because we have kathleen hall jamieson for that. our master media decoder and her vigilant team at the university of pennsylvania's annenberg public policy center scarcely miss a bobble along the political beat. at the websites factcheck.org and the new flackcheck.org, their job is to critique, watch, analyze and share what they find out. kathleen hall jamieson, thank you for being with me. >> thank you. >> one of the big stories this week was the defeat in the republican primary of senator richard lugar after 36 years in the senate. and he attributes his defeat, in the statement he made after his concession, to the determination of conservatives and right wingers to bring him down. and he says it was because of his vote for the t.a.r.p. program, for government support of the auto industry, for the s.t.a.r.t. treaty, and for the confirmation of two of obama's nominees to the supreme court, sotomayor and kagan. >> we have now lost an individual who was willing to do what he thought was right even when that meant working across the ai

television, we've been doing realty checks since about 1990 thanks to brooks jackson and kathleen hall jamieson. back in 1990, we attended a seminar where their concept was discussed and we thought well, why not do it locally? why should we not do it? we began to do it more and more. there's an ebb and flow to all of this on -- in lean years, we can't do as much and in fat years, we do a little bit more. but we also have a lot of production that we have to do. those are fantastic. it takes a long time to do that. we have to dedicate a lot of people, producers, graphics. we have to take a reporter off, sometimes a producer to do this. so i was very interested to hear in the last panel, kevin, talking about the cost of this. and there is a cost. what we have tended to do just in the last coup of years since 2008 when the bad economy hit everyone, we've had a lot of layoffs and i'm sure many of your stations and companies have had that. and we've begun to compress it and now we're expanding a little bit. as this political year begins, we are now dedicating ourselves to doing a lot more of reality

and kathleen hall jamieson from the university of pennsylvania.rtain way, joe biden says he is comfortable with same-sex marriage. >> i am vice president of america. the president sets policy. i am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men measure marrying men, women marrying women, hmen marrying women are entitled to the same civil rights. and i don't see much of a distinction beyond that. >> the vice president saying i have a different position than the president. hrc came back immediately with a response, encouraged by vice president biden's comments, rightly articulated that luing, committed, gay and lesbian couples should be treated equally and called on president obama to speak out for full marriage equality for same-sex couples. i see that sound bite turning into joe biden is a radical who wants to destroy marriage. i also see it as he is the great, progressive conscience in the obama administration. i almost paused, because i am very happy, but on the other hand, i am sad how it could end up as a truthy statement. >> we all know that t

kathleen hall jamieson, a professor of communication at the university of pennsylvania. director of the annenberg public policy center whi. the author and co-author of 15 books on policy and communications, she is an expert on how politicians bring their messages to voters and how communication tapes elections and policy. patricia murphy is the founder of citizensjane politics and covers politics for the daily beast newsweek. she has her ear to the ground having spent nine years as a hill staffers. she has a key sense of what americans are thinking and asking about what's happening in washington. the panel will be moderated by john taras, editor in chief -- jon harris, editor-in-chief and one of the co-founders of "politico." --john harris. please welcome our panelists. [applause] >> good morning, we have 40 minutes to tackle a pretty big question. the first thing i like our panelists to do. i propose we go down the line starting with senator portman is to look at the premise of this panel, which is that it might be challenging substantively, but not really that difficul