to build effective legislation for the lack of international agreements on the issue. our earth is a small pool in space. the united states setting an international example to protect humanity's greatest asset has been the most important change in our country in the last 20 years. with this we can finally push to the stars. >> to watch this and all winning entries, visit our website at studentcam.org. >> the labor department released a stronger than expected jobs report. employers added 303,000 workers to their payrolls in march led by job gains in health care, government, and leisure and hospitality. the unemployment rate dipped to three .8% come the 26th straight month below 4% come the longest since the 1960's. the associated press says it is

hopeful the economy can vanquish high interest rates without recession. coming up, conversation about media coverage of former president donald trump with the former executive editor of the washington post. they also talk about the decline of local news outlets and social media's impact on news. this was hosted by jews united for democracy and justice. >> marty baron was my colleague at the los angeles times for number of years and also the executive editor of the miami herald and at the boston globe where the paper won a pulitzer prize for its coverage of expose of the catholic church six scandal, which also triggered a number of similar investigations across the country and recently as the executive editor of the washington post from 2013 to 2021. the subject of this book which we will be discussing tonight, the collision of power, trump,

bezos, and the washington post, one of the most eminent editors in america and we are happy he could make time to be here. it is good to see you again. it has been almost nine years since donald trump dissented the golden elevator. the question for journalists and non-journalists alike, all those years, is how trump has changed journalism. we talk a lot about how he changed the country, but how he changed journalism is a big part of that. i think that's true >> that's true. he was a candidate unlike we had seen before and then became a president like we had never seen before. and now a former president unlike any we had seen before. i think that the press struggled with how to cover him the first time around.

struggled with covering him as president. i think is still learning lessons as it tries to cover him today. i think that he did changed journalism in a lot of ways. i think a lot of norms in our business were set aside. some for the better and some for the worst. i think that people are trying to figure out, what is the best way to cover him? patt: if you have a question for marty we will get to them in the hour. you can put them in the q&a and we will come to those. tell us your first name and where you're from in your question. marty, to talk about how he changed journalism, a lot of the arguments outside and within journalism is that this, covering this era of trump is a different job and different jobs require different tools.

the argument is that that is true of journalism as well. you think that that's the case? martin: i think that we have the tools we need. i think we are dealing with a candidate that's difficult to cover. we got a lot of advice on how to cover him. a lot of people say don't report what he says because you are normalizing it. if you don't, they say how could you not because it was so outrageous. you get a lot of contradictory advice. what we should be focusing on today is 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. a lot of the things that trump is talking about he is talking about openly. a lot of them are the kinds of measures that have been implemented in other countries where you had aspiring authoritarians. those are the measures they put into place using the military to suppress protests, going after

political enemies by prosecuting them, bringing treason charges against people you deem to be unfavorable to you, including former members of his administration and members of the press. eliminating the civil service and installing loyalists. these are the kinds of measures that we have seen in other countries that have become authoritarian in nature. i think that we should be focusing on that in addition to what kinds of laws he intends to exploit to implement those measures or what laws he intends to bend or break to implement those measures. and who he would put in charge to carry out these kinds of measures he is talking about. patt: in the audience, we are aware we don't have closed captioning and we are sorry because of the technical issues you might be witnessing.

marty, trump issued such a firehose of these threats and outrageous comments for years. you wonder how those of us in journalism and our audience, our readers and viewers, are able to process when we've heard so much of this before and how much do people turn off what they are hearing and how hard is it in our business to make sure that people know this is what is going on and may be escalating? and he's not joking? martin: it is true that a lot of people have decided they don't want to hear anymore it troubles them so much and gives them anxiety. there are a number of doctors recommending that people not watch or read the news because it makes them more anxious. i would discourage that myself because i think that we should be aware of what's happening. keep in mind that any one media outlet only reaches a small part of the population. only 8% of the american public

lists the new york times at as its primary source of news. 3% for the washington post. no matter what you are doing you are not necessarily reaching everybody in the population. even the big cable networks, if you look at their total audience it is relatively small. people are getting their information from all sorts of different sources. i use the word information broadly. a lot of it is misinformation, and in some instances disinformation, deliberate falsehoods being spread. patt: let me ask about where they get their information from. a colleague of ours in houston was covering a protest during the carter administration when interest rates went high and farmers were having a hard time. they converged on washington with farm equipment to protest. paul was covering it when he saw

a woman stuck trying to get out of washington, angry, getting out of her car, shaking her fist, saying, i don't need you farmers. i get my food at the grocery store. journalists and printers say the same thing. i don't read the washington post or new york times, but a lot of what they are reading comes from these newspapers at a time when newspapers, especially smaller ones, are under threat. journalists are losing their jobs faster than coal miners. we have the idea that news is still coming from these old media companies and the way that we can report on these is quickly disappearing. martin: that is true. what the new york times or washington post publishes, the l.a. times publishes, can be amplified and gets onto television, gets onto the cable networks, gets onto radio. it gets spread through social media. so, it can have a greater

impact. the problem is now that we have, because of the internet and because people can turn to sources of information that affirm their pre-existing points of view, we have in too many instances a society that doesn't share a common set of facts. it is worse than that. we cannot even agree on how to establish that something is a fact. the kinds of things that we have traditionally 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. in many instances what we saw on january 6 of 2021, people are denying what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. there is an enormous volume of

evidence and yet people will call that normal civic discourse, as the republican party did. or some members of that party have said a typical tourist visit. although i have never received a brochure advertising that kind of tourism myself. patt:[laughter] the fact that journalism changed something noticeable was a debate in newsrooms that resulted in some of trump's comments called racist, some called lies. it took a long time to get there. journalism responded, maybe not as much as some wanted or as quickly, but now journalists feel a sense that, yes, i can characterize what this man is saying. martin: it is not a bad thing. it is certainly a tradition and 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 cannot take it back.

you have to be careful that the language itself doesn't become a target. the result is that people pay less attention to the actual facts of the matter and nature of the falsehood as opposed to the incendiary language being used. it did become apparent that in lots of instances trump was not just self-deluded, not just saying that he couldn't care less if something was true or false and making it up in whatever way served his own interest, but that he knew that things were false and said them anyway. that has become ever more clear over time, particularly with regard to the 2020 election that he lost. and, for example, what happened january 6, 2021. i think in those instances we are on safe ground saying that he is lying. he knew -- he absolutely knows

what he is saying is false, yet he is saying it because it serves his own interest. patt: your book deals with when jeff bezos bought and his ownership of the washington post which parallels the trump administration. let's talk about that. first of all, why jeff bezos wanted to buy the washington post. martin: well, you know. it is 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 to assure himself that it was an important institution, to which he said, yes, of course. he had to make sure that he could be optimistic about its future. if he didn't have hope for the future he would feel sorry for us, not want to join us. he said, did he have something to contribute? he said that he thought about it and concluded, yes, he could

give us what he called runway. he could make investments and let them play out over time to see if they worked. he did bring other things, which was obviously an understanding of technology and a sophisticated understanding of consumer sales. of course, our business is consumer sales. this will sound naive because we are talking about one of the richest people in the world, and on any one day the richest person in the world, people will say that he cannot have noble motives. i do believe that he believes in the press. i think that that has been borne out raised on his ownership of the post. that he believes in the role of the press even though he has become the target of it. that he believes in american democracy. he just feels that the press plays an important role and felt

that the post could be turned around. we were in a position sliding into oblivion without a successful business model when he acquired us. our strategy was to be fundamentally regional. we covered national politics about the motto at the time was for and about washington. other than national politics we focused on our region. bezos said that that may have worked in the past -- and it, was profitable -- but it couldn't serve us in the future. we could be national and international for variety of reasons. we had a unique ability to do that and had the capacity to deliver our journalism digitally as opposed to a newspaper, which meant that we could acquire additional readers and subscribers at effectively no incremental cost. he said, take the gift the internet is giving you, even though the internet has damaged so much of your business. take the gift. you can be national because you're in the nation's capital,

you have the name the washington post, and you have history going back to watergate. many people around the country and the world know the washington post, have a great impression of the washington post for holding power to account, particularly going back to watergate, but they've never read a word of the washington post. that is a base to build upon, the internet is giving us this gift, and we should build upon that. he saw the capacity to turn around the post, which most didn't, including many who worked within the post. i think that he saw that he could make a difference. for a variety of those reasons i think that he bought it. he has not used it to exercise influence. he has been accused of that by trump over and over again, but there is no evidence. the reason there is no evidence of that is because he has never actually done it. patt: your book was published after you read the paper, but your review said that it was three books in one.

bargain hunters, beware. an insider's revealing examination of bezos' stewardship of the post, a sometimes thriller about how the post navigated a peril of time in journalism and chronicle of how trump tried to discredit the post and sing amazon. you had a seat at the table for a lot of that relationship with bezos and trumpet. my sense is that rob probably expected us rich guys will stick together. can you talk about some of the dealings that bezos and trump had and dealings that you had with trump individually? martin: it came to a head in a meeting that we had about five months after trump took office. our publisher, and this is in the prologue, felt that it would be a good idea if we met with trump. bezos had met with him previously as part of a group of technology executives, but also

had a private meeting before that where trump talked about how he liked amazon but not the post so much. when we had our meeting at the white house it was for dinner. our publisher felt it would be good to meet with him. our editor was there, our editorial editor, jeff bezos, maloney, and the president. i was to his left and threw that he was criticizing the post, calling us the worst of all media outlets frequently. every time that he would criticize the post for something he would elbow me to my left. i was tempted to elbow him back but you don't do that with the president of the united states. patt: with the secret service there, certainly not. martin: we called bezos the next morning. i don't know if you get involved in news coverage, but i'm sure that you do this on extent is

how he put it. he said, isn't there something you can do to make the post more fair to me? bezos told him he didn't get involved in news coverage and if he did he would regret it for the rest of his life. trump at the end of that conversation on the cell phone basically invited bezos to ask for a favor. he said if there's anything you need give me a call. bezos thankfully never gave him a call, never asked for a favor, and was the subject of constant attacks to raise postal rates and amazon intervention and a $10 million cloud computing contract where amazon was considered to be the leading bidder and trump wanted to make sure it didn't go to amazon. it did not. trump called me a couple of times afterwards to complain about stories. the last time, on more than one

instance, said that he was portrayed like a little boy. then he said, which i never expected to hear from the president of the united states, i am not a little boy. i could not believe i was hearing that from the president of the united states. the second time he said it was because of this negative coverage, the media, bezos, amazon, which i was irritated to hear again directly from him. then i said, it's not and you know it's not. i think that he's not used to that kind of confrontation. he blurted out a bunch of profanities and said that we were just a hate machine and a big fat lie. he basically blamed bezos and amazon again. after that, he had no more contact with bezos or me, but he made every effort to undermine the business of

amazon. and to demonize, of course, the post and press in general. to go beyond demonizing us to dehumanize the press. it, to me, it is hard to be shocked anymore, but that to me is still shocking. patt: trump, of course, doesn't have any real sense of fairness. his idea of fairness is favorable coverage? martin: basically, and you can see this play out not only in his relationship with the press but with other politicians, that you can never dissent. you can never break away from him on anything. it has to be 100% loyalty, 100% support. not 99%. 100% is what he considers to be fair, what he considers to be right, and that is his expectation of the press.

with the press you can see that in his relationship with fox. if fox veers from him or her heirs his opponent or critic he starts to attack fox -- or airs his opponent or critic he starts to attack fox and says that that's an appropriate. he doesn't feel anyone but himself should have an opportunity to have a voice and none of his critics should be allowed to say what they say. he views that criticism is unfair. patt: it has been seven years since the motto democracy dies in darkness was unveiled a couple of weeks into the trump presidency. your sense was not what you might have wanted it to be. your phrase was, we are not at war with the administration, we are at war. that saying resignation it with a lot of people, because darkness seems to be the alternative. martin: the phrase was not really a reaction to the motto. we had our time with that motto.

we spent two years on it. it wasn't a reaction to trump, it just happened to be introduced at that time and was interpreted that way. that was a phrase that was meant to signal the role that the washington post can play in washington, holding power to account. which is the historic role of the washington post. obviously in the case of richard nixon but with presidents republican and democrat. the phrase we are not at war with the administration we are at war came several weeks after trump was in office. his first full day of office he went to the cia, someone with whom he had a troubled relationship because of their investigation of russia's intervention in the election. he was standing in front of a memorial to fallen cia agents and what did he talk about but the press?

he said as you know, i am in a running war with the media seemingly wanting to enlist the intelligence agency in his own word with the media. i was asked for my reaction to that and said, we are not at war with the administration we are at war. i meant that we have to look back to why we have a free, independent press in this country. so, james madison, the principal author of the first amendment, talked about freely examining public characters and measures. public characters are politicians, people of authority. measures are policies. freight, we should -- free we should understand that work. it is digging beneath the surface, finding out who did what, why, with what intent, who influenced those decisions and for what purpose? those are the kinds of things that journalism exists to do and it exists to hold power to

account, particularly political power. that is why we have a free and independent press, and i view that as the original assignment from the founders of the country to the press. we essentially have a near sacred duty to fulfill that obligation. if we don't, we aren't doing our jobs. patt: i wonder what you think a second trump term might look like when it comes to the press? there is every indication that this supreme court looks willing to revisit new york times versus sullivan, one of the fundamental court decisions that underpins the free press in this country, the ability to criticize public figures. martin: my expectation is that trump will not wait for the supreme court to rule. he will try to go after the press immediately in a very aggressive manner. i think that he will -- if there is any disclosure of classified

national security information i would suspect he will bring prosecution for that. that historically has not been constituted, but i would imagine that a trump justice department would do that. i would expect that he has talked about challenging the broadcast license for nbc. he has accused nbc and comcast, which owns nbc and msnbc, of treason and coverage he believes to be unfavorable to him. i believe that he will try to damage at 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 political allies of an authoritarian leader take control of those media

organizations for their own purposes. i also think that he will encourage his allies, as i believe he has in the past, to bring these libel suits and if they win or lose to settle press organizations with enormous costs of defending themselves. so, i would expect to see that too. he wouldn't want to try to test the new york times versus sullivan case. patt: we have a lot of questions on this point. go to the q&a part on zoom and enter your question, your name, and where you are from. several have asked, so many small news outlets are being bought out by large media companies or closing down. how do you see this as affect detrimental to the democracy as the news sources are getting smaller given so many americans have said that it is local news that is there news source? martin: i think that the crisis

in local news is the single biggest crisis in journalism today. we have faced many challenges, political ones, financial ones, even at the national level, but local and regional news outlets have suffered the most. there are certain signs where there is some success of certain news organizations doing ok. but many of them are suffering greatly. the types of major news organizations that are acquiring newspapers are largely hedge funds and private equity funds. it is not traditional news organizations acquiring them. they are treating local news organizations essentially like annuities. basically extracting every last penny that they can get out of them through the sale of real estate through whatever means that they can. significant cost cuts with no

real care about their long-term sustainability and survival as long as they achieve a good return on their investment. that is a huge concern. countering that, a number of nonprofits have sprung up around the country. that is a model that is still emerging. it still needs to be tested. that would require significant support from within local communities. it is not yet clear there is enough nonprofit money for independent news coverage to support nonprofits, but it is being tried by very energetic people today. patt: when they ask what they can do to help newspaper journalism, subscribe to the paper where you live and where ever you come from subscribe to the main paper in the capital of that state. coverage of what is going on in

that state, the politics and culture, is vital to the system we have where the states, as we know from the electoral college, matter so much. to support that level of journalism and local journalism is vital. i hope it is something that has been of use to people who are looking for ways. martin: many major newspapers have maybe one person covering state government. obviously, state government is huge. a single reporter in the state capital isn't capable of covering the entire state government, or any portion really well. the biggest newspapers in certain states have nobody. in washington, covering the representatives in congress. patt: charlotte and falls church , virginia says that trump thrives on publicity. is he getting too much free coverage? what are the boundaries journalists should observe to not over-boost him.

in 2016 trump was like free wallpaper for cnn. martin: first of all, he is obviously going to be the republican nominee. so, you have to cover him as the republican nominee. free publicity doesn't mean that we won't cover the person leading in the polls. clearly, the major party candidate you can't ignore. on the other hand, i think there have already been mistakes akin to what happened in 2016. in 2016, cnn and fox carried his rallies from beginning to end without any intermediary. nobody saying what he was saying wasn't true. it was all free, essentially, contributions to the trump campaign. recently, cnn did a long interview with donald trump. at the beginning of the

primaries. i think that that was too early and i don't think that 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 democrats. it was a pr motive. the same was true when there was a new host for "meet the press." they had an interview with donald trump. the purpose was to promote the new host. that to me isn't a good justification for having an interview with him. he dominates these interviews and utters an enormous number of falsehoods. there will have to be interviews with him, but there was no need for those interviews at that time. patt: how much has the public

driven journalism influenced major newspapers? certainly online news sources, instead of writing a headline that says "trump declares kick out the immigrant day" it would say "guess what day trump has declared." then you have to click on it to read where the headlines for legitimate newspapers does that for you. martin: you don't see much of those headlines in major news organizations anymore. the reality is the economic foundation of online operations has changed substantially. it is built on subscribers. subscribers aren't looking for that. they are acquiring a subscription because they expect you to live up to certain standards and don't go for click they.

they go for in-depth stories, accountability, great narratives. journalism that is distinct and special in some way and not commoditized. those kinds of headline tricks art how major news organizations are operating these days. patt: ruth in rochester, minnesota clearly speaks from personal and frustrating experience asking, how to you approach a discussion for someone who has fallen for disinformation they've gotten for social media or sources like fox or one american network? martin: it is a tough question. i have been asked that before. i think just showing them a story from the washington post, new york times, cnn won't help because they don't trust those outlets. we have highly polarized media consumption. it might help, might, if you can point them to original source

documents. if we are talking about a court case, january 6, the 2020 election, find the ruling available for major news outlets 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. how trump-appointed judges rejected those arguments. pointing out that no evidence, no credible evidence has been offered. you don't have to do that with one judge. you can do it with multiple trump-appointed judges showing that it is not just 1 -- trump would call that a bad or biased judge. you can show that it's all of the trump-appointed judges. you can point to original source documents, that is what i would .2. patt: kathy wants to know about viable models for funding independent journalism if it

isn't hedge funds. martin: some people are trying nonprofits and trying to raise money locally and raise money from foundations. that is yet to be tested, although some of them are reasonably successful. in california we have cal matters. the texas tribune. marshall project for criminal justice. you have that and you have some actually succeeding at the national level and local level. the boston globe, where i worked for 11.5 years, is in a sustainable place now. san francisco it seems the chronicle is doing well. it obviously doesn't have the resources that used to, but it is doing reasonably well. that is true in minneapolis as well.

there are legacy news organizations doing ok. there are a variety becoming more specialized in their approach. not so much geographics. for example, a nonprofit that covers education also has a lot of local sites covering education in different cities. it is specializing in that way. a platform covering big tech companies has broken a lot of news and seems to be doing well. the information in san francisco covers the intersection of media and tech. there are success stories. our business is being radically reinvented. we aren't sure how it will shake out, but as long as we have a democracy i think there will be a demand for journalism. democracy is the big question mark at the moment. as long as we have one i think that there will be demand for journalism. patt: on that point, jack from

santa barbara asks if an mpr model for a national newspaper would help increase public trust in news. we -- is that a good model? martin: i think he is talking about a government-funded model or partially government-funded like pbs or npr? patt: he doesn't allude to that but we will put aside the funding question. just the idea of the network with affiliates. martin: you had that in the past. a lot of national papers across the country. i worked for a chain at the miami herald that had papers in philadelphia, charlotte, san jose, detroit. i don't think that that is the answer to any of this. i think that the reality is, the

way that people are consuming news and the way that advertising is being distributed is the big challenge. so much advertising is being sucked up by the big platforms, google and facebook and apple. less and less twitter. patt: susan says, what do you think of the hiring and firing of mcdaniels who was fired by the rnc but taken up by nbc and there was outrage among republicans that she was fired from there? martin: there is good reason not to hire her. she lied about the election and worked to undermine that election. i don't think someone like that should be on our network. i don't think she can offer an analysis different than anyone else can offer. frankly. patt: we are having a little

trouble with marty's internet. martin: -- between government and the networks. how is this now? better? is that better? patt: yes, go ahead. martin: sorry. i am in a storm here. i am kind of concerned about the revolving door between washington, between government and the networks. i would discourage that. i think that the press ought to be independent to the extent that you are hiring people who are essentially spokespeople for a party or a candidate. i think that that raises questions about who are they working for when they are on air. patt: a question from paul in manhattan beach is editorial boards and opinion pages carry weight in communities or if they are ineffective due to our partisan politics.

i know that the los angeles times interviewed all of the candidates for judgeships, and that is not a group of races that people follow closely. i know many people who use such recommendations for their voting when they do not know the candidates. the overall question is the clout and the voice. whether that carries the clout that it used to or to this day? martin: i'm not sure it never carried as much clout as we think that it did, frankly. i think that there is a legitimate question. then york times has cut back significantly on the number of editorials it publishes. there is a concern about people not being able to distinguish between opinion and news. it looks so muddled online. i do think that where editorials can make a difference is in the areas you are talking about. certain races that people aren't paying attention to. certain local issues.

for example, smaller local newspaper where they can draw attention to issues and illuminate those issues in a way that the ordinary person isn't of focusing on. patt: we have a question that is a career question from tina in portland who says that our granddaughter is in college and wants to be a journalist. what would you tell her? martin: i always tell people to ignore their parents, and i will include grandparents. they think that you shouldn't go into journalism. my parents thought that i should go into law and become a lawyer. while i was interested in law, i was not interested in becoming a lawyer. i think if someone 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. i found one. i think that a lot of young people are looking for that today. our field will change dramatically. i don't think that people should judge opportunity strictly by

what is 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 to learn a lot of new skills. if they do that and are willing to embrace the new rings that they have to learn, if they are willing and able, they have the capacity to have an accelerated career and jump over people at traditional organizations who are unwilling or unable to make -- to change the way that they should. patt: apologies for the commentary being run right now. linda, a retired associated press person, would you be willing to get back into the news business as a powerful voice to help save the industry? we will get you your white horse. i think we can do a gofundme. martin: i think i know that

linda. no, i retired. i don't want to manage people anymore. i did that for most of my career . 20 years as a top editor of a news organization. i want to be involved in our profession but in a different way's. one way was writing this book and talking about angst that i address in the book. and i will have to figure out what my next act is. i don't know what it is at the moment but i don't want to go back to running a news organization. patt: what is your opinion about so-called neutral news sources, such as all sides? i saw a billboard on beverly boulevard a couple of days ago talking about number one american neutral news. martin: i am afraid that it's not neutral. epic times is essentially part of a group that is closely

aligned with trump, trying to advance the interests of trump. there is nothing neutral about it. people should be careful what -- careful when someone describes themselves as neutral and be careful of that type of advertising on the part of epic times. it might be the last place that i would look for neutral coverage. patt: i think cnn said, be truthful not neutral. what do you make of that advice? martin: i think -- i am in favor of positivity, but i don't think that that equates to a false equivalence or both sidesism or neutrality. i use objectivity. that is a concept that goes back more than 100 years to walter lippmann. going into our reporting with an open mind, being willing and

wanting to talk to all people you need to talk to. looking at all the evidence rigorously and thoroughly and fairly. being fair to everyone that you talk to, being fair to the evidence. also being fair to the public, which means that you do that work to get at the truth. to get at the reality and the facts. the reason that you do that work is to tell people what you've found to be true. we have to approach that with a level of humility. sometimes we see the world through a keyhole and we should recognize that. sometimes we can crack open the door and seymour. sometimes we can swing the door wide open if we have a lot of skill. we don't always do that, so we have to have humility about this. when we get at the truth, the facts, we have done our job well, we should tell people what we've found. that would be the only honest,

honorable thing to do. patt: amy enrichment has a question that i am sure is on a lot of peoples minds. how do you think about how the war in israel is being covered in the news media here? martin: who can generalize about the media overall? if everybody acts the same way -- we like to say all politicians, all doctors, all lawyers. people don't say that but they will say the media as if everyone is doing the same thing. it is a complex story and i'm glad i'm not in the middle of it, because i have been attacked in the past by all parties for that coverage. there is no satisfying people. the region has been described in a book that i just read, the history of violence, counter violence, and counter counter

violence. it is a complex story and the obligation of the press is to cover that story in all of its complexities. there is a lot of on the ground reporting. patt: this goes to what you talked about with people knowing the fundamentals of journalism. how do journalists determine which are the important stories to cover? the war in gaza and most coverage of ukraine ends. it is a substantive question we grapple with every day. martin: these are hard decisions. a lot of them are based on how much we have in resources. when you are covering conflicts like that there are only so many people on the staff with experience covering conflict zones. you don't want to just throw anyone into a story like that if you have to be in a danger zone. these are risky things. people don't go into these because they are trying to advance an agenda. they're trying to tell people what is happening on the ground.

no one risks their life to make some ideological point. these are tough. the reality is that both of these stories are important. there is still coverage of ukraine. i know that the post still has quite a few people there, the times, other organizations do as well. obviously israel-gaza is a hotter story because it is an ongoing intense conflict that has huge risks attached to it. ukraine has huge risks attached too. you try to do both as best you can. patt: there is the question of cost. we analyzed in the los angeles times spending $1 million a year to have a bureau in baghdad. those are high costs with covering especially foreign conflicts. douglas wants to know if you are concerned about sinclair broadcasting purchasing the

baltimore sun. at one point it was mandating editorials, conservative editorials that had to air on every station that he owns. martin: baltimore or sinclair in general? patt: sinclair and then baltimore. martin: baltimore was acquired by the ceo of sinclair individually, not the company itself. that said his comments from the start were worrying. he indicated that he had an agenda, a political agenda. he didn't say so explicitly but seemed to signal that that is what the newspaper ought to be pursuing, stories that would advance his own political views. with regard to sinclair, yes, i think that they have certainly leaned to the right, to trump.

it was not regular but not irregular sort of thing to threaten a lawsuit from sinclair. 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 every

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