 To our global audience streaming live, welcome to the World Press Freedom Day web chat in Washington, DC. Our program will discuss the role of fact-checking and its role in promoting media freedom around the world. I am Tom Smitham, the Deputy Coordinator of the International Information Programs Bureau at the State Department, and I am excited to be moderating today's event along with Yelena Berkovich, who will be taking questions from our on-camera audience at the Croatian Journalist Association in Zagreb. We are also joined by viewing groups, journalists, students, NGOs all over the world, including Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, organized by our embassies. This program is also being simultaneously interpreted into French for our viewers in Africa. Thank you to our partners, including the Brussels and Johannesburg media hubs. Viewers can start asking questions now in the chat space next to the video player on Share America, or on Twitter, using the hashtag WPFD2016. I'm very happy to see so many participants for this really important occasion. Journalists today have an important job and often work under difficult and dangerous conditions. As President Obama said last Saturday to journalists, your power and your responsibility to dig and to question and to counter distortions and untruths is more important than ever. And, you know, speaking as a public official, we don't always appreciate or even like the results, but I think we all agree that we're much worse off without objective and well-reported journalism. So it's pretty clear we think the issue is important. Our embassies and consulates consistently work to promote independent media that can report objective facts. We have programs in more than 30 countries around the world, and one of them happens to be in our host country today of Croatia. And with that said, I will now turn over to my good friend, U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Julieta Volznoyes for opening remarks. Congratulations, Julieta, on your coming up on your first year as Ambassador there. It's very good to see you from Washington. Thanks for that nice introduction. We're delighted to be co-hosting this event today with IAP and Glenn Kessler. Mr. Kessler, I am a big fan, it's an honor. We are also delighted to have with us here the President of the Republic of Croatia, Kalinda Grabar-Kiparovic, who will be sharing with us her thoughts on the importance of media freedom in a moment. Madam President, welcome. Thank you. We're gathering here at the Croatian Journalists Association to mark this important day. A special thanks to CJA President, Sasha Liković, and to our moderator, Jelena Berković, head of the Civil Society in Giova. This event has been in the works for many weeks, and I appreciate all of your assistance in making it a reality. We are joined not only by some of Croatia's top journalists, civil society organizations, and students, and they're waving right in the back there, and students of journalism, but also by again Glenn Kessler's counterparty, Croatia, Edgar Vigov, one of Croatia's very first back finding website factor breath. We're also joined by 19 other countries throughout Europe, France, Africa, and the Middle East. Today's event is first and foremost an opportunity to reflect on the pivotal role that media can and should play in helping to maintain the health of our democracies. A free media is an essential part of our democracy in the United States, and we strongly defend the need for free media all around the world. At the same time, we believe journalistic freedom must be paired with journalistic professionalism, fact checking, and integrity in reporting. No one can speak to those issues with greater authority than Glenn Kessler. It is fitting that we are meeting just moments after the Croatian Journalists Association gave out their annual awards to a number of Croatia's most highly respected journalists. A number of them I'm proud to say are alumni of our programs. I would like to add our embassies congratulations to them. They set the high standards to which all journalists, including in the United States, must aspire. So our focus today again is about media in the United States, both media integrity and media bias. So I encourage everyone on the panel and in the audience in Croatia and in the other countries to ask Glenn very hard questions. And with that, Mr. President, thank you so much again for joining us here today. You have the floor. Thank you very much, Ambassador Mojiz. Good afternoon to all of you. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you in Washington, D.C. It really is a pleasure to be here. And first of all, I'd like to thank the U.S. Ambassador here and the Embassy of the United States of America for organizing this conference on the freedom of the media, on fact-checking the truth, on the occasion of marking World Press Freedom Day. Freedom of the press, freedom of the media, is of course one of the most fundamental freedoms, one of the most fundamental human rights and the foundation of every democratic society. Thomas Jefferson said where the press is free and every man able to read all is safe. Of course, the media have changed a little bit in the meantime, but that still remains. And as president, I will always advocate and defend the freedom. Thank you, Ambassador Mojiz, for those welcoming remarks and thank you, President Grubakitirovich, for honoring us with your presence today. That's a really great honor for you to be here with us. I'd like to introduce our guest speaker here in D.C., Washington Post, investigative journalist and fact-checking columnist, Mr. Glenn Kessler. Glenn's an experienced investigative journalist and correspondent who writes the popular fact-checker blog for the Washington Post, where he writes statements made by politicians on a Pinocchio scale. So Pinocchio, as you'll remember, is a storybook character, a wooden toy whose nose grew longer every time he told a lie. Glenn, I pass it over to you to say a few words. Thank you very much. First of all, congratulations there to the award winners at the Croatian Journalist Association. And Madam President, I think your presence here is quite a testament and is very well welcomed. My name is Glenn Kessler, and I write the fact-checker column for the Washington Post. At least five days a week, I take a detailed look at a politician's statement and examine the facts behind that claim. And then I make a ruling, ranging from one to four Pinocchios on how truthful that statement is. It is kind of like a reverse restaurant review. But four Pinocchios is not something to be proud of. It means the statement is utterly ridiculous and flatly false. Now, on rare occasions, I give a Geppetto check mark for a completely truthful statement made by a politician. It does not happen often, but hope springs eternal. Now, I will readily admit the Pinocchios are a bit of a marketing gimmick. It is not especially scientific, and it is open to subjective analysis. The line between two Pinocchios and three is sometimes fuzzy. But I do find it to be a useful tool for maintaining consistency over the months and weeks of writing columns. Many other fact-checking organizations, such as Factograph and Coetia, have developed similar rating systems. I believe it helps readers understand our bottom-line assessment of the accuracy of a politician's statement. Now, in politics, you only succeed if you win. And after 30 years of covering government, politics and diplomacy, I have found there is little difference between the two American political parties on one key issue. They will both stretch the truth if they believe it will give them a political advantage. But that does not mean that voters or consumers of news need to accept that reality. One key goal of my column is to help consumers of news become better judges of fact-based statements. I want to help readers become more discerning about hearing the weasel words and caveats that politicians routinely insert in their statement in order to prevent a more rosy or a more dire picture than the facts would suggest. Now, I have run the fact-checker for more than five years after covering foreign policy, economic policy and politics in the U.S. Capitol. When I started, political fact-checking was mostly located in the United States. But in recent years, there has been an explosion of websites and organizations devoted to fact-checking political statements in Europe, in South America, Africa and Asia. It is really a gratifying development. The Duke University Reporters Lab, which tracks fact-checking, says there are now 96 active projects in 37 countries. That's a 50% increase from the year before. There is also now an international association of fact-checkers that meets regularly to exchange ideas and advice. We will actually be meeting in Buenos Aires in June. Now, the Balkans, of course, has been one of the real pioneers in fact-checking, dating back to the establishment of the Istonoma in Serbia in 2009. The Factograph website is very impressive, with a fresh and modern look. It takes a lot of work, a lot of hard work, to create a fact-checking organization and to sustain it. But I believe that dividends, both for journalism and democracy, can be huge. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you very much for that presentation. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to our friends in Zagreb to start the question-and-answer session. Elena, do you have a question from your audience? Yes, we have quite a few questions. I hope that we'll have a chance to ask them in the short time we have in front of us. Let's start with a quote from President Obama a few days ago and understand why. Around the world, some of the fundamental ideas of liberal democracies are at the top and notions of objectivity and of repress and of facts and of evidence are trying to be undermined or, in some cases, ignore it entirely. So this is a quote from American President Obama a few days ago at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And the question comes surrounding that Correspondents' Dinner. The fact is that the association that organizes such events in the United States is more than 100 years old as is the German association. But let me start with a question from Miss Sandra Bartolowicz from an online known-for-profit portal regarding this political culture in the United States and if you might be able, Glenn, to share your advice perhaps with us on how to get to that level of political culture you might have perhaps a president holding such dinners for correspondence or basically having how do you make politicians to have regular press conferences regular briefings with journalists so that they are able to ask the questions from their politicians. It is difficult to do the fact-checking to be a watchdog if such opportunities are not necessarily existent. Right. You cannot necessarily force a politician to have a news conference. But a politician, of course, does repeatedly have to provide information to voters, provide information to constituents, they have to speak to lawmakers. So I think the first step one would do would be to fact-check the statements they make in that spear. And secondly, you have politicians will often make promises. You can begin to catalog what those promises are and whether they have begun to fulfill those promises. Fact-checking trade is known as promise checking. So again, those are things you begin to vet and rate the accuracy of statements they make to key constituents, to lawmakers, whether or not they are fulfilling the promises they have made. And I think from there, you build a baseline that might require a politician to actually begin to answer questions. Because if you were able to document, for instance, that they are not fulfilling their promises, they might feel a need to explain themselves. So that's how I would go about starting that. Thank you, Glenn. Yelena, do you want to provide another question from Zagreb? Oh, I'm sorry. Can I just send you a follow-up question if it's possible? What would you expect, is there an advice for American journalism if perhaps a politician that you're trying to ask a question would simply refuse to answer or simply perhaps a spokesperson would make sure that the politician would be safe from asking questions. Would the American journalists somehow react together? Glenn, I think the question is how do you try to pin down politicians who are trying to avoid answering questions from journalists? Well, like I said, you cannot force a politician to answer your questions. And in fact, here in the United States, we face an interesting situation with a politician known as Donald Trump, who is right now the front-runner for the Republican nomination. He, to my frustration and to the frustration of other fact-checkers, he and his campaign do not respond at all to our questions regarding the accuracy of his statements. I mean, he is quite possibly the least accurate politician I have ever covered in 30 years of journalism. And on a daily basis, we will write articles saying why his statements are false and misleading. We get no response from his campaign and he continues to say the inaccurate statements, no matter how often fact-checkers say they're wrong. Now, I don't write fact-checks to change the behavior of politicians. I write fact-checks in order to inform readers and consumers of news. But in the past, generally in American politics, if I write a column and say, XYZ politician, your statement was worthy of four Pinocchios, they will stop saying it. There's a response. What's interesting about Donald Trump is that there is no response. He continues to say ridiculous and false things repeatedly, no matter how often they are fact-checked. So, I have not yet, myself, figured out a way to break through that and to have at least his staff explain to us why he says things that are clearly false. But we still have six months to go in the campaign, so I'm hopeful something will happen. All right, well, thank you very much, Zagreb, for starting off the program with those really good questions. It looks like we're going to have a robust debate here. And as you can see, we have some of our own challenges and intrigue here in Washington with our own political process right now. So, we're going to start taking some questions from our viewing audience around the world. If you do have questions for Glenn, please ask them in the chat space next to the video player that you see on your screen. This first question is from Aram in Ghana who asks, what are the best practices in validating or checking news leans and leaks on social media? Can you speak particularly to this time where government agencies, political parties, are increasingly using social media to communicate with the media and public? So, an interesting shift there, Glenn, from traditional media to social media, is ever present now in our political discourse. Right. Well, if a politician uses social media, that's as if they're making a speech. You can fact check a tweet. You can fact check a Facebook post. This is something that we do routinely. And of course, one of the ways that we disseminate fact checks is through social media. Tweets, Facebook, what have you. We even do Snapchat fact checks of presidential debates. In terms of fact checking things that appear on social media, this is an important role now for fact checkers because there is a lot of false information that appears on the Internet. So, there's, in fact, one of the original debunking websites in the United States is something called snoops.com. And they must do five or six fact checks a day to say what is false on the Internet. Is there any difference, though, in your work between fact checking what happens in social media each day and what is printed in a newspaper or on an online news journal? Well, no, I don't think there's that much difference. Ultimately, you're trying to find out what the facts are. Is the statement being made, whether in social media or in a speech or in a newspaper article, is the statement accurate and facts are facts. Generally, it should be relatively easy to find out whether or not that fact is correct. It just seems that sometimes there's a different standard between what you're planning to tweet out or put on your Facebook page and what you spend time writing and then gets edited and then printed in a newspaper or, again, on an online newspaper. Right. The standards seem to be a little lower from Twitter, but it shouldn't be. That's a good point. So we've got a question now from Poland. Tomas in Poland asks, how does a journalist keep up with the speed of information these days? Badly. It's amazing how much it has changed in the last 35 years or so that I've been a journalist. You used to be able to, you know, you would write one article a day, the next day, you would write a reaction article or something like that. Now you were expected to come up with an analysis or a statement even while someone is giving a speech. And then, on top of that, you have so many venues for information these days. You have traditional newspapers or television, but it can be blogs or social media. So the only thing to do is just not sleep. But let me ask you this. Does the speed of the turnaround in social media affect your ability to do the fact checking? So is it because of the turnaround time, how you have to produce your stuff so quickly as well? Well, I mean, I don't print until I'm ready and you have to guard against a temptation to print something that is half finished. But it does mean you probably write a lot more than in the past. Now the other advantage, though, of the internet is that it has made it easier to fact check things and you can find information more quickly. You can get instant access to government databases. So it's a double edged sword. Okay, thanks for that. We've got a question from Twitter in Maseru. What should be the role of investigative journalism in criminal investigations by the police? So what standards do journalists have when they're investigating or reporting on something that the police are also working on? Well, that's an interesting question. You don't want to be, ever consider yourself an arm of the police or part of the police investigation. And you don't, so you want to remain independent. There are, you know, journalists might occasionally find rare instances where they have information that the police would feel could compromise an investigation and that then is a judgment call about whether or not publishing that information that you obtained independently would compromise that investigation. I have, when I was writing about national security issues, there were instances where the State Department or the White House said if I published this information it might put American lives in danger or something like that. So you have to make a judgment call. But the best situation is, from a reporter's perspective, is you are independent, you are investigating facts that are new, that are fresh, and that you force the police to do a better investigation because you have found information that they had either failed to find or were not being aggressive about. So it's a good lesson in the role of journalism to hold investigators accountable for the stuff that they're working on. Exactly, exactly. Okay, we have a question from Tilal Ismail from a Sudanese newspaper. What are the best tools for fact-checking and how can you find out if politicians are making false statements? And I think he's also asking about the techniques that you use to uncover these false statements. Well, it really depends oftentimes on the statement being made. But the best statement to try to fact-check is something that involves facts. You cannot fact-check an opinion. Like someone may have the opinion that tax cuts mean higher revenues. That's a debatable opinion, but you can't necessarily do a fact-check about that. But if someone had a statement that when John F. Kennedy cut taxes, it meant there were higher revenues, well, that's a historical thing that you can fact-check and determine whether or not that is correct. So the first thing is to make sure you are fact-checking something that is really rooted in facts. And then secondly, it's just good old-fashioned newspaper journalism reporting. If someone makes an assertion, a claim, you go and find out whether or not it's true. Just recently, Donald Trump said that the ISIS terror group had control of the oil in Libya. So that's an easy enough thing to check. Does ISIS actually control only oil wells in Libya? It involved talking to people in the Libyan oil industry, talking to analysts based in Libya, reading news reports, and ultimately the conclusion was no, they don't control any oil wells in Libya and they're not making any money from oil in Libya. So I like that. You can only fact-check facts, you can't fact-check opinions. That's a good thing to remember. All right, listen, I'd like to go back now to Zagreb for a couple of questions. Yelena, would you like to start it off? Thank you. So going back to Zagreb, let's switch a bit towards, if that's okay with you, towards the challenges that journalists have on the political but rather the economic sphere. We listen to also, for example, Amy Goodman says, yes, media has the oxygen of democracy, but the corporate media is succeeding in ruining this US presidential election. So from that point of view, it resonates with British journalists, probably with journalists around the world, who are also seeing the shrinking of the invisible wall between newsrooms and marketing departments or public relations or lobbies. And a question coming from Slavica Lukic, the daily printmaker at Eutronia East, is dealing exactly with this non-transparent ownership of media. How does that affect journalists in today in the United States if you're a journalist who has to write their daily reports but having in mind the other businesses that have the owner of your media is interested in, how do you deal with those pressures? How do you deal with the pressures of, they call it's native marketing? I don't know whether it sounds English, which is something like a system of making journalists write commercials and take owners' interests instead of a journalistic professional standards as a priority. Do you have issues like this? How do you deal with that? So, thank you, Lena. So I think the question was two-fold. One is, is there, is the line being blurred between journalism and a marketing department? And also, what is the role of owners and the influence that owners have over their media outlets and how do journalists maintain objectivity when faced with owners who have particular opinions? Right, well, you know, the United States in general has had a different system of journalism than many other countries in that most of our news organizations do not have a particular political slant. You weren't necessarily associated with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. That has changed somewhat in that you have increasingly the rise of media here in the United States that is clearly associated with a particular political point of view. And that, I don't know if you would say that that is necessarily generated by the owners, but it's known that that's a political slant of that news organization, be it a network or increasingly on the web. But generally, most newspapers and television stations in the United States do not have directives from the owners or the publishers. For instance, the Washington Post is currently owned by Jeff Bezos, who is the owner of Amazon, creator of Amazon. But as far as I can tell, he has virtually no input even in not only in the news-gathering aspects of the organization, but also in the editorial page, which is a separate part where there is opinion and sometimes the owners will direct that, you know, I've decided we're going to endorse this particular idea or this particular position. But at the Washington Post, I see no evidence that either the previous owners, the Graham family or Mr. Bezos feel any need to insert their political objectives as part of our news reporting. Thank you, Glenn. I think it is interesting to note in the U.S. we do have this divide between the news coverage and the editorial page of a newspaper. So the editorial page is there for opinions, but the idea is that even as Glenn is saying with the owner of a paper having a particular opinion or view, the news coverage is supposed to be objective and independent. Yolanda, do you have another question for us? If that's the case, coming from Photograph, the callings by fact-checking, Peter Widow and Tania Despot. Well, it might also seem a bit different due to the European versus American approach to creation of media. Photograph itself is non-profit online portal. That's difficult to finance the occasional expectations from the audience, if I may say so. But they often, as authors, come to the need to maybe fact-check the media themselves more than the politicians. Because of the titles, the chosen perspectives or the complete lack of information in mainstream media creates very distorted messages and it's a problem per se. Do you sometimes have a feeling, a same feeling regarding American media? Would you mind perhaps sometimes starting a fact-checking for the media themselves? And secondly, if I may use a chance to ask a two-fold question again. Do you have a problem with perception of objectivity? We mentioned Donald Trump a lot. How do you deal with the one side of political aisle is usually more likely to represent, misrepresent facts and use falsehood in their statements? How do you deal with that discrepancy? Okay, well, there were two questions there. The first had to do with fact-checking the media. And it's not something that I do on a regular basis. It's occasionally, if there's been a misinterpretation in the media or if there's a, you know, anyway, I have enough trouble keeping up with all the statements that politicians make that I really don't have time to deal with the media. But certainly fact-checking the media is an excellent idea. There's a British fact-checking organization called Full Fact, which goes out of its way not only to fact-check politicians, but also fact-check inaccuracies in news articles. Here in the United States, there's associated with political fact. They have a website called Pundit Fact, where they fact-check statements made by news media figures on television. So that is certainly a venue for fact-checking and all to be applauded. What I have learned doing this now over the past more than five years is that there are lots of things in news media that is not accurate. And journalists can be lazy in terms of fully checking out whether or not something is correct. So sometimes politicians will come to me and say, all I was doing was quoting this thing that I read in that newspaper article. And it turns out it was really incorrectly reported. And then now I've lost the train. What is this? On political info, how to check different parties. One side of the political spectrum is acting differently from the other side of the political spectrum. Objectivity, yes. Well, I've been doing this now for more than 30 years. I may have personal political beliefs, but I do really stay completely objective about the facts. And I expressed before some irritation at the fact that Donald Trump's campaign doesn't even want to respond to questions about his statements. Yeah, that's a journalistic frustration. Actually, I would like to bend over backwards to be as fair as I can in terms of investigating his statements. And so I want to find out where does he get the information. You know, why does he believe this? And most professional politicians will quickly respond to my questions and will say, well, actually, we read it in this newspaper article. Or we believe this is true because of this reason, that reason, that reason. And then I can take that information and I can vet it and determine how accurate it is. So that's just, you know, my frustration with Donald Trump is that he's making it harder for me to do my job because they don't really respond to questions. And I think that's that, that does not help him. It doesn't help me, it doesn't help him. But I'm in terms of whatever, you know, whether, I don't believe either political party in the United States is more false than the other. You may have certain politicians who play fast and loose with the facts more than other politicians. But in both parties I find very professional politicians that are very responsive to fact checking inquiries are very careful about the statements they make are eager to participate in the fact checking process. And so I, you know, I think the key is just to remain completely objective. Don't even pay attention to who is making the statement. Just keep your mind on the facts. Do I recommend a quick internet search for Mr. Kessler? You will find that he's taken both political parties to task over over the past few years. Let me go now to our embassy, a question from Malta. And we have a question about if you have a verified source revealing something about a politician. Is it necessary to check with the politician before you publish the story? Sometimes it takes a long time and the story dies before you can get a response from the politician. Oh, well, it's an interesting question. Well, you should always seek a response. You want to give the subject of the, you know, your inquiry a chance to respond. So, I mean, I mentioned Donald Trump before. Before I write any fact check, I send emails or call his spokesperson to see if there's a response. But then if I don't get a response, I still go ahead and publish. You really want to give the subject of your story every opportunity to respond. And sometimes you can do it in many different ways. You could send an email. You could make a phone call. You could leave a letter at their office and say, I'm writing this article about this issue. But certainly you shouldn't wait forever until the grass is three feet tall. Eventually you have to write your article. Just make sure you've done your best to not only get a response from the subject of your inquiry, but also, I mean, you mentioned you have information from a verified source. I would try to get more than one source, get as many sources as you can, because one source may have a particular perspective, but other sources will be able to round out your reporting as well. So, do you have the obligation to check with the politician or check with the object of the story? Yeah, generally. There are not going to be situations where you particularly if you're going to say they may not mind it if you're going to write an article saying, hey, what that person said is completely true and factual and they're doing a great job. They may not know that. But if you're going to say what that person said is completely false and they're misleading people, then clearly you should be able to go to them and say look, I think you made a mistake here. What's your response? Do you often find that politicians are faced with difficult questions, that that's when you don't get the responses back from them or from their spokespeople? It varies. And it really depends on the politician. There are some politicians that are really interested and deeply interested in the facts and when we have pointed out this is not accurate, they will stop saying it or they will adjust what they're saying. And I have found that just in this, you know, President Obama tends to be that way. In this campaign Jeb Bush on the Republican side and John Kasich, another Republican as well as Hillary Clinton they all have with varying degrees responded to critiques that I or other fact checkers have made about their statements. It's a good example of the role of responsible journalism holding the politicians to account and actually getting them to change their behavior. It's pretty impressive. Okay, let's go to a participant from the U.S. Embassy in Maseru. How can journalists in difficult environments like Africa continue to report stories without self-censorship amidst rampant human and media rights violations? I'm guessing this is going to be a question from many journalists that work in difficult conditions around the world. How do you maintain objectivity when you're faced with threats against your life? This is a very difficult question and it's not something that thankfully I've had to face and to the journalists out there that are in those situations and trying to bring out the truth with such difficult environments, I salute you because you are the leading edge of journalism in the world. I think there are two things that can be done. One of course is you want to be rigorous about the facts. Now, not always will the facts prevent you from being arrested or being put in jail, but you want to be able to rely on the fact that you are being accurate. You don't want to make a mistake in terms of accuracy. So that means really double checking the information you have and making sure you rely on reliable sources. And then I think in some countries with nationed political systems of weak democracies I don't think you should engage in self-censorship but you might want to try taking baby steps on the road to under things that you report on. So as a way of ensuring that the subjects of your inquiry realize that you're a serious objective journalist are not necessarily trying to say anything that they would regard as false. So the subjects that you write about, could it be about things that are important to people in countries such as the quality of water supply, the economic environment and that would then allow you to provide a base, you fact check those things and you vet government claims about those particular issues and then you work your way up to more difficult subjects. Let me ask you a follow-up to that. What about the role of anonymity or being anonymous as a reporter when faced with those threats against you and your family? Well, I mean that is your option obviously and that may be what's required. Okay, let's move now to a question from Skopke. How do we protect ourselves especially the freelancers from bogus information and pressure and did Mr. Kessler ever find himself in a dangerous situation about providing two facts. So a good follow-up to the last question about being threatened have you ever faced yourself certain situations like this? Well I can't say that I personally was in a dangerous situation. Obviously I have reported from war zones and places, I went to Iraq I went to Afghanistan, things like that. It's not like the reporting that I did I was ever threatened with personal danger. I did have a couple of instances where sources of mine were put on trial or were charged with criminal acts for providing me with information that happened here in the United States and you know I had to testify in those trials in one case I testified on behalf of my source in the second case the trial never went the case never went to trial it was ultimately dropped but my source was unable to work for five years or so. So that's not dangerous but it was very disturbing and it was a case of the U.S. government at the time to thwart the flow of free information and it sent I think a chilling effect so that's the closest I could say come to danger. Different kind of threat I guess Based on this morning's conversation I guess Donald Trump hasn't called you up to threaten you or anything. No, not yet. He does talk about saying he wants to change the libel laws to make it easier to go after journalists would be certainly a disturbing trend. Thanks Glenn. We have a question from Ethiopia regarding African leaders and why do African leaders consider some books and publications as terror and imprison those who publish their opinions. Some Ethiopian journalists have been prosecuted apparently under some legislation. So this gets to the role of journalism in a free society and how you respond when you're faced with these sorts of regulations and rules. Right, that is you know there's no response but to condemn it. It's an outrage to use what is to declare legitimate journalism and you have this problem in a number of countries. I think in Egypt under the current regime this has also become a trend. And maybe this is a case where as you talked about before a case for amenity when publishing such books because anyway I don't know if there's a solution there except that I would hope that the United States government would put pressure on those countries to protest against it. Well as I said in some of my opening remarks it is one of the things that we focus on through our embassies abroad and this has just become a really important issue. And I think getting to the point that you raised earlier the key thing is that journalism responsible fact-checked journalism holds politicians accountable to account. And also as I think you said earlier it actually changed the way some politicians addressed facts and by pointing them out you noted that Hillary Clinton and others corrected themselves and that's a pretty interesting role for journalists in a free society in promoting the free flow of the nation. So it's pretty impressive that we're able to do that here and certainly we aim to promote that worldwide. We've got a question from the U.S. Embassy in the long way in some parts of the world investigative journalism is suicidal because journalists place themselves in danger. How can journalists effectively do their jobs when they are in danger? A friend in questioning from some difficult places and do you have any further comments on what journalists can do to protect themselves or what responsible journalism looks like when you actually are under threat? Well I go back to what I said before which is you have to rely on the accuracy of your information. That is the ultimate badge that you the ultimate journalistic badge that you can have. It may not prevent you from being put into jail or being threatened but it does mean that you at least are able to go forward with the truth on your side as opposed to the government. Okay, thanks Glenn. We have a question from our Embassy in Rabat asking about the role of fact-checking and how it affects politicians. It affects politicians negatively it can presumably affect politicians positively. Have you had some experiences either way where you've seen a positive or negative effect on a politician? Maybe take the presidential campaign as an example here. Okay, I can. First of all to the Embassy in Rabat I actually I want to say hello because I spent a week in Morocco training people on how to be fact-checkers and so that was a great experience and I did that with the help of the State Department. So anyone else out there want contact your State Department at your local U.S. Embassy? Well, I think one problem that Donald Trump faces as he goes forward with this political campaign is that he has earned a reputation for not being accurate and I think in part that is because of the repeated errors he has made in his statements. So I don't think that presents a positive image as he goes forward. My colleagues at Politifact actually they do a thing once a year called the lie of the year and for 2015 their lie of the year was simply all the statements by Donald Trump. Now at the same time he's been successful at least in terms of gaining votes in his political party and he doesn't seem to care that much about that. So for the United States it's a really interesting test as to whether or not someone who has earned so many negative ratings for his factual statements whether they can do well in a general election. So I think like I said, my goal is not the change to behavior of politicians. My goal is really just to inform voters and consumers of news whether political behavior changes as a byproduct whether or not voters punish or reward a politician based on the accuracy of their statements. That is a byproduct. But the main goal is simply to get the facts out there so that people can make more informed choices. So I think we have a really good follow-up question from Lisbon and Lisbon viewer and Lisbon asks what is the most accurate of this year's presidential candidates? I think we've dealt with the most inaccurate. Right. I don't necessarily sit there and keep track of it. I would say generally for instance look at it this way. For Pinocchios 70% of the time that I have rated Donald Trump he has received four Pinocchios. By contrast about 15 to 20% of the time that I have rated Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders Jeb Bush John Kasich and four Pinocchios. And those four are all pretty much in the same category. 15 to 20% which is an average Pinocchio rating of like a two or so whereas Trump is just kind of off on the other side of the scale. Ted Cruz who is one of the remaining candidates left he has gotten four Pinocchios about 27 to 30% of the time. So you can see there's a pretty big range there between Donald Trump and the others. So I can't say that anyone is the most accurate but also I would say that the other politicians are also willing to respond and alter their talking points based on fact checks which is I think to their credit. Okay Glenn thank you very much. A question from the U.S. Embassy Party in Djibouti does the press sometimes cover up the truth to protect powerful people? Well yes it certainly does happen. It shouldn't happen. I have never done it. I don't think the Washington Post of course is known for its investigations such as the Watergate investigation which led to the resignation of a U.S. president. So that is obviously a good example of where powerful people were not protected but yes unfortunately it does happen. Let me ask you this though I think you alluded to it earlier. Does the press sometimes hold back on a story because it might affect an operation or an investigation and is that also protecting powerful people or is that just protecting the sanctity of the investigation or the Right I don't think that is this that's not a question of when I think of protecting powerful people it means when you have information that would be very damaging to a particular politician or business executive and you choose not to print it until you know it is correct. That's wrong. Now I did have I mentioned when I was covering national security for instance I discovered it had to do it had to do with operation in Iraq and it was a pretty good scoop I had and the White House came and said if you print this you will put American soldiers lives at risk because the people that we are about to attack don't know we're going to attack. So we debated that at the Washington Post what do we do with that do we honor that request or do we not and ultimately we agreed to not run the story at that moment but to publish it in the middle of the night just as the operation was set to begin so therefore I still had my exclusive scoop but it didn't in some way tip off the people who were as part of that operation. So different from protecting powerful people it's just protecting well right and I didn't want to have tip off someone who could hurt an American military soldier. Okay so we've got a question from the U.S. Embassy in Conakry how do you manage rumors especially when they are issued by senior officials who often want to divert the attention of the population so this is your wheelhouse of fact-checking right here how to debunk and deal with rumors well again it gets to basic journalism you have to report it out and make sure if the rumor is true or not you know the question seems to me to be more about if a politician is trying to spin you to do something like how you just you always have to be skeptical you know and you have to you have part of good journalism is developing reliable sources and over time you will learn who provides you accurate information or who is trying to spin you so when I was covering the State Department which I did for nine years over time I would develop I would realize there were officials who would not spin me even if it was the information they were telling me was not something that they were happy about or something that they were confirming was not necessarily something that would enhance their policy so those were people I had learned I could trust whereas there are other people that unfortunately when you went to them so you develop that over time and you determine with this person because they told me correctly this fact six or seven times this is someone I can trust whereas that person I can't Glenn I will never try to spin you I'm too scared of your fact checking so this question comes from Lisbon would you agree that the pressure of time is the strongest opponent of your thinking any tips to overcome it I'm guessing this has to do with the issue of politicians delaying their responses and not right well I mean if you think you have the facts nailed down and you've given the other side an opportunity to respond to it then you should publish but you know simple as that you can't wait forever for a response okay continuing on a theme we have honorine in barundi who asks what would you advise journalists who are reporting about security issues and political crises well I take this another way to look at this issue one is you as a reporter have gone to Afghanistan and have reported on difficult crises difficult situations you have another side and some of the questions have alluded to it where you've got reporters in a country reporting on crises and difficult situations in their own country who are under threat so there seem to be two different ways to approach this question how do you look at the reporting on crisis and how do you report on crises when you personally are under threat right well and as we've discussed there are no hard and fast rules there's no unfortunately there's no shield you can have that will protect you except the integrity of what you do but in terms of a political crisis that is that is a situation that can involve lots and lots of rumors and you don't want to get in a situation where you are simply reporting rumors or publishing rumors without making sure that you are verified what's really happening and it's also going to be a fast moving situation but it's more important to get the information right than to get it first and that's really critical every journalist likes to have a scoop every journalist wants to be the first but I've learned from bitter experience that in the rush to be first if you're not completely you have everything nailed down you can get it wrong so you don't want to do that so how do you do that in really fast moving political crises journalism is often called the first draft of history which means that there can be second and third drafts that are more accurate and looked at in the fullness of time so how do you try to get the facts out that you know at that time to be as accurate as possible when the political winds are shifting all the time one of the things is to be very transparent about how much you really know so you don't want to state it is absolutely certain that the vice president resigned because of this particular reason you should say and document it two sources said this was the reason a third source said that they thought it was for another reason a fourth source said so if you lay it out and let your reader or your viewer know that you don't have all the information yourself and you're still gathering it but this is the most plausible explanation that you have found and this is what appears to be happening and then of course if it turns out that you actually printed something that was not right then you have to be forthright and say yesterday we reported the reason was such and such but it turns out upon further investigation that the reality was more nuanced and this is actually what happened so laying it all out allows you to fact check yourself the next day right exactly and also when I say transparent I hope that's not too colloquial but that's a a journalistic term here in the United States where you are saying this is why we know what we know and a lot of times in my fact checks I take the reader along with me on the investigation let them know where the information comes from how that information was obtained yep thank you Glenn we have a question from Lesotho which is pretty interesting because it has to do with how do we fact check financial statements and reports that are sometimes wrong and distorted so how do you fact check facts that are wrong so when you presented with something purporting to me the facts and an auditor has stamped on it the fact then how do you go deeper well several things there we haven't spoken much about experts but obviously financial experts can be a particularly good source of expertise that you can rely on no journalist knows everything about everything so you should put together a group of experts that you can rely on in terms of audit statements you know I would take those statements to people that are familiar with financial statements and see whether or not they can determine how accurate it is of course if it's completely false then you have to look for other sources of information to determine and to demonstrate why that might be false now one thing that has been a real wound for investigative reporting are things such as emails if someone is cooking the books they might be admitting that in emails so if you can get your hands on emails or things like that that would document that this is increasingly in the United States a lot of financial investigations are revealed through email exchanges so do you have a network of experts that you know to when you come up against a question that you're not sure about not just sources but you go to financial experts or you go to polling experts exactly I've written about many different subjects in my time in Washington but I don't know everything about everything Glenn used to cover the State Department as he mentioned keeping us all honest so we have a question about the political actions of certain politicians around the world to close TV and radio stations because they've been objective and professional in their jobs by reporting about illegal activities of those politicians so this gets to I guess an earlier question about the ownership and the regulatory and oversight structure of media companies what's your view of politicians meddling in the news I can kind of answer that for you I think but how do you view the actions of certain politicians to take down newspapers or websites when they've printed negative things Right or in the case of what the writer said objective things objective truths I think it's a terrible trend I mean what I've always done, been doing in Turkey is a very disturbing trend the Turkish press in my experience has always been very vigorous and and working hard to get the facts out there and to shut down newspapers or to put publishers on trial simply because they printed the truth is outrageous and you see you've seen similar crackdowns in Russia under Vladimir Putin since he came back as president and these are all very disturbing trends that need to be condemned and combated Thanks for that we've got a question from Puerto Rico what is an example of a U.S. journalist who has been reporting false statements by politicians for years without their feedback so I guess without going back to the politician himself or herself to check about the statements that this person's been making do you have any ideas on I'm not familiar of any U.S. journalist that would do that I mean there are three main fact checking organizations in the United States the Washington Post Politifact, factcheck.org and we always all go to the politician or their staffs and say please explain yourself Is there anything more from Croatia? Yeah, they're coming up A viewer on Twitter from U.S. Embassy in Kolkata asks how does yellow or sensational journalism affect the real journalists in modern times well you don't it's amazing how one really bad case of journalism can really affect all journalists and you have examples in the United States of journalists who invented articles we have a very famous example at the Washington Post actually won a Pulitzer Prize which is the top award you can get in the United States for journalism and this was about 25, 30 years ago and it then turned out she had invented the entire article not a single thing in it was true and the Washington Post had to give back the Pulitzer Prize so and that was very damaging not only for the reputation of the Washington Post but for the reputation of American journalists so unfortunately there are always bad apples in any group of people but when you have a rotten apple like that in journalism it affects everyone So we have a big tradition in the U.S. a legal tradition of freedom of information so in the U.S. as maybe many people know you can request information from the government that might have been either confidential or just kept out of the public eye so we have a question from LeLongwe asking about how do you fact check effectively when there is an absence of these types of freedom of information laws and how do you get information out of government bodies that you need to make sure that your stories are accurate Right This is a very difficult problem in some countries though I have to say that the Freedom of Information Act does not work as well as it should here in the United States I have I once filed a Freedom of Information Act request for some information I didn't get the information for 10 years took that long so it's not doesn't work flawlessly here In this case I think what you need to do is try to develop sources in those government bodies and have them provide the information to you on a discrete anonymous basis The second problem is you don't know whether or not that information is going to be accurate there are some countries where manipulation of government statistics is the standard and you can't trust the statistics that are being reported by the government or even statistics that are within the government so there you might be required to come up with your own statistics and that would involve maybe collecting information from certain districts or certain towns in order to verify information put out by the government on a general basis So we have another question from Embassy Maseru and we kind of talked around this issue a little bit and this questioner is asking about corruption and how journalists can report on corruption in a way that would effectively influence leaders to act to clean up their act I guess Well if you expose corruption and you get a wide notice of that corruption then obviously you might be able to force a reaction from the leaders Is that a good story for journalists to get like a good political corruption story? Well, yeah, obviously you can see in China for instance the press there is fairly regulated but reporting on corruption some very unbelievable corruption cases has led the current president to have a crackdown on corruption now he may be doing that in part for his own political ends manipulating the corruption you know cleanest political house but you do see a cause and reaction there where the corruption cases were so extreme that even in a one-party state it there was political pressure to do something about it Alright, well thank you Glenn we've had a great number of questions coming from all around so I will now go back to our friends in Zagreb for a final question Elena? Hi and the big hello to friends from Skopje and Warsaw they already took some of our questions that were being planned to be asked here especially regarding the sensitivity of the American public the American audiences towards politicians who you spend in public okay we'll have to wait for the for American presidential elections to finish maybe to get the specific and the correct answer to that question so let me move on to the perhaps I guess last question that we have Glenn if that's okay with you to try to tell us how you see the structural challenges that journalism in the United States has today regarding the political and economic pressures perhaps and other pressures what do you think if our countries would be able to continue on the pro-democratic development in our futures what sort of challenges might we get can we compare anything according to your experiences in the United States what are the challenges for journalism today in America thanks Glenn is to be stated for our global audience I think the question is about the political and economic challenges that the profession of journalism faces right now in the United States and if you have some thoughts about that right well this in the United States grave financial challenges the internet has destroyed the economic model for both newspapers and television stations the Washington Post is now owned by one of the richest men in the world you know I think last week his net worth increased by five or six billion dollars so we certainly have an owner who has the resources that will allow us to try to figure out how to create a new economic model but right now the economic model for journalism in America is broken no one is able to figure out how you transition from print to digital media the same problem is faced by television stations and in fact there have been allegations made that one reason for all the excessive coverage of Donald Trump is because he drives higher ratings and that's because the networks are so desperate to earn more revenue and there have been critiques that the American political process has been twisted because there's constant coverage of the same but not the others and that's because the networks have been driven by ratings so the financial pressures are a very serious problem at the same time the there is greater opportunity for journalism now because there are so many different venues for people to get information so there's always have the Washington Post and the New York Times other big newspapers and a few networks now you can you can read Buzzfeed or you can go to the Huffington Post or you can go to all sorts of news organizations that didn't exist before they were very in quality and I'm not sure they make much money either but there is a profusion of news outlets and that's because of the way the organization means more aggressive journalists so where that leads I don't know it's the cliche time will tell the end of every state department cable but in this case we are in a very difficult financial situation and the US such as the Washington Post have well healed owners but whether or not they will be patient is unclear it's interesting if you grew up in the United States when I did Sunday morning the newspaper would arrive and it would be about this thick full of advertisements classified advertisements and now if it arrives it's like this I'm interested in the note of optimism that you provided which is the ability through different media to get other views out and for bloggers and online journalists to provide other types of information and other types of commentary and comments on the political process so maybe it's not maybe there is a balance of optimism and pessimism about the business model right well it's impossible to make money right now but it's never been less expensive to start up a news organization so Glenn we just have a few minutes left I'd just like to give you an opportunity if you'd like to wrap up or if you have anything else you'd like to say before we close this really interesting session alright well I appreciate the time and I appreciate all the interest around the world I think that fact checking provides a terrific opportunity for journalists particularly in countries that do not have strong traditions of investigative journalism or strong traditions of democratic governance as a way to push forward and delay the basis for something bigger and so I'm available I'm easy to find on the internet or at the Washington Post I'm available to answer anyone's questions from anywhere in the world if you want more information and you know thank you very much to the State Department for setting this up thank you to Croatia and the Embassy there and to the President I think that it's a testament to what Croatia is doing is really a model for how other countries should be approaching this Glenn you know thank you very much for that presentation and the really great answers to our audience's questions I think I'm a little bit more knowledgeable about fact checking and I know I got to watch myself now a little bit more in my daily work so thank you for that I want to thank all our viewers for participating in our World Press Freedom Day virtual program I really want to give a big shout out to our embassies that have organized viewing parties for this event just a few as you probably have heard through the questioning Madrid Puerto Rico Skopje Malta Lisbon Djibouti Conakry Banjul Sudan Pristina and others I'm not going to go through the rest of the list here and I want to give a special shout out to our embassy in Croatia Ambassador Noyes the journalists who assembled there your participation has been terrific and we really couldn't have done this without you