goo good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. it's been hard if not impossible to ignore all the talk about president trump's first 100 days in office. he skipped the correspondence dinner instead held a rally touting his accomplishments and talking about the media. ted koppel joins us in a minute.

and from contributions to your pbs stations from viewers like you. i'm pliesed to welcome ted koppel to this program. he is the former long time host of abc's "nightline." he's now a senior contributor to cbs news "sunday morning." >> i can see you, and you look

well. >> now i know how all those guests on nightline felt over the years. >> you did a great job on that program. i am glad to see it's ongoing all these years later. speaking of your legacy, let me start by asking, what you make of the way the media is covering donald trump. i ask that because it seems to me that given that he is such an anomaly in so many different ways, i have watched my colleagues in the media struggle with how to cover him, what do you think of how they're covering donald trump? >> i think the first thing you got to do is consider how media have changed in in the 25 or 30 years that have elapsed since the development of the internet and social media. it used to be 3 or 4 networks

out there, and that was it. and they were in in competition with one another for the 100,000 television homes in the cun. now you have those tands of outlets, tens of thousands if you count social media. the level of competition is so great that people are doing things that they simply would not have done 30 years ago. 30 years ago we had the clout to say, if we don't put you on the air, you just eliminated 30% of all your outlets that's not the case any more. there's so much competition now that you find people doing things that they do for reasons of commercial competition rather than for journalistic reasons. >> i'm not naive in asking this question. what does or what should competition have to do with standards? >> ideally it should have little or nothing to do with standards,

but if your standards are going to mean that you drop 10 or 20 points down in terms of the rating it has everything to do with it. look, the chairman of the board over at cbs as did his counterpart at cnn both of them said look, donald trump has been very very good for business they don't say he's been good for journalism, president trump spends so much time lamb basting the media, when in point of fact he never would have become the republic nominee for president, had it not been for the wall to wall coverage he received. >> what do you make of that wall to wall coverage he received. people like bernie sanders were complaining they couldn't get a

tenth of that coverage. >> he was right, he wasn't getting 10% of the coverage. if there's one thing president trump knows how to do now, and knew how to do during the campaign, it was saying things that were just outrageous enough that it gained him the kind of attention that simply would not permit an outlet to say, there's a trump event going on, let's wait and see what he says before we put it on the air. i got into a lot of trouble with some of our colleagues, many, many years ago. when i said that what cnn was doing in much of its live coverage of events had less to do with journalism than it had to do with technology. simply training a camera on a live event is not journalism, journalism requires editing, journalism requires sifting facts from nonfacts. journalism requires in effect putting things into some kind of a context. simply training a camera on an

event has nothing to do with journalism opinion. >> speaking of journalism and objectivity, i've been following -- i always follow u you. but the pieces you've been writing, you seem to suggest that you think that the state of journalism and in this moment is a threat to our democracy, that's a bold statement. i'm not sure i disagree with it, am i reading your thoughts right? >> when you put it that broadly, no. it makes it sound as though i'm complaining that there's no good, let alone great journalism out there. there really is. there's an extraordinary amount of great journalism out there. it's in danger of drowning in the massive universe of bad journalism. there is more journalism than there's ever been before. it all depends on how you define journalism. there was a time when in order

to be a journalist. you had to be part of an organization in which there would be certain standards, in which there were other people who were paying a little bit of attention to what you said, if it was on television, you would have producers, fact checkers. if it was a newspaper you had editors. these days there are so many outlets on social media that have none of those checks and balances. and without that you have more bad journalism than you've ever had before, that much is true. you still have some great journalism. i consider the -- what the new york times does on a daily basis, what npr does, what the washington journal does, what the washington post does, what pbs does. there is still some extraordinary journalism out there, but it's in danger of drowning in the much larger

universe of mediocre to bad. >> that's what i'm getting at. if the good is outweighed by the bad, in a massive sort of way, doesn't that then a threat to our democracy? >> when i say that it is a threat to our democracy, i assume you're making a glancing reference to the conversation i had with sean hannity, when sean said, do you think i'm bad for america? i said yes. bad for america in the sense that -- i made this point, i think he's very, very good at what he does. he put the on a good show. but when you're more concerned with the ideology of what you're saying than the accuracy, with the facts behind what you're saying, that represents a threat to democracy. >> i wonder how you would have managed differently at

nightline, if the president or any other persons you wanted to talk to needed to profile had to go around you because they had 28 million twitter followers, how would you manage nightline in that era, where people didn't have to come on nightline to talk to ted koppel? >> no, no, no. you're not being the slightest bit disrespectful, that's stating it very accurately. back in the days when nightline was in its heyday, people who wanted to get a message across, had to appear on nightline, on meet the press, had to appear on the cbs evening news. there were only so many outlets that reached 6, 8, 10, 12, 15 million people at a time. one thing that has changed are the number of people that are watching these different outlets. at nightline's peak, when i was doing it back in the mid 1980s,

it was not unusual to have an audience of 10 to 12 million people, it's an absolutely enormous audience. by today's standards. it's not saying anything about what's happened to nightline. when i started doing nightline, the tonight show nightline and in those days cbs did reruns of a cop show. among the three of us, we represented 70% of the audience that was watching television at 11:30 at night. 70%. these days the three programs that are on at that time, the tonight show, cbs and abc whatever they have on at 11:30 at night. among the three of them, they probably only have about 30 or 35%. in other words, half or less than half the audience. >> i think that might be

generous, but we will check those numbers. >> what is your sense of whether or not the attack, the vicious and unrelenting attack that president trump has leveled against the media, has that or will that have a debilitating effect? >> it clearly does in the eyes of those who are supporters of president trump. i did a fair amount of lecturing. i was doing a lecture tour a couple weeks back, and night after night after night i was talking to audiences of about 2500 people. and i would say to them, how many of you here listen to rush

limbau limbaugh, about 2500 people, 4 or 5 hands would go up, whatever you think of his program, the fact of the matter is, it is the most listened to radio program in america it has a weekly audience of about 20 million people. most of my left of center friends never listen to him. have no idea what he's saying. cannot possibly judge why he is being as successful as he is, and as he has been. the same thing is true of president trump. i think we have to be very careful that we don't allow ourselves to make permanent what is clearly a transitional phase in our national history right now. that is, we are about as divided as a nation as at any time possibly going back to the

period of the civil war. that's dangerous, we have to listen to one another. we have to listen to opinions that may differ from the opinions we hold. you can't argue with people if you're not willing to listen to them. we're not going that. we're not doing it in journalism, and we're not doing it in our congress. >> president trump just gave a very loose dissertation on the civil war. since you said it, he's going to take my mind to what he had to say about a conversation about the civil war the other day. he's done a number of interviews of late. in one of those interviews, he was asked whether he would fire his press secretary sean spicer. fire him? of course not, that guy gets good ratings? how do you view the good ratings

that mr. spicer gets in these daily press conferences at the white house? >> well, the fact of the matter is, people are paying attenti, people are listening, he's learned what his boss wants, and his boss is the president of the united states who wants him to get up there, and be combative. and his combativeness is what causes him -- i was flipping among channels, i don't normally watch television around that time of day. it just happened to be at the time that sean spicer was giving his briefing. he was being carried live on at least 4 different channels at that time. that's crazy. it's ludicrous, that's not his fault. that's not donald trump's fault, that's the fault of the managers of those different cable networks. >> and what of the president and for that matter, his press

secretary's loose relationship with the facts? >> well, that's where journalism plays a role. that's where i think we have to be very careful that we not fall into the trap of becoming the enemy of the president. the enemy of the trump administration. an adversarial role, that's perfectly fine. journalists have been adversaries of whoever happens to be in power long before i arrived. i'm disturbed by the freak went use these days of the word resistance. it makes it sound as though we are already living under a dictatorship. you may not like what the president is doing, you may not agree with what the president is doing. you may take issue of the accuracy of what the president is saying. once it becomes a matter of

they're the enemy and we are the resistance, then i think it's gone too far. we have to remain careful that we not let ourselves fall into that track. >> what you would replace the word resistance with? >> i would replace it with replacing inaccuracy with facts. i do believe that it is our role as journalists to analyze fairly and objectively what is being said and where something that is being said as inaccurate to correct the record. that's what journalism is all about. we have an editorial page and an op ed page where people can express their opinions quite frankly, far too much opinion is being expressed on front pages these days. and far too much opinion is being expressed by folks who are finders of fact but not

necessarily editorial writers. i don't think we should all be in the role of writing editorials. whether that's on newspaper, radio or television. >> you've been at this longer than i have been. your take on this may be different than mine. to my mind at least, i don't know that i've seen in my lifetime the imbalance i've seen now. there appears to be more opinion on television certainly at another outlet. there is more opinion than there is news. has it always been that way? >> no, no. clearly not. i mean, you know, when i began -- and you're right, you said it very delicately. i am a lot older than you are, so when i began at abc in 1963. we're talking 54 years ago. first of all, you had something back in 1963 which didn't end

until 19 -- well, there was something called a fairness doctrine. are you familiar with the fairness doctrine? >> absolutely. >> there was a requirement for those of your viewers who don't remember it. there was a requirement brac in those days that if you put on an opinion of someone who was conservative, you had to balance it with an opinion of someone who was liberal, and vice versa, that was required by the federal communications commission. and quite laterally a radio station or a television network was in danger of being fined or having a license suspended if they didn't do that. and i believe in 1987 the fairness doctrine was revoked, and with that you suddenly had dozens then hundreds, then thousands and now tens of thousands of people expressing

not their best version of the facts as they've been able to determine them, but their points of view, their opinions. so yes things have changed enormously since i was a young journalist, and i don't think it's a change for the better. >> i think i saw john mccain on one of the sunday programs this weekend. and i'm paraphrasing here, i think he was asked what advice he would give to world leaders who were trying to figure out how to navigate a tricky terrain, and trying to establish a relationship with the trump white house. i'm paraphrasing again. his response was, i would pay attention to what president trump does, not to what he says. it got me thinking about our conversations. is it possible and is it important for the media to cover the strategy of what he does and not all together every day what he says. >> as i've already indicated, i don't think it's a good idea to

do live coverage. every time the president has a rally, every time the president gives a speech i think the appropriate thing for the major journalistic outlets. the appropriate approach for them to take is first of all to read or listen to or watch what he says and then weigh it on the basis of its relative importance. and to the extent that it is important report on it, to the extent that you find it to be a misstatement of reality, report on that, i think that's all perfectly appropriate. the process of journalism does take a little while. we've always been jeopardized by the fact that we're meeting deadlines. there used to be a daily deadline, you used to have a newscast at 6:30 in the evening, on television and that was essentially it. then you had morning programs

like the "today" show and "good morning america" which came on the scene. now you had two sets of deadlines in a day. these days, you have deadlines every passing second. that's too much for journalism to be conducted properly. >> back to these interviews the president has given over the last few days on the occasion of the 100 days of his administration, one of the conversations he said he thought the presidency would be easier. >> yeah. >> he thought the presidency would be easier. i know what i think of that, that's not really important. how do you process that statement. he thought it would be easier? >> well, if the president is reminding us that he is a political newcomer than that's perfectly appropriate. he clearly has come to the presidency having to learn a great many things. i think almost everyone who

comes into the white house -- even the most experienced politicians find after a few months that the job was infin e infinitely more complex than they expected. donald trump has had no political experience, none, zero. that he would be surprised does not surprise me in the least. >> we have talked for the balance of this conversation about journalistic integrity and accountability. i wonder if i can ask to what degree if any do you think the media was complicit in helping to elect donald trump? >> well, complicit in the sense that i referenced a little while ago when i said for example both the top management of cbs and the top management of cnn conceded that donald trump had been very very good for business. the minute you start making your news judgments on the basis of what's going to bring the most

eyeballs in, and what is going to earn the most advertising dollars, then you're not approaching it from an honorable journalistic point of view. you're approaching it from a business point of view, the fact that i've always worked for business people. the fact that the folks who provided the money that allowed me to put nightline on the air were people who had to sell advertising and people who had to worry about what the business impact of things was going to be, that's nothing new. what i'm saying is, there's always been a chinese wall or at least there used to be, between the news division and that part of the network that made the money. and i think that chinese wall is perhaps a little more perm yabl than it used to be. >> so many of these lectures that you're giving are to students on cal campuses across

the country. when they ask you, or when you're faced with a question to encourage or discourage a person from going into the journalism business these days, how do you respond? >> i encourage them to go into the business. i discourage them from going to journalism schools. i believe, tavis that young people going to college have a responsibility to learn something about anything. i don't really care what it is. whether it's architecture, economics, foreign policy, but bring something to the trade of journalism. we can train young people to be professional journalists, we can't fill their empty skulls with information after they've spent four years in college not learning anything. and i -- you know, journalism schools by all means work for the college newspaper. by all means, work for the college radio station. television station, go work for the station downtown.

go work for the newspaper downtown. but the important thing about college is getting a real education. >> my respect for you is so immen immense, so great, i have to call you mr. koppel after all these years. thank you for visiting us tonight. >> mr. smiley, thank you very much. >> that's our show. as always, keep the faith. for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley, join me next time for conversations with malcolm nance and actress elizabeth moss. that's next time, we'll see you then.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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