our free mobile app, c-span now and online at c-span.org. >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 5:10 p.m. eastern, martin luther king iii commemorates the 56th anniversary of his father's april 4th assassination at the civil rights museum. and the series congress investigates looking at investigations that changed policy and law. this weekend we'll look back at the mccarthy era hearing that explored whether commune anythingses that infiltrated the state department, the army and other federal agencies. at 8 p.m. eastern lectures on history, north carolina history professor jasmine howard

discusses student activism and civil rights movements in north carolina. watch mrn history tv saturday on c-span2 and find a schedule on your program guide or watch online at anytime at c-span.org/history. >> coming up, a conversation about media coverage of former president donald trump with the former executive editor of the washington post, martin baron and the decline of local news outlets and social media impact on news. this was hosted by jews united for democracy and justice. >> marty baron was my colleague at the los angeles times for a number of years and executive editor of the miami herald, and the paper won a pulitzer prize for coverage of the expose' of the catholic church sex scandal

there and triggered a number across the country and most recently as the executive editor of the washington post 2021, the subject of this book which we're going to be discussing tonight, the political power, trump bezos and gravely he made time today. marty, great to see you again. >> pat, thank you to have me. >> it's been almost nine years since donald trump was on the gold elevator and the question, how trump has changed journalism and we've talked a lot about how he's changed the country, but how he's changed journalism is a big part of that. >> i think that's true. obviously, he was a candidate unlike any we'd ever seen before in 2015 and 2016 and then became a president unlike

any we'd ever seen before and now again, a candidate unlike any-- a former president, unlike any we'd ever seen before. and i think the press really struggled with how to cover him the first time around, struggled quite a bit with covering him as president and i think is still learning lessons as to tries to cover him today. so i think he did change journalism in a lot of ways and i think there were a lot of norms in our business that we set aside, some for the better and some for the worst and you know, so -- and i think that people are trying to figure out, you know, what is the best way to cover him. >> for all of you in our audience, if you have a question for marty, we'll get to them later in this hour and put them in the q & a and we'll be able to come around to those. please tell us your first name and where you are from in your question. so, marty, to talk about how he

has changed journalism, a lot of the argument both outside and within journalism is that this is-- covering this era of trump is a different job and different jobs require different tools and the argument is that's true of journalism as well. do you think that's the case? >> well, i think we have the tools that we need. i think we're dealing with a candidate who's really difficult to cover. we get a lot of advice how to cover him, a lot of people say don't report what he says because you're normalizing him. then if you don't report what he says, they say how could you not report what he says, it was so outrageous. you get a lot of contradictory of advice on that. my sense what we ought to be focusing on today is really what he intends to do if he were to get back into the white house in the same way that we should report on what biden might do in a second term as well. but a lot of the things that trump is talking about, he's talking about them openly and a

lot of them are the kinds of measures that have been implemented in other countries where you'd have aspiring authority terrence -- authoritarians. and using the military for protests. going after your enemies by prosecuting them. bringing treason charges against people you deem to be unfavorable to you, including former members of his administration, but also members of the press. eliminating the civil service and installing loyalists in every level of government. so, these are the kinds of measures we've seen in other countries that have become authoritarian in nature. i think we really should be focusing on that, in addition to what kinds of laws he intends to exploit in order to implement the measures and what kinds of laws to bend or break in order to implement those measures and who he would put in charge to carry out the kinds of measures that he's

talking about. >> just so you know, in the audience we're very aware that we don't have closed captioning this evening and i'm sorry that we can't deliver that to you this evening because of some of the technical issues that you may be witnessing. but, marty, trump has issued such a fire hose of these kinds of threats and outrageous comments for years, but you wonder how those of us in journalism and then our audience, our readers, our viewers, are able to process it when we've heard so much of this kind of thing before and how much do people turn off what they're hearing and how hard is it within our business to make sure that people know that this is still what's going on and may even be escalating and he's not joking? >> it's true that a lot of people have just decided they don't want to hear anymore, it troubles them so much, it gives them anxiety. in fact, there are a number of doctors out there actually who are recommending that people know the watch or read the news

because it makes them more anxious. i would myself because we need to be aware of what's happening. and media reaches only a portion of the population and lists the new york times as primary source of news, 3% for "the washington post," so, no matter what you're doing, you're not necessarily reaching everybody in the population. even the big cable networks, if you actually look at their total audience, it's relatively small. so people are getting their information from all sorts of different sources. and i use the word information broadly because a lot of it is misinformation and in many-- in some instances, actual disinformation, deliberate falsehoods that are being spread. let me ask you about the point about get their information from. years ago, a colleague of ours

in the washington bureau was covering a protest in the carter administration when interest rates went high and farmers having a hard time. they converged on washington with farm equipment to protest. he saw a woman stuck trying to get out of washington that day, very angry, getting out of her car, shaking her fists, i don't need you farmers, i get mine at the grocery stores. people say they don't read the los angeles times or the new york times, and smaller ones are under threat. journalists are losing their jobs at a rate faster than coal miners. we have threats, that news is coming still from the old media companies and that the way that we can report on these is quickly disappearing. >> that's certainly true. certainly, what the new york times publishes or what "the

washington post" publishes or l.a. times, can get amplified, gets onto the cable networks, gets on the radio and ends up it's spread through social media so it can have a greater impact. but, the problem is right now, is that we have, because of the internet, because people can turn to sources of information that affirm their preexisting points of view, we have in many instances, in too many instances a society that doesn't share a common set of facts. it's actually worse than that. we can't agree on how to establish that something is a fact. so the kinds of things that we use, that we traditionally have used to establish something as a fact have been greatly devalued in our society. unfortunately. things like education, expertise, experience, and

worst of all, evidence so that many instances such as we saw on january 6th of 2021, people are denying what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears and an enormous volume of evidence and yet, people will call that normal civic discourse as the republican did, or as some members of that party have said, sort of a typical tourist visit. although i've never actually received a brochure advertising that kind of tourism myself. [laughter] >> to the extent that journalism has changed. one of the things that was noticeable, a debate in many news rooms, the fact that some of trump's comments were called racist, some were called lies and took a long time to get there, so journalism responded maybe not as much as some people wanted or as quickly, but now journalists do feel a sense, yes, i can characterize

what it is that this man is saying. >> look, i think it's not a bad thing. and certainly, it's a tradition in our business to be careful with the words we use and i think we should be careful with the words we use. once we use a word, we can't take it back. and you have to be careful that the language that you're using itself doesn't become a target and the result is that people pay less attention to the actual facts of the matter and the nature of the falsehood as opposed to the sort of incendiary language used. yes, it did become apparent in lots of instances, trump was not just self-deluded he couldn't care less whether something was true or false and making it up in any way that served his own interest, but knew things were false and said them anyway and that's become ever more clear over time. particularly with regard to the 2020 election and that he lost

that election and what happened, for example, on january 6th of 2021. so i think in those kinds of instances, we're on very safe ground, saying that he's lying, that he knew -- he absolutely knows that what he's saying is false and yet, he's saying it anyway because it serves his own interest. >> the book deals with the period when jeff bezos bought and his ownership of the washington post which parallels much of the trump administration. let's talk about that, first of all, why jeff bezos wanted to buy "the washington post." >> it's hard to get into his head. i can tell you what he said and what i believe. i mean, he talked about that, you know, he had to go through several gates. one was to assure himself that it was an important institution, which he said, yes of course. he had to make sure that he could be optimistic about its

future because if he didn't have hope for the future, he would feel sorry for us. but he wouldn't want to join us, and then, he said, you know, did he have something to contribute and he said he thought a lot about that and he concluded that, yes, he could give us, obviously, what he called runway, which was-- he could make investments and let them play out over a period of time and see if they worked. he also, i mean, he did bring other things, which is obviously an understanding of technology, sophisticated understanding of technology and a sophisticated understanding of consumer sales and of course, our businesses in consumer sales. but i also think, and this is going to sound naive because we're talking about jeff bezos as one of the richest in the world and on any one day, the richest person in the world and he didn't have any noble motives. but i actually believe that he believes in the press and born out on his ownership of the post that he believes in the role of the press even though he's become the target of it.

and that he sees-- he believes in american democracy and he just feels the press plays an important role on that and he also felt, i think, that the post could be turned around. we were in a position that we were kind of sliding into oblivion. we did not have a successful business model when he acquired us. our strategy at the time it was to be fundamentally regional. we cover national politics, but the motto at the time, internal motto was for and about washington. and so, other than national politics we focused on our region and bezos said that that may have worked in the past and did, was profitable, but that it couldn't serve us in the future. that we could be national and international for a variety of reasons. and that we had a unique ability to do that and that we now have the capacity to deliver our journalism digitally as opposed to delivering a newspaper which

means we could acquire additional readers and subscribers and incrementally. and take the gift. you have the nation's capital, the name washington post and history back to watergate. and since then people around the world that know about "the washington post" and holding power to account, particularly going back to watergate, but never read a word of the washington post. that's a base to build upon and the internet is giving us this gift and we should build upon that. he saw the capacity to turn around the post which most people did not see, including many people who worked within the post. and i think he saw that he could actually make a difference. and so, for a variety of those reasons, i think, he bought it. he has not used it to exercise influence, but he's been

accused of that by trump over and over and over again. but there's no evidence of that and the reason there's no evidence for that is because he's never actually done it. >> your book was published after you left the paper, but the review of your book said it was three books in one. bargain hunters be aware, the three books in one and sorry about the kibitzing here, revealing examination of bezzo's stewardship of the post and sometimes a thriller that navigated a perilous time in journalism and how trump tried to discredit the post and sink amazon. you had a seat at the table for a lot of that relationship with bezos and trump and my sense probably expected hey, us rich guys, we're going to stick together. can you talk about some of dealings that bezos and trump had and some of the dealings you had with trump individually as well? >> sure, well, i think it all came to a head in a meeting that we had about five months after i got--

after trump took office. our publisher wanted-- and this is in the prologue to the book, our publisher felt it would be a good idea if we all meet with trump and bezos had met with him previously as part of a group of technology executives, but he was also, had a private meeting before that where trump, you know, talked about how he liked amazon, but he didn't like the post so much. but when we had our meeting at the white house it was for dinner and our publisher felt it would be good to meet with him. i was there, the publisher was there, i was there, bezos was there, jared kushner, melania was present. i was sitting next to his life. throughout that entire dinner he was criticizing the post, called us the worst of the outlets frequently and every time he would criticize the post or something, he would elbow me to his left, i was

quite tempted to elbow him back, but you just don't do that with the president of the united states. >> and with the secret service there, certainly not. >> and then he called bezos the next morning, i don't know whether you get involved in news coverage or not, but i'm sure you do, to some extent is how he put it. contradicting himself. isn't there something you can do to make the post more fair to him. and bezos told him he didn't get in the news coverage and he if did he would regret it until the end of his life. and trump at the end of the conversation on the cell to enbasically invited bezos to ask for a favor. if there's anything you ever need just give me a call. bezos thankfully never did give him that call and never did ask for a favor and the subject of constant attacks to raise postal rates in order to hurt amazon, intervention in a $10 billion cloud computing contract where amazon was

considered at least initially to be the leading bidder and trump want today make sure that it did not go to amazon and initially did not. and trump called me afterwards. i think he called me a couple of times afterwards to complain about stories. the last time he called, the one instance he said he had been portrayed pass a little boy. and words that i never expected to hear from the president of the united states. i am not a little boy. i cannot believe i was hearing that from the president of the united states. the second time he called to complain again and said that, it was all because of this negative coverage was because of me, it was because of bezos, it was because of amazon, which i was irritated to hear yet again directly from him and then i said, well, it's not and you know it's not. and i think he is not used to that kind of confrontation. and he blurted out a bunch of profanities and said we were just a hate machine and a big

fat lie, basically blamed bezos and amazon again. and after that, i -- he had no more contact with bezos and he had no more contact with me, but he did make every effort to try to undermine the business of amazon and to-- and to demonize, of course, the post. of course, the press in general, but to go beyond demonizing us, to dehumanize the press and it's really, that to me is hard to be shocked anymore, but that to me is still shocking. >> and trump, of course, doesn't have any real sense of fairness. his idea of fairness is favorable coverage and anything-- >> that's what he views as fair. basically, it has to be-- you can see it play out not only in his relationship with the press, but other politicians. you can never dissent, never break away from him on

anything. it has to be 100% loyalty, 100% support. not 99%, 100%. that's what he considers to be care. that's what he considers to be right and that's his expectations of the press as well and you can even see that with regard to the press you can see that in his relationship, for example, with fox. it fox ever veers from him, or even actually airs his opponent or critic, he starts attack being fox and saying that that's inappropriate and he just doesn't feel that anybody, but himself should have an opportunity to have a voice and that none of his critics should actually be allowed to say what they say and he views all of that criticism as being unfair. >> it's about seven years now since the motto, democracy dies in darkness was unveiled and just a couple of weeks into the trump presidency. and your sense of it wasn't quite what you might have wanted it to be.

your phases were not at war with the administration, we're at work. and yet, that's the saying has certainly resonated with a lot of people because darkness seems to be the alternative. >> yeah, that phrase was not really a reaction to the motto. i mean, i think people were, we had a hard time with that motto and spent two years on it. it wasn't a reaction to trump it just happened to be introduced at the time that trump took office and it was interpreted that way. so, you know, that was a phrase that was meant to sort of signal the is distinct role that "the washington post" should play, which is holding power to account, a historic role of "the washington post," obviously did that in the case of richard nixon, but it's done that with presidents both republican and democratic. so, the phrase, we're not at war with the administration, we're at work, came several weeks after trump was in office. trump, on his first full day this office went to the cia and with whom he already had a

troubled relationship because of their investigation of russia's intervention in the election, and in standing in front of a memorial to fallen cia agents, of course, what he did you can at that about, but the press and he said, you know, i'm in a running war with the media. and seeming to want to enlist them in the war with the media. and i was asked about that, i said we're not at war with the administration, we're at work. what i meant by that, we have to look back to why we have a free independent press in this countries and so, james madison, the principal author of amendment talked freely examining public characters and measures. and people with authority, measures, policies of course, free. we should understand that word, but examining is the key word here. that means that journalism is not stenography.

it's digging beneath the surface, looking behind the curtain, finding out who did what, why, what intent and who influenced those decisions and for what purpose. those are the kinds of things that journalism exists to do and exists to hold power to account, particularly political power and that's why we have a free and independent press in this country and i view that as the original assignment from the founders of this country, to the press. we have an essentially near sacred duty to fulfill that obligation and if we don't, we're not doing our jobs. >> on that point, i'm wondering what you think a second trump term might look like when it comes to the press. there's every indication that this supreme court looks willing to revisit new york times versus sullivan, which is one. fundamental court decisions that underpins a free press in this country, the ability to criticize public figures. >> yeah, well, my expectation is that trump will not wait for

the supreme court to rule. i think he'll try to go after the press immediately and in a very aggressive manner. i think that he will -- that if there's any disclosure of national security information, classified information that i expect he's going to bring prosecution for that. that historically has not been prosecuted, but i imagine that a trump justice department will do that at the drop of a, you know, of a hat. and i would expect that he made-- he's talked about challenging the broadcast license for nbc and because he's accused nbc and comcast which owns nb c & m snbc for treason for coverage that he deems to be unfavorable to him. he's talked about that. i believe he will try to damage the finances of major media organizations and possibly use that as an opportunity for his allies to acquire them as has

happened in countries like venezuela and other authoritarian regimes where media organizations are being weakened and then political allies of an authoritarian leader come and take control of those media organizations for their own purposes. so, i think that there are -- and i also think he'llen courage his allies as i believe he has done in the past to bring these libel suits that you mentioned and saddle-- whether they win or lose, to saddle press organizations with enormous costs of defending themselves. so i would expect to see that, too, and i would think that he would want to test the new york times versus sullivan case. >> we have a lot of questions on this point and i'll start going to your questions and who are watching, go to the q & a part as you see on the zoom and enter your question and your name and where you're from would be very helpful. several have asked so many small news outlets are bought

out by large media companies or just closing down. how do you see this as affecting detrimental to the democracy as the news sources are getting smaller and smaller given that so many americans have often said it's local news that is their news source? >> yeah, well, i think the crisis in local news is the biggest crisis in news today. and political ones,we've talked about and local and regional outlets suffered the most. i would-- i mean, there are certain signs of some success of certain news organizations that are doing okay. but many of them are suffering greatly and the types of major news organizations if you want to call it that that are acquiring newspapers are hedge funds and private equity firms. it's not traditional news

organizations that are acquiring them. they're treating news organizations essentially like annuities, basically extracting every last penny they can get out of them through the sale of real estate, through whatever means they can, significant cost cuts, with no real care about their long-term sustainability and their long-term survival, as long as they achieve a good return on their investment. so that is, i think, a huge concern. countering that are a number of nonprofits that have sprung up around the country. that's a model that's still, i would say, emerging. it still needs to be tested. that would require significant support from within local communities. it's not clear yet that there is's enough philanthropic for news in this country to support a nonprofit, but it's something that's tried and tried very energetically today. >> when people ask me what they

can do to help newspaper journalism, i say subscribe to the paper where you live, but also, wherever you come from, subscribe to the main paper in the capital of that state. coverage of what's going on in that state, the politics and culture and everything else is vital to the system that we have. the states as we know from the electoral college, the states matter so much. to support that journalism and local journalism is vital. it's something i hope that has been of use to people who are looking for ways-- there are many major newspapers that have no-- maybe only one person covering state government and obviously, state government is huge, it's a single reporter and the state capital isn't capable of covering the entirety of state government or any portion of it really well, and many of these major-- the biggest newspapers in certain states have nobody, actually in washington covering their representatives in

congress. >> let's hear from charlotte from false church, virginia, who says trump thrives on publicity. it he getting too much free coverage now? what are the boundaries journalists should observe to not overboost him. and in 2013, trump was free wall paper for cnn. >> well, first of all, he is going to be the republican nominee. that's obvious, that he will be. so, you have to cover him as the republican nominee, so it's like free publicity means we're not going to cover one of the leading candidates? and the person who is actually today leading in the polls regardless whether we care about the polls at this stage or not. and the major party candidate, you can't ignore him. i think there have been mistakes already, akin to what happened in 2016. as you mentioned in 2016, cnn and fox carried his rallies from beginning to end, without any intermediary, nobody saying

what he's saying isn't true. just carrying it, essentially a free in-kind contribution to the trump campaign and so more recently, you know, you had cnn do a long interview with donald trump, even right at the beginning of the primaries. i think that was way too early and i don't think there was a journalistic justification for doing that. the reality was that cnn was trying to demonstrate at that point that it welcomed republicans as much as it welcomed democrats. so it was a pr motive for doing that. the same was true, i think, when there was a new host for meet the press, they had an interview with donald trump. the purpose there was to promote the new host for meet the press. that to me is not a good justification for having an interview with him. and he does, because of his, just the way he come ports himself, he just dominates these interviews and then

kaput ers-- then utter's enormous amounts of falsehoods. there was no need for those interviews at that time. >> how much has the kind of click-driven journalism influenced major newspapers and you know, certainly online news sources or arguable news sources instead of writing a headline that says, you know, trump declares, you know, kick out the immigrant day, it would say guess what day trump has declared and you have to click on it in order to read it. the headline for legitimate may i use the word newspapers, does that job for you. >> in reality you don't see much of those headlines in major news organizations anymore. the reality is that the economic sort of foundation of online operations has changed

substantially. it's very much built on subscribers and subscribers are not looking for that. they're acquiring a subscription because they expect you to live up to certain standards and they don't go for the click bait. they go for indepth stories, accountability work, great narratives. journalism that actually is distinct and special in some way and it's not, you know, commoditized in any way. so, those kinds of headline tricks are not how major news organizations are operating these days. >> ruth in rochester, minnesota speaks clearly from personal and frustrating experience, how do you approach a discussion with someone who has fallen for disinformation that they've gotten from social media or such sources as fox or one america network? >> yeah, it's a tough question. and i've been asked that before and i think, you know, just

showing them a story from, let's say "the washington post," the new york times, cnn not going to help because they don't trust those outlets, we have a highly polarized media consumption in this country. i think it might help, and i might, if you can point them to original sourced documents. let's say talking about a court case or the january 6th, 2020, find the rulings from trump-apainted judges who weighed in on the kind of case that donald trump and his allies tried to make arguing that the election was stolen and how trump appointed judges and rejected those ar arguments and no credible evidence has been offered. you can't do that with one judge. you can do that with multiple trump-appointed judges.

trump could say it's one bad judge, but you can point to all of them and point to regional sourced documents, that's what i would point to. >> kathy wants to know more about the viable models for financing independent journalism if it isn't to be hedge funds or billionaires. >> some are trying nonprofits and trying to raise money locally and raise money from foundations. i think that that is-- that's yet to be tested really, although some have been reasonably successful. so, for example, california, we have cal matters, in texas, the texas tribune. you ome at the national level for investigations, marshall project for criminal justice. so, you have that. you also have some, you know, that are actually succeeding at the national level and at the local level. the reality is, i think the boston globe where i worked for 11 and a half years is in a pretty sustainable place right

now. in san francisco, it seems to me, the chronicle is doing reasonably well. the-- obviously, doesn't have the resources it used to, but it's doing reasonably well. i think that's true in minneapolis, also. so, i think there are some actual traditional and legacy news organizations that are doing okay. and there are a variety there are becoming much more specialized in their approach and they're not so much geographic. so, for example, truck beat, which covers education, a nonprofit, but it also has a lot of local sites and covering education in different cities so it's specializing in that way. an outfit called platform is covering the big tech companies and brokered a lot of news and seems to be doing well. the information in san francisco covers the intersection of media and tech. so there are success stories out there and i think that our business is being really radically reinvented and we're not quite sure how it's going

to shake out, but as long as we have a democracy, i think there will be a demand for journalism and i think that democracy is the big question mark at the moment. so, but as long as we have one, i think there will be demand for journalism. >> on that point, jack from santa barbara asked whether an npr-pbs model with local affiliates would help to increase public news. of course, we had gannett for a while and rejected associated press. >> i think he's talking about a government-funded model, partially government-funded model probably like pbs or npr. >> doesn't allude to that, but we'll put aside the funding question for the moment, the idea of a network with affiliates maybe. >> you had that in the past as you said gannet has papers

across the country and we had night ritter, had charlotte, san jose, detroit, a whole bunch of places and i don't think that's the answer to any of this. i think the reality is that the way that people are consuming news today and the way that advertising is being distributed is the big challenge. so, so much of the advertising is being sucked up by the big platforms and that would be google facebook, apple, less and less twitter. >> susan from boynton beach, florida, why do you think of ronna mcdonnell fired by the rnc and then taken up by nbc and then fired by there. >> i think there's good reason not to hire here. that is that she lied about the election and actively worked to undermine that election. i don't think that somebody like that should be on a

network offering analysis. i'm not sure that she can offer analysis any different than anyone else can offer, frankly. and i am -- (inaudible) >> we're having trouble with marty's internet. >> revolving door between the government and the networks and there's a lot -- yeah, how is this now? >> yeah. >> is that better? >> yes, thank you. >> is that better? >> yes, it is. go ahead. >> all right. i'm sorry. there's a storm here. in any event, i'm kind of concerned about the revoling door between washington-- between government and the networks, and i would discourage that. i think that the press really ought to be independent and to the extent that you're hiring people who are essentially spokes people for a party or a candidate, i think that raises

questions who are they really working for when they're on air. >> there's a question from paul in manhattan beach, whether editorial boards and opinion pages carry weight in communities are are they ineffective due to ardent partisan politics. i know that the l.a. times they interview, for example, all the candidates for judgeships and that's not really a group of races that people follow closely. so i know many people who use such recommendations for their voting when they don't know the candidates, but the overall question is the clout and the voice that that-- whether or not it carries the clout that it used to or to this day. >> i'm not sure it ever carried as much clout as we think it did, frankly. so, i think it's a legitimate question. the new york times has cut back significantly on the number of editorials that it pubpublishes

where editorials can make a difference in the areas you're talking about. certain races that people aren't paying attention to, certain issues, locally, for example, smaller local newspapers where they can draw attention to issues and illuminate the issues in a way that the order person is not focusing on that. >> we have a question, kind of a career question from tina in portland who says our daughter-- granddaughter is in college and really wants to be a journalist. what would you tell her. >> i'm sorry to tell you, i tell people to ignore your parents and grandparents here. and they think you shouldn't go into journalism. my own parents thought i should go to the law and become a lawyer. while i was interested in law, i wasn't interested in becoming a lawyer. i think if somebody has a passion for the field, they should go into the field they have a passion for. i wanted to go into a field

that i thought would always be interesting and meaningful and i found one. and so, and i think a lot of young people are looking for exactly that today. our field is going to change dramatically. i don't think that people should judge the opportunity strictly by what's happening on the employment front at traditional legacy news organizations. they will have to be entrepreneurial, either within an organization or on their own, they will have a learn a lot of new skills. if they do that, if they're willing to embrace the new things that they have to learn. if they're willing and able to do that. they have a capacity to have an accelerated career and jump many over people at traditional organizations who are unwilling or unable to make-- to change the way that they should. >> apologies for the commentary being run by my fur baby right now. linda, who is retired

associated press person, i think i know who she is, my friend, will you be willing, marty, to get back into the industry to save the industry? get your white horse, i think we can do a go-fund-me. >> i think i know that linda. no, i retired. i don't want to manage people anymore and i did that for most of my career, and 20 years as a top editor of a news organization so i want to be involved in our profession, but in a very different way. one way i did that was by writing this book and going around and talking about it, the kinds of things i address in the book and i'll have to figure out what my next act is. i don't know what that is at the moment, but i don't want to go back into running a news organization. >> neil has a question, what is your opinion about so-called neutral news sources such as all sides and epic times? ... he epic times.

i saw a billboard on beverly hills, talking about number one america neutral -- >> i'm afraid it's not neutral by any expression. "epic times" is essentially a group in china that owns "epic times" and it's closely aligned with trump, trying to advance the interests of trump. there's nothing neutral about it. so i think people should be careful what -- when somebody describes themselves as neutral and be careful of that kind of and be careful of the kind of advertising. it's actually might be the last place i look for mutual. >> scene and said be truthful, not neutral. want make of that advice? >> i think, i'm in favor of objectivity but it'll think that equates to false equivalence or on one hand neutrality.

i don't come that's the word i would use. i use objectivity which means a concept goes back more than 100 years to walter littman who popularized, and that it's going into reporting with anr open mind, being willing and wanting to talk toto all people you need to talk to come looking at all the evidence, doing so rigorously, thoroughly and fairly, being fair to everyone you talk to, being fair to the evidence but also being fair to the public which means you do all that work in order to get at the truth, to get at the rally and the facts and the reason you do all that work is sleek and the people what you found to be true. we have to push it with a level of humility, sometimes are seeing theet world through a keyhole, should recognize that. sometimes we can crack the door open and see more, sometimes we can swing the door wide open

ever lucky and have a lot of skill. we can do that but we don't always do that. we have to have humility about this. when we do get at the truth, as the facts we've done our job really well. we should tell people what we found. that would be the only honest and honorable thing to do. >> amy in richmond, virginia, has a question i'm sure a lot of people's minds. what you think about how the war in israel is being represented covered in the news media? >> it's hard to address. who can generalize about the media overall? there's a tendency to generalize the media, if i would ask a guy can of different complexing all politicians, all lawyers, all doctors but people tend not to say that but they will say that beatty as if s anybody is doing the same thing. it's a complex story. i'm glad i'm not in the middle ofnd it because i have been attacked in the past by all parties in that for that kind of

coverage, and there's just no satisfying people. i mean look the region as has been described and i just read is the history of violence, violence and counter counter violence. it's really complex story and the obligation of the press is to cover that story and all of its complexities with a lot of on the ground reporting. >> this ghost whichro talk about people knowing the fundamentals of journalism. the questions how do journalists determine which are the important story to cover? for example, war in gaza starts the most coverage of ukraine ends. it's a very substantive question and one with all grapple with every day. >> these are hard decisions. a lot of them are based on how much we having h resources. when you're covering -- >> c-span2 is live on capitol hill where the house rules

committee is considering foreign aid bills for israel, ukraine and taiwan. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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