of glasses may not have been true if i lived somewhere else so i wanted to become a doctor. then i became an eye surgeon. worldwide, there are 2.5 billion

people, one in three, who need glasses and can't get them. three 6 million people are blind , for in every five of them who shouldn't be because the cause of blindness is curable. in 2011, i left my job and my wife and i packed our bags and moved to kenya. we went there because we wanted to look at any the large population and we needed to under -- establish 100 clinics. we realized how big the scale of the problem was but also how much potential there was to change lives. when i worked in kenya, i took 100,000 pounds worth of i -- eye equipment to understand why people couldn't see. what we started to do was create mobile technology that could do the same assessments but in the hands of non-specialists. we built a vision test that could measure someone's vision, then we built a tool that would sit on the phone that allows you to see inside the eye so you

could understand why someone couldn't see. it was apparent how many people have access to mobile devices that would go to places that had no roads and electricity, but people have mobile phones. an incredible doctor said to me, in the community there are children in schools who can't see. when i send miners from the hospital to see them, she finds them and she spends all day in one school to find around 5% of children with a i can no longer afford to send her because the clinic is too busy. i s why dwe train teachers to do the same thing? teachers started using our mobile app to measure vision and get a simulation of what the child could see, and it would automate a message to the parents and the head teacher and the hospital. suddenly, everyone knew the child existed. the first time we trialed it, 25 teachers screened 21,000 children in nine days. weent up to 300,000 children in the entire district. the governor -- the government

of botswana has committed to screen and treat every school child in the country, making them the first country in the world wheran entire generation longer will have to suffer this problem. this is my brief but spectacular take on a -- it eradicate in avoidable blindness. judy: so good to hear about that. you can find more episodes of brief but spectacular on pbs.org/newshour/brief. a new study finds hospitals that experience a data breach, the deaths among heart attack patients increase. we explain on our website, pbs.org/newshour. that is the newshour for tonight. i am judy woodruff. join us online. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and we will see you see -- we will see you soon. >> major funding has been provided by -- >> bnsf railway.

consumer cellular. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. and friends of the newshour. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station by viewers like you. thank you. >> this is pbs newshour west from weta in washington and our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. >> you are

♪ ♪ - this week on milk street, we're off to paris to explore what's happening in the new world of paris bakeries. we stop by the famous rose bakery near place pigalle for a lemon almond pound cake. we interviewed lindsey tramuta, who guides us through the new world of paris food and cooking. and then we visit a very ufrench bakery, le petit grain, where they make a salted peanut and caramel tart to die for. so stay right here with milk street