protect civilian lives. a major military operation was not the way to go, understanding that there are hamas operatives there. we have to make sure that we protect innocent lives here. so they had a very direct conversation. that's because they've known each other for many decades. everybody, thank you so much. hopefully we will see you tomorrow. >> this month, the u.s. supreme court her your -- here's oral argument ia case of whether former president dond ump has criminal immunity for his role iattempts to overturn the 20 election results. live coverage of the oriole -- oral argument thursday, april 25 beginning at 10: etern on c-span, c-span now, and online

at c-span.org. ♪ c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including new scope. ♪ >> they supports c-span as a public service along wh these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. coming up, a conversation about media coverage of former president donald trump with the former executive editor of the washington post. they talked about the decline of local news outlets and social media's impact on news.

>> marty baron was my colleague at the los angeles times for a number of years. also the executive editor of the miami herald and the boston globe as well. a pulitzer prize for its coverage of the catholic church sex scandal there which also triggered a number of similar investigations across the country. most recently as the executive editor of the washington post from 2013 to 2021. the subject of this book which we are going to be discussing tonight, the collision of power and the washington post. one of the most eminent editors in america and we are so happy he made time to be here. it is great to see you again. >> great to see you. thanks for having me. >> it's been almost nine years since donald trump dissented that gold elevator. the question for journalists and non-journalists alike is, how trump has changed journalism.

we've talked a lot about how he change the country. but how he changed journalism is a big part of that. >> i think that's true. obviously he was a candidate unlike any we had ever seen before. and then became a president unlike any we'd ever seen before. now again a candidate unlike any we've 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 it tries to cover him today. so i think he did changed journalism in a lot of ways. there were a lot of norms in our business that we set aside, some for the better and some for the worse. and you know, i think that people are trying to figure out, what's the best way to cover

him? >> in the audience, if you have a question for marty, we will get to them later in the hour. put them in the q&a and we will get around to those. tell us your first name and where you are from in your question area so to talk about how he's changed journalism, a lot of the argument both outside and within journalism is that covering this era of trump is a different job. different jobs require different tools. the argument is that it's true of journalism as well. do you think that's the case? >> i think we have the tools that we need. we are dealing with a candidate who is really difficult to cover. we have a lot of advice on how to cover him. a lot of people say, don't report what he says because you are normalizing him. if you don't report what he says, they say, how did you not report what he said? you get a lot of contradictory advice on that. my sense is that we ought to be

focusing on 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. a lot of them are the kind of measures that have been implemented in other countries where you had aspiring authoritarians. those are the kind of measures they put into place. using the military to surpass protests. going after your political enemies by prosecuting them. bringing treason charges against people you deem to be unfavorable to you. including former installing loyalists in every level of government. these are the kinds of measures we've seen in other countries that have become authoritarian in nature. i think we should really be

focusing on that in addition to what kinds of laws he intends to exploit in order to implement those measures or what kind of laws he intends to bend or break in order to implement those measures. and who he would put in charge to carry out the kinds of measures he's talking about. just so the audience is aware we can't deliver closed captioning to you because of the technical issues you may be witnessing. but trump issued such a fire hose of these kinds of threats and outrageous comments for years that you wonder how those of us in journalism and then in our audience, our readers and viewers are able to process it, one 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 a lot of people have just decided they don't want to hear anymore, it troubles them so much and gives them anxiety. in fact, there are a number of doctors out there that are recommending people not watch or read the news because it makes them more anxious. i would discourage that myself because i think we should be aware of what's actually happening. keep in mind, any one media outlet only reaches a small portion of the population. only 8% of the american publicist "the new york times" as its primary source of news. something like 3% for "the washington post." so no matter what you're doing, you're not necessarily reaching everybody in the population. even the cable networks, the total audience is relatively small. people are getting their information from all sorts of different sources. i use the word "information"

broadly because a lot of it is misinformation and some of it disinformation, deliberate falsehoods being spread. >> let me ask you about the point of where you get your information from. paul houston, a member of our bureau, covering a protest in the carter administration when interest rates went high and farmers having a hard time and converged on washington with their farm equipment to protest and paul was out there covering it when he saw a woman stuck trying to get out of washington that day, very angry, getting out of her car and shaking her fist and saying i don't need you farmers, i get my food at the grocery store. print journalists find themselves in the same position. they say i don't read "the washington post" or l.a. times but what they are reading comes from the newspapers when especially newspapers, the smaller ones, are very much under threat and journalists are losing their jobs faster than

coal miners. we have the two threads, the idea that news is still coming still from these old media companies and the way that we can report on these is quickly disappearing. >> that's certainly true. what "the new york times" publishes and "the washington post" publishes and the l.a. times posts can get amplified and gets on the television and cable networks and gets on the radio and it ends up 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 pre-existing points of view, we have in many instances -- in too many instances, a society that doesn't share a common set of facts. and it's actually worse than that. we can't even agree on how to establish that something is a fact. so the kinds of things 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, actual evidence, so that in many instances, such as what we saw january 6 of 2021, people are denying what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears and of course there's an enormous volume of evidence and yet people will call that normal civic discourse as the republican party 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. >> to the extent that journalism has changed, one of the things that was noticeable was a debate in many news rooms that resulted in the fact that some of trump's

comments were called racist, some of his comments were called lies and it took a long time to get there so journalism responded maybe not as some people wanted or as quickly. now journalists do feel like they can characterize what they feel this man is saying. >> look, it's not a bad thing and certainly 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 because once we use a word, we can't take it back. and you have to be careful the language that you're using itself just doesn't become a target and the result is that the 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 being used. but yes, it did become apparent in lots of instances trump was not just self-deluded and he was not just sort of -- he couldn't care less whether something was

true or false and just making it up in whatever way served his own interest but that he actually knew things were false and he said them anyway. and that's become evermore clear over time, particularly with regard to the 2020 election. and that he lost that election and to what happened, for example, january 6, 2021. so i ning those kinds of instances we're on very safe ground saying that he's lying. he knew -- he absolutely knows what he's saying is false and yet he's saying it anyway because it serves his own interests. >> your book deals with the period when jeff bezos bought his ownership of "the washington post" which parallels much of the trump administration. so let's talk something about that. first of all, why jeff bezos wanted to buy "the washington post." >> it's hard to get into his head but i can tell you what he

said and what i believe. he talked about that he had to go through several gates, one was to assure himself that it was an important institution of 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 thought a lot about that and conclude that yes, he could give us obviously what he called runway, he could make investments and let them play out over a period of time and see if they worked. he did bring other things which was obviously an understanding of technology, a sophisticated understanding of technology and a fiction ticketed knowledge of consumer sales and our business in consumer sales. but i also think and it will sound naive because we're talking jeff bezos, on any one

day, the richest person in the world. people say well, he can't have any noble motives but i actually do believe that he believes in the press and i think that's been borne out based on his ownership of the post and believes a role in the press though he's become the target of it and that he believes in american democracy and he just feels the press plays an important role in that. and he also felt, i think, the post could be turned around. we were in a position that we were kind of sliding into on liveian and did not -- oblivion and did not have a successful model and our strategy was to be fundamentally regional and of course we covered national politics but the internal moto was for and about washington. other than national politics we focused on our region and bezos said that may have worked in the past and did and was profitable but 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 had the capacity to deliver our journalism digitally as opposed to delivering a newspaper which meant we could acquire additional readers and subscribers at effectively no incremental costs so he said we'll take the gift the internet is giving to you though the internet has damaged so much of your business, take the gift. you can be national because you're based in the nation's capital and you have a heritage going back to watergate in that there are people around the country and around the world who know "the washington post," have a great impression of "the washington post," holding power to account, particularly going back to watergate but never read a word of "the washington post" and build on it and the internet is giving us a gift and he saw a

way to turn around the post which many did not see and i think he saw he could actually make a difference. so for a variety of those reasons, i think he bought it he he's not used it to exercise influence though he's been accused of it by trump over and over again and there's no evidence of that. and the reason there's no evidence of that is because he 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. the bargain hunters beware, three books in one, a insider's revealing examination of bezos' stewardship of the post, a sometimes thriller of a tale how the post navigated a perilous time in journalism and how trump tried to discredit the post. you had a seat at the table with bezos and trump. my sense is that trump probably

expected hey, us rich guys are going to stick together. can you talk about some of the dealings bezos and trump had and some of the dealings you had with trump individually as well? sure. it all came to a head five months after trump took office. our publisher wanted -- it's in the prolog to the book. our publisher felt it would be a good idea if we met with trump. bezos actually met with him previously as part of a group of technology executives but he also had a private meeting before that where trump talked how he liked amazon but didn't like "the post" a whole lot. we had a meeting at the white house for dinner and our publisher felt it would be good to meet him and i was there and the publisher was there and jerod kushner, melania and the president, and throughout the

entire time, i was sitting next to his lap and throughout the dinner he was criticizing "the post" and called us the worst of all media outlets frequently and every time he would criticize "the post" for something he would elbow me to his left and i was quite tempted to elbow him back but you just don't do that with the president of the united states. >> with the secret service there, certainly not. >> then he called bezos the next morning and said 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. and he said isn't there something you can do to make "the post" more fair to me? and bezos told him he did not get involved in the news coverage and if he did, he would regret it the rest of his life. and then trump at the end of that conversation on the cell phone said basically invited bezos to ask for a favor and said if there's anything you ever need, just give me a call.

bezos thankfully never did give him a call and never asked for a favor and was the subject of attack of raising postal rates to hurt amsson in an intervention and a $10 billion cloud computer project where amazon was considered to be the leading bidder and trump wanted to make sure it did not go to amazon and initially it did not. and then trump called me afterwards. i think he called me a couple times afterwards to complain about stories. the last time he called -- in one instance he called and said he'd been portrayed like a little boy and then he said these words i never expected to hear from a president of the united states, he said, i am not a little boy. which i just could not believe i was hearing that from the president of the united states. and the second time he called to complain again and said that it was all because of the negative coverage because of me and bezos and amazon which i was irritated

to hear from him and i said well, it's not and and you know it's not and he isn't used to that confrontation and blurted out a bunch of profanities and said we were a hate machine and big fat lie and basically blamed bezos and amazon again and after that, he 4 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 demonize of course the post, and of course the press in general. but to go beyond demonizing us and 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. >> that's what he views as fair. basically it has to be -- can you see it play out not only in his relationship with the press but in real estateship with the other politicians. you can never dissent or ever break away from him on anything. it has to be 100% loyalty, 100% support, not 99%, 100%. that's what he considered to be fair. that's what he considered to be right and that's his expectation of the press as well. you can even see that with regard to the press, can you see it in the example with fox. if fox ever veers from him or even actually airs his opponent or critic, he starts attacking fox and saying that's inappropriate. just doesn't feet himself should have an opportunity to have a vice and that none of his critics should be able to say what they say and

viewed all that criticism as being unfair. >> it's seven years now since the motto, democracy dies in darkness was unveiled just a couple weeks into the trump presidency and your sense of it wasn't quite what you might have wanted it to be, your phrase is we're not at war with the administration we're at work and that 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. we had a hard time on that motto and wasn't a reaction to trump but happened to be introduced the time trump took office and was interpreted that way. that was a phrase that was meant to sort of signal the distinct role "the washington post" can play in washington and should play in washington which is holding power to account which is a historic role of "the washington post" and obviously did that in the case of richard nixon but has done that with presidents both republican and

democratic. 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 in office went to the c.i.a. and with whom he already had a troubled relationship because of their investigation with russia's intervention and the election. and standing in front of a memorial to fallen c.i.a. agents, what did he talk about but the press? and he said, as you know, i'm in a running war with the media, shaming to want to enlist the intelligence agency in his own war with the media. several weeks after that i was asked for my reaction to that and i said we're not at war with the administration, we're at work. what i meant by that is we really have to look back to why we have a free and independent press in this country, and so you know, james madison who is a principal author of the first amendment talked about freely

examining public characters and measures. so public characters, politicians, government officials, people in authority, measures, policies, of course, free, we should understand that word but examining is the key word here. that means journalism is not sten ok if i and is dig -- sten ok if i but -- stenography but digging behind the curtain and who influenced it and to what purpose and what journalism does and exists to hold power to account, particularly individual power and why we have a free press and view that as an original assignment from the founders of the country to the press. we have an almost -- essentially a near sacred duty to fulfill that obligation and if we don't, we're not doing our jobs. >> i wonder what you think a second trump term might look like when it comes to the press.

there is every indication the supreme court looks willing to revisit "new york times" versus sullivan which is one of the fundamental court decisions that underpins the free press in this country, the ability to criticize public figures. >> yeah, my expectation is trump will not wait for the supreme court to rule and think he will try to go after the press immediately and in a very aggressive manner. i think he will -- any disclosure of national security information, i would expect he's going to bring up prosecution for that. that historically has not been prosecuted but i would imagine a trump justice department will do that at the drop of a, you know, of a hat. i aexpect he may -- he talked about challenging the broadcast license for nbc and because he accused nbc and comcast which owns nbc and msnbc for treason

for coverage he deems to be unfavorable to him and he talked about that. i believe he will try to damage the finances of major media organizations and possibly use it so his allies may acquire them which has happened in countries like venezuela and other authoritarian regimes where media organizations are being weakened and then political allies of the authoritarian leader come and take control of those media organizations for their own purposes. so i think that there -- i also think he will encourage his allies as i believe he has done in the past to bring these liable suits you mentioned and saddle whether they win or lose, to saddle press organizations with enormous costs of defending themselves and so i would expect to see that, too, and suspect he would want to try 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 if you who are watching have questions, go to the q&a part as you see on your zoom and enter your question there, your name and where you're from would be very helpful. several have asked so many small news outlets are being bought out by large media companies or just closing down. how do you see this as detrimental to democracy given that the news source respect getting smaller and smaller though many americans have said local news is their news source? >> the crisis in local news is the single biggest crisis today and we face many challenges, political ones we talked about and national ones even at the national level but clearly local and regional news outlets have suffered the most. and i mean, there's certain signs of some success, certain news organizations that are

doing ok 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 largely hedge funds and private equity firms. it's not traditional news organizations that are acquiring them and they are treating local news organizations essentially like annuities, basically extracting every last penny they can get out of them through the sale of relies and whatever means they can. significant cost cuts with no real care about their long term sustainability and 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 still i would say emerging. it still needs to be tested p. that would require significant support from within local

communities. it's not clear yet that there's enough philanthropic money for news, independent news coverage in this country to support a lot of nonprofits but it is something being tried and tried very energetically today. >> when people ask me what they can do to helpup journalism, i of course 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 because coverage of what's going on in that state, the politics and the culture and everything else is vital to this system where we have where the states as we know from the electoral college, the states matter so much. so to support that level of journalism and local journalism is really vital and i hope something that's been of use to people who are looking for ways -- >> there are many major newspapers that have maybe only one person covering state government and obviously the

state department is huge and a single reporter and the state capital is incapable of covering the entire state government and well and many newspapers in certain states have nobody in washington covering their representatives in congress. >> let's hear from charlotte from falls church, virginia, trump thrives on publicity, is he getting too much free coverage now and what are the boundaries journalists should observe in order not to overboost them and in 2019, trump was free wallpaper for cnn. >> well, first of all, he is going to be the republican nominee, that's obvious that he will be and you have to cover him as the republican nominee and free publicity means we're not going to cover one of the leading candidates and the person leading in the polls regardless whether we care about the polls at this stage or not but clearly the major party candidate and you can't ignore

him. on the other hand, i think there have been mistakes already, akin to what happened in 2016. as you mentioned, in 2016, cnn and fox buried his rallies from beginning to end without any intermediary, nobody saying what he was saying wasn't true, just carrying it, it was all free, essentially a free in kind contribution to the trump campaign. so more recently, we had cnn do a long interview with donald trump 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 cnn was trying to demonstrate at that point it welcomed republicans as much as it welcomed democrats. it was a p.r. 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 just because of the way he comports himself, he just dominates these interviews and then utters an enormous number of falsehoods. there will have to be interviews with him but i think there was no need for those interviews at that time. >> how much has the kind of clique journalism influenced major newspapers and certainly online news sources or arguable news sources instead of writing a headline that says 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 whereas the headline for legitimate, may i use the word

newspapers does that job for you. >> the reality, you don't see much of those headlines in major news organizations anymore. the reality is the economic sort of foundation of online operations has changed substantially and very much built on subscribers and subscribers are not looking for that. they're acquiring a subscription because they go for in depth stories and not click bait and great narratives, journalism that actually is distinct and special in some way and that's not commoditized in any way. those kind of headline tricks are not how major news organizations are operating these days. >> ruth in rochester, minnesota, speaks clearly from personal and frustrating experience, asking, 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. i think just showing them a story from, say, "the washington post," cnn won't help because they don't trust those outlets and we have a highly polarized media consumption in this country. i think it might help, and i do say "might" if you can point them to a regional source document. let's say we're talking about a court case, january 6 or the 2020 election. find the ruling -- and these are available from major news outlets. find the ruling from trump appointed judges who have 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 have rejected those arguments and pointing out that no evidence,

no credible evidence has been offered. you don't have to do that with just one judge but multiple. trump would call it a biased judge or one jump -- judge but it would show it's all the trump appointed judges. can you point to documents. >> and someone wants to know about viable models for journalism if it isn't to be hedge funds or billionaires? >> some people are trying nonprofits and trying to raise money locally and raise money from foundations. i think that that is yet to be tested, really, although some have been reasonably successful. so, for example, in wave, you have cal matters and in texas you have the texas tribune and some at the national level for investigations and the 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 1/2 years is in a pretty sustainable place right now. i think in san francisco it seems to me that san francisco -- "the chronicle" is doing reasonably well. obviously it doesn't have the resources it used to but is doing reasonably well and true in minneapolis, also. i think there is some actual traditional -- and legacy news organizations are doing ok. and a variety that are becoming much more specialized in their approach and not so much geographic. so, for example, "chalk beat" which covers education, a nonprofit, also has a lot of sites and covering education in different cities and specializing in that way, an outfit called platform is covering the big tech companies

and has broken a lot of news and teams to be doing very well. "the information" based in san francisco covers the intersection of media and tech. there are success stories out there. and i think our business is being really radically reinvented and we're not quite sure how it's all going to shake out. as long as we have a democracy there will be a demand for journalism. democracy is the big question mark at the moment. as long as we have one, i think there will be a demand for journalism. >> on that point, jackson of santa barbara asks whether a n.p.r. model for local affiliates would increase public trust in news? of course, we had ganet which worked for a while and rejected the associated press and you wonder where that's going. is that a good model for -- >> i think he's talking about a government funded model, partially funded government model like pbs or npr.

>> doesn't allude to that but we'll put away the funding question for a moment. maybe a network with affiliates maybe. >> you had that from the past, you point out gnet is national, night ridder was a chain i worked for at the "miami herald" which had papers in philadelphia, charlotte, san jose, detroit, a whole bunch of places. i don't think that's the answer to any of this. i think that the reality is that the way people are consuming news today and the way that advertising is being distributed is the big challenge. is 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, says what do you think of the hiring and firing of ron mcdaniels who was fired by the r.n.c. but taken up by nbc and

outrage among republicans she was fired from there. >> i think there's good reason not to hire her and that is she lied about the election and actively worked to undermine that election. i don't think somebody like that should be on a network offering analysis and i'm not sure she can offer a analysis any different than anybody else can offer, frankly. and i am -- >> we're having trouble with the internet. >> how is this now? is that better? >> yes, thank you. >> is that better? >> yes, it is. go ahead. >> i apologize. i'm sorry. the storm here. i'm kind of concerned about the revolving door between

government and the networks and would discourage that. i think the press ought to be independent and to the extent you're hiring people who are essentially spokespeople for a party or candidate, i think that raises questions about who are they really working for when they're on air. >> a question from paul in manhattan beach, whether the editorial board and opinion pages collect weight in communities or ineffective due to ardent partisan politics. the l.a. times interview, for example, all the candidates for judgeships and that's not really a group of races people follow very closely so i know many people who use such recommendations for voting when they don't know the candidates. but the overall question is the cloud and the voice that that -- whether or not it carries the clout it used to, to this day. >> i'm not sure it ever carried as much clout as we think it

did, frankly. so i think there's a legitimate question. "the new york times" has cut back significantly on the number of editorials it publishes. i think there's a concern of people not being able to distinguish between what's opinion and what's news and looks so muddled online. secondly, i do think that where editorials can make a difference is in the areas you're talking about, certain kinds of races people aren't paying attention to, certain issues locally, for example, small or local newspapers where they can draw attention to issues and illuminate those issues in a way the ordinary person is not focusing on that. >> we have a question, kind after career question from tina in portland who says our granddaughter is in college and really wants to be a journalist, what would you tell her? >> well, i'm sorry to tell you, i always tell people to ignore their parents, and i'll include grandparents here because they also think you shouldn't go into

journalism. my own parents thought i should go into the law and become a lawyer and 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 in the field they have a passion for. i wanted to go into a field i thought would always be interesting and meaningful and i found one. i think a lot of young people are looking for exactly that today. our field is going to change dramatically. i don't think people should judge the opportunity strictly 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. and they will have to learn a lot of new skills. if they do that and they're willing to embrace the new things they have to learn, if they're willing and able to do that, they have the capacity to have an accelerated career and to jump over people at traditional organizations who

are unwilling or unable to change the way that they should. >> apologies for the commentaries from my fur baby. my friend, would you be willing, marty, to get back in the news business as a powerful voice to help save the industry? we'll get to your white horse, i think we can do a gofundme. >> i think i know that linda. no, i retired and don't want to manage people anymore. i did that most of my career and 20 years as top editor of a news organization. so i want to be involved in ourings profession but in a different way and i wrote the book and go around and talk about it different things i talk about 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 don't want to go back to running a news organization. >> neil has a question, what's your opinion of so-called neutral news sources such as all size and the 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 advertising on the part of "epic times." it might well be the last place i'd look for neutral coverage. >> i think a reporter on cnn said be truthful, not neutral.

what do you make of that advice? >> well, i think our -- i'm in favor of objectivity but don't think it equates to false aequivalence or both sidessism or on the one hand journalism or neutrality. that's a word i wouldn't use. i would objectivity which means that a concept that goes back a hundred years to walter litman who assigned it and going in with an open mind and talking to all people you need to talk to and looking at all the evidence and doing so rigorously thoroughly, and fairly. being fair to everyone you talk to and being fair to the evidence and also being fair to the public which means you do all that work in order to get at the truth, right, to get at the reality and the facts and the

reason do you that work is so you can tell people what you found to be true and we have to approach that with a level of humility and sometimes we're seeing the world through a key hole and should recognize that and sometimes we can crack the door open a bit and see more and sometimes we can swing the door wide open if we're lucky and have a lot of skill but we don't always do that. we have to have humility about this but when we do get at the truth and get to the facts. you see who can generalize the media overall. there's a tendency to generalize about the media. if everybody acts exactly the same way, there's a lot of different -- it would be like saying all politics and all doctors and all lawyers but

people tend not to say that but will say the media as if everybody is doing the same thing. look, it's a really complex story. i'm kind of glad i'm not in the middle of it. i've been attacked in the past by all parties for that coverage and there's just no satisfying people. look, the region as has been described in a book that i just read the history of violence, counterviolence and counter counter violence and it's a complicated story and the obligation of the press is to cover that story and all the complexity with a lot of on the ground reporting. >> and from dee in albuquerque, this goes to what you talked about with people knowing the fundamentals of journalism. how do journalists determine what are the important stories to cover, for example, war in gaza starts and most coverage of ukraine ends. it's a very substantive question and one that we certainly all

grapple with every day. >> these are hard decisions. a lot of them are based on how much we have in resources. and by the way, when we're covering conflicts like that there are only so many people on the staff that have experienced covering conflict zones. you don't want to just throw anybody in a story like that if you have to be in a danger zone. these are risky things and people don't go into stories because they're trying to advance an agenda and trying to tell people what's happening on the grown. nobody risks his or her life to make some ideological point. these are tough. the reality is both of these stories are important and there is coverage of ukraine and "the post" has people there and "the new york times" and other organizations do as well. but obviously israel, gaza is the hotter story and i mean hot because it's an ongoing, really

intense conflict that has -- has huge risks attached to it and ukraine has huge risks attached to it, too. you try to do both as best you can. >> there's the question of cost at some point and we analyze in "the new york times" we're spending $1 million a year to have a bureau in baghdad and those are high costs in covering foreign conflicts. douglas wants to know are you encouraged by sinclair broadcasting including recent purpose of ""the baltimore sun." sinclair broadcast at one point was mandating conservative editorials that had to air in every single station and market it owns. what are your thoughts about that, marty? >> about baltimore or sinclair in general? >> sinclair in general and "baltimore." >> "baltimore" was acquired by the c.e.o. of sinclair individually, not by the company itself. that said, his comments from the

start were quite worrying. he indicated he had a political agenda, though he didn't say so explicitly and seemed to signal that that's what the newspaper ought to be pursuing, pursuing stories that would advance his own political views. with regard to sinclair, yes, i think that they have -- certainly lean to the right and lean towards trump at "the washington post." we were threatened several times with lawsuits by sinclair. seemed to be a pretty -- not exactly regular but not irregular sort of thing. get a threatened lawsuit from sinclair. so i think that's concerning. i think it's concerning, any media organization really trying to advance an ideology in its coverage. that's not our job. our job is to be independent and i always felt independent of any

party and any politician. >> one thing happening in news rooms is younger journalists want to use their positions to put out their personal opinions and it's become a source of friction in some news rooms. we had a letter from a number of journalists in los angeles who were calling for an end to the killing of journalists in gaza which is a perfectly legitimate journalist thing to do but then they were talking about how their own papers were covering this and entering into discussions and debate that usually happened within a building in style tone, substance and that sort of thing. >> that letter talked about how news organizations should call israel an apartheid state and was engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide and it was a poorly written letter in various ways and talked about 200 israelis being captured -- they weren't captured but taken hostage. i'm opposed to this kind of

expression of opinion on social media and elsewhere. it's inappropriate and directly violates the guidelines of most news organizations, by the way. i think it undermines the reputation of these institutions. i think a lot of the people expressing these opinions are not actually directly involved on these stories but weighing in on them. i think they hurt the ability of their own colleagues to cover these stories in a objective way. sometimes a single post on twitter can draw more attention than an entire project that you've worked on very carefully and distorts the reputation of these institutions. i think reporters and other journalists within news organizations should exercise care and restraint in what they do and i think too many of them are not exercising care and restraint. >> i know certainly as you say the guidelines prohibit a lot of the behavior including donating to campaigns, our generation,

you can't put up law signs or generate any exhibit for one or the other and you certainly can't cover something you might have a stake in. so that seems to be a generational shift here. we have time for maybe another question before we wrap up with your final thoughts. joyce in los angeles wants to know where do you go for your daily news and how do you stay informed? i think a lot of people will be taking notes on this one. >> i read a lot, so -- i read "the washington post," "the new york times," "the wall street journal," atlantic," the "boston globe" where i work, i've been reading the l.a. times. i read my hometown newspaper, "the tampa bay times" now. let's see. i read my local paper, "the berkshire eagle," i live in berkshire county, massachusetts,. let's see. there are a lot of other things i look at.

i can't recall them all at the moment but that's a pretty good -- that's pretty much it. >> that's a balanced diet. >> yeah, maybe too much. so if i can spin off that point, jim from l.a. says well, what if anything would you like to say about the current health of the future of the l.a. times? >> well, look, the paper has gone through way too many years of turmoil. it's the paper i worked at for 17 years, longer than any other newspaper i worked at. i was there from 1979 to 1996. >> did you get a watch? >> i never got a watch. i got a little swag but that's about it. that's a very important paper and i think it plays an incredibly important role in covering the region and the kind of issues important to the region. a whole reaction of things from immigration to the environment and world affairs in various ways. all i can say it i -- i don't want to inject myself into the

various controversies that have enveloped that place. it's gone through too many years of instability -- here's what i think, everybody there, same as "the new york times" and same as "the los angeles times," everybody needs to work together to make sure the place is successful. and successful journalistically and successful commercially because one doesn't come without the other. and that means that it has to involve the owner, the editors, the top editors of the journalists, the union, absolutely everybody working together that rather than working across purposes. because that's the only way you'll find a route to success. people should figure out how to do that rather than being at each other's throats. >> here is marty's book. you can buy it. is it in paperback yet? >> coming out in october, i believe it is.

>> paperback version so you can buy more and share with your friend. it's available now. we try to end on a hopeful note. can you give us some hope for the future as we move into this election cycle and beyond? >> well, i think -- i'm a big read are of history. i read a lot of history. we've gone through rough times in the past, this country, as we know. even rougher than what we're experiencing today, and somehow we find our way through. it's not a straight line. we make progress. i think that's still possible today and i think the press can play an important role in that. and i think it is endeavoring to do so. we have our faults. we're not perfect because we're human beings. but i think we're working hard at it and my view is that i try to be optimistic about our profession and about our country because i think we can't afford not to be. >> we also say democracy dies without subscriptions?

>> yeah, let's say that. >> marty, thanks so much. always a pleasure to have you here. your book is really gripping and thank for you writing it and thank you for spending time with all of us today. >> thanks, pat. thanks for having me, appreciate that. >> marty baron 2013-2021 the editor of "the washington post" in the bezos era and his book is available now and in october in paperback. i want to thank everyone who sponsors this program and ganizes this program and who watches this program. >> all this wee we're showing recent s court cases that the hh court is expected to rule on by the end this term andwith reporters about some of the legal issues involved. it begins each night at 9:30 eastern c-span. tonight's oral argument is united states v.raheny, a case ether people under protective orders can legally own firearms. watch the supreme court case tonight and other recent ora

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