ship, a work visa program and increased border security. a second storm is brewing over the budget. on wednesday the president sends it to congress. while the proposal is likely to be tossed in the fire and roasted by republicans, some democrats have expressed early outrage over the president's offers on earned benefit programs including social security. but the stormy weather begins today. with gun safety. the senate will begin discussing the issue in a matter of hours. and president obama will be in connecticut to take up the issue later this afternoon. as of right now, here's where the issue stands in congress -- there is now a glimmer of hope for consensus on expanded background checks. with blue dog democrat joe mansion in talks with the former club for growth president, republican pat tomorrow tomb toomy. >> unless mansion and toomey need more time to work on a deal

on background checks. obstruction will be led by right flanker rand paul and ted cruz, 13 senators are vowing to filibuster reid's bill. paul and cruz are being joined in their efforts by mike lee, marco rubio, jerry moramoran. ron johnson, mike encity, mike crapo, coats and roberts. all 13, with the exception of sequester dan coats and marco rubio have a ratings from the nra. the group backing a firearms status quo wrote this weekend -- we will oppose the motion to proceed on any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions. but just because you are a republican and just because you have a very high rating from the nra, does not mean that you have to adultrate the democratic process, case in point, senator

john mccain. >> i i don't understand it, purpose of the united states senate is to debate and vote. >> you would not only encourage it, i don't understand it. what are we afraid of? >> rather than taking a vote, any vote on gun safety laws, what should these 13 republicans be afraid of? perhaps these people -- the families of newtown victims who are heading to capitol hill tonight, to remind lawmakers of what exactly happened 115 days ago. >> to not just look us in the eyes, but to look our children and the lost ones and see those faces, see what's gone. >> they have to be our government and vote. up or down. they have to vote. >> we don't get to move on. we don't have the benefit of turning the page to another piece of legislation. and having another debate and playing politics the same way we've been doing. we don't have that benefit. we're going to live with this for the rest of our lives. so our legislators need to hear us. >> joining me today, "rolling stone" contributor editor and a

visiting scholar at new york university, eric bates. manager of the grio.com, joy reed, senior political reporter at politico, maggie haberman and assistant director for legislative affairs for the brady campaign, colin goddard. colin, you're in washington. i think the fact that john mccain called out members of his own party for standing in the way of the democratic process seemed to be a powerful moment. if not for the nation, then at least for the republican party. how much pressure do you think that ultimately exerts on these 13 angry men? >> i think it's a great amount of pressure coming from someone from their own party. and that's only, that's in addition to what we've seen from other senate republicans who have come out in favor of this, of possible compromise, on background checks and other issues, like senator isaacson, senator toomy, they understand that their purpose is to vote on this.

>> for the newtown families coming to make it real, this is what we need, to always remind us why we're doing this the senators take a vote on this, they're voting to protect the lives of their constituents directly. that needs to be at the forefront of this conversation moving forward. >> maggie, we were talking about the segment when we were planning it this morning. which is worse for the these republicans, filibustering it or taking a no vote? >> that's a very tough which is the worst of the poison pills, right? i think that taking a no vote is probably better, realistically. because we're talking about their own districts. we're not talking about what happens nationally. i think the filibuster move, you know, it's going to start to be a problem, right, if we see it repeatedly. you saw rand paul's filibuster, that created the whole i stand with rand hashtag we've seen a lot of, and i think at a certain point it becomes problematic. i think this does not get talked about very much. you've seen some republicans like senator rob portman talk about how they support gay marriage.

i think the fact that you're seeing some republicans make that statement makes it much less likely that you're going to see republicans then take a vote on something like a gun bill. i think it cannot be everything. i think they cannot support guns and immigration reform and gay marriage. i think it is impossible to peel these things away from each other at this point. >> colin, i'm curious about that. you're obviously working on gun safety reform laws, there's immigration afoot and to some degree, the budget. as maggie says having the superstorm of legislation converge over congress at the same time, how much does the movement on immigration undermine the movement on gun safety reform and vice-versa? it seems to in some degree be splitting the republican ranks. >> 90% of the american people support comprehensive background checks. i don't think that 90% of americans agree that today is monday. that's phenomenal, we don't see that on any issue, let alone something on gun safety, responsible gun violence

prevention issues. if the senators truly believe that and we show them districts and polling in their states that show them exactly that. high support from nra owners and gun owners in their states, they have to understand that this is something we want them to address, we want them to vote on. >> you know, there's an op-ed in the "washington post" where it's written what does the rule of people mean if a 9-1 issue is having so much trouble gaining traction, this distortion represents why the republicans have so little impact on what's happening in washington. at the moment, our democracy is not very democratic. >> you see the same things going on in the other debates, with the budget and immigration reform, where the public is clearly lined up overwhelmingly in favor of something. and the opposition from the republicans, essentially what's being put on the table doesn't really go far enough for the public. it doesn't do as much as the public wants to do. but that's still too much for the republican opposition. so you've got this paralysis. where you just can't move forward on any of this stuff.

and it all goes back to filibuster reform. we see this over and over again. the question is, is this going to be a place where harry reid is willing to go nuclear and say we're going to change the rules, we're going to use the majority to change the rules so the majority can make the rules, which is the way it's supposed to work. >> well filibustering and redistricting these are both sort of procedures that have been completely adulterated in having the push over the majority. there's a "new york times" piece over what went down in connecticut, which is the site of the shootings and is also the home to gun manufacturers, that's a democratically-controlled legislature. it comes down to saying we're going to do this because it's the right thing to do. and thus far, there are democrats in congress who have not yet come to that conclusion. >> i agree. it does like like at the state level, the nra is going to lose in states where there's a democratic governor or there are democratic state legislators.

but you have to wonder if it's democrats who are not willing to take a vote on the gun issue because of their state politics or republicans who are willing to filibuster. what's the principle they're fighting for? they're not only fighting majority opinion, but it's hard to understand what principle they're fighting for. even gun owners support the idea of doing background checks. >> overwhelmingly. >> overwhelmingly. nobody believes that somebody with a criminal background or considered dangerous by society should have a gun. they're now fighting for the right of people on the terrorist watchlist, people considered mentally infirm. people who are considered dangerous, people who have a violent history with their spouse. they are saying we want to preserve the right of dangerous people to do whatever it is they want to do on guns. that's a principle i don't even think republicans can uphold for long. >> as joy speaks passionately about this issue, colin, the family of the newtown survivors are going to be following president obama to capitol hill today. there's been a lot of hue and cry about the president taking

advantage of the tragedy. when i think more than anything it's a reminder of actually what happened and the human toll. exacted by newtown. that is i think a daunting proposition to be, you know, a mike lee or a marco rubio or a rand paul, especially latter two, and say, i'm a national leader, i'm someone this party wants to think about in 2016, and stand there as the parents of children who were shot riddled with bullets and say, i'm not going to allow a vote to take place on the issue of gun safety reform. >> it's frankly irresponsible. background checks is the responsible thing to do. and if you oppose the idea of doing background checks when you sell a gun to someone you don't know? that's irresponsible. we've seen what happens when irresponsible people get hands on guns. even just one, what can happen with that. so to put the faces back again to the front and center of this equation, to realize that the background check is about a 90-second wait on average needs to happen here to understand ha

is the most responsible thing we can do as leaders of this country. the american people clearly are responsible-minded people and want something to be done. >> thank you to colin goddard from the brady campaign. colin, we'll be checking in with you throughout the week. . i want to go to immigration reform before we close out this block, because it's the other topic on the table. we talked about marco rubio trying to filibuster potentially gun safety reform. immigration is the issue where he's taken sort of a banner position. he is in many ways, the person that birthed this in the congressional lab. and yet there's still a lot of analysis about whether he is going to get on board actual comprehensive immigration reform when it goes to the floor. ashley parker writes in "the new york times" this weekend, the probable t probab probable tablo, images of rubio smimg and celebrating besides democratic senators and maverick republicans as he claims ownership of the overhaul of the

nation's immigration laws thatten will reject. >> my colleagues wrote about this a couple of weeks ago as well. >> an ad that describes as millions of new democratic voters. that's a real question. >> or even just the handshake, inevitably the signing of the bill, obama taking credit for it, it being furthering democratic priorities around a path to citizenship. >> he is doing his best to mollify his right flank. i think you're likely to see him endorse some kind of a bill. what that bill looks like remains to be seen. and there is a bit of disagreement right now. senator schumer said yesterday, it should get done this week. lindsay graham indicated it will be a couple of weeks. so i don't know that it's this far along as people would like it to be. >> i just don't know before we go, joy, how you can be a, again, trying to claim mental of like leadership of the party. be seen crafting this bill and

then at the end, sort of walk away from it. >> i mean marco rubio's career has really been about self-preservation and preserving his options for the future. he wants to have the option of being the tea party savior that stopped amnesty. if he wants to be that he has to always sort of stand on the fence, he can't be 100% for immigration reform. but he's the face of the party, reform for hispanics. he's in kind of an impossible position. if he doesn't support comprehensive immigration reform, it's the only signature issue he has. what is his signature idea what is the reason why he should be president? >> there's no "there" there, eric? >> that's exactly right. it's a question of what the party looks like going forward. and if he wants to say i'm what the party looks like go forward, then he's got to be that. >> when we come back she was both loved and loathed, but one thing supporters and critics can agree on is that margaret thatcher was a political pioneer. we'll discuss the legacy of the iron lady, when richard wolfe joins us next on "now." so if you have a flat tire,

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margaret thatcher, the daughter of a grocer who went on to lead britain for than a decade as the country's first and only female prime minister died this morning of a stroke at 87. thatcher will be remembered for many things, including her championing of women's rights, known as the iron lady, it was she who famously said and truthfully said, if you want anything said, ask a man. if you want anything done, ask a woman. in a statement today, president obama wrote of thatcher -- she stands as an example to our daughters, that there is no glass ceiling that can't be

shattered. but the prime minister was also a controversial and divisive leader who ushered in a conservative movement, built on cutting taxes and shrinking the government. to better understand her legacy, let us go to washington to speak with the son of england, our very own richard wolfe, also the executive editor of msnbc.com and an msnbc political analyst. no better day to speak with you and every day is a good day to speak with you. >> thank you, alex. >> let's talk about the legacy of margaret thatcher. those have praised her and there's a distinct feeling around thatcher's legacy, that it was not all that great for britain. what's your take, my friend? >> it's interesting, on this day, people are attaching themselves to her as an advocate for women's rights. she was certainly a pioneer. there's no question that notice britain of the late '70s, she smashed through the old boys' club. she emerged without any other

women peers around her in terms of senior leadership in politics and in westminster. but it's also true that she left no trail of women to succeed her. she did not promote women into senior positions in her cabinet. and the conservative party has only just so many decades later got a woman in a senior position that's home secretary, which is likely attorney general, only now is the labor party seriously considering maybe in the next round having a woman as its leader. so there has been no one like her before or since. so the women's rights legacy is an interesting one in terms of being controversial, in terms of being divisive. that exists to this day. in domestic politics, in international politics, she found enemies in her own cabinet, in her own party. around the world, she often beat them, but she left a lot of wreckage around her. >> ken livingston, the former labor leader, minced no words, writing thatcher created today's housing crisis. she created the banking crisis.

and she created the benefits crisis. she decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry, that she could live with two or three million unemployed and the benefits bill, the legacy of that we're struggling with today. in actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact that she was fundamentally wrong what do you make of that richard? >> well ken livingston was a foe of hers at the time. and she thought of him as such a terrible foe, she shut down his entire branch of government because she hated him so much. that's just how aggressive she was. you know, the bigger question is not whether she was do blame for all of our problems, but would britain have got better without her? and i think that's where the sort of historians have to look at her. she most certainly punished communities. she punished branches of government. she punished industry, she took a brutal, brutal look at what industries were working and just said -- we're going to close it down. the miners, for instance, the mining strike which became the subject of that movie "billy

elliott." if anyone is familiar with that, she just said, this isn't viable, they're my political enemies and we're going to introduce extreme measures, including police surveillance of domestic, my enemies domestically, unthinkable in american terms, she went ahead and did that. was britain in a terrible state economically in the '70s? you bet. the labor unions were too strong. that's something you can actually justify. because the trash wasn't being picked up, bodies were going unburied. would it have got better without her? would the economy have taken off in the '80s without her? would it have been restructured? probably. could it have been done in a more humane way? absolutely. still, she's part and parcel for that period how much she was responsible toor that recovery and how much she made it much more aggressive and rapid in the sense that people couldn't recover from that economic shot. you know, she, the historians are going to be debating it for

a long, long time to come. >> it's interesting before we go, richard, nancy reagan released a statement. in it she said ronnie and margaret were political soulmates, committed to freedom and ending communism. >> her passing rejuvenates the debate about the size and scope of government, the role that it has in the modern era, especially at a time of fiscal duress. the jury is still out about the reagan legacy and this complicates that and churns the waters even more. >> no question about that. they were partners in a sense of their ideological project. let's just remember, though in some of the rewriting, while they championed free markets, they also championed monetary policy. because they wanted to kill inflation. was measuring the scale of money, the number of coins and notes in circulation the important thing? or was it what paul voeckler did at the fed in terms of killing inflation. we have a tendency at this point to make all rosy and make it look as if it was just the legacy of a couple of people. but the impact of what they did,

margaret thatcher, no question, she stood up to communism. as i said before, she had an attitude to her domestic enemies that frankly was the antithesis of freedom. someone who was a pioneer for women, who actually hurt working families and working women and that includes teachers and women across the board. this is not, this is not a clean story for anyone to tell on either side of the divide. >> definitely worth further debate and discussion. political soulmates, a term frequently used to describe our relationship, richard. >> thank you, alex. >> i'm so glad you could join us today, thanks for your time. >> my pleasure. coming up, some key obama fundraisers are taking on the keystone pipeline. but mum is the word from the president's grassroots group, ofa. we'll discuss the administration's risk/reward on tar sands fuel. this is $100,000.

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months after president obama roiz to re-election on the biggest wave of private money in u.s. history, some of the same donors who brought the president back into office are now making clear exactly what it is that they want -- no keystone pipeline. the pending $7 billion project would deliver 700,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into the country every day. president obama and the state department are expected to make a decision on the pipeline by the end of the summer. but it won't be easy. the fight over keystone has been all politics. proponents of the pipeline argue the project will create thousands of new jobs in a time of economic uncertainty. specifically according to state department estimates, 3900 temporary jobs, and exactly 35 permanent jobs. but even the jobs numbers are in

dispute. outside estimates range as low as 500 and as high as 250,000 jobs created. meanwhile, opponents of the pipeline, like climate activist, bill mckicken, say approving the project would be akin to lighting a carbon bomb. causing irreparable harm to the environment. this weekend obama's superpack adviser bill burton launched a campaign urging rejection of the pipeline. >> it's time to connect the dots about the keystone excel pipeline. oil spills, it's not if, it's when. it's happened before and now again. keystone excel doesn't go to the u.s., it goes through the u.s. sending oil to places like china and venezuela. putting us at risk while big oil gets the rewards. connect the dots, it's a pretty ugly picture. keystone xl, all risk, no reward. >> it's unclear whether president obama himself sees the pipeline as all risk, no reward. last week at a dinner with

high-dollar donors in california. the president appeared to be leaning towards approval. calling the politics of the environment tough. with democratic donors breathing down his back. environmental activists organizing around the country and congress urging approval and two-thirds of americans in favor of the pipeline, the president has a point, politics are tough. but now might be the moment to combat climate change. earlier this year, "time" magazine wrote keystone isn't the best fight to have over fossil fuels, but it's the fight we're having. if we're in war to stop global warming, we need to fight it on the beaches, the landing zones and the carbon-spewing tar sands of alberta there are many climate problems a president can't solve, but keystone isn't one of them. it's a choice between big oil and a more sustainable planet. the right answer isn't always somewhere in the middle. joining us from san francisco is executive director of the sierra club, michael bruin, thanks for joining us. >> hi, alex, thanks for having

me on the show. >> there's been almost sort of a conventional wisdom around keystone is that the president is going to approve it. i think it's pretty remarkable that you have members of the democratic establishment, former deputy press secretary, bill burton, heading an effort, a campaign saying do not approve this. it feels like perhaps the environmental movement is really sort of beginning to gain some steam inside you know, establishment democratic circles around this iraq. how much, how optimistic are you at this point? >> well this is a huge priority for most of the environmental community. because we see it as literally a line in the sand. and a key test of the president's commitment to really fight climate change with both fists. a couple of months ago we had the largest climate rally in u.s. history, 50,000 people came to d.c. to rally against this pipeline. and in favor of full approach towards transitioning to clean energy. and now what you're seeing is big, democratic donors, as well as former administration

officials, realizing what farmers in nebraska have understood for years -- which is that this pipeline is dirty, it's dangerous, and it's unnecessary. and shouldn't be built. >> eric, you know we were talking about newtown earlier and we were, we were saying you know, have we forgotten the legacy of newtown. here we have you know, a few years after bp, we're talking weeks after an oil spill in arkansas, we're talking about environmental devastation that has wreaked havoc on the nation's economy, whether that's droughts, wildfires, whether that's you know, dangerous, very, very destructive storms like hurricane sandy. and yet the issue of climate change hasn't seemed to gain traction in the national conversation as much as other issues like gun safety or immigration reform. why do you think that is? >> it's a long-term problem. people believe it's down the road, even though there's evidence that it's happening now and it's with us now and it's going to accelerate. so it's very hard for people to grasp what they think is decades down the road versus right now.

but i think we're also seeing a situation for president obama where he comes down on energy and it wouldn't be inconsistent for him to approve this pipeline given his actions after bp. he was very generous and friendly towards the oil and gas industries. tried to open up drilling in the arctic not long after bp happened. he's continued to walk a line of more drilling, more perks for big oil, more perks for big energy and it could be another one from them. >> it's hard to divorce it from what's happening economically. we had a situation where the jobs report was pretty weak. i think if he does approve it, i agree with you, can you see a land where that happens, it would be under the guise of this is what's necessarily economically for the country. the sense of dithering on the project, combined with the mania over sequestration has not been, has not been advantageous, so i think if you see it happen, it would be that way. there is a road that he could

take where the secretary of state could end up sort of blunting some of this. and say it is technically through them. but i think it is more likely than not that it gets approved. >> michael, this is the thing that i think is endlessly frustrating. the positioning global warming as an environmental issue, not an economic issue. especially when the jobs numbers around the keystone pipeline range from 35 permanent jobs to 250,000. they're all over the place, having that as sort of the foundational argument here seems to be flawed at best. then you couple that with the economic impact of climate change. people whose jobs, people whose farms were affected. people whose jobs were lost, their profits were down. that's a very measurable economic impact. and yet, the white house doesn't seem to sort of wrap its arms around that argument that well. >> it's a fascinating thing. because what's happening is that almost everybody doesn't wrap their arms around the idea that this is an economic issue for most people. i grew up in new jersey, on the jersey shore. the house that i grew up in was

flooded last year by hurricane sandy. my parents still haven't moved back in and most of our neighbors, five miles in both directions haven't been able to get back into their houses. the same thing for people in texas displaced by wildfires last year. same thing is happening to people who are affected by drought. but when we look at climate change, most of the conversation is about the obligation or whether or not people feel a moral obligation to act to fight climate change. what isn't covered often is the economic opportunity in a transition to clean energy. for every billion dollars that's invested in coal or oil and gas. it will create three to ten times more jobs if that money is invested in solar and wind instead. that's a whole series of studies have been done by universities here in california, in michigan and elsewhere, showing that there's a great economic benefit to be secured when we transition away from dirty fuels and towards clean energy. we need to find a better way to make that part of the conversation. >> absolutely.

joy when we talk about progressive values, it's really interesting, there's a lot on the congressional plate as it were. if the president does not get measurable gun safety laws passed, if immigration sort of dithers, withers on the vine, i don't know how he approves the keystone pipeline in conjunction with all of that. >> it would be kind of ironic if after the 2012 election, after he wins re-election by a strong mandate, if what we wind up getting is nothing on immigration, nothing on guns and a pipeline. like that's really not what the base wanted. at the same time it's hard to make the argument. if you look at the ad, the bill burton ad, it runs through the red states with the six and seven electoral votes. even if it's 35 or 40 jobs, they're saying they're willing to take the risk. texas and louisiana, states that destroying themselves by punching holes in the torte get the oil. the people there want the jobs. you get the argument say we're willing to take the risk, we want the pipeline. >> local versus national.

michael before we let you go, i think the irony is that john kerry is our secretary of state, this decision is apparently on his desk. his first speech on secretary of state was about climate change. how much is this going to be a referendum on his ability to keep the flame burning on the subject of sensible energy reform? >> it's a huge decision that, that secretary kerry needs to make. not only was his first speech as secretary, passionate and eloquent about climate change, but his previous 1,000 speeches on climate change as senator. he's had a fantastic record as one of the strongest, most eloquent and far-sighted leaders on climate change. and it's, we think it's a huge opportunity for the secretary and his new position, to say that this is a national security issue. fighting climate change. it's an international issue. but we can't just talk about it. we can't just issue a regulation through epa, every six months or so. we actually have to fight. if we want to defeat climate change, if we want to stabilize emissions, build a clean energy

economy, we have to show leadership and we have to make sometimes difficult political decisions in favor of clean energy and we have to stand up to big oil. so we hope the secretary will do that. >> when we say we, we mine you, secretary kerry and you, president obama. >> that's right. coming up, what's democracy without a free press? and what about a free press with free access? we'll discuss the emergence of the fourth estate in burma and beyond, when global post's charlie senate joins us ahead. [ other merv ] welcome back to the cleaning games. let's get a recap, merv. [ merv ] thanks, other merv. mr. clean magic eraser extra power was three times faster on permanent marker. elsewhere against dirt, it was a sweep, with scuffed sports equipment... had it coming. grungy phones... oh! super dirty! and grimy car rims... wow! that really works! ...all taking losses. it looks like mr. clean has won everything. the cleaning games are finished? and so are we. okay, but i just took a mortgage out on the cabinet.

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and we are sharper. since the advent of the blogosphere and print journalism online and the dawn of metered paywalls, the fourth estate has seen a makeover. on the other side of the world in the southeast nation of burma, myanmar, it's beginning the gradual process of becoming free. last week a country ruled by a military dictatorship for the better part of a half a century began allowing privately run newspapers to hit newsstands for the first time since 1964. under new democratic reforms, the burmese people will now have four independent daily newspapers to choose from, with 12 more to follow. the effort is part of broader democratic reform set in motion by the country's president, and former military commander,

thain sain. on march 30th, the "associated press" returned to burma, opening a bureau with six full-time journalists, from now on their work and that of other media outlets will no longer have to be submitted to state censors prior to public indication. the government's libelization of the telecommunications industry is also expected to result in rapid change. currently only 6% of burmese citizens have access to mobile phones, under new laws, they expect to cover 75% of the country's 60 million citizens in the next three years. after the freeing of most if not all political prisoners, including opposition leader, aung san suu kyi, the burmese people will join the billions around the world who consider access to information not only a safeguard against tyranny, but the hallmark of a safe democratic society. what does journalism mean in an era of rapid change and

uncertain support, like their colleagues in buenos aires and mumbai, they'll face challenge of how to report the news fairly with little time and few financial resources. if anything, the development of burma's fourth estate at this particular moment in time is cause fof both wonderment, imagine inventing the wheel in the age of the superhighway and excitement. a difficult task lies ahead for bur burma's printing presses, but what's clear this week is that the desire for information and the exchange of ideas is no less powerful and no less important than it was when the printing presses and news rooms and servers were first put to use to report the news. years in the city of baltimore. when i first started experiencing the pain, it's hard to describe because you have a numbness but yet you have the pain like thousands of needles sticking in your foot. it was progressively getting worse, and at that point, i knew i had to do something.

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it's opening of the presses and other steps towards democracy have put a spotlight on freedom in burma. reporters without borders acknowledged the country's recent efforts moving the country up 18 spots this year to number 151 in its rankings of

global press freedom. but challenges still remain. in a visit to burma last month, google executive chairman eric schmidt urged the country to allow private businesses to modernize the country's poor telecommunications infrastructure. according to the world bank, only 1% of burmese citizens have access to the internet and just 6% of the population own as cell phone. joining the panel is char charlie senate, executive editor and co-founder of global post. great to have you here. >> good to be here. being half burmese i'm very interested in everything that's going on over there. i think it's relative to people involved in news-gathering in a broader sense. in terms of how do we jockey this changing line of what journalism means and the question of revenue and support and reporting and fairness. but let's look at sort of newspaper trends worldwide involved in the global post. >> that was my world for 25, 30

years of my life. >> we talk about sort of the death of newspapers here and certainly newspapership circulation and titles are declining in north america, western europe and central and eastern europe but they're rising, considerably in asia, latin america and the middle east and africa. what do you attribute that to? >> i think there's not enough people online. they're still looking to the traditional delivery of news which is through the printed presses. it's also, candidly easier for the government to control. you have a situation in myanmar or burma where the government is opening up and they're going to take these weekly newspapers and make them daily. that's a big development, but they still have to issue the permits for the presses. so there's a sense of a great opening right now in burma. i think it's really an exciting moment. i think it's full of poe essential. but i think it's going to take a great commitment on the part of the government which has shown an early commitment to opening up to the free press, to the opposition to aung san suu kyi and the other leaders of

opposition, who pushed for this forever. but there's an excitement on the ground. i was just there and you can feel the excitement of young people who don't have a lot of training, who haven't had lot of experience. who are looking for an opportunity to express themselves. i think that sense of burma wanting to tell its own story. as we say, is, is something we're excited about and we're going to go over there and try to work with burmese journalists and american journalists and get that moving. >> the thing we were talking about during the break, something we grapple with here in the u.s. is how do you establish a fair nonpartisan free media fourth estates. at a time when most publications were opposition outlets, covering underground or had an agenda or government mouthpieces which also had an agenda. you couple that with the rise of the telecommunications industry. the fact that they're going to try to have coverage of 75% of the country from 1% now, is a

shocking and dramatic shift. >> particularly in a country like burma. where you have such great religious and ethnic diversity in that country. it's very hard in any country to get it right. to have a free and fair press. i mean i think that's hard anywhere. but it's particularly hard in a country like burma. i think there are great challenges ahead this is a country that sits between china and india, huge business interests there in terms of all kintds of natural resources. from timber to water. to oil. energy. precious minerals, jade is very big. there's copper of course, there's actually a great interest in the business community in getting real information, it's not only the noble pursuit of the truth that is a great part of journalism, where it's succeeded. it's also a need for accuracy. in order to really understand the place. for investors, for the government, for the people who live there. so i think there's some very

practical aspects that will lead burma forward, but i think it will take training. think the young generation of journalists will need help and i think there's a lot of support around them to take it sort of to the next level for this country. >> you know perhaps because this is part of my own ethnic heritage, i've take a disproportionate interest, eric. but also it's the idea of what the press means to a society. and we have gotten into a lot of sort of media-bashing in this day and age. but it is sort of a brave new world for those of us that have been involved in print or online and figuring out sort of how to jockey the line. how to be immediately responsive to what's going on in the news while at the same time pursuing stories that require deep reporting and rigor and i'm sure all of you guys can talk to this. but in terms of your optimism and how we do it and moving forward, where are you? >> what this is a reminder of is how much we take for granted about the media that we have. and just to have one, just for

them to be getting one essentially and getting it off the ground and the excitement around that and empowerment around that is really incredible. i think one thing that sets a lot of developing countries apart, though, when it comes to media is how possible is it for the media to even get information. it's one thing to have a newspaper, if you can't make a phone call, finding out the most basic information, what's the population of this village. not controversial, and that's a question i would have, as to what extent is the new government of burma in position? it's going to be a give and take, and they have to be in a position to supply real information. particularly given the ethnic differences that there are. >> that's a really good point. when we were in the modern capital, you get a sense of this awakening. of young reporters working the hallways in parliament. yeah, they're new at it and it's going to take time and the questions aren't that hard right now. they're sort of warming up. they're clearing their throats and getting ready to sing.

i still think it's this moment for it to happen. i think the international support for that will be critical. the united states just to broaden out regionally for a second. the united states talks about the real concerns over north korea right now. and they are frequently holding out myanmar as an example of a country that's come in from the cold. i think there's a diplomatic initiative that's happening right now in burma that will essentially need that free press, in order for the country to go forward. in order for it to really fulfill, the potential it holds for example for coming out of the cold, out of the sanctions and into the future. >> the sort of telecommunications piece, burma is a land where rumors fly. in a place, there's no other country in the world like it and the terror that's struck in my heart that you will have the proliferation of blogs to further rumors, the sort of back and forth. >> and it can create violence.

you're going to have to be aware of the great ethnic tensions and cultural divisions. they can begin to learn about each other in a way they never have. i think that's a sword that cuts both ways. >> may i suggest you take maggie haberman, and eric bates and joy reid and myself. we'll be happy to shed light. charlie, doing great work. thank you, thank you to everybody else on my panel. that's all for now, i i'll see you at noon when i'm joined by my panel. until then you can follow us on twitter, "andrea mitchell reports" is next.

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