>> coming up next, a conversation about covering president trump's first 100 days in office with journalists from the associated press the wall street journal, and washington free beacon. during the discussion, panelists covered biases in reporting, trump administration media restrictions, and access to the white house. this was sponsored by the university of chicago institute of politics and the university of chicago international house. ♪ >> alright, welcome everybody. for this alumni weekend and for journalism we i'm so glad to see

so many people. it's fantastic. and because it is journalism week, this is going to be about trumpy's first 100 days, but oath about covering president trump's first 100 days. i will start this of with zeek, because many of you probably know the travails of the associated press, and have because the ap would not call the gulf of mexico the gulf of america, the president of the united states decided to keep the ap out of its very important role in the white house press corps. i want to talk to zeek. zeek, tell people traditionally, the position that ap has taken both in the white house briefing room, and at press goggles and why is this change so dramatic,

given the history of the associated press? >> first, thank you to all of you for being here and thanks, john for that question. what is the purpose of a pool, that comes up a lot in this discussion. there are hundreds of journalists who want to cover the president of the united states or any other public figure, you're operating in space-constrained environment, a resource-constrained environment. . so journalists get together and say and share information so that we can get some representatives of the press corps into a smaller space and they can transmit that backout. the press pool, has evolved over time with the white house. but, it took, current form about 50 or 60 years ago and has evolved a little bit since. but the associated press has been a foundational part of the principal and was there before there was a formal white house press pool, because that is what

the associated press is, we are owned by our members, we are in is cooperative and we -- the small papers, television and radio stations in the u.s. and around the world that can't be in washington so they are members of the associated press and subscribe to the associated press. we are their eyes and ears and an extension, the eyes and ears of everybody else. in the white house briefing room, we sat front and center. we were in every pool, on air force one traveling with the president, covered the white house 24 7, 365 days a year. we still do that, but we do that in a very different position. we are not allowed the same level of access and had previously. but that is the background of what the ap does, we were the eyes and ears of everybody at all times. >> i don't know if some people remember, but from traditional white house press conferences, the person that would almost

always recognized the ap white house reporter first, the press secretary would always start off briefings with the associated press first. it was a sample position and considered, of the dean of the white house press corps. i want to talk about precedent here. the word unprecedented has been used at over the last 100 days, and you know at times, it is merited. but i want to talk about the past. during the obama administration, the very beginning of the obama presidency, there was a moment where fox news was not invited to a gaggle. a guard is when usually it is the press secretary, holds up privately with reporters to talk about what is going on in the day. it is usually met with the cameras available. fox is -- do you all remember

that? >> i heard a lot about it. i was in there for that. >> i remember this. >> so, talk about how that compares, how is that similar to end different from what is going on with the pool in the garglga ggles --gaggles now. >> there are similarities and differences. obama moved fox news. made it very clear that he did and he singled out the network for its viewpoint, that he was not as specific in saying "it's because he will not use the term i want you to use." he just did not like their viewpoint and did not consider their moods. so he said, fox is in the pool but i will not include them. differences that the rest of the pool participants said, that's not ok with us.

we recognize that threat here and we will not show up if you don't include fox. so they stood alongside fox, and the obama white house eventually relented. ap is in somewhat of a trickier situation, though, i suspect you guys will succeed in your court battle because the refusal to use gulf of america is actually a viewpoint discrimination. but there has not been -- members of the press corps are saying that they agree with you, they are not refusing to shut up at white house briefings or refusing to be included in the pool in the same with the outlets didn't fox. >> that is an excellent point. zeek, do you wish, do you want your colleagues to say, if ap can go to this cool spray, we are not going to go? >> it is a really difficult

question and there are no easy answers. the media landscape now is very different than it was 16 years ago with what happened under obama and also your inner operating environment where our basic position is we want to cover the means. the question is if there was a boycott, what happens from there. yes, it was hard to see 40 news outlets sign a letter with the white house correspondents association which ranged the ideological spectrum from huffington post and wanted to newsmax on the other and everyone in between, saying that what was happening was wrong. more actually that is always helpful. every individual news outlet and press corps collective is trying to cover the news while also at the same time trying to protect the independence of the press corps. i may disagree with some of the decisions they are making, but i understand the structure of the

environment in which we are making those decisions? >> can i just added, the obama white house relented. i'm not sure how much this white house would actually care. >> i was actually going to ask that question. annie, you have been in some of the heated press pool sprays meaning when the president, you get invited into say to the oval office, the president is there, with a world leader, say president zelenskyy, there are a few cameras, a few reporters, it's a pool spray, because it's only a few people in a little bit of time. what would happen, do you think, if you have one of these sprays with the president of the united states, and the only people who show up are the president of's supporters, one america news network or something like that? >> yes, this issue is one i think this organization has

struggled with since the president made that decision and it has caused everybody to think really hard about exactly what is the value of being there, why are we there, and what do you give up but not being there? >> the president when he has his pool sprays, he has tv cameras. it be clear, tv cameras are still tac -- their. that has not been a part of the media here is led to shut him. it's been people like myself, the reporters asking questions. and in those scenarios, you have maybe 15 or 20 people who are asking questions. and you do what independent media in that space, able to ask the president a question. i am love to say a question is about a question. i have asked a lot of questions and without all, golly, they didn't come out quite right.

you want people who are at least asking her temper but asking the news of the day and pressing the president on his policies rather than, your poll numbers are great, can you comment on that, which is a question that has come up in the past. so the value of being in these small intimate gathering. the president and having representatives of independent media there, is an enormous value. we were probably one of the most interesting and surreal experiences of my professional life -- i have been a reporter for 20 years -- i was in the oval office during this very heated exchange between zelenskyy and vice president vance and then later president trump. and being able to witness that, i mean, the images came out afterwards. the people -- you could go and

watch the full exchange, but the place i happen to be was next to the ukrainian ambassador to the u.s., i'm standing right next to her. there is no bar on this. i could look, looked at her notes that she took on the exchange, which she took in english, thankfully for me. [laughter] the camera isn't going to be focused on her notes, but i was able to be positioned there, and see what she was writing down. and i think the cameras did a very good job capturing the reaction of a lot of the principles in that room. i'm certainly -- secretary of state marco rubio, as reaction was very well captured. the cameras are not always on him though, and i remember as that was going on watching him very closely and seeing his reaction and seeing others'.

you just learn a lot about the principals close to the president. i was very happy to be there even though it will broadcast live so everybody did get a chance to see it. >>. >> do you feel like if you were just sitting back in the white house briefing room watching the cameras, what would you have missed? >> i definitely wouldn't have seen her notes. [laughter] >> what were in them? >> she was being very -- she was being very -- she had beautiful handwriting. [laughter] she had beautiful handwriting and she was writing down the names of each person who spoke and then sort of a brief synopsis of what they were saying. and then she writes outjdv, jd vance, i took that to be how shorthand, and starts writing his question, and then just like literally, there is a long, blank line. in my head i was thinking like a heart monitor -- [laughter]

it went straight. i don't want to read too much into that, but it was part of this moment where, sometimes when you are standing and watching something, you want to look around and see how other people are reacting. to be able to see that texture and to bring it to our readers, i think was important. >> you were mentioning some of these questions. i will say it, there are some stupid questions are terribl -- asked there. we have seen karoline leavitt, the press secretary, bring in what she calls alternative voices. anywhere from podcasters who have been actually tied to russian media, to jack prosobee who is known as a conspiracy theorist. these are not regular media.

i wanted to get your take on how this is working, and what has it meant to the value of the press briefing in this presidency? >> well, i don't think the press briefing has had a lot of value for a very long time. it had been on camera and been used for performative posturing by various members of the purse for several years. they could probably be a lot more useful. there is nothing particularly unique about that when it comes to this white house. in terms of bringing in new members of the quote unquote media, i think that is great. it is reflective of the way americans are actually getting information. we saw this with the white house. we saw this on the campaign trail where it was a huge issue.

was donald trump going to go on joe rogan's broadcast -- i'm not even a u.s.c. -- sorry, he is a comedian who turned podcaster. hugely influential. the harris campaign said in retrospect we wish we would have sat down with him. is he a journalist by traditional standards? no, but millions are getting information through him. and there are many others who don't fit the traditional definition. megyn kelly had this debate with the new york times, the podcast is on video that i highly recommend about what does it actually mean to be a journalist. i think it is reflective of a strong feeling among the american public -- i assume not particularly well-reflected in this room, that the american people have lost faith in journalists and journalism, and they are seeking out alternative sources. so, good on the white house for bringing them in.

we are not doing -- we don't do brain surgeries. it's not that hard to do this. so i think that is good. >> if i could just add one thing to that, i think it's a little bit inaccurate to think that just because the president is the real question from a conservative reporter, that it is an easy question. you can see -- any politician, some of their worst moments honestly are when they believe they are taking a family question and then they see something or go are in some bizarre direction or they say something they didn't want or need to say. i think, for me at least, the differentiator here is, in my belief, you want people in there, who are asking important questions, whatever that -- wherever the ideological spectrum comes from. it is the idea of sycophancy that i sort of cringe at. but i will say, in my experience

at least, and the two of you have covered trump much longer, he doesn't tend to like that. he tends to like questions and he likes having a more honest exchange with reporters, like a tough back and forth but doesn't tend to bother him in many cases , at least that is what i have noticed. >> in my experience, he likes that confrontation -- the central feature of the 2016, 2015 campaign was the press conferences that went on and on certainly with the white house. and if i could go back a little bit, in defense of the white house press briefing as it exists, a very small part of what journalists do, 5% or 10% of our time and probably in terms of our work. there is the symbolism of that. on camera or off camera, it's a different question. the representative of the president, often times the

president has to abase themselves and take questions from the likes of us on behalf of the people who can't be there,. that doesn't happen everywhere on earth. and for that matter the white house pool of it were formally constructed, it didn't happen anywhere else, no world leader in the world had 30 members of the independent press corps who they didn't like and who brought them everywhere. they were not to golf, to dinner, they sat around at the white house all day, they had the press corps with them at their beck and call should anything happen and they are documented activities for history. that doesn't happen anywhere. it is a uniquely exceptional piece of this. some of it have been eroded in parts with the pool, but when it comes to the daily white house press briefing, how useful it

is, they may not produce history, but it would be hard-pressed to argue that they should go away entirely. >> and need, i want to talk about the last presidency in your coverage. any along with her colleagues famously covered joe biden-esque mental slide and physical slide. the first stories that the wall street journal published work roundly criticized not just by democrats, but some in the media itself. and i want to ask you, what that said about the white house press corps. and then i want to talk about what would happen if you were the same stories today about the current president. but let's talk about first, what

lesson did you and we learn about white house coverage from the response to your story? >> yes so i wrote with my colleagues, we published a story before the first presidential debate that documented ways in which president trump at the time -- biden at the time was having some mental difficulties in some meetings. and that reason we decided to do the story after robert hur's report came out -- special counsel -- his report documented , to me reading it, i was very alarmed by what i read. our editors were as well. we wanted to go further and find people who met with the president in small meetings and get a sense for -- who had some sort of sense of his mental

acuity. the white house has long said to us -- he would have various snafus in public and they would say, if you could see him the way we see him behind closed doors, in the situation room, he is so sharp. you don't get to see that, but if you saw what we sow, you would have a very different view. so that was, in my head as we were working on these stories, that is what we were trying to challenge? >> right, like let's find out who gets to meet with him in these meetings and what is their view. these are people who don't work for the white house, democrats and republicans who intimate with him. they did report to us and we reported in our story that he would have good days and bad days. he stumbled frequently. overly relied on note cards to say very obvious things, even sort of greetings that he would lose his train of thought frequently. he would close his eyes for long

periods of times. he would pause for extensive periods of time mid-thought. people found that alarming. but they also would say, we could have a meeting with him one day and he was off and then he was ok the next time. so i thought maybe it was me. maybe he just was having an off day. even people who met with him were eager to rationalize away some of the behavior they were seeing. we captured that in the story that ran at the beginning of june. [laughs] jonathan is right, the white house certainly pushed back very hard. the white house official accounts tweeted at the journal 80 times within the period of two days, which is kind of harassment level tweeting about how terrible i was in our newspaper is. and we sort of expected that. i was a little surprised by the media reaction.

in my first 10 years in journalism and local reporting, when you get beaten on the story, at least i tend to put my head down and go out and match the story. which really is what you expect people to do. it was laid out in an easy way to match it. but some of the press focus their coverage on the controversy around our story. that became the story and narrative around washington. the rental where i would go to a party in washington that was very fancy. and people came to me and said the white house admit it you, are you ok? as if i had cancer or something. this is an important story, we are doing a follow-up. personally it was a tough period. fortunately the journal was very

strong. the editors knew all of our sourcing. they did not waver at all. in fact they merely put us in another story about biden abroad and we pulled in reporters from around the world had contacts with foreign governments were another story based on his interactions abroad. that story came out a day after the debate. but we were working on it. the night of the debate, i think people changed from sort of covering our coverage and started working on their own versions of that story and the times on the post later date pieces that got his decline. >> what do you think of the way other white house reporters, and media responded to that first story? >> i was not surprised, in that at the beacon, we talked about

something very specific in terms of trans-exclusion of the ap. but there was all this arcane -- there are a lot of arcane and access issues that aren't particularly fair. we don't have a professional press pass or white house press pass. we were just watching the guy on tv. and we started a series, joe biden's senior moments on video in 2021 and 2022. there was never a week when we can have multiple moments where we were displaying two people just based on tv. so our view was alright, mainstream is picking us up. there was one other reporter who was doing it other than you guys. we had been observing this. i was totally unsurprised to see the mainstream press circling the wagons around the white house. but i covered the first trump

white house at politico. and i think if you haven't been a white house correspondent, it is sort of difficult to understand that while these people are supposed to be competitors, like you guys should viciously load each other -- -- seek each other's approval, basically right for each other, and this includes cnn, msnbc, the new york times, the cable networks and mainstream media outlets. it's quite difficult to get out of that bubble and write something that implicitly criticizes the work of your competitors. the result is a flow of information that is often times, doesn't serve the american public because it reflects one point of view as opposed to 27.

>> let me ask all three of you, if somebody wrote a story saying donald trump is losing mental capacity, how do you think the press would respond? >> it depends on the reporting. at the wall street journal, we are based in new york and our dna of our readers are business people who use our information to decide on billion-dollar bets on companies. they are not super interested in groupthink and they are not paying the subscription or an ideological position. they certainly have a

conservative point of view. our coverage of trump has been tough, we broke the stormy daniels story and won the pulitzer prize for it and that led the president to have criminal convictions. we are going to follow the reporting wherever it goes and have a track record of being tough. the president and elon musk tweets about the wall street journal frequently. >> do you think the press would circle the wagons and -- or is it a more defensive attitude toward the white house? >> there's the ideological press across the spectrum.

there is the nonpartisan press where our job does not change when the president changes. who we are trying to serve doesn't change, the stories we are trying to write, trying to uncover the truth and share with our readers doesn't change. there would be a different dynamic certainly. >> if somebody wrote a story saying donald trump's mental capacities are diminished, you would not face criticism from your peers.

it's not hard because most reporters are democrats, their sympathies are with the democratic party and politicians into the way i put it, and this is why it's good to have reporters from both parties, i am jewish, there is a yet us -- yiddish phrase that when there is a democrat in office reporters don't feel like let's go after this guy. how else you explained that it took a national debate with the president of united states a sickly having a meltdown on stage for the press corps to start writing the story? they turned on a dime and everybody was writing it and he dropped out of the race and we haven't heard anything about it since. our beef at the free beacon is we say we are coming from a conservative perspective and our frustration with the new york times is just admit it, you

didn't write it because you didn't want to, you don't feel it the way we do about the democrats. they don't admit ideological priors. >> i will say one thing. if you go on to certain social media sites, you will get all sorts of people saying why don't you write about donald trump's decline? there are people certainly -- >> i covered all four years of joe biden and the wall street journal because we have a newswire, it used to be included in a lot of the bowls -- the polls.

a lot of people didn't realize, he made such little news that they were surprised we were in the pool. it is a very different experience to be in oval office exchange with donald trump and joe biden. >> how so? >> when you walk in, there are little tricks and am interested what you think because you've done this a lot. your goal is you want to get called on by the president and you want him to take your question. he will make eye contact with you, he is very clearly reading each person in the room, who is this person and you have this instant to develop a quick

rapport with the guy and i haven't covered him for years like others. you've got this moment. you settle in and listen to his spiel and you get to ask questions and he will call on you based on that moment of interaction you have. the first few times i did this i was looking at my phone and trying to get the recording device to work and there are things we do when we walk into the oval office, there are a slew of things you do, you are recording it, making a phone call, so your colleagues can hear it. i wasn't making eye contact with the president. when you get to the mental capacity, it wasn't the experience with the joe biden, there wasn't a clear recognition, this is the person

i'm going to talk to, this is the point i want to make it sometimes when he answers a question, he calls it the weave. when you listen to it frequently, my sense is he doesn't really want to answer the question, he will just filibuster for a little while. that's not unusual in washington. with the bite, there would be really quick interactions. sometimes you would be super on top of it, other times it got shut down suddenly. we see president trump sometimes there are days i've seen him more than my husband. you are called into the oval office that often, there are things to criticize about him and he has many critics but my experience has been he's watching in way i did not experience. >> he is a very stable genius.

i want to talk about covering this president and the press role at this extraordinary time. we haven't really seen this since fdr and they are not really comparable. let's talk about the expansion of executive authority and what role the press or mainstream media has in deciding when a president has become a or is becoming an authoritarian. when democratic principles are at stake. is there a line? what are you looking for?

>> i don't know if i can speak for everybody but my role is to give you all the information you need to judge for yourself and i want to give you accurate information, want you to make decisions quickly and be in a position you can trust me. i'm not putting my spin on it. this is what happened, this is the context in which it happened so you could make an informed decision. democracies need that rock of information and we are there to provide it. questions like that, maybe answered in places like here in chicago in the academic context or people who study that particular question, we call them up as sources and ask them come quote them in stories as

needed. my job, if he does this or doesn't do that, we don't label people, that's not our role in the democratic process, our readers don't want that, the public doesn't want that. you arguably wouldn't benefit from that. our audience is everybody who likes or heeds donald trump and everywhere in between. >> we are in this situation where president of the united states is defying court. you could say he's waiting for the supreme court to give final notice or whatever, but what happens is you could call one law professor and the law professor says we are in a constitutional crisis. you call another professor and he says we are not in a constitutional crisis yet.

is there a time when journalism, if you just quote three people saying we are in a constitutional crisis, we are not -- are we just confusing our viewers? >> i think at least for me, i have been struck by in the first 100 days of this administration, the way the president is using power. i'm not sure i agree we are not -- i'm not here to make a label about that. he is using power that's quite different from other presidents and it has manifested with doge, crating this office, installing elon musk. elon musk was in cabinet agencies before the cabinets were confirmed. there's an extraordinary amount of power the white house held onto and the president vastly

expanding his power and reach. whether going into what you would label it, their perspective is look, we were elected and we will do something and you had a democratic party that has been bogged down by this the rock receipt and procedures and they see themselves as working faster but respecting the rules. one way to look at it is carefully document and write about the expansion of power underway right now. >> journalism 101, don't tell people what happened, show them what happened. >> the free bacon is approaching this with an ideological framework, your open about it, you are saying you are a

conservative publication. are we in a constitutional crisis? >> i share their view on this. i think the president has taken a maximalist view of executive power on a host of things. i suspect with the courts will say is mixed. in some areas the executive has these powers and in some areas the executive doesn't. i think the idea that for us and me personally to come over the top and say there is a debate brewing in the courts and a debate growing among law professors, but actually i know the answer and it's a constitutional crosses -- crisis here and not here. we are all learning. i'm not an expert on whether the federal government has the ability to cancel billions of

dollars of grants to universities. i'm interested to see how this goes and it's our job to distill down the arguments for readers so people can understand what argument is happening. and to be informed and reach their own conclusions. i think things will get interesting when the supreme court says xyz on this and the white house decides how it will respond. i think what is often lost on the public's we are learning about these issues in real time too. we are not experts on this, the tariff power, we don't know anything about tariffs. >> that's the great thing about the white house story, you can make anything a white house story. you're covering a person as an individual, their family, their life.

the commander-in-chief, head of a political party, political movement, academia, trade policy -- everything is a white house story if you try hard enough. for me, it's the best job as a reporter. i believe that because of that, but it also means we are all by our nature generalists. in some ways so are most people out there as readers. there are specialists on our teams much smarter when it comes to tariff policy or defense policy or individual issues but my job is to talk to them and distill their expertise for the general public. >> i hate it when a moderator inserts his own story in a panel but i'm going to do that right now. during the republican primaries,

i wanted to do a profile of vivek ramaswamy in his early days and he was walking around telling everybody he understood they could cut government by 75% without congress. i remember sitting down with him and saying there is something called the impoundment control act, it says it's a law, was passed in 1974, it says the government must spend what congress appropriated and there is another law, called the antideficiency act, which says the president must spend the money congress appropriates on the things it's appropriate for. and i told him, what you are saying you want to do is illegal. and i wrote kind of a snarky article saying he wants to break the law. what i didn't realize is you could break the law. i think donald trump is breaking the law. if i was writing it, i would say what doge is doing is a

violation of two laws. i haven't seen much of that just stated. and why not? [laughter] [applause] >> i think to the readers, i think what they are doing has been well covered. who they are, who is elon musk, what are his motivations, how has he acted in the past, is tendency to move fast and break things that he started with great success and brought to washington, i think that's been fairly well covered. it's unfolding and this president is pushing the envelope. we will find out how far he's

pushing it because he does enforce those laws. pam bondi would have to bring some sort of action and it's not clear that something he would prioritize -- she would prioritize. we are in a very interesting moment and i think that makes covering the white house so interesting. covering this white house in particular, things are happening in ways we are not used to and we did not expect. i don't think there's been a lack of coverage of muska or the actions he's taken and the repercussions that has led to, i think it's one of the main storylines. >> you're seeing a lot of coverage on the impacts of these policy decisions and violating

acts, there will be a moment for that, and part of it is congress has to assert its own authorities, we see some of that around tariffs. we can focus on the impacts, it's a key component of our jobs . they are read people -- real people downstream of these decisions or on the fifth floor. it has effects on real policies and real programs. it helps people understand and what the government is doing on their behalf and to them and who loses out. in some ways, that's been the

bigger priority to the largely obscure congressional statutes, but i think for the broader public -- vivek ramaswamy didn't know that when you brought it up to him. most folks are not lawyers. >> this brings up another question. in the time we are having this conversation, i'm sure three things will have broken in washington that probably merit being written up. how do you cover a presidency that comes at you like a blizzard without being covered by the snow. how do you convey to your readers or viewers what's

important when you have so much information to impart? >> i might be the worst person to ask about that because these guys work at outlets where their agreement is to cover everything. >> near the editor-in-chief so you decide emphasis. >> we've got 25 people and there's no way we're ever going to provide a full offering. the way i look at things is to say what is the white space being left by everybody else and how do we strategically fill this? for the past four years or so, we saw a huge opening to cover academia, which has become a major, national story, where we developed a strategic advantage because folks were not on that story. now we are ahead of the pack. we were covering columbia and harvard three years ago.

i think we have a little bit of an advantage covering fights brewing on the right just because it's easier to cover things when you know the people. i look at things as we don't need to duplicate what the mainstream is covering, it's what people -- it's what are people missing? >> ap famously has to cover everything, if it is on the ap wire, it didn't happen. can you convey what is most important or is that just not your role? what does it mean for readers? >> we have different news products, we have the news alert , this big thing just happened, run-of-the-mill tech story.

it could be 130 words, a lot of things could be capturing the brief. this is something we want to note, it's relevant. it might not be a plot of the day, go to the bottom half of the alphabet but it's worth noting. we write more alerts than a while. there's a lot happening in major news and we have a great info graphic about that. we try to capture everything but not everything is treated with equal weight if the impacts aren't known. what does it actually mean, will it hold up in court, does it need congress to take effect?

that's what the judgment piece of it is, but it's a challenge when there's this much happening. there's also a tremendous amount of fun as a journalist because you get smart on so many different topics and you get to educate the public. >> i think we are about to move to q&a. i'm going to let any answer the same question. how does the journal decide? >> our model has changed quite a bit. we often try to not do too much of the news of the day unless we have something very specific to add. i was working on a bit about the

treasury secretary and machinations behind closed doors and efforts to get the president to move off tariffs and filing that story the day he sent out a tweet and said he was pausing the tariffs. i literally had to rewrite the whole thing. i think you guys were doing something similar but it ended up being a very rich story for our readers and we had a lot of deep reporting, and who was talking to who and who was trying to convince the president to back off on tariffs. we try to pick our spots a little bit. >> we are going to turn to q&a, i would encourage students to

ask. we will prioritize students in the q&a. and of course fire away. >> you talk a little bit about the debate, whether we are sending it to authoritarianism. -- said that trump is on the same path as russia. do you think your outlets are potentially missing the moment covering this debate? missing the moments objectively and sliding into something that's closer to authoritarianism? >> missing the moment? >> i hope we are not missing the

moment. we have a very big news organization and speaking about the white house, the way i try to think about the president, the idea of how does this man use power? that's how i also approach the biden white house and other white houses. i also covered local nose for many years and i see some parallels between trump and a big city mayor. they behave in some ways with similarities. i think that question is also one better asked and better answered by other parts of our paper. we have an entire editorial page of people who think and look at that. every administration shifts

things in different ways and trump has a way of making changes in a way that is abrupt. but if you looked at the first administration, the tariffs in place caused all kinds of consternation, headlines, what is he doing, this is crazy. then the biden administration did not lift them. i think we are approaching him and his administration by trying to look carefully at what is the actual policy? what has actually changed? we talked a lot about the press court and the makeup of the press pool. it's one thing to kick out another thing -- kick out a member of a group but another

thing to expand it. they can make a strong argument. this is a president that doesn't like the press. i think that question is important and i hope we won't look back and say we failed. >> i'm really curious, given the large reach your organizations have and the news coming out of washington right now, how do you strategize time and resources for stories and how do you strategize what you think is important to the public? >> are you part of those sessions? >> a little bit. we are the front lines of where

this is happening, the president does something and our job is watching truth social when it comes in, so a lot of it happens at the strategic level. is this going to be 3000 word take out. there are no easy answers and they might start with the handle this as a quick snippet and then events change. it's a dynamic process. there are objective things that slap you across the face. it happens a lot. it's not the majority of the things we deal with. >> you're at the top of your organization. what is the point of the process? >> our focus is always on

prioritizing new and original reporting, which is a little different than the president did a press conference today and there were 30 reporters in the room, that news is out there. my focus is on, if we didn't exist, with this news be out there otherwise? that tends to be the most time intensive and expensive sort of reporting. i'm always thinking that way. >> i wanted to ask, given how the president, how vocal he is and how he got around media, if you think traditional media can

go back to reclaiming the role of shaping the narrative and public opinion and discourse, and how they go about doing that. >> this president is unique in that he shares so much of his thinking. it's highly unusual to have this much of the president's thought process unveiled before you eyes -- before your eyes. it makes our job a challenge because we often look for what is the story behind the story. if he is already told you that, we don't really need to work that hard. i think for us. -- i think for us, my job isn't to shape the narrative as much as unearth new things and find out the president said this but who are the last five people he talked to and what did they say

and what did he say to them and to try to map it back further from where the public view began. this president pulls the curtain so far back sometimes but there's always more. this is a lesson you learned after doing the job a long time. even with trump, he so vocal, but even small asides have long conversations behind them. that's what we are looking to find out. >> what happens when the president says one thing and then something completely different. we love tariffs, but then we don't want to do these tariffs, but i never said tariffs are a beautiful thing.

is there a role for the media in calling out a lie or do you just lay it out that he said this and said this? >> you guys may have different thoughts, i think a lot of times with trump, he has competing impulses. so yes, he likes tariffs. i personally do not like the tariffs. but he likes tariffs. he also wants to be perceived as a dealmaker. not sure he's lying when he says i'm putting the tariffs on, oh wait, i struck a deal with japan, they are not contradictory. i think you see this the most on foreign policy, where he just said in the time magazine interview that he doesn't want to go to war or drop bombs on people, but at the same time he

uses very bellicose rhetoric at times and wants to make deals i was at his summit with kim jong-un in singapore and he was showering him with praise and put out an agreement that probably said the alphabet -- it was a lot of nothing. i was struck by when he told time magazine in his 100 days interview, he said essentially, will israel drag you into a war with iran and he said no, so you're not going to bomb iran? that's not what i said, he said we will go willingly, we won't be dragged. i think in foreign policy, and you see it in staff as well, you have competing impulses and, look, the guy lies a lot. on these issues, there are areas

of huge import to his administration, economics and foreign policy, i think it's a push and pull in the administration. >> you see it right in front of you. >> where trying to explain that dynamic is much as we can and sometimes it helps to categorize , we do a lot of in their own words instead of juxtaposing. and to help people understand, this isn't -- it may be contradictory but they do reflect the different impulses. if i can go back to the initial question, we are not going back to the era of people reading print newspapers every day over there cup of coffee or 20 million people watching. social media, podcasts, it's an evolving industry.

our role is all of those platforms need some foundation of objective truth. our job is to provide that. we want to be picked up so they can debate whether it's a good thing or bad thing, criticize us or not. there needs to be objective journalism in this new media future. >> i know we are running out of time, that's my bad, i injected my own question. go on. >> i am a fourth-year in the college. i want to build off the first question, which was it seems like you guys were jumping around directly addressing the issue of trumps authoritarian tendencies. do you think as a journalist

it's difficult to take a clear stance on threats to democratic norms based on previous administrations? i do feel there is an agreement of his antidemocratic policies that falls on all political sides of the aisle, and by trying to stay unbiased, are you doing the country and consumers of your media a disservice? [applause] >> free and open societies need facts and our news needs to be treated or consumed by people across a global spectrum for society to function. not just speaking for the ap but any news organization. this person, this politician is a blank.

people in a political position or view of that politician will view things come up will view journalism different our job is to give them the facts so they can judge for themselves and go back to their kitchen tables and have conversations with friends and family and people they see at the corner store and engage in civic discourse. it's very dangerous if we get to a place where news is not accepted as fact. and facts are in dispute. our job is to try to reach as many people as we can with those facts. we are not perfect, it's a human enterprise, there will be criticism on every thing we do and that's fine, it comes with the territory. some of these are judgment calls we may make incorrect ones from time to time. when we make a mistake, we

correct it. that's something you often don't see from people who come at things who come at things, they exploit errors for their own purposes. you raise important questions about journalism and the media more broadly and our society. i don't know that journalism is the answer to those questions, i think those are broader societal questions and i think from where we stand, our view is, we want to provide that baseline for civic discourse to the extent we possibly can as long as we can to as many people as we can. >> time for one more question. >> i'm a 30 year studying lyrical science another question about journalism and authoritarianism.

i noticed not just you guys, that media -- politico especially i feel -- when talking about trump's use of power uses terms like expensive use of presidential use of power, wide-ranging. that's kind framed as a way of saying he's using a lot of power and it's hard to term it. describing his use of power as wide-ranging, is that not tacitly endorsing the idea that it's legitimate and taking a political stance? >> i would put two questions to you. are you open to the idea that there are unanswered questions about the breadth of powers allotted to the executive branch? you cannot answer that and say

there are no unanswered questions about this. that there will be no cases that arise from this. that's where we are. there are dueling views in the legal community about what powers are allotted to congress and the executive and these are playing out. i think we've had three questions and i'm sure there are many more about whether trump is authoritarian. i struggle to wrap my mind around -- do you all believe the problem in checking trumps power is too few journalists are out there calling him an authoritarian and if those of us up here would just do that, things would be better? i don't know. [applause] i have trouble understanding that. i don't think there is a lack of

fervent opposition to donald trump in the journalistic community and if folks would only cover him more vigorously and speak out against him that the problems would be solved. i'm surprised there isn't more concerned about a lack of journalistic rigor and question asking about the previous administration about those concerned about this administration. it's not limited to one administration or one party. >> ok, that was a good way to end this because as zeke said, journalism is not the answer. i just want to say to all of you , the new york times ran a series of polls during the election last year and if you look at the very bottom of the polling questions, one said where you get your news? the fact of the matter is 7% of

likely voters, 7% got their news from outlets like these. >> oh really? [laughter] >> on that note. zeke is correct, journalism is not the answer.