 Well, good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to get us started. PJ Crowley, our featured speaker, is en route from the Department of State. So if traffic is as traffic is, presumably he will get here in just the next few minutes. I'm Frank Cezno. I am the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs. I'm also a refugee in the growing ranks of refugees from CNN. So I have had a great deal of experience dealing with global media and global reporting. And so we welcome to the School of Media and Public Affairs and the George Washington University today our journalists from other ports of call who now call Washington home and who are reporting from the capital here. The discussion today is cosponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Transatlantic Media Network and by our own Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. And we share a commitment to the issues sort of embodied in our names in terms of networking and communication. And we're very pleased to have you here today. And we really look forward to a terrific panel discussion and, of course, a terrific conversation with PJ. What PJ will do when he comes here is he'll speak for a few minutes, and then we'll take questions from the audience. May I just ask by a show of hands how many journalists do we have who are posted to Washington from other parts around the world? So a few here. Side, sides, OK. Thank you very much. We know we had several RSVPs, and I see some people outside. So we'll presumably be joined by some more. And students here at GW, how many have we got? Terrific. The conversation today is called Navigating the US Media. I think two words are a very good place to start. Good luck. Navigating the US media is becoming an increasingly difficult, challenging, and at times dangerous task. I have heard from more than one journalist based here in Washington who laments at going all across the capital and finding the great stories only to find that their editors or producers or those who are assigning them back in Paris or Rome or Tokyo are watching CNN International or Sky or some other place and finding the scandal du jour in Washington and reassigning them based on what they're watching as opposed to what is actually happening or being recommended right from here at the news organization's bureau. I can also tell you, and I hope PJ will talk to you about this, for those who are trying to cover Washington as a city and as a functioning, living, breathing national capital and global capital, that what you hear from different podiums at different agencies and in different buildings is very, very much subject to that building's peculiar culture. My year's covering CNN at the, covering for CNN, the White House, the White House press corps is unlike any other creature you'll find, probably on the face of the earth, but certainly unlike any other creature here in Washington. And what comes out, the kind of reporting that comes out, depending on the news organization that's conveying that reporting, is a very distinct breed of sort of open brawl and ideological debate and gotcha reporting. What, for those, and I'm sure most of you who are journalists here have experienced, the atmosphere and the purpose, really, in the press room at the State Department is utterly different. It's heavily laden with guidance. It's very deliberate. It's actually quite civil most of the time. And it takes on an entirely different thread. The reporters who are there, and as they represent the story in their media, which you are navigating, is also substantially different, reflective of the twin cultures of the beat and the news organization. We also find that, and I reflect on the challenges that must be present for anyone because, and we have found this through direct experience, that language is different. And I don't just mean the language that we speak, but the words that we use mean different things. When the term political reform is uttered from the podium of the State Department or the White House, it's going to mean something very different. PJ, come on down and join us. And I'm getting my wind-up and pitch ready to introduce you. It's very, very different than what is meant by political reform when it's spoken in the halls and in the meeting rooms in Beijing or in Caracas, heaven forbid. So what we'd like to do today is to really explore what it's like to navigate American media from the perspective of those who must make sense of this town and make sense of what the domestic media are reporting. For those of you who have not been journalists, I'm sorry to tell you that a disproportionate amount of what is reported is built on the shoulders of those who've reported before you. And I have been based overseas and I know this. The first thing that I would do every morning when I was in London was to read all the local newspapers, was to listen to BBC World, was to watch the news, to see what is being reported from my region and how it's being interpreted. How are experienced journalists, how are experienced columnists and commentators digesting and explaining the latest switch in policy or the change in tone or language that the president or the secretary or the minister are using because I need to take my cues. I am after all a visitor. I am learning as I'm going. And I'm trying to balance what the conversations I'm having with my sources with the background noise around me and the experience of those journalists who've been covering those beats for one, five, 10, 20 years. They must be smart. They must know things that I don't know. They also have connections and sources I don't. The other very difficult thing when you're posted to another place, especially in this economic environment, is you are often the only person there or one of very few. And you will be asked to cover by your news organization perhaps the flooding in the Midwest because that's a huge story or the latest Lindsay Lohan story because that's a huge story to your audience back home and by the way, the president's new development aid policy. So there's a lot of juggling and relying on these other news organizations around you is a way of leveraging yourself. You cannot be in all places at once. I'd like to introduce to you now the keynote speaker who is really uniquely capable of addressing this because he does this every day or nearly every day and has for quite some time from the podium at the Department of State where he is Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Public Affairs. I've known PJ for a fair number of years here now and I would tell you just as a personal matter, he is a person of great integrity who understands and respects the value of information and the fact that at the end of the day, the only thing PJ has, he's got a great title, but the only thing at the end of the day he really has is his credibility. But he also knows that he spends much of his day as do his aides, knocking down bad stories, dealing with people who've heard something online, a rumor in the hallway, or seen a headline in a periodical that may or may not actually be right. So just so you know, PJ is not only currently Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Public Affairs during the Clinton administration. He was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs before that. He has experience in the military and in the private sector and in the think tank world. So he brings a great deal of perspective and knowledge. So I'd like to introduce you to you, PJ Crowley. PJ, we'll turn this over to you. I will come back to moderate your questions with the audience. The last time I was on the stage, as Frank knows, CNN used to have a great program here called Crossfire. I was one of the liberal proponents or progressive proponents on the show and spent a lot of time on the stage getting yelled at by Tucker Carlson or the late Robert Novak. So it's nice to be here where the audience is sedate. Now, I'm confused. I thought we were here to help train or help foreign journalists who are maybe new to this country adapt to covering the United States. Now, the first person I see is my friend, Andre Sitov, who's been here for as long as I have. I should be sitting listening to you talk about how to cover the United States. My instructions were to talk about 20 minutes and then take questions. Since I just got off the podium at the State Department and I'm not used to actually talking for longer than 90 seconds before getting interrupted by somebody, I'll actually maybe shorten my opening comments a little bit so we can find out what's on your mind and I'll be happy to take those questions. I suppose thinking of what to talk about here and I know one of the questions is sourcing information sources do you draw upon to cover the United States and perhaps part of that is relying on journalistic sources that maybe think about the evolving nature of the news business here in the United States. Of course, on that score, I should be sitting there and have someone like Frank Sezno who knows more about the evolution of the news business in this country but in Frank's introduction, he was very kind enough to say that maybe I have my credibility intact but you didn't say I got this job because of my good looks. I suppose and this is my 30th year as a government communicator. It is something that I have spent most of my adult life involved in starting in 1973 when I was a second lieutenant in the Air Force and at that time the United States was winding down its involvement in Vietnam but there was tremendous tension in the relationship between the military and government and the media as an institution and for much of my career, I've spent a great deal of time strengthening or stitching back together again this relationship between government and the media because it is a fundamental relationship that is vitally important to our democracy. Now that sounds very lofty but it actually is true and when you do travel around the country as we do at the State Department, we're continuously monitoring the status of news media in other countries around the world for a very simple reason. Now in government as Frank said, I read The New York Times, The Washington Post at home before even coming to the office and at the office I get an inch thick clipping package that tells me what the US media have reported about foreign policy and then I get a briefing every day about 8.20 where we have an analytical team who tells us what the media around the country or around the world have communicated about United States foreign policy or what emerging stories that might find a way from somewhere over there to here. So we spend a good deal of time focused on only what journalists report but the status of journalists in a country themselves. We may have tensions in our relationship between government and the media that are built in to the media's role as the fourth estate and to some extent as the filter through which government communicates to its citizens and through that process we have informed citizens who can participate in our democracy. And as sometimes thorny as this relationship might be journalists do play a vitally important role in our society. And Frank will know first of all the American people may or may not be giving journalists today credit for this role. The opinion polling is pretty challenged when it comes to the public's appreciation of the role of the media in our society. And yet it is vitally important that every day when I stand at a podium like this I feel genuinely that the government is standing up and being held to account to explain what we did. Today it was the travel alert that we issued yesterday to American citizens who might be traveling in Europe. Why did you do that? What's the terrorist information? Why you're confusing everybody. And we should be involved in a process by which we inform our citizens about what government is doing on their behalf. Now in other countries around the world journalists have at least the same exalted position as they do in our society. But we do recognize that in various parts of the world today journalists are being jailed, intimidated or even killed. And that's where you start to appreciate that perhaps the central challenge of the 21st century when we consider how do we create a more peaceful and stable world is to expand civil society around the world and countries that are stable and peaceful are countries where there is strong accountability. And one of the institutions of accountability in a true democratic society is the role of journalists in being able to hold governments to account. If there's corruption they report it. If governments are serving the interest of a narrow cross section of the population but not the population as a whole, they report it and government is held to account. So we do, this is a vitally important role and that's why we at the State Department spend a good deal of our time helping you understand us and helping to show here in this society for the flaws that we do have. Our democracy is by no means perfect. But this is something that we think is important and so while you're here we spend a lot of time and energy and resource to enable you to cover the United States, understand what's happening here and then relay that perspective back to your citizens and to your governments. I'll be happy to talk about that. But it is a reflection of what I think probably the most fundamental change in the nature of our society is the expansion of media from a relatively narrow group think about it, in 1973 when I first became a government communicator you had the three broadcast networks plus PBS, you had many, many newspapers but a handful that were considered the true record of what was happening in this country and now 30 years later, we see in journalism a hemorrhage where no one's business model seems to be working and you have very good journalists who are gravitating out of journalism to other pursuits but you also have, we have less time to fairly consider how do you report and then more importantly, how do you interpret the news of the day in our pursuit of 24-7 news environment and with the advent of cable television and now the internet and now the blogs on the internet, there are a couple of phenomenon that have emerged. One is the news cycle is a lot faster than it used to be. Go back a few years and you had, the New York Times might or Washington Post might report something, that would be the first blush if you will, of the news of the day. Television might take their cue from these exalted newspapers and then news magazines which would print once a week would perhaps provide the perspective on what were the initial facts correct or if this happened, why it happened and what does it mean for our citizens. All that now is compressed. You have the news magazines who have moved from being weeklies to being dailies if they still publish at all. You have newspapers chasing television not the other way around and then with the advent of the blogosphere you have some convergence of reporting an opinion. So everyone's got opinion but that opinion may or may not be based on a credible set of facts. I think probably our greatest challenge today as a society is what news outlet can Americans faithfully go to where you have strong reporting standards and objective reporting to the extent that's possible. I mean every news outlet has some bias. At the extreme end now you've got the competition between MSNBC which is decidedly left and unapologetic about it and Fox News that is decidedly right and unapologetic about it. And then you've got journalists being interpreters of media trends, interviewing media but I would just simply say, don't hesitate to come back to government as a primary source of information. That's why we do a daily news briefing and inside the dynamic inside my briefing room is it's very interesting to see the evolution of the journalists who now cover the State Department on a daily or regular basis. I have fewer American journalists in the room. A lot of news organizations have cut back their staffs or actually eliminated their bureaus entirely. So I've got the first two or three rows are your traditional domestic press, the wires in the television networks you do cover the State Department although they cover it more now with producers not necessarily a non-air talent. And then in the middle of my briefing room I've got Indian journalists, Arab journalists or Middle Eastern journalists and in the back of my room the most patient are the Asian journalists and so my briefings go through two or three or four different iterations as I start with questions from the US press that I've got this interesting dynamic where the Indian journalists start asking about the Middle East the Middle Eastern journalists start asking about Pakistan and in the back my Asian journalists just want to know what are you doing about North Korea? Good question. But this is a manifestation of what has, what perhaps was a US media market 30 years ago and is now a true global media market today and the challenge for us is to make sure that whatever message that we are communicating at the State Department is echoed both at the White House and also at our far-flung posts around the world or by a civilian communicator and military communicator in a place like Afghanistan because if we are communicating a contradictory or confusing message and there's a disconnect between what's being said in Kabul and what's being said in Washington, that disconnect will emerge within minutes, if not hours just because of the true global nature of our, of the news business and government's role in the daily reporting of international news. So we spend a great deal of time that only making sure that we as a government, as a US government are presenting a coherent message and which is not to say that we at the State Department will look at the world slightly differently than my colleagues at the Pentagon and they'll look at slightly have a different vantage point than perhaps my colleagues in New York at the UN but it should be broadly speaking a consistent message that helps the Andres Seetoffs and Tosses understand what the government thinks and what the government is doing. So this is something that we pay a great deal of attention to. Everyone at the State Department understands the, that when their humble spokesman stands at the podium at one o'clock every day, I am communicating both to my citizens here in the United States but I'm also communicating the policy and perspective of the US government to governments overseas or to people overseas who are affected by what the United States is thinking and the United States is doing. But with that as kind of a backdrop, let me stop there and we'll get into a conversation. I have never done this before, Frank. I don't think you need to do that. Now normally I would turn to a curmudgeonly, crusty reporter named Matt Lee from Associated Press who's the Dean of our State Department Press Corps who kind of sits right off to my left and go, okay, you get the first question. But whoever wants to ask the first question, aha. PJ, we often talk about the echo chamber, one news organization handing off information to the next and I think in the context of being a foreign correspondent in a perplexing place and Washington has been referred to as that place, remember this, as where there are puzzle palaces on the Potomac. I spent 11 years there. Yeah, and it's often hard to dissect and there are in fact warring factions within an administration if you're trying to cover it nationally. Are there news organizations that people should pay no attention to in your mind? How does one determine, I'm doing my curmudgeonly thing, well, how do you determine what information is good and then what role, talk a little bit more about the role of the blogosphere in propelling some of this information around. Well, when I was in the think tank world, I was Fox News' favorite liberal which is a really interesting place to be. And I do still appear frequently on Fox because we're normally making them unhappy in some way, shape, or form. And I'm usually guaranteed I have a very loyal following on Fox and they now call the State Department sometimes even before I'm off camera. So the last time I was on Fox because the governor of Arizona wasn't happy with something that we had reported in a human rights report about the immigration law in Arizona and between the walk from the lobby of the State Department where some of the cameras are usually set up back to my office which is about a three minute walk. There were seven calls, you know, complaining about the administration's criticism of the Arizona immigration law. You know, I, it's hard to say. My children who grew up in a household of news consumers, I asked both of them a while ago, I said, so where do you go for your news? And the answer for both of them was comedy channel. You know, I always think about the admonition when John Edwards announced his run for the presidency and John Stewart said, well, you know, this may not count. I think what's, you know, what is important is that people need to rely on multiple sources. And I think part of my concern about the trends in the news business is that people don't necessarily go to multiple sources. They think that there should just be one. And so they rely on one and then they want to make sure that that one network or that one paper, you know, fits within whatever ideological frame they might have. No one should rely on one source of information because no one source of information has monopoly on the truth. I do think that the danger for us is that you are seeing a trend towards, you know, some reporting of news, but some definite advocacy within that reporting of news. The dynamic between, you know, Keith Oberman and Bill O'Reilly, I know them both, it can be fun television, but it, you know, but you have there two sources of news that are not fair and balanced or not objective. They have a point of view. So it's not that you shouldn't pay attention to what's on Oberman or O'Reilly, but it is that don't rely on any one outlet to be your only source of news. I think, and we're all busy people, but we have to stop and pay attention. Read a newspaper one or more. You know, listen to the radio, watch television, do all of those things. And then, you know, through that kind of digestive news, you get a strong sense of what is actually happening, how to interpret what's happening in this country. Go ahead. Hi, my name's Josh Reimann. I'm a graduate student here at George Washington. You had mentioned in your opening remarks that no one's business models are working anymore. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the competitive nature of the news industry today, and that effect that it's had on the quality of reporting, and also in your view, what are some maybe new examples of different models that are being introduced, different kinds of news organizations. One example that comes to mind is ProPublica, but different models that are out there. They've got a lot of talented people at ProPublica. It's a great question. I think that the advent of cable television and now the advent of blogs have put pressure on standards of reporting. We at the State Department are still trying to struggle with how to treat bloggers. Are they journalists? Are they offering a fact or opinion? And the answer is a little bit of both. But they are truly agenda setters. There's no question about that. Frank from his years at CNN, CNN starting in the mid-80s and certainly by the time of the First Gulf War had somewhat transformed how we look at news. News became more available to us instantaneously. Of course, now that certainly is true with the internet. The concern that I have is what does that do to standards of reporting? So now you have, it used to be that from that, and I know the older you get, the more you think about, well, it was always great back then. Well, it wasn't always great back then. Journalists in the 50s and 60s and 70s got stories wrong and they also got stories very right. But now you obtain a slight wrinkle and then all of a sudden, you're on air. And the government just dotted its eye or crossed its T, news flash. And the real concern I have is who now provides that longer-term perspective? Who steps back every few days and says, okay, this is what was reported. And in hindsight, this was right, this was wrong, this was over-hyped. This actually was more important, but we missed it. Now it used to be that news magazines did some of that. Now actually newspapers are doing a little more of that. But we need that perspective. And that's what's getting lost in this compression of the news cycle. And in the case of bloggers, and I have two that are in my briefing room nearly all the time, their stances of reporting are dramatically different. Now, but I can't ignore the blogger because he and she, these two cases, are table setters. If they report something which they might have heard from a source and their temptation is, okay, put it out there and then we'll call to react to what they put out there and they'll go, okay, well we'll add what you've said to us to that blogging report. But it is, if you're constructing a blog, it's just kind of, it's cumulative. We heard this, then we heard this, then we heard this, then we heard this. And if you pay attention to the blog all the time, then you make up your own mind was this, which in some time, frequently comes out of the category of rumint, rumor intelligence, more than fact. The New York Times has a different standard. I got a call from a reporter today, not from the New York Times, or from another reputable news organization, they said, I need a second sourced on this particular issue. And I told them, they had the fact right, but they were a day ahead of an announcement that we planned to make last week. And I just said, off the record, I'm not telling you you're wrong, but I can't be a confirming source, which then meant that they could not report the story. But there are clear standards of journalism before they report something, they want it to go through a rigorous process so that they are confident that what they report is as accurately conveyed as possible. Those are two very different approaches to news. Now, both of them can easily have a role in our society, but if you're only paying attention to the blogger and you don't read the New York Times, you're going to have a much different perspective on what's happening in our country. Andrei. Hi, my name is Andrei Sitov, I'm with us, the Russian news agency, which is now called the Tartar Sexual. First, I'm flattered that PJ, whom I don't know for quite a few years, actually remembers my name. Second, I once got PJ speak Russian, actually, on Russian television, I don't know if he remembers that. Second, I hold a government accountable, only it's not my government. I report from Washington, D.C. One thing I would argue with in PJ's presentation is he says, go to the source, go to the government. Go to the government spokesman. That's exactly what they want you to do. Don't do that. Don't do that, because the government said take it from a... As a government spokesman, I'm not sure I can endorse that philosophy. Take it from a former Soviet. The governments have their own agendas, not necessarily the same as the public does. By way of asking a question, I thought, actually, I wanted to ask you, when you were telling about that guy who called for a second opinion, was this the story about the atrocities in Afghanistan, the trial in Seattle, somewhere near Seattle? No, that was a different one, okay. But that leads me to my question. That's one of the things that the governments do. They suppress the things they don't want you to know about and hype the things they do want you to know about. And a good example in my book would be like this Guatemala story that somehow gets announced on a Friday afternoon. Even though it then, it probably couldn't be suppressed. The president made a call and it became a big story, at least internationally. But the State Department at one point actually tried to set up, maybe not a bureau, maybe a small organization for fighting rumors, malicious rumors, disinformation. And they even brought the head of that office to the Foreign Press Center, where we are based in the same building at the National Press Building. It was quite an interesting briefing. It led to more hype around all sorts of rumors. As an example, you all know the kind of rumors I'm talking about. At that point it was that the AIDS epidemic was government made, our days it's probably that the 9-11 is government made or whatever. So how do you fight rumors? You just referred that in the current climate, with the current sources, internet sources, it becomes even more prevalent. Nobody knows what's right, what's wrong. Nobody has the time to check. Everybody is in competition with everybody else. How do you fight rumors in that atmosphere? Thank you. It's a great comment and a great question. Well, I come back to what Frank said in his introduction. As a government spokesman, the only thing that I offer, I offer information and perspective, but I put my credibility on the line every single day. I have this August title of Assistant Secretary and Spokesman, but I also play reporter within my own bureaucracy. We have a process through which every entity, we will review the news of the day, we'll task to our policy bureaus. Hey, there's either stories out there or we know there are questions out there, need information on X, Y, Z. And then it gets constructed, homogenized, reviewed, and I get a piece of paper that goes into a binder that hears the perspective on the United States of America on this issue or that issue. And I challenge what's on that piece of paper every single day. I said this is not credible, this is not sufficient. What a Matt Lee or an Andre Setoff will be asking at the press briefing, I need more than this, or is this actually true? You know, do we know this is true? Because if I convey misinformation, then I've done a disservice to my government, but I've also compromised my role as a government communicator. I take that very, very seriously. Now, last week, one of the entities that sits within my bureau are the Office of the Historian, wonderful people, 44 of them. We had a conference on Vietnam. You know, the secretary spoke, Henry Kissinger spoke, Richard Holbrook, John Negroponte. But as we were setting up the program, I said we've got to have a media panel because the media did play a profound role, particularly in the latter stages of our involvement in Vietnam. And we had a great panel led by Marvin Kalb of CBS and the Shorenstein Center, including two significant journalists, and a government spokesman from that day. But Morley Safer of 60 Minutes was there and Bill Beecher from the New York Times was there. And three of them were telling all the horror stories about reporting on Vietnam. And then the next thing you know, they're subject to IRS audits and two of them appeared on the Nixon blacklist and so on and so forth. And I was aghast. Now, that was my government intimidating, bullying, lying to the media. It's one of the sorriest episodes in our history where Vietnam and Watergate converged. But part of how that ended up evolving was because government spokesman and then the administration itself eventually lost its credibility. So, Andre, my suggestion would be not to stop talking to the government, but your role is where you believe the government is lying to you and lying to your people to expose them and simply say, this is what the government says and based on our own reporting, this is what we see and where the credibility gap emerges between what the government is doing and saying and what people recognize as the reality on the ground. That's how eventually you get more effective government. It's the only, and that is the, but that's where journalists played a vitally important role in the context of Watergate in exposing government corruption and a conspiracy within government that led to a fundamental change in government. Now, conversely, when you think about the Vietnam, there was clearly a credibility gap between what was being communicated about the war and what was actually happening within the prosecution of the war. That said, there was at least one major time, for those of us who were old enough to remember the Tet Offensive, where the journalists covering the war actually got that fundamental battle wrong. Tet was reported as a defeat and it certainly had a psychological impact on our country in 1968, but Tet was a military defeat for the Viet Cong. They tried an offensive and that offensive was defeated by a combination of U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. So in that particular case, it was, whether it was a turning point in terms of public support for the war, you can argue, I think by 68, there was a clear breach between what the government was doing and what the American people were willing to support. But narrowly in that, the reporting on the Tet Offensive where it was actually, in hindsight, dead wrong. And that's always a risk in journalism. There sometimes can be a temptation to go with an inexorable trend. That certainly was the case more closely. The media reporting leading up to the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, not necessarily the finest journalism in our history. Yes, I'm Reggie Dale. I'm actually gonna be moderating the panel that follows, which I hope maybe you'll be able to stay for some of. With regard to the comments by our Russian colleague, if he doesn't pay any attention to government whatsoever, I'm not quite sure what he's doing in Washington. He could be in Palm Beach, he'd be probably better off. You should be in Des Moines, Andre. Two quick questions, one very quick, and one more logistic. If there's some, on the question of credibility and then deniability and so on. If there's something that the secretary doesn't want, the media to know, would she tell you and tell you not to tell them, or would she just not tell you? So that you could say you don't know. I'm sorry, I can't tell you. Incredibly. Perhaps I'll go on to the second one then. Well, I mean, my first response would be something like Rumsfelding, and they're unknown unknowns, and they're unknowns unknowns. I was for some years a correspondent here for a European newspaper, and for the technical problem was, it wasn't just technical, but one of the problems was that we had to produce reactions from the State Department before you'd actually held your briefing because of the time difference. I mean, we had to be signed and sealed by 11 or 10 or 11 or noon. Of course, we call the State Department, but very often not get the call back until the afternoon because they obviously wanted to wait to hear what you were gonna say. So the technical question is, is there some system for European correspondence, particularly because of the time difference, whereby they can get a reaction out of the State Department, where you have an arrangement that people can be called back, some sort of hierarchy of time according to their need and their deadlines. That's still an issue. Just to put the, we brief at one o'clock because it takes our bureaucracy, that amount of time to determine not only what the implications of a particular story relative to our policies and then what to say about it. We have tried to actually brief earlier and the system struggles to get a decent answer by 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. We spend about two, two and a half hours going through a process to prepare for every briefing. So there are times where we will miss European deadlines. That's a fair point. And we try to be responsive where there is breaking news and the need for at least some sort of early comment where we can have one. That's actually one place where the new media, even Twitter, it's amazing how much you can say in 140 characters. It actually can be useful. It gives you at least one line, just zip it out there and journalists will pick that up. In terms of what I know versus what I say, there's lots I know that I can't say. I meet with the secretary every day and we go through a few issues and she'll give kind of a strategic guidance and then we work from that guidance with others to okay, here's where we wanna be at the end of the day. And then frequently, it's not me who's communicating our policy, it's she who is communicating the policy. So frequently, she's out before the press. She wasn't today, but she will be in succeeding days this week. So we're both involved in that process. Within the context of what we can talk about, I'm committed to getting journalists as much information as possible. In the context of say today's story, which involves this travel alert that we gave to American citizens. We said, travel to Europe, go ahead. Just be cautious when you're there because there are people who are actively trying to attack our allies and our citizens in Europe. I can talk about that fact. I'm not gonna talk about what the actual intelligence is that we are working to try to defeat those people even as we speak. So there's always gonna be some things I can say, but as a spokesman, the guidance, I need to know what's behind the story so I can fairly interpret it so I can provide what I can, but not ever try to mislead anybody. I guess we could build on what the last question you answered was. As I see it, your job is to tell the public what the government wants them to know about American foreign policy. But there are times when the successful execution of that foreign policy depends on the public not knowing. Depends on the public. Not knowing. I guess a good example of that would be the delicate negotiations going on now between Israelis and Palestinians. So I suppose my question is, do you view the withholding of information as important a part of your job as the giving of information? And maybe you could just elaborate on that portion of your job a little more. Well, there's tension here. Some information is classified and there are people who do not have the appropriate security clearances that to be in possession of that class of information. WikiLeaks would be a perfect example of that. Now, I don't, you know, there are times where class of information will end up on the front page of the New York Times. I'm not gonna throw the journalist in jail, you know, because the journalist is doing his or her job. It is their job to unearth information and usually responsible news organizations, including the New York Times. If they are in possession of classified information, they'll call us and say, hey, we have this information. And after allowing us to have a few expletives, they'll go, you know, now, if we print this, is there an impact? And they will frequently open up where we can negotiate. You know, if you print this, we're not happy, but, you know, life will go on, but if you print this, then lives could be lost. Now that sounds dire and it is only because of how we get information. It's usually not the information itself. It is that information can come from people and when your sources are compromised, if there's a fact that only a handful of people in the world knew and that fact ends up on the front page of the New York Times and that fact came from somebody who was an aide to the president of another country, that person could end up, you know, injured or killed. You know, so that is not an idle consideration in terms of our ability to gain information that gives us a perspective on the world and that's largely speaking the reason why, you know, we have the classification system that we do. Now, do we classify more information than we should? Yes, we do. You know, that's the nature of bureaucracy. Now, there's different kinds of information. You talked about the Middle East peace process and we are in a delicate, you know, period of time. There's a lot of ideas being exchanged among the United States, the Palestinians, the Israelis. You know, most everybody, probably if they sat down and read through various accounts in recent days, they have a pretty decent idea of the kinds of things being discussed. Here, the challenge is that, you know, given the nature of the history of this conflict, if, you know, it's not that we're withholding information from people necessarily, it's because the more that is discussed publicly about, you know, what one leader might consider, what another leader might consider, the more public that exchange, the less likely that negotiation is going to be successful because there are groups and constituencies that are itching to spoil a peace agreement on both sides of the equation. So we have committed that the exchanges that we're having with the various parties as part of this negotiation will remain as private as possible. Now, we've been at this for about a month, you know, for the first two weeks, they did pretty well for the last two weeks as the negotiation, you know, the tougher and tougher and tougher it goes, we've had leaks all over the place in the last few days. But that's less about the actual details that's more about the dynamic, you know, between the negotiating partners. There are some things that if you're going to be successful, the less said and public, the better. That's just the nature of a negotiation which is normally, you know, confidential, but not classified. Okay. One last one. Go ahead. I promise this is an easier one than the ones you've been getting lately, so. My name is Henry Merleau, I'm an undergrad here in the School of Media and Public Affairs. My question is, earlier you mentioned that your briefings have been, that you've been getting less and less journalists at your briefings in the last few years. You said that in your opening remarks. Yeah, fewer and fewer US journalists because I think there were fewer and fewer US journalists. Okay, so right, my question is, as a future journalist, why do you think that you're getting less journalists? Is it only an economic reason on the part of the news outlets? Is it because the idea that maybe we shouldn't be going to the government for our news information? Or is it because maybe journalists can be getting information easier from other sources? And, I'm sorry. Okay. And if they can be getting that information easier from other sources, why do you advocate that they should continue coming to the government for their information? Well, people should seek information from the government because we develop an execute policy on behalf of you. And having an informed citizenry is fundamental to a democracy. So you should know what we're doing. You should, you know, people should be seeking information from the government. And then comparing, you know, what the government is trying to do with perhaps other experts who might say, you know, and of course, and we do have that, you know, in almost everything we do now. Healthcare, everyone's got an opinion. The economy, everyone's got an opinion. Energy, everyone's got an opinion. And foreign policy, people have opinions as well. And we do benefit in the case of foreign policy because we have informed diaspora in this country who both can tell us, give us a perspective on what's happening in a particular location. And they also become an interest group who help us in terms of, you know, I mean, we do operate within a political environment and people are lobbying the government all the time to do X, Y, or Z. And some of those things are related to policies on immigration or the economy or some other issue regarding a different country. So it's the nature of our system and it's how a democracy works. So, you know, people, if people are not listening to the government, then they're losing out on a perspective that helps them help us make informed decisions on behalf of the people. Because every two years or four years, you know, you vote and then in doing so, you influence the direction and policy of government. That's how a functioning democracy and civil society should work. So I hope that people do pay attention to what I say or what Robert Gibbs says or what, you know, Jeff Morell, you know, says at the Pentagon. And then there should be a vigorous debate. You know, and I do get, you know, I ask my analysts, okay, you know, tell me, you know, based on what I said at today's podium or the briefing today, tomorrow I'll say, you know, how did news organizations or even columnists or bloggers report on what I said? You know, and I said something on Friday regarding the Middle East peace process and today there was an op-ed in an Arab newspaper that said, Crowley is obviously biased in favor of Israel. I am. But, you know, it's helpful for me to get that kind of feedback. One day, not long ago, my wife calls and says the right wing is attacking you. Is there any reason why? What they are? And it turned out that I had actually said something and misspoken and then it got misinterpreted, then it got into the blogosphere and all of a sudden now Rush Limbaugh is commenting on me which is never a good idea. So, you know, I want to be in, you know, to be successful, I have to be in this process by which we say something, we listen to see how it was received and then that informs, you know, what posture we take at the podium on subsequent days. But it's all, you know, because policy has what we call a public diplomacy dimension to it. Countries will, you know, the United States leadership in the world is vitally important but countries will only follow the United States' lead if they believe in those policies. To believe in those policies, governments have to understand them and their people have to, you know, support, you know, that partnership or that alliance. It's not surprising that we, you know, one of the most vitally important relationships that we have on earth is currently the relationship between the United States and Pakistan. But it's a very complicated relationship, not the least of which is because the approval rating in the United States in Pakistan is below 20%. Why should a Pakistani politician support the current policy where the government is trying to build a stronger relationship with the United States if the Pakistani people by and large hate us? That's a good question. So it's not that we're trying to win a popularity contest but if we're going to have the successful prosecution of policy, then we have to have public support for that policy, whether that public support is in our country or that public support is in another country with which we have an important relationship. And my ability along with others to communicate our policies to build that kind of public support is an essential dimension of the execution of the foreign policy of the United States on that note. Thank you very much. Thank you.