 Good evening and welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, and it's a pleasure to have you with us this evening, whether you're joining us here in the theater or joining us on our Facebook or YouTube channels. We are presenting this program in partnership with the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress and the Democracy Fund, and we thank them for their support. Before we begin our discussion of the credibility of the Fourth Estate, past and present, I'd like to tell you about two other programs coming up here soon in the McGowan Theater. On Saturday, October 26th, at 7, we'll show the documentary film, Summoned, Francis Perkins and the General Welfare. Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, was President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor and the driving force behind Social Security, the 40-hour work week, the eight-hour day, minimum wage and unemployment compensation. On Tuesday, October 29th, at 7 p.m., we welcome Congresswoman Jackie Spear, who will tell us about her book, Undaunted, Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage and Fighting Back. In 1978, Spear survived a deadly attack in Jonestown, Guyana, and later became a vocal proponent for human rights. To keep informed about events throughout the year, check our website, archives.gov. We'll sign up at the table outside the theater to get email updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports all of our education and outreach activity. Check out their website, archivesfoundation.org, to learn more about them and join online. A desire for a free and active press was evident at the very beginning of our national government. After receiving word from James Madison of the new Constitution for the United States, Thomas Jefferson wrote, this Constitution forms a basis which is good, but not perfect. I hope the states will annex it, annex to it a bill of rights, securing those which are essential against the federal government, particularly trial by jury, habeas corpus, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. And from those earliest days, there's always been tension between those who govern and those who report on them. The records of right exhibit upstairs in the Rubenstein Gallery documents a number of instances, congressional legislation and Supreme Court cases that bear on the First Amendment to the Constitution, both restricting or defending freedom of speech and the press. We prize our First Amendment rights and regard them as part of what defines us as Americans. I return to Jefferson's words, but 35 years after his comments to Madison, in a letter to Lafayette, Jefferson listed several conditions that, quote, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive, but the only security of all is in a free press, unquote. Now it's my pleasure to welcome Martin Frost to the stage. He's the president of the U.S. Association of Former members of Congress and served 26 years as a congressman from the 24th district of Texas from 1979 to 2005. During that time, he served eight years in the House Democratic leadership, four years as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and four years as chair of the House Democratic Caucus. Since leaving Congress, he served four years as chair of the National Undowment for Democracy, and he is an adjunct professor in the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Martin Frost. Well, thank you, David, for your kind introduction, and for the long and successful partnership that the former members of Congress enjoys with the archives. We do a variety of programs on different subjects and here at the archives, and I think you will find this one to be particularly timely and interesting. I want to tell you a little bit about former members of Congress. We bring together a bipartisan group of over 600 former representatives and senators who work together in a bipartisan manner on a wide variety of projects, and our mission strengthens the work of the current Congress by promoting a collaborative approach to policymaking. Now, this is an interesting evening, and I have urged the people on the program to move it right along, because we do have an event that starts at 8.08 this evening involving the Washington Nationals, and I think that a lot of people are going to want to see that, so we will move along promptly in our discussion. You know, this is a program that is of particular interest to me, because I started my professional career as a journalist. I have a journalism degree from the University of Missouri. I worked as a newspaper and magazine reporter and a television commentator before being elected to Congress. During my time as a magazine reporter, I covered Congress for a congressional quarterly weekly report, and so that when I became a congressman, I already knew a little bit about what was going on. I didn't know it all, but it didn't hurt to have been a journalist who actually was exposed to Congress on a daily basis. You know, I'm going to go to the introduction of our panel. We have a truly outstanding panel, and I think you will enjoy them quite a bit. They'll come on the stage after I make my introduction, and it's my great pleasure to introduce them to you tonight. The moderator, Politico reporter Daniel Lipman. Daniel covers the White House and Washington for Politico and was previously a co-author of Politico's playbook. Before joining Politico, he was a fellow covering environmental news for E&E Publishing and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. I actually used that environmental publication when I was with a law firm after I left Congress. It's a very good publication. Daniel will be tonight's guide during our conversation on the credibility of the Fourth Estate throughout history. Joining him are tonight's panelists, former Congressman from Pennsylvania, Charlie Dent. Congressman Dent served seven terms representing the 15th District of Pennsylvania and the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2018. During his time in Congress, he served on the House Committee on Appropriations, where he chaired the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies. He also was chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 to 2017, a truly thankless job. Congressman Dent also is a CNN contributor and addresses the nation frequently on a lot of matters. He told me he was on this morning and he's on call to be on this evening at 10 o'clock. They haven't told him yet whether he'll be on. Former Congresswoman from Connecticut, Elizabeth Estee. Congresswoman Estee represented Connecticut's fifth congressional district from 2013 until 2019. While in Congress, she served on the Committee on Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Infrastructure, and Science, and Space, and Technology. She also served as vice chair of the U.S. House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and as co-chair of the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus Infrastructure Task Force. And we have a couple of other panel members that I will also introduce. Tom Glazer. Glazer, now I'm not sure I pronounced his name correctly, but he'll correct me when he comes out if I didn't. Is the Managing Director of Public Square Program at the Democracy Fund. Tom has a background in media research and policy as well as social media advocating consulting. He led the media policy initiative at the New Americans America Foundations Open Technology Institute where he sought to track and influence media efforts at the local community and national levels. His efforts centered on policies that support the open internet and innovation in media, strengthening independent reporting on issues of public interest and helping citizens access and engage with high quality information. Last but certainly not least, Denise Tolbert is Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence of Michigan's Communications Director. Denise served as the primary media advisor in high profile crisis communications situations including one in Detroit in 2008 and another one in Detroit in 2009. Before a career in political communications, Denise was an award winning professional broadcast journalist working as a radio and television reporter some of her time in Texas by the way, in the Dallas and Houston area. She also worked for such outlets as NBC, MSNBC, CBS Reuters and Army Broadcasting Services. Her most recent media position was as morning drive traffic producer at WTTG TV. It is a privilege to have all of you, all of them on stage with us this evening. This is a particularly timely subject right now because questions have been raised about the media, the role of the media and nothing in my view, nothing is more important to us as a democracy than to have a free and well functioning media. Please join me in welcoming this distinguished panel with a round of applause. They'll come on the stage now. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming everyone on a night where we'll all be watching the gnats later. So I won't keep you too long. I wanted to thank the panel for joining us and kind of start with a question about how did interactions with the media change during your time in office for the former Congress people, we have different time spans, but I wanted to start with you, Congressman and Estee, like how did your, when you first ran for Congress versus when you were actually in office, I'm sure you had a staff and you didn't have to do it all yourself, but what were the challenges to that? Well, I had a chance to observe this in elected office from local office in 2005 on through 2019 and saw a dramatic change during that time and even just from 2012 when I ran for Congress to when I left. And I would really say the huge impact of the rise of social media, just enormously different in terms of the speed and need for immediate response, but also things not vetted. So making extremely hard to not only anticipate what's coming, but then to if things are not true, that makes it extremely difficult to respond to that. I saw this in three very high profile situations once when I was a state rep where we had a horrific murder in my local community, it made international news, it cost me my seat in the state legislature, but it was traditional news covering that, it was newspapers and TV, that was in 2010. And then I was elected just after I was elected, Newtown happened, those murders happened in my district, international news coverage, intense, intense pressure, but the social media really rose later when you saw Alex Jones and the conspiracy theories, but it wasn't immediately at the time that has become a much bigger element in all of the mass shootings we see now. And then towards the end of my career, I had around the me two things, there was an incident involving my former chief of staff who I fired and it became a firestorm in a very, very short period of time with no ability to get information out. It was just impossible and I knew enough about politics to understand the importance of timing. And I think it's a huge challenge for politicians right now that social media has collapsed that time for getting information out, so if things are not accurate or require fuller context, it has become extremely difficult to do that. And I think it's driving mainstream media as well as politicians to want to be the first one up, the first one saying things, and if they're not accurate or context is, or thought is required, that puts pressure on traditional media as well as politicians in ways that I don't know how to resolve that, but I do think it's a really important thing for all of us to deal with. What lessons did you learn from that most recent experience where you were kind of in the media saucepan for a little bit? I think it's very difficult if you're someone who's thoughtful to, I think there are times when the public can't hear things. I think you've got to wait if there are things that are complex, sometimes you just can't do that in the moment. And I think I was right in my instincts about that, that there are issues that in the immediate moment may be difficult. And you have to decide that if you're an elected politician, you know, try to feel that way. You have to know sort of what your own values are. And I wasn't interested in staying in office at any cost. And I made a conclusion that to try to defend myself was gonna violate things I thought were important about respecting people's privacy. So I just didn't do it. And I think if you run for office, you really have to know where that line is because right now there's so much pressure to again be the first one to say something to punch back harder. And if that's not what you wanna do, you need to know that for yourself. You need to decide that way before you ever get in the crossfire of something. Because if you haven't thought about it, ahead of time, if you don't know when it's time to not continue, then your soul is in peril and then you aren't gonna be in trouble. Congressman Dent, can you tell us about what it was like to deal with the media during the Trump era, those two years that you served where you were seen as one of those members on the right, you know, a traditional conservative who was standing up against the president, you know, at least sometimes. Yeah, well, for me, it wasn't that hard. I mean, I had served 14 years in the state legislature, eight years in the state house, six in the state Senate, then 14 years in Congress. And so I was at the point in my career where I said, look, I enjoy the job, but the job doesn't define me and that I was prepared to do other things. I had been thinking about getting out for a couple of years and even before Trump. And I decided that I didn't have to, I wasn't worried about reelection. I never gave it a thought. And I learned, I think during the 2013 shutdown, that if you just be authentic and you state what's on your mind, state the obvious if it's, and when others are not. And in Washington, stating the obvious can be a revelation or a gaffe, depending on the circumstances. And I thought, politicians tend to spend too much time making calculations. And I've often said, you don't have to calculate as much. If you have a half decent gut and you're following your values and you have good judgment, you're probably gonna be okay because if you try to pretend and act like someone who you're not or you be too quiet when you shouldn't be, people can sense fear. They sense fear. And even if they disagree with you, at least if you're standing up saying what you believe in, they might not like it, but at least they'll respect you for it. So I never found it hard to speak out against the president. Hell, I did today and I'm, I don't do social media much anymore. I don't, I really don't. I've gone dormant since I left Congress. I once in a while, I'll put something up. I don't, I have a former staffer who still doesn't. I don't touch it. I really don't. I never, I always had the staff manage it. We told them what to put up off of public statements, but you know, I never touched it. Tell us what happened today this morning for people who are not watching it. Well, yeah, well, I'm trending on Twitter. So which is a, it's always a good sign. Well, what happened was I was on CNN New Day this morning and I was on with a former colleague of mine, Sean Duffy, just resigned from Congress. And we were talking about the latest on Ukraine, Bill Taylor's testimony, which was pretty, pretty dramatic yesterday. And basically I read the trans, I read his statement and my former colleague was kind of talking about process and servers and all this stuff. And you know, and I said, you know, people ask me why I've been critical of the administration, the president. I said, well, reason is because my nose is not a heat seeking missile for the president's backside. Okay, and then with that, you know, boom, the Twitter blew up and then I went on to explain why, you know, this guy was, Taylor was very compelling that this guy was a patriot and, you know, he did establish a good pro quo and why this is such a big problem. And so that was kind of fun, but it's kind of nice, you know, and I know it's important when my kids say, you're trending on Twitter. Because they don't, ordinarily, I don't pay attention to social media because that's where people go to hate, right? That's where you go if you want to say nasty things and I don't, you know, I have enough need for therapy right now. I don't need more reasons and I'm not in therapy. I'm just kidding. Are you disappointed in how many of your fellow Republican colleagues have handled the Trump era where most of them don't seem very eager to stand up for former principles like free trade and respect for the truth? Yeah, you know, it's funny. I've talked to a number of them about it. I can tell you that many of them are very despondent and dejected over what's been going on. I can tell you that, you know, I mean, I saw it during the, when the president proposed and President Trump and I guess it would have been the fall of 2017, he proposed, you know, tariffs on steel and aluminum in the name of national security on Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, Japan, Europe, basically all of our friends and allies and partners. And I remember going into the House of Republican conference that day and this is a couple of days after it was announced and we had a conference meeting and this issue didn't come up and we have microphones in there. So I go to the microphones after all the main business is done and I said, you know, was everybody asleep the last few days or was it, you know, am I the only person who's really outraged by these tariffs on steel and aluminum? I said, I thought this is the House Republican conference. You know, we were the party of free trade. Had Barack Obama proposed this, we would have a bill up on the floor this afternoon and we'd be shoving it, you know, where? And that's what we should do today. I mean, you know, a handful of people clap and I'm like, I thought this was a core principle. I mean, this is not some small thing. And then, you know, I guess it surprised me. I thought they'd speak up on that and I also thought they'd speak up on when the president proposed diverting the military construction funds to pay for the border wall. Now I took that personally because I was already out of Congress, but I wrote that bill. That was my bill. The Millicom bill had taken three and a half billion dollars and had paid for the wall and it's completely, you know, a slap in the face to Congress's article. One powers and so I was pretty animated about that. But I was shocked that more didn't get excited about that. Then, of course, was Syria and the Kurds. Well, that's got a lot of people talking. And same thing with Putin a few years ago on Helsinki, that's when people spoke up. More inclined to speak up on foreign policy matters. Although now I think many of them are in a bad way because you look what happened last week or a couple of weeks, you had the whistleblower complaint and that phone, that rough phone transcript, you know, on the Ukraine matter. You also have the Dural, the Dural self-dealing issue. You also have, what other big things? Oh, Syria, pulling out of Syria with the Kurds, you know, a betrayal, you know, the Mick Mulvaney confession on the quid pro quo. And I'm probably forgetting a couple of things, but the point is those things were, I think, largely completely and totally indefensible. Or there were a situation in Mulvaney's case, you made it impossible to defend the president by admitting a quid pro quo. So I think they're very upset right now. And I think the dam is cracking. I think when it breaks, it's gonna break. And they're not, I don't think they're gonna trick a lot. I think they're gonna come out with big numbers if it happens. Tom, I wanted to go to you. What would you say are the leading incentives that are currently, you know, motivating what gets communicated through the press for both members of Congress and also just the media in general. They're not always the same incentives. They often are misaligned. So how do you see those incentives shaping or skewing public perceptions and the discourse that we find ourselves in? Well, thank you, Dan. I think there's a lot of change that's happened over the careers of these two steam-congress people. And I think it's evident that timeliness, trending on Twitter is not something anyone would have said 10 years ago, dealing with social media and backlash. Social media is a place of hate. There are incentives to get into that conversation when we think about the Congress people and politicians in general. When we think about the incentives of media and far beyond for me to suggest Politico would be seeking to chase eyeballs. But there is a real pressure with media needing to sustain itself in a commercial environment that is extremely tough. If your support, if you are seeking to sustain commercial media through advertising, it is a tough business. And I'm just sort of stepping back from this. If we think about the journalism industry and not everyone knows, I think I'm surrounded by people who are Congress people and I'm caused by journalists and people who are Congress people and journalists in the background. But if we think about the career of journalists, there were 400,000 people working in the newspaper industry in 2000. That's fallen by 65% in the last 19 years. 65%. Just contrast that with the number of, the loss of jobs in coal mining, 61%. Journalists are losing jobs at a faster rate than coal miners. This is a profoundly different environment that Congress people and politicians face with immense scrutiny from the public and an absence of scrutiny, especially at the local level which means you end up with incentives to respond to appeal to mass audiences at national level rather than audiences that they can't effectively reach at the local level with an absence of reporters. And if we look at the collapse there, I mean that for me is the incentives have changed in really complex and nuanced ways. For Denise, for your member, have you seen the media in your home district and state? Has that declined since you took the job and is that, are you seeing fewer media inquiries and are you seeing less hard-hitting journalism because they're just of the economic pressures? Well, what I'm finding in, my member represents Michigan 14th District which includes parts of Detroit, Southfields, Michigan, Pontiac, the gross points. And what I'm finding there, when we have a paper that's laying off now, our main publication in Detroit News is they're now asking people to take buyouts. And I have to actively, a lot of times, seek press from my boss. Every now and then she'll say something controversial that I can use that I can put out on Twitter or Facebook or put out a statement and it'll get picked up. A lot of times it's mostly by the nationally. Ironically enough, CNN and MSNBC will pick it up. But locally, I can get some stuff but because they are dial-sizing back in Michigan. And does the, for your boss, she was a well-known long-serving mayor in the Midwest but she's not as well-known as a household name in DC and across the country. How do you basically, how do you get the media to care about what she says and she does? There's 500, there's 535 members of Congress who are currently serving. And if you're Adam Schiff, it's not that hard to get media. But how do you kind of work with her to get yourself? And that's the difficult thing we find repressed secretaries. But luckily in Michigan, it's not like, because I worked for a California member in the past and when you have California, I don't know how many members of Congress that you have to try to get media for. But there are nuances that I can use for Congressman Lawrence, for instance, she's big on women's issues. So she co-chairs the Women's Caucus and the Democratic Women's Caucus on issues. And also she is now the only African-American member of Congress from Michigan. So I'm able to market her that way. And for, you know, Congressman Estie and Congressman Dent, did you notice a change when you were in Congress about, from your colleagues about the desire to get on cable TV and to, you know, do those hits to raise your profile and do you face that yourself? You know, when you were in Congress that you were telling yourself, you know, I want to get on CNN or Fox and I need to, you know, get my message out there that way because traditional press releases and op-eds don't really cut it anymore. Oh, I think there's a lot of pressure and I think part of this is both the change in media but part of this and I ran in a seat that was hotly contested. So in 2012 it was the fourth most expensive house race in America. So if you're having to raise millions of dollars which I have had to, then you need to get your name out and if you're going to national donors people want to see you on TV. And so I think part of the challenge now is that without incentives within caucuses there's no earmarks, there's no carrots and sticks, bills aren't getting called up. So members want to deliver something. Well, you can't, you can't deliver legislation, you can't get grants, you can't get bridges and you need to raise money. And you've got an ego. Guess what? The incentives line up with figuring out how to get on TV. To get on TV and you don't do that by being moderate and you don't do that being thoughtful and giving a long discourse on the aging state of infrastructure. I know this because I was the one doing that. The white paper does not do. You've got to come up with something pithy like Charlie's really good at and that gets you on TV. And so I would get, I would get told by, you know my electorate like, why aren't you on TV more? I mean literally, I would get on TV if there was a mass shooting because I represent a new town. And I said like, would someone please put me on when I don't have to talk about children dying? Because that is the only time I would get those calls. Because that was sort of not my brand to get on and say something smart and sassy. And so there was this big issue. I mean, Charlie and I were people who did not read our social media because I found it not helpful and it either feeds your ego or crushes your soul and either one is good. And I had to tell my mother to get off of Facebook. I'm like, mom, she said, why are they seeing those terrible things like mom, get off Facebook? You're 85, don't do it anymore. And so there is this huge pressure. And actually my district was unusual because they're still, we were covered by seven local newspapers. This probably got to be the highest number of local newspapers of any place in America. So why he was in a very unusual position because we probably could get something placed. We had to be out and around all the time, which I was, but that is unusual. Most districts, that's not true. So you raise money and you get attention. And that allows you to rise in leadership by doing all of those things. And it's not, to my mind, it's really not constructive for getting legislation done. It's really not constructive for collegiality or for consensus building, which is what Congress is supposed to be trying to do. And all those push towards division and disagreement and snarkiness. You know, one thing I learned, when I first was elected to the state house in 1990, I used to live and die over local media. And you talked about that earlier, how local media is really struggling. And local media was everything. I could have cared less about the national publications. It really didn't affect my world. They weren't interested in me. Most of my constituents weren't reading the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. When I was a state legislator in Allentown, Pennsylvania, they were reading the Allentown Morning Call and the Express Times of Easton and Bethlehem. That was their world. And there were local TV stations that people were watching. I didn't even think much about television either. I get the Congress fast forward, I get here. I didn't do a lot of media. I mean, my first couple of terms, I was keeping my head down, trying to figure out how to be a congressman. I wasn't mouth and off at all. In fact, nowadays, you got some of these members, I'll pick on one, like Matt Gates. You know, he was freshman, and that guy was on TV all the time. I used to sit in the Republican Conference, meaning after I'd been in for four or five terms, and I would watch freshmen get up to the microphone and tell us how we were gonna get a bill through the House and the Senate and become law. And I'd say, they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Why doesn't somebody correct them? They say, well, why don't you correct them? Are you sure you want me to do that? Because I'll be happy to. And then I said, you don't wanna ask for this, but it's gonna happen. So after over time, I literally, for my first four terms, I stayed low profile with the Washington Press Court. And then I finally got to the point where I saw certain members who were going on national television, mostly Fox, Republican members, and who were saying things that were very problematic in my view, and they were branding all of us. I'll pick on one, Michelle Bachman. You remember her? And there were others. And I said to the leadership, and we get into the government shutdown of 2013, and I remember going into then the Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office a few days before the shutdown and said, you know, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen where this is going. I am out, I'm gonna be very vocal, and I'm gonna vote against us on all this stuff. And he understood, actually, because this is insane, and they all understood it was insane. And so then I started speaking up, because I said I didn't, and I went on other stations like MSNBC and CNN, because I felt that, you know, the narrative on some of those networks was that all these Republicans are crazy. And if you just show up, and you sound reasonable, guess what? You just won the battle. Oh, he's not nuts. And that's high praise, by the way. And during the shutdown, so I was out there criticizing Senator Cruz and saying that, you know, this is a, well, I had really some sharp language for him too. That was pretty pithy, actually. And, well, I'll tell you later, but it was a really good one. And that's a long story short. You know, I just found that, when I thought, okay, I'm committing political suicide now by speaking, being so vocal, being out front, that was in the middle of the shutdown. And just as the thing was ending, I actually slipped out of Washington for a few hours. I lived close enough. I had to go into a grocery store and people were coming up to me saying, hey, I like you, you're not nuts. Thanks for speaking up. I'm thinking, oh, wow. This is like people on the street. These are normal people saying nice things to me. They don't usually do that. You know, I mean, they just usually complain. And I found that that was helpful. So I figured out that, hey, if you just be yourself, be authentic, state the obvious, be reasonable, don't be a zealot, don't be hanging out here on the fringes, and you have a better chance of surviving in this environment. I think it actually helps. And of course, then came Donald Trump and now the rules have all changed again. So that's kind of my story. What's the role of like Fox News and the Republican caucus these days? If there was no Fox, how would the caucus look differently in terms of how they act with the media? Or does it kind of, it makes them more extreme? Well, it's not just Fox. I would say it's the echo chamber. I mean, it used to be talk radio. And I remember some members would get all upset. You know, they wouldn't vote for, you know, the debt ceiling or whatever the issue was. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna get killed on talk radio. I said, you just got to learn to tune it out. I mean, I don't even pay attention to it. You know, okay, I know that a lot of these calls are orchestrated to come into my office. And people have to just be mature enough to know that, you know, if a thousand calls come in, you know, over one issue and because Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, you know, called you name, it's really not having that big an impact. You just have to tune it out, do what you need to do. And don't worry about all these, you know, and I would tell members like, you have to understand, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Fox, they have a business model. And their business model, they need market share. And this is true of all the networks by the way, you know, MSNBCC and they need market share. And so their business is not governing. Their business is not to get 50% plus one to pass a bill in the house and 60 votes in the Senate. They could care less and they can't, they're not gonna drive clicks and eyeballs if they're saying, boy, these folks in Congress, the Republican conference in particular, they really struck a good compromise on issue X. I mean, they need anger, they need to get people juiced up. So they always have to be on the flank and, you know, nipping. So, and frankly, they do a better job when they're attacking other Republicans, not just Obama at the time, but they can do that. And that's how they drive, that's their business model. As you understand that, what's that market share that they need? I don't know, four, five, 8%, whatever the hell it is, that's what they need to make a lot of money. And you have to be, you have to understand how they've monetized politics. They've monetized it, it's about money. I mean, I'm not sure that they believe all this stuff they talk about, but that's what they do. And I think some members don't quite understand that and they have to go on. And so they feel a need to, you know, to placate these pundits. They really don't have to. Denise, would your member go on Fox News as a? Yeah, on specific shows. She's not going to do a Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly. But, you know, and the guy, Shep Smith, who left? Oh my goodness. Eric Sean, the regular news people there too. These are journalists, Chris Wallace, somebody like that who are actual journalists and are not looking for the gadget type thing. Cause I was trying to schedule on Shep Smith before, right before he left. So didn't get a chance to do that, but she would go on Fox News on no specific. Is she gone on those channels yet? Not yet. Not yet. But back in Michigan, we have done a show. I wanted to cover service stations, WJR to Frank Beck, Michelle, and they battle back and forth on, but it's on policy, it's on views and their friends after the show is over. So it's not real over the top messy type of programming. Tom, do you think the media covers Trump too much or are we kind of doing our job because people care about this president? And this is something, you know, we're living in historic times that will never, you know, there's not going to be another Donald Trump unless Ivanka wants to run. Who knows? It's the question of, is there another? But I think we are, I just sort of step back both in terms of the media ecosystem, this digital public square that is so difficult and so apparently dysfunctional to navigate. It's pretty clear that the president has identified a way to navigate it in his interests. And in its current state, it is failing to serve democracy. It is failing in many ways to inform the public or enable trust to be built between public, the public and legislators or tell them necessarily about things that they often care about beyond the horse race. And I, so I'm gonna say that I'm not sure about covering Trump more or less or but it's pretty clear that the situation we're facing is a situation where Congress is held in low regard and the media is held in low regard. And we have former Congress people here struggling, explaining how they have struggled to navigate this swamp, to use a word. But hasn't media broken many of the important stories and controversies and scandals of the Trump administrations? And like hasn't the level of trust at least in some surveys actually gone up and you see record subscriptions? So how has the media failed in this era? And I think it's important not to lump cable news with the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Wall Street Journal, which are more reasoned in terms of actual stories. There are really an opinion space that is poisonous in many ways and dysfunctional. And there are a lot of journalists working their hearts out to break stories in an incredibly difficult environment where frankly, if you are a young female journalist, you are getting hate mail and you are getting threats. I applaud all of that. And I also just to be on the upside here, there is a lot of innovation going on. And I come at this as a representative of a foundation that's supporting innovation in media as well as supporting the wonderful work that the Association of Former Members does. And really we have a moment in this moment of transition from, I frankly, I think a commercial model that chases clicks badly to a model that is almost certainly going to be supported by members of the public like yourselves and chasing advertising dollars less and seeking to build a relationship over the longer term with subscribers and such, but it really could serve us well. But it's a working progress. Congressman Ernest, how do you think the media has covered this president? And does it hurt, you know, it's crowded up a lot of the coverage of the Democratic primary because it's kind of like the ballgame is Washington and impeachment at least for the next couple of months. I think Donald Trump is a master showman. He understands what the media craves and it craves new and outrageous and he delivers it up every single day. And he does it to such an extent that he knows that people can't turn away. And so it allows him to dominate and change the subject and the chaos is something he thrives in, he creates and thrives in it. And the media has played right along with that and it makes it very hard to keep a narrative going. It's very hard to follow any particular story for any length of time. And he has broken all the norms in terms of his behavior and that nobody knows how to handle that. And I don't think the media has handled it particularly well. And I think some particularly on the cable side and I would say on the left-leaning side has enabled him enormously actually is in part responsible for giving him all that airtime and crowding out space for a lot of other candidates. And that is making it still challenging now. I did wanna follow up though on something that Tom said. I think we are in a time of incredible innovation and tied to what Charlie said. It's the job of a member of Congress to know your own district. So in fact, some of these tools make it easier too. Like we would do telephone town halls with hundreds or thousands of people on the phone. We did bipartisan ones with Republican colleagues in the middle of the day. So nobody has to go any place. We had subscribers to a weekly newsletter that I could have video clips. I could do surveys, 13,000 people, up to 30,000 people every week getting information and able to communicate. So there's opportunities and tools available for people that have never been available before. And so that is very exciting and that does if you are serious about knowing your district and voting your district, which is what John Dingell taught me as almost 60 years in Congress said I was fortunate enough to have him mentor me. And he said, it's your job to know your district and vote your district. And that's what Charlie's talking about doing. But I think people's heads get turned by the desire to be on TV. And it does help you raise your profile. Your family's excited they see you. It doesn't get you elected. But it does help you raise money and it does line up another job afterwards. And there are some people who are more concerned about that and shame on them. Yeah, by the way, just on the issue of the media's role right now, I think the media has to exercise a lot more restraint and discipline. And I'm saying this in the context of like today, Trump tweeted, made some comment about lynching today. I read the tweet exactly says he's being lynched. And I thought that was an overreaction because look, they're upset because he said it and he's made racially incendiary comments and he used the term lynching. So people were offended. But a lot of people have used the term lynch mob to describe something. Maybe they shouldn't, but I think Joe Biden had a walk something back that he said years ago. But probably nobody ever said a word about it. I mean, I remember Tim Russert said that Mark Kirk and I let a lynch mob down to the White Houses when George Bush was in, by the way, when George over the Iraq war. And I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think it was racially incendiary. I just thought we were kind of bad and we had a meeting down there and it was described that way. And I thought, I kind of chuckled. But I'm just saying, I thought it was an overreaction today. I'll tell you too. And that's what I think sometimes the president tries to distract you. And I feel like the media behaves like maws. Trump is the light. He turns on that spotlight and the media goes to it no matter what it is. And sometimes they just have to step back and maybe you don't have to cover every absurd tweet. And same thing with the, even during the campaign, you have to give Donald Trump credit for something. He changed the rules. And I remember like, as a congressman, if it would go on a Sunday show, the rule was you have to be in studio and you can't do it remotely. They had all these hard rules. And I would turn on the Sunday shows and there's Donald Trump on Meet the Press, probably sitting on the can in Trump Tower at nine o'clock in the morning and I'm saying, you gotta be kidding me. He's doing it. He's phoning it in. He's phoning it in. And I was always told we have rules. And they had him on it. He would go on any show. They'd invite him on. And they knew he was saying a lot of absurd or ridiculous things, but they weren't being at all discreet. And they said, well, these other candidates all can come on, but I always kind of doubted that. But she was good for ratings. Let's face it. He brought clicks and eyeballs to those. It was great for ratings. That's why they let him phoned in from Trump Tower on the Sunday shows. And I saw other examples. So I don't know, how do you tell the media to become better disciplined? And by the way, I said earlier, when I was younger, I didn't spend as much time in the New York Times. That's all I read now. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and you know, I mean, I'm overwhelmed. I'm looking at Axios, Politico. I'm looking at every, I can't, and the news is almost redundant anymore too. I mean, I feel like I'm getting a lot of the same stuff from different sources and just managing the information today is brutally hard. I have to follow news of the day every day because I get called in to comment on it. And everything is so immediate now, but it's tough. But even still, as much as I follow it, you know, I missed what happened five minutes ago and boom, you get asked about it. Denise says your boss, you wanted to say something? Yeah, I did. First of all, what Congressman Dent said about early on during the campaign and the stations were letting Trump call in and they weren't monitoring then. They weren't regulating then. And now, I think they're to the point, they're trying to play catch up. And now we have to investigate. Now we have to vet and do our research. And I think that's what's happening with the times and the post in those publications. And about the lynching comment, why that was so offensive, is because Donald Trump is always offensive. Well, that's right. It's because he said it. And because he said it and it goes along that same vein as there were good people on both sides remarked and all of those other remarks. So it was offensive because he said it and he has a history of this. That was my point. He makes the central, with the guys who were formerly the central park five and he wanted them killed. And these guys were exonerated. Does your boss, how much, how do you know when to respond to a Trump outburst? Because you could be issuing statements every day. We don't usually respond. It has to be, we did respond to the lynching comment because like I said, she's the only African-American member from the state. But we don't usually respond to him. We don't. I mean, it's too much. I mean, he'll put out 30 tweets in two days. He's talking about Detroit, right? Sometimes, yeah. No, he hasn't talked, not like Baltimore. Like not like he did Baltimore, but no, he hasn't really. We haven't had to respond to anything like that. No, I wanted to just make a point around the point on lynching, which is a deeply offensive comment. And when uttered by the president, is in many ways for me a new low. And I speak to you as a citizen by choice who took the oath a few years ago. And I commend to you some work that a number of people are doing who have worked on mass atrocities abroad and looked at the concept of dangerous speech. When you have leaders, political leaders making comments that are designed to inflame, things can deteriorate. And I will reinforce the point that Congressman Denton made. The media have to step up and respond appropriately, seriously. And we need to, this dysfunctional media ecosystem that we have, we need to really look seriously at how we can adjust our policies to build a media ecosystem that serves us. That we did that in 68 with the Public Broadcasting Act in lots of ways. There are many rules and possibilities with the FCC. There are public funding efforts that are going on that I think in some ways are controversial. But going on at the state level to rejuvenate media that actually asks the Congress people questions about things that are on the minds of their constituents. So I just... Do you think tech companies like Facebook and Twitter should they be held responsible for particularly campaign advertisements where Democrats are attacking Facebook because they say that the Trump campaign has these ads that are completely false and Facebook has taken a laissez-faire attitude towards it? I mean, they have concentrated the audience for news in ways that were just not envisaged in our traditional media regulations. They have a way to direct our attention that even they don't understand because their algorithms are sort of remaking themselves on the fly. When you have that power, it comes with it a certain responsibility. And just as we would want a news spread editor and a good journalist like yourself, Dan, to sort of build a product that serves us, I would ask the platforms to do the same. And I speak as someone who's worked for the last year to seek to work with the platforms such that they share data about the implications of the platforms on the public dialogue and release information. And... I mean, frankly, the level of information that is available is deeply disappointing and not enough for us to truly understand the role of the platforms in the public square. And when they are in parallel, pursuing a laissez-faire attitude as you've laid out, it's frankly difficult to defend their practices. You know, pure-hearted public servants don't get as much press as preening members of self-promoters or politicians ensnared and scandal. But this isn't a new phenomenon. But I can see how it might be exceptionally demoralizing in the Trump era. Does the role of a congressman dealing with the media, does that attract the wrong types of people for public office and not kind of the good civil servants, public servants that we want? Or how do you see it affecting kind of the candidates that we're attracting these days? Well, I would say that I've certainly seen, and this is particularly true on social media, I talk a lot to groups of young women. I try to work with women who are community activists who would think about running for office and the incredibly uncivil town and the sort of the personal attacks, deeply personal and deeply offensive and ungrounded and anonymous. It's like, tell people it's like the bathroom wall. That is what social media, it's like writing on the bathroom wall. And I would say it has a disproportionate impact, I think on women. I find a lot of women, it'll be the number one reason that they say they don't wanna run. Can they just, can't people ignore- It's very hard, it's very hard to do that. And it's also hard because it affects your family and that's another feature. You as a candidate can just strap on, I said, just strap on your asbestos arm or like, I don't read it, I don't look at it, it's much harder for your family. And if you have kids, people will say things. People said things to my children, people wrote things. I had journalists write snarky things about my kids. That is something that nobody wants to have happen and that has now become fair game. And I think that is a level that again, journalists need to help police that because otherwise then you really are gonna be at a point where the people you would want to run would just say, absolutely not, I won't do that. So I don't know how you do that because I think it's very hard to regulate. I think it has to be more self-restraint than actual regulation. I think regulation gets really hard. The Honest Ads Act helps deal with some things. I mean, you should have to disclose who's doing ads, who's really paying for it. It has to be online. There are things you can do for greater transparency but the uncivil tone and the just unbelievable nastiness is hard, I think we'll get through this but right now it is ugly and I'm sure Brenda has to deal with that. I mean, they're just professional trolls. And I will also say we did a forensic study, 30% of the traffic on my website and this is for just a generic seat in Congress. 30% were Russian bots. We did a survey in 2017 because we wanted to know what was going on in our district. So if you haven't done that survey and you're a member of Congress, you may not know what your district actually thinks because they are trying to change what you think your district thinks. And that's gotten way more sophisticated now than it was two years ago, way more sophisticated. So they go on your site and they submit comment? Yeah, and they post on social media and you have to track down that those are not real names, those are not real websites. Then you flagged that to the tech companies? Oh yeah. Did they hear back much? No, he just said everybody needs to check this because a lot of what you're seeing is not actually people from your district. Over time, I just learned to ignore a lot of this stuff and I never, people say nasty things and I said, that didn't hurt. I mean, it really, I just kind of numb to it, does it? But you grew up through it. I think it's hard for people starting now because it's really hard to offend me anymore. I mean, it's really hard. But I think now starting even just at local level, we've seen it at local level, it has changed in ways that I think when you started when I started, I started 13, 14 years ago, it's different. The key is though not to respond in kind. Absolutely not. I mean, I'm used to people yelling and screaming and venting, okay, they're done. No, let me answer the question, okay. And then we'll just go on. I just try to, I think that I've gotten better at that over the years. I used to, when I was earlier in my career in the state legislature, much more sensitive to the slightest little criticism and overthinking it and nobody cares. I hate to say that, but a lot of people just don't care. And they didn't see it and it's my world. It's not their world. Don't worry about it. And you just have to kind of be able to tune it all out. And like you said, you got to wear it and put your body armor on and just go forward. And by the way, it's healthy too because you waste a lot of mental energy overthinking these things. And focus on the policy. Do the stuff that's important and tune it out. We're gonna go to audience questions in a minute. So we have some mics so people can line up if they have some good questions. But before we go to audience questions, you said that it took a while to develop a thick skin. Have you ever gotten bad at reporters when you were a congressman? When I was younger, I would never yell at them or get that upset with them. If I saw something that was really factually inaccurate, usually we'd only ever call it correct if they made a real factual error. You know, generally I didn't have too many bad, I didn't have too many bad experiences with reporters. What I did find, I always was very nervous about, not the experienced reporters. I was worried about the new ones. Like an intern doing a story. They were the ones most likely to get it wrong. And it'd be a mess. They asked too many questions. They didn't know where this story was going and then, oh my goodness. And you realize that there are problems. Generally, I found press to be, I think they try to get it right. And I learned over time to appreciate news organizations that have editors. At least there's another set of eyeballs. Somebody at least is trying to monitor the content so that it's somewhat fair or balanced. Nowadays, anybody with an iPhone or a computer is out there, they think they're a journalist. How often would you be interacting with the reporters one-on-one instead of having a communications person handle that? We don't allow that. We don't allow that. We don't allow what? For the reporters number. That's right, unsupervised number. For them, reporters to contact you guys directly. Well, that's a get us right on the house floor. You get the gaggle and you can't avoid them. I'm usually with my boss. I'm all with it. We have a question for the audience. Go ahead, sir. May I have clarification on the rules? Mr. Lipman, may I ask you a question? Sir, I noticed in the brief biography that you spent some time on the Syrian-Turkish border. And I think that I'm not the only person in the room that would like to know if you're still in touch with any of the people that you met in that time. And if you could say a word or two about how you see the current situation in that part of the world. Sure. So in early 2013, I went to the Syrian-Turkish border to cover the conflict for CNN.com and Huffington Post. And since I don't speak Arabic, I hired a Arabic translator. And so I'm still in touch every so often with that person. And thankfully, he's okay. He's not gone back into Syria. A lot of Syrian educated Syrians fled to Istanbul and other parts of Turkey because to be a journalist or anyone working with Western media is deadly. And so when I was there, you could just hear the disappointment from people I talked to who are rebels and injured civilians about how the US had basically was not engaging properly in helping the rebels against a horrific regime. And so this was before kind of the serious rise of ISIS. But so this was, you know, when I was there, most Americans didn't know what ISIS was and it hadn't kind of taken over a significant part of the country. And so, but you could kind of tell that this was like when I was there, it was like the last few months where aid could have made a difference. And now, you know, six years, five years later, it's just way too late. And I think the people that I met, they are horribly disappointed with how the Trump administration has abandoned our Kurdish allies and it makes it much harder for people to trust US commitment to our friends as if we're willing to, just based on one phone call with a autocrat like the Turkish leader to basically say, you know, enough, I'm gonna withdraw our troops from Syria. And so that's kind of a huge turning point, it seems, in terms of how the US is looked at in the world. And so it's just disappointing for the people I talked to who were there. I wanted to ask a question for Tom. Like, do you see, how do you see the media? You know, what are the worrisome trends that we haven't talked about? Because you talked about the job loss, but there's a lot of nonprofits that have started to cover journal news and to do investigations in the States. You have ProPublica, which is, you know, doing a very important work every day. Yeah, no, I mean, I think I've covered the diners earlier, but I think the opportunity here in this moment of transition within our democracy, but also within our media is that there is a massive growth in nonprofit news. In the last 10 years, it's grown from a field of $35 million a turnover to 450 million. There are programmatic ways for encouraging people to support news, such as NewsMatch, that raised $7 million last year, brought in 50,000 more donors to news over the month it ran in December of last year. And those news outlets, which one has been born every month for the last 12 years, are now amounting to something in places around the country, not everywhere, but they are pursuing a sort of reporting that I think better serves us, provide meets what I would consider community information needs, as well as in the case of investigative outlets like ProPublica, responsibly digs into the toughest investigative stories there are. They match up and win Pulitzer's just as the New York Times and the Post and others do. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. And just, I mean, I'll give a little ad, really, that today there was a conference in New York run by a set of organizations called Harkin and the Membership Puzzle Project advancing a citizen's agenda for reporting around the election and really seeking to provide a pathway to move away from horse race centric coverage, which is compelling and interesting and I really like others, but we need alternatives. We need reporters actually trying to answer the public's questions on issue and allow the public to understand the perspectives of the politicians and their expected policies should they get elected. What role does media literacy play in this for especially young people? There's a project that I've helped out in the past called the News Literacy Project, which has high school classes where, you know, journalists, working journalists come to talk about how to distinguish between real news and fake news, which is an overused term by the president. But like, is that a part of the mix? So can we, you know, can public schools, should they be getting in this more? I think they should. I think the News Literacy Project has done a lot of great work. Growing from, I'm not sure how long ago you were involved, but it was a pretty small thing. And now they are in several states at a meaningful level working and partnering with school systems. But this, when you start thinking about interventions at the high school or middle school level, you're talking about a multi-million dollar effort, a decades long effort to help kids understand the media, the new media forms that they're seeing and how they're absorbing media and what is actually false and incorrect, or what is actually, you know, legit reporting. I wanted to ask the Congress people on this panel, how did your constituents get their news and would it often be wrong where you'd have to tell them, you know, actually, you know, our members on the other aisle, they don't all have horns and they're not evil and I work with them, you know, as much as I can or how did you kind of address how did the sources affect their views? But I think we've seen, and it's pretty documented, how the consumption of news is going more and more by social media and that's not just millennials, that's across the board. You're seeing, you know, people over the age of 30, over the age of 40, over the age of 50, over the age of 60, beginning more and more to be just sharing posts by friends and family so that it is not restricted to young people. I would find, I'm sure Charlie found this true. You go to town halls and people are saying stuff that is absolutely not true and they'll be saying it is fact and you have to listen respectfully and then I would correct with factual information but I would always say I can hear you're really passionate about this, I really appreciate you're taking the time to come here, we're not here to agree, we're here to listen to each other and understand different perspectives so I think it's really important to set that up if you are dealing with public because people are gonna have very different understandings of what is factual, especially right now and if you lay a foundation as a public official of respect for people who care about democracy, we're here to try to get the country to a better place, that lays a foundation that then allows, even if people don't agree about the facts, they at least have a certain level of respect and then you can talk about the values you're trying to implement. I found that generally worked but you have to do more work at it and more of laying that foundation in a climate where people genuinely are highly exercised so I'd have to tell people, please do not interrupt people, let everyone have their say because at heated times, in 2010, before and right after the election in 2016, you would have folks show up and wanted to cheer or shout down people and I worked very hard to make sure that was not- You probably had more security too at 10 months. Well, yes, you'd have to have security and because I represent a new town, unfortunately I always had to have arm security public at every single event I was at because we always had gun people showing up or threatening to show up so that has now, I'm afraid, become quite common that members of Congress have to have local police there visibly armed at events to try to be there in case anything were to happen and that is regrettable that that has now become the norm for many, many members of Congress just to have somebody there in case. Congressman Dent, can you talk about how your interactions with constituents were affected by their news consumption? Sure, when I first got in politics in the early 90s, I had the sense that most people were looking at the same news sources that I was looking at and it was, again, the morning call in Allentown and certain local papers and certain Philadelphia area TV stations and so I kind of had a sense what they were seeing but as time went on and as we developed, and people were listening to talk radio and cable news and then here comes the internet and the internet and like Elizabeth said, a lot of people would come in and say things that were false but they would pick up information off the internet. I don't know where they were getting it from but they were getting it from sources I probably never heard of or I never bothered to check out myself. I can't tell you where they're all getting their information from now. I was always hoping they were getting it from more traditional places because, again, we're back to editors, somebody who's at least putting some eyeballs on the content to make sure it's somewhat accurate but I worry about that and I would, some people like these other Breitbart and the Blaze and whatever the other, all these other news organizations are out there or they call themselves news organizations, they're out there and see, you just simply don't know and they will, and people will, and they get their information of course from the sources that they're comfortable with now and that just reinforces their existing opinions or biases and there are a lot of people out there who are seldom wrong and never in doubt. And you can't persuade them and that's a problem so people are siloed, they get their information from the source and they talk to people who are on that same site and they reinforce each other and it's hard to get them to turn the dial or to go to another site. And so I guess it's important to remember that maybe us in this room, our lives are all around politics and news but most Americans, they care about putting their kids through college and getting a pay raise and more ordinary everyday concerns and so the news that they're getting is two minutes here, three minutes there, they're not as focused on what roll call votes we're having on Capitol Hill or what depositions are even happening, right? I wanted to say something about what Tom was talking about because part of, with former members, some of the things we're doing at is looking at civics classes and sort of civic education and doing Congress to campus and I was thinking when Tom was talking it would be really valuable, I think, as part of civics classes to also teach the importance of a free press and teach some about journalism and actually have students do some of learning what does it mean to source something? What is that like? And you learn much better by doing than by talking about it so just in the way that I think part of that should be fiscal literacy kids should understand before they graduate from high school what it means to take on debt and thinks that we should do a better job of equipping young people to be educated, active, informed and effective citizens and part of that is understanding about what is the difference between source and non-sourced information? How is it that the Constitution, what is actually in the Constitution and what is not? What is the point of having a free press? Do you think most members of Congress have read the Constitution? I'm not gonna answer that question. I think the answer is yes. I do think it's unfortunate. I swear to God, I think half the people in America think a monument is some hand lotion. Like, oh, that's so good, it feels so awesome. Now, we should have like a collective reading and we do that, actually Congress does do that every year, which I've done which has a reading of the Constitution by members of Congress, but yeah, I'm afraid not, but. Reading and understanding. Reading and understanding is not just reading it. And didn't they just send it to a filibuster using the Constitution a couple of years ago and members went on the floor and I forgot what the bill was, they were filibustering, but everybody read parts of the Constitution. But there's an annual reading of it every year. There was the green eggs in him, the filibuster that I read every few years ago. Tom, how do we, if we look at history, a lot of people kind of forget that the media has been used as a partisan tool way worse than we're seeing now and with media outlets as kind of organs of the parties we had. Is that, what kind of lessons can we learn from that? I come at this from a perspective really of media or journalism where ethics becomes propaganda. That's where we end up. We end up malevolent outlets that operate without journalistic ethics seeking to tell a story and sometimes represent themselves as journalism is a deeply pernicious effect. And the possibilities of that occurring and I think practically it is, both outlets oriented towards the left and to the right is something that we need to be deeply concerned about. I know that if I speak to you, Dan, you're gonna write down what I've said. And if it's pertinent to the story, my words will appear accurately. And meaningfully, in a story, there are now people who will represent themselves as journalists who frankly would not do that. When you remembered were there ever times where you read stories and you're like, this is completely, even before the, apart from those controversies that you had, how often would you actually see stories that kind of miss the boat? Or you saw your, when you gave an interview to a reporter and you can't remember specific words that you told them. Oh, I think that happens. That happens from time to time. I will tell you the kind of thing though that really stuck with me about where we are now and it was just when I was leaving Congress and there was a lot of controversy in the Democratic caucus about whether Nancy Pelosi would be elected speaker and a lot of discussion. And so some of us who were not running for reelection were buttonholed and asked questions about that. I gave a very long answer about what I thought was really a challenge because the job had become so complicated and there were so many pieces and it's not just the horse race, up or down. No interest. No interest person turned and walked away. I was like, this is actually pretty important to understand what the different parts of the job are and nobody ever wanted to see Tip O'Neill on TV but now we expect the speaker to be on TV speaking for the party. It's become a very complicated and multifaceted job. And I thought, okay, well this is an example of a reporter who had a story, wanted to do the horse race, had a chance to actually have an extended conversation. He's like, no interest, nope, nope. I'm only gonna do the horse race. And that is frustrating when you see like, you know already, you get asked and you know what they're looking for. When the story's written, when I have a sense of story's written, that's when I usually just want the narrative. They know the narrative. That's when I usually don't respond. If I know they have a story written or one of these, there's some times I'll be calling you about a story where if you do respond, you will be the story. So who's gonna be the dumb person to answer the question? Because it's gonna be about them, whatever the hell, like congressional travel. You know what, don't even answer the question. But then it will stay in the story, did not respond to her request for comment. So what? So what? But that's one line. You don't think that's better? Don't you think decline to comment? How would you see if that would change? Because it's telling you, I've seen this like they've done stories, they want you to comment on something like that, you know, the trips you may have taken or if you do, you give a statement and you make like two sentences. That's it. And this is what I did and why I did it. And you know, or there are some other stories, like I'm just can't, I'm not thinking quickly enough there's a story that you know is gonna be bad and they're probably calling a whole bunch of members. The key is not to respond because then you become the subject of the story. Did you sometimes, if you had like a negative story, you would tell the reporter, don't, if you don't do that, then I'll give you a better story. That's kind of an exchange. You weren't that. I mean, they weren't that bad, but they, no, I just noticed that sometimes it's just, sometimes it's better just not to respond, especially to have a story. I'll tell you an example. I remember some reporter called me and said that I had traveled more than any member of the Pennsylvania delegation, which I knew was patently false. And I said, well, they said they looked at a couple trips over a very limited time that were privately funded and approved by the committee, the ethics committee, and they're all legitimate. They're, you know, run by good organ aspirin and, you know, the former members association. And I said, well, what about codels? And the reporter said, I mean, what's a codel? And I said, okay, well, that's how most members travel. It's government funded. It's government funded. And I said, oh my gosh. And I forgot the name of the reporter. I think her first name was Hope. And I said, she shall forever be referred to as Hope the Dope. She's writing the story of congressional travel and didn't know how most members traveled. And I said, oh, this is, and then I made the mistake of responding and trying to actually educate this person who really didn't know what she was doing. And, but it didn't end up, it didn't go well for me, of course. But the point is, I just, I learned that sometimes let them go. Let them go. I have two questions before we wrap up unless we have more audience questions. One for you, Congressman. The, you talked about how Trump uses social media and Democrats are not as aggressive and they, you know, they don't seem to have figured out how to combat and the media has played into that. What advice would you give to Democrats running for a president or just trying to respond to the president in terms of you want to kind of, you don't want to get in the mud, but you also don't want to say something on Twitter or into the media that is just totally ignored. So you need to kind of get in that conversation, but you know, how do you kind of make that, how do you make that balance? Well, there's reasons I'm not running for president. I think it's important to acknowledge and say something, especially if you feel strongly, it was totally appropriate for Brenda to say something about the lynching point because that is personal to her district and personal to her experience and those of many of her constituents. So I think you pick and choose those. But again, it's like Charlie said, one or two sentences. And then, you know, if, if you are not talking about your own agenda, you're playing on his turf. So it's like, you have got to make, you decide what the agenda is going to be and you talk about your own agenda. And it's not that you ignore that, but you segue and say, yes, that's true, it's terrible. And let me tell you, you know, you can't just spend 45 minutes talking about how terrible and what's the latest outrage because then the time is up and you've never talked about your show. On that point, like today, the news to me today was the Bill Taylor story. It shows them. It was a very compelling story. So then the president tweets out, you know, that he's the victim, I'm being lynched by all these Democrats. You know, in other words, it's a distraction. He wants this to be about him. So we're not talking about this Taylor issue, which so that's what I mean about discipline. You know, you got to, you just got to be able to know when to pick the fight with a guy. And I just see how he's a master at distraction, how he can just turn on that light and everybody floods to it when actually what they were just focused on was actually more relevant. And maybe, you know, more beneficial for the public to understand. But people also love authenticity. And so a lot of just regular citizens, they don't like the fact that members of Congress, they don't do their own social media, that they're not writing their tweets and that that's a problem for them because. Well, some of them do. Yeah, I know some of them do. But you got like Congress momentally, you know, in AOC, you know, the squad. The squad, they do their own tweets. But when I think people like Charlie and I would have, we talk to people about what do we want to talk about? Yeah, like all the things we want to talk about, what do we think is important to talk about? The only thing we ever put on social media, like I always told my staff, whatever's tweeted or put up on Facebook, it's coming off of something I had said or a public statement off of a press release. So in other words, I controlled the content. I wasn't physically doing it. Yeah, but basically I control, I knew everything that was going out and I knew it was something that I had said or I said, you know, could be. And that's the way we do the same thing in our office. The member is either a statement that she's okay or a press release that I've written or something from an op-ed that I've written that she's okay with. Moving on to the next question. Yeah, thank you. I'd be interested in hearing the panel's perspective on if you think the media's credibility is lower since you're all going to answer yes. If you think it's because the media is worse, they are legitimately less credible or if you think that the public is changed, that the public's perception of the media is because maybe we've become more closed-minded or less tolerant of facts that are inconvenient. So I'd be interested in your perspective on that. Thanks. I think the media, look, I'm only speaking for myself. I worked with CNN, but look, I think they try, I think they generally, at least the established ones, try to be fair and accurate. Sadly, I think that much of the public believes that all these news organizations have an inherent bias one way or the other. And so you take like, I would say this about CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they all have good journalists. I mean real journalists, each one of them does. And I think what's happened now is that people see, the journalists are on the same networks with the opinion people and people conflate the two. And so that's how a Shepard Smith or Chris Wallace could be seen as an ideologue or something when they're not, they're not. But they're on a network with some people who are, and you could say the same thing on the other networks. And I think that's unfair, but people have a sense that many of these organizations have an inherent bias one way or the other. When in fact, in many cases, they may not. And like what the Congresswoman said about President Trump and his power of messaging and his marketing skills, that he's, I mean, remember, he's a reality TV show person. So he knows how to do this. And he has dubbed the media as fake news or the deep state. And that has brought down public opinion of the media. The media hasn't changed, they've been doing their job, but that's brought down to public opinion because of that constant pounding and the reiteration of his statements. And I think you just have a reduction of trust in institutions across the board. I mean, we've seen that since Watergate, like all institutions. And I actually think we may be seeing somewhat of a resurgence on even around media. So some of it is lower, but some of it is also higher. I mean, the fact that you're getting people willing to pay for online news and stuff, I think there is some understanding in the challenging times we're in that actually a free press is really important. And we've got to figure out a way to pay for that. So one of the things I think we really do need to do is looking at pay models, pay models for media, pay models for social media, as well as journalism and find ways that those of us who would like to not be catered to but actually get news can find a way to do that. Hi. So I had a question regarding some comments made earlier during the panel. So you've each spoken in different ways about how commercialization has started to dominate journalism and that outrageous headlines are more beneficial for publications than truth and nuance and how accessible local news is suffering because of it. I'm interested in hearing from each of you, do you think informal rules of journalistic accountability and restraint are enough or do you think systemic reform is necessary? Static reform? I'll let the journalist answer, but that one. But I think journalists should be responsible for operating with ethics, but I don't think we need to do a systematic reform of how journalism operates. I think that would be something that President Trump would want for his own selfish purposes, but most stories get it right. And if they weren't getting it right, then Trump and other people who don't like the media, they wouldn't be responding as fiercely as they are. And so I think that when journalists get it wrong and then they get attacked by fellow journalists and so it's kind of, we have a self-policing mechanism and that seems to work pretty well. And so I don't think we need to kind of tear up the rulebook. Can I say something about Politico? And this is a guy who's a Politico reader, like religiously playbook a couple times a day and I read all these articles. But I've also noticed that like Politico and don't take it wrong, they got a business model, they like to drive clicks. And I never forgot they did something a few years ago that I thought was kind of cheesy if that's the right word, they had a headline. John Boehner reveals million dollar home. Well, he bought a house in Florida. He bought a house in Florida and he disclosed it on his financial disclosure form. You know, he bought a house in Florida and it made it look like it was untoward. But you know what, it drove a lot of eyeballs. I mean, and so sometimes I see even legitimate media and Politico is very legitimate. They do a lot of great work, not just here but around the world. But I thought, see, but they're trying to get people to the site. But you read it first, you thought that, oh, Boehner's hiding something, this has been revealed. People are interested in that type of stuff. I know, but he didn't do anything wrong. He bought a house in Florida and he put it on his disclosure and it was like, I thought I was gonna read a scandal and like, it's a big nothing burger. Stuff like that. Why did you think it was gonna be a scandal? No, it wasn't, I mean, but it was so sensational. Are you saying the headline was misleading? It seemed like the headline was that he'd done something wrong. And it was like, some of the stories are just, this is what happens, this is what happened. The guy bought a house. It's not like a 10,000 word investigation with his realistic purpose. Yeah, but it was kind of, yeah. But it drove a lot of eyeballs. But I do think there is a problem with local and state media. I do think how we get journalism. At the local and the state level is a challenge. And especially a lot of times at state capitals. Which may not be in the biggest cities. You have the final word. That's a huge problem. The collapse of local media is ongoing, accelerating the likelihood of, I mean, in Philadelphia, the inquiry is now a non-profit. Yes. Any media market below the size of Philadelphia, nation's fifth media market, I think. You can't expect money in commercial newspaper at a level that is going to satisfy commercial capital. The only commercial capital left is hedge fund owned asset stripping newspapers across the country. If there is a recession and there is a downturn in advertising revenue, we are going to need to look to new models. And I will, to the earlier questioner's point, there's an all hand on deck moment. There is a really, for me, an appeal to good journalistic ethics, innovation and engagement with audiences that is now possible that will really better serve the public. And frankly, I think there is a moment where we have to think and remake the sort of public interest media bargain just as it was done in 1968. So we have time for one. I think the panel for a very interesting discussion. We were out of time, and it's been very helpful. And I'm sure that some of the panel members may stay for a little bit and take some individual questions, but thank you very much for what you've done. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Go Nat.