Transcript
MR. STEPHEN HESS: Good morning and welcome to the tenth program in the Brookings/Harvard Forum on the role of information and media in the war on terrorism.
I'm Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. I co-host these programs with Marvin Kalb who sits under the appropriate banner over there, the Executive Director of the Washington Office of Harvard/Shorenstein Center.
This is an appropriate moment for this particular panel because it was one year ago this week that the final report of the United States Commission on National Security was released. This report, the last of the three reports, has become quite famous in retrospect. You'll recall that it's the report that said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers, and went on to recommend that the government create a National Homeland Security Agency.
Marvin and I then looked for that evening's news on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC's Nightline, the next morning's New York Times, Washington Post, and there wasn't anything there. And that really is the conundrum that we're dealing with.
MR. MARVIN KALB: The Washington Post did.
MR. HESS: The Washington Post, because Mike Getler is its Ombudsman, is somewhere in our audience. It should be noted that The Washington Post did cover the story. But it was uniquely absent for a story that had this much ultimately to tell Americans.
So today we have a panel of one person who is uniquely qualified to tell us what the Commission did to try to bring itself and its report to the attention of the American people, the co-chairman of that commission, Warren Rudman.
And we have three panelists who are uniquely qualified from long distinguished professional service to tell us why the media may have missed it and what all of this tells us about the state of the media. They are Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today; Bob Schieffer, the Chief Washington Correspondent of CBS News and also the anchor of Face the Nation; Tom Kunkel, the Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Maryland and also the President of American Journalism Review.
I should say one thing before I let Marvin shoot a softball question to Warren Rudman. Warren Rudman's work on national security alone would merit a Presidential Medal of Freedom, but it is just the tip of the iceberg in comparison with his deep knowledge of government. Rudman is a Republican, but he is accepted on both sides of the aisle as a national resource on truth-telling. Those are not my words, by the way, I am quoting from?
SEN. WARREN RUDMAN: Did I write them? (Laughter)
MR. HESS: These were written by Paul C. Light, Director of Governmental Studies Programs at the Brookings Institution and they appeared in Government Executive Magazine December 1, 2001. I want you to know that we know you and appreciate you around here.
Marvin?
MR. KALB: Senator Rudman, in light of what Stephen just said, you're not innocent to the ways of Washington or the press. You had what you considered to be a big story in the report, had it ready for the press on January 31st last year. In anticipation of the actual release, what did you do to sell it to the press, to alert them to the fact that this was something special?
MR. RUDMAN: Marvin, that's a great opening question because just for the background of the audience, this was a congressionally mandated mission with an extraordinary panel of people which mirror imaged Truman/Marshal's 1946 study of the balance of 20th Century in which there was a total reorganization of the security apparatus after World War II. Knowing that this was a difficult story to understand and it covered all of national security not just terrorism, we set out with some good advice from some professionals to go out and tell that story mainly to the print media.
MR. KALB: When you say professionals, do you mean journalists who told you or professional PR people?
MR. RUDMAN: We hired a professional PR firm in the second year because obviously the executive director was a retired four star Air Force general, that was not particularly—He was good at dropping bombs, not at PR. We went to Editorial Board meetings with all the major media that I can recall.
MR. KALB: The Times?
MR. RUDMAN: Oh, yes. The Post, Bureau Chiefs of various enterprises here. We did talk to the television media as well. And we kept everybody updated on our progress since the first report which was essentially looking in the world, that was '99, what we laid down as the problems in 2000, and the 2001 report you refer to was the list of recommendations covering the entire apparatus. So I thought we had done everything that we should have done. Knowing that it was a story that had no immediacy to it and I've often felt in dealing with the media unless you can create an aura of immediacy we're going to have a hard time getting off the classified page.
But the most striking thing to me, and we've discussed this, and then I'll finish here. The most striking thing to me was we did advance briefings of major players in the Congress—Senate and the House. And when we had our roll-out in the Mansfield Room, Room 207 of the Senate, not only was all of the commission there but we had uniquely a number of major players in armed services and intelligence and foreign policy from both the Senate and the House who stood, if you will, shoulder to shoulder, and we proceeded to do this briefing.
With all due respect, I mean I've been around the town a little while, and I've never seen a better presentation than that one. Anyone who was listening said hey, these people have come up with a number of incredible recommendations and we ought to pay some attention to them. I've got to take a shot here I normally take. The New York Times is called the newspaper of record, and I guess that's probably true. They had a reporter there. I won't name him. It's not important.
The reporter walked out about ten minutes before the end of this briefing and one of our people caught up with him and said what's the problem? He said there's no story here. They said what do you mean, there's no story here? He said there's no story here. I mean in terms of immediacy I suppose there wasn't. The thing that shocked me more than anything else, the Post did a story, it was a good story, you wouldn't expect more than that really, but the first time anybody knew of the Hart-Rudman Commission was on the morning of September 12th when a very good New York Times reporter who obviously, this wasn't his beat, wrote an expansive story on what we had done.
With all due respect, although there wasn't immediacy, it deserved better treatment than that.
Let me just add one thing. The wire services did a good job. I read about it in my New Hampshire paper. All the other papers in the heartland of America ran something about it but not the major media outlets, which is probably just as okay because the American people at least read it, the opinionmakers, unfortunately, didn't.
MR. KALB: We're trying to understand what it is that makes the press work as it does. Just going through the nexus/lexus, what I came upon that day, right after that large news conference that you just talked about, there was a CNN report that was done. Chris Matthews did a long piece on it that night on Hardball. Charles Osgood on CBS Radio did a piece the following morning. Norm Kempster of the LA Times did a substantial piece. And Steve Mufson of The Washington Post did a substantial piece. Other than that in the major news organizations, I didn't find anything anywhere.
How is one to account for that? From the point of view of newspapers, television, and you now as a Dean looking down upon it all. Susan, start us off. How does it work that a story of this magnitude would be "news"?
MS. SUSAN PAGE: Well, what USA Today did that next day, I know from looking at our clips, is a brief, and I'd like to thank Paul Evitt, the editor who does the briefs so we had at least that in the paper the next day.
I make no excuses for what we should have done, I wish we had done more on this report in particular and covering terrorism and homeland security in general before September 11th. I wish we had. In hindsight we certainly should have.
But some of the reasons that we didn't are the size of the staff we have, we had to make decisions about who would cover what on that particular day. I talked yesterday to a reporter who was in some ways the obvious reporter to have covered this who recalled talking to her editor about it and deciding that homeland security, he didn't know what that was, he hadn't heard of that, didn't sound compelling to him.
The timing of the report was also a factor. It was ten or eleven days after the inauguration, so there was a lot of attention being paid other places including the White House.
I think a third factor is that while the press can set the agenda on a big story, and ought to often, the press also covers the things that other people do. So if President Bush had had a news conference about it, or had Senator Hart and Senator Rudman to the White House to highlight this report and say it was important to his Administration, that would have generated more coverage because we would be covering the President. Or if Congress had immediately scheduled a hearing saying this has got to be a top priority for the year, we would have covered that.
MR. KALB: So there were kind of two things missing then, as I hear you. One of them is that the major press didn't do it, and the other is that the major players in the Administration, very new into the Administration, also did not pick it up and highlight it.
MS. PAGE: And reflecting also what we know now which is the public, until September 11th, didn't see this as a driving concern in their life. They certainly do now, but the press had the same short-sightedness at the point that your report came out.
MR. KALB: Bob Schieffer, take us through that day, January 31st for the network.
MR. BOB SCHIEFFER: Marvin, I'll tell you, what I learned in the Air Force is when you're called into account for something like this the proper answer is, "No excuse, sir." Then you go on to something else.
We should have done it, we didn't do it, I wish we had of done it, as Susan said.
But one thing that defines what is news is not just how important it is to the public, on what day has it happened. I learned that during my long tenure as the anchor of the CBS Weekend News when there sometimes is not as much news as there is during the week days.
I'll never forget many years ago I was anchoring the 11—When CBS used to have an 11:00 p.m. newscast on Sunday nights. I remember the lead story, I came on the air one night and I said good evening. And the largest brushfire in the history of Orange County swept through—(Laughter) I don't think you would have gotten that on the week day news. But the fact of the matter is, there just wasn't anything else going on that day so we gave news coverage to a grass fire.
This story was competing with a lot of other stories, as Susan said. The new Administration had just come in. There was an electricity crisis. I've gone back and looked at the lineup. There was an electricity crisis in California, interest rates I think had just been cut. I noted that the day this came out we did two stories on that. The Lockerbie verdict had just come in that night. So the fact of the matter was there was a lot of other stories competing for attention that night, those two days on the evening news.
Still having said that, we should have covered this story. Here's one of the reasons we didn't.
There is what I call another part of what determines news, and I'm not sure how you overcome this. Sometimes there's just no appetite for a particular story. Terrorism was not on anybody's front burner in those days.
I remember some time before this, and you'll remember this Warren, after that gas attack, the terrorist attack in Japan, Sam Nunn had done quite an extensive report. He saw terrorism just as serious as you did. And I remember we did a piece on it, we did the whole Face the Nation one Sunday on that piece, and Sam's a great friend of mine, he made a lot of sense on that program, and we must have gotten one of the lowest ratings we've ever had on CBS on Face the Nation in the 11 years that I've done it.
For some reason people, you just couldn't get their attention on terrorism in those days.
When I used to cover the Pentagon and I became interested in arms control, and I'm like any, like an adult convert to any cause. When I—I didn't know much about arms control when I came to the Pentagon. Marvin will remember that because he was covering the State Department. But I really got into it, and I really got interested, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get other people interested in it.
One of the reasons I finally concluded, Marvin, was nuclear war is so horrible to contemplate that people really can't envision what it is. In the same way that we all know what $500 is. We don't know what a billion dollars is. We talk about wasting a billion here and a billion there. I find that the stories that had the most impact is when you figure out the government's wasted, spent $2,000 on hammers or something like that. Because it's something people, they have experience with and they know about.
This terrorism, until September 11th, was so beyond all of our imaginations that you really had a hard time getting people interested in it. So I think that is probably one of the reasons that we didn't give it more attention, why the editors in New York didn't order up the piece. It was on the wire service. We all knew about it. But I think that's part of the reason that it didn't get the attention that it didn't get.
MR. KALB: Tom Kunkel, tell us what the truth is.
MR. THOMAS KUNKEL: That's no fun, Marvin.
I certainly agree with what's been said. I think one thing you need to remember on this kind of thing is it is human nature to want to push off the outside world. I was going back through some of these clips in preparation for this presentation and came across a quote from Senator Rudman shortly after September 11th in which he said, "We Americans have the ability to procrastinate until we get hit over the head with a 2x4." It's true. Maybe that's a shame, but I think we shouldn't forget that there was a strong isolationist tendency in this country until Pearl Harbor. Churchill spent years trying to warn England about the buildup of Nazi Germany, largely ignored.
There were several reports, none on the scale of Senator Rudman's blue ribbon commission, but there had been several reports and hearings in this vein for several years leading up to this and I think Bob's right to a certain extent. There wasn't an appetite for it. And there wasn't really an appetite for it in the media, I think, and Senator Rudman alluded to it earlier sort of the notion of what's the hook? What's the peg?
It used to drive me crazy as a reporter, you wanted to write a story and the first thing your editor would say is what's the hook? You prayed there was an anniversary or something so that there was some bogus hook to hang it on. I think the media is in a trap that way sometimes.
So I think all these things came together in this instance to give us the conclusion that was unsatisfactory on every level.
MR. HESS: It strikes me that there are two players here that are being described. One are journalists who need a story and want a story; the other are newsmakers who want a story and need a story too. And somebody, the newsmaker if he's wise, figures out that this doesn't have a hook or that people are scared of nuclear explosions or all of these things, so you or the public relations firm, Warren, were aware of those things.
What I'm curious about is didn't someone say hey, why don't you break this story on Friday because there's no news on Saturday? Or the opinion leaders that you really want are the ones who read foreign affairs, and you really should brief, those are the people.
It strikes me that I'm getting the sense that you were throwing this into the mill with every other story and now all three panelists say yeah, but it didn't compete in that way.
MR. RUDMAN: Well, we did all of those things. We not only briefed the media, we briefed a lot of opinionmakers and academics and editors and government officials and congressional people and think tanks. We did all of that.
I would take exception with one thing that was said here from a factual point of view. I think we did have a hook, but of course if you weren't there you couldn't grab the hook. The hook was this, and we said this to everyone knowing the very point that you raised.
We said look the evidence is in front of us. It already started. It started in the early '80s with killing American servicemen in bars and discotheques in Germany. It moved on to Beirut with killing our ambassador, our CIA station chief, and then 243 Marines. This was Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism, it was ethno-terrorism from the beginning. Number three, they went after the ambassador in Islamabad, killed him and part of his staff. Then they blew up the two embassies. Then they blew up the Cole. We told everybody that we met with, look, it's moving here and it's going to happen here. Listen to us. It is going to happen. So there was a hook.
But I don't disagree with my friends here, and I know them very well. I've worked with them for a long, long time. We've got a problem of the day it's released, what else the news is. The thing that troubled me frankly more than anything else is that I think it deserved at least a minimal mention in all major media. I do not think it should have been a huge story. It should have had minimal message so at least people around the country who had some interest in this would be aware of what we did. After all—
MR. KALB: You seem to be particularly obsessed, though, Senator about the Times.
MR. RUDMAN: Oh, very. I told them that. I have a lot of friends there. It's a great newspaper, they do great work, but they sure blew this one. There should have been, on the page between the sports page and the classifieds, I don't care where it was. There ought to be something there that said this commission, which spent $10 million of taxpayers' money, which traveled all over the world, which was the brain child of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, which was mandated by Congress, which had an incredible group of people, a wonderful staff, worked for three and a half years, produced this report, it deserved that much in The New York Times.
MR. KALB: The Times doesn't normally give you a post-facto explanation of why it did or didn't cover a story. But did you ask for one and did you get one?
MR. RUDMAN: No. I didn't think I would get one, and I didn't bother asking.
MR. KALB: There's another aspect—
MR. RUDMAN: And there's no personal animosity. I'm just shocked.
MR. KALB: There's another aspect of this which has to do with journalistic judgment because one of you, I think the Senator mentioned, if the President, or Susan, if the President had invited you all there that would have given it some kind of geographic oomph and you'd have then gone with the story. What does that say then about journalistic judgment? I mean why do you need the President to give you that kind of push?
MR. RUDMAN: We weren't going to get the President for a whole bunch of reasons, which is for a different seminar.
MS. PAGE: John McCain being one of them.
MR. RUDMAN: Yeah, I was his campaign manager. I wasn't going to get invited to the White House that day. (Laughter) Maybe I should have resigned on the 20th and went by to take it myself. (Laughter) I'm only half jesting about that.
But the bottom line is that we did have something that was the next best thing and I want to again take a little exception, but you had to be there. In that press conference we had very substantial members of the Senate and the House who said we believe this report is right in a whole group of areas. We will undertake to introduce legislation and in fact they did.
So it did start to produce some results immediately.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Let me just say one thing, and Warren and I have known each other for 25 years and worked on a lot of stories together. But I am very happy that he says, the explanation he gives about all of this. Because so many times when we don't cover a story people come to us that there's some sort of grand conspiracy or we have some agenda to keep this from happening.
He is making the point that Jerry Friedheim, who used to be a long time ago was the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs out at the Pentagon. I'd gone to him with some story I picked up one time and he said to me, "Bob, always remember this. A lot of times we don't do things because we have some agenda. It comes out that way because we're dumb." (Laughter)
I think in this case that may have been what was behind this. We didn't cover this because we made the wrong decision. It was a bad mistake. These are human enterprises and mistakes happen. There was no agenda for it not getting on the news and—
MR. RUDMAN: Oh, I agree with that totally.
MR. KALB: Would you have said the same thing if there were no September 11th?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Perhaps. Because it was not until September 11th—We're in a new world now. This is different. We have a different view of this. My guess is that, we hope to God there's never a nuclear bomb exploded, but if there is, we will take a new view of arms control and we'll be more serious about reducing the nuclear arsenals on both sides. We haven't up until now simply because it's beyond our comprehension the devastation that would happen with something like that.
MS. PAGE: Marvin, just in response to the point you made. I don't think we have to have a President focusing our attention on an issue to cover it. There are lots of cases where the press makes something an issue even though no one in the government is talking about it. But it is one of the great powers of the presidency to focus attention, to force people to pay attention to an issue he or she one day cares about. So it's something that would have catapulted this report to a different level if he had done that.
MR. RUDMAN: If we could have pulled that one off that day. Incidentally, the date was not within our control. It was mandated in the statute and it was specifically designed by Clinton and Gingrich to present to the incoming Administration, done three years before the election. So nobody knew who that would be, but we were mandated to present it at a particular time, and we did.
MR. KALB: No one knew even three months—
MR. SCHIEFFER: Do you think the fact that you didn't get very much attention had something to do with the fact that you were associated with McCain?
MR. RUDMAN: I do not. No, no. Absolutely.
MR. SCHIEFFER: You felt you got what you needed from the White House?
MR. RUDMAN: Oh, the White House was totally open to our meetings. Dr. Rice couldn't have been nicer. The other people, Don Rumsfeld gave us a great audience on a number of the recommendations. After all, when you look at the people on this commission—I mean people from Jim Schlesinger to Don Rice and Lee Hamilton, Norm Augustine and eight or nine others. These are people with great credentials. They certainly did listen.
And by the way, p.s., most of the major recommendations have been adopted or are in the process of being adopted.
MR. KALB: Tom Kunkel has a comment, but I wanted to point out, you said that everyone was so nice to you and listened so seriously and carefully.
According to this piece by Harold Evans, Senator Hart went to see Condoleeza Rice on September 6th and gave her a big talk about oncoming terrorism of one sort or another, and she said she would pass it on to the appropriate people. It was kind of a brushoff, wasn't it?
MR. RUDMAN: Could be. I wasn't at that meeting. I know that the meetings that we had prior to that I thought were satisfactory. And certainly the meetings with Colin Powell, with Don Rumsfeld, were positive meetings.
MR. KALB: Tom?
MR. KUNKEL: I just want to make the point that, because I think we're in an important area here. It's very interesting and instructive to talk about why this particular story got dropped, but to me what's really worrisome about it is that I think it's symptomatic of larger issues about the media and Washington that ought to be very concerning. We at American Journalism, we've looked at this, Professor Hess has looked at it in great detail. That's just that unless it's happening at the White House and unless it's happening at Congress, increasingly whatever happens in the rest of Washington, this big huge factory, pretty much goes unnoticed.
We have whole agencies, the Interior Department, where one or two or maybe none, no reporters are working full time anymore. And that's troubling because there's a lot of important regulatory action that's going on, important policy that happens. We have these kind of blue ribbon committees that are occurring that are largely under the public radar.
You combine that with the extent to which the media are pulling away from covering international news and you really have a recipe for disaster in terms of an informed public.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that if they had written more about this report and we had done more stories about Afghanistan that September 11th wouldn't have happened. But I think there's no excuse for the fact that the American nation is so ill informed about some of this, and that cannot help the situation. And I think we all have to bear a fair amount of responsibility.
MR. KALB: Why do you think that's happening? Let's assume you're absolutely right, and I think you are, but why do you think it's happening?
MR. KUNKEL: It's happening in two reasons, in my estimation. One is, frankly, financial. Bob can talk about this but it's been documented that the networks, for instance, had major reduction in overseas bureaus since the end of the Cold War as part of cost-cutting measures, and no one is more frustrated about it than the people at the news divisions.
At the same time, and more on the print side, you have a situation where you have a finite amount of reporters out there and you have editors saying well nobody cares about Afghanistan, nobody cares about public policy.
When you actually poll the public, you survey the public, it turns out that's not true. They care very much about it. But inside the news rooms increasingly we have let ourselves believe that people don't care about it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And if you get out, and you all travel, certainly these people do. If you get out of the Eastern or Western corridors and you read the papers in the Midwest, the South, it's rare to see much in the way of news from overseas. It's down to less than two percent of the average news hole in most American papers. So it's a problem.
MR. KALB: Susan, Bob, do you agree with that?
MS. PAGE: I certainly agree that there are huge areas of the government that we don't cover, and then you have this mob of people covering the White House. I have two sons who used to play Saturday morning soccer, and I don't know if you have kids that have done that, but you know, the ball goes over here, everyone rushes to the ball, the rest of the field is uncovered except for the kid lying down sleeping in the back—that was my son Will. (Laughter)
But I think that's what we do. We cover whatever ball seems to be kind of the sexy story in play. Actually I think that's even happened now. Since September 11th the ball that everybody is chasing is terrorism, homeland security, at the expense of other issues that are also important and that we should be covering and which in a year or two maybe we'll be doing a story about why weren't we covering a global warming report that came out today or some other important issue. It's hard for us to have—It's hard to have the kind of smart perspective, although I know that we try to and I know that CBS tries to, and all serious news organizations do. It's hard to have a smart perspective and not to be caught up in just chasing whatever ball is running down the field at that moment.
MR. RUDMAN: Marvin, can I just interrupt for a second? I've always thought of the media since I came here 20-some-odd years ago as a gigantic fire department and all the engines are ready to go. As soon as there's a fire they all go to the same fire, no matter what else is going on in town. And if you're in the Senate and you've got a very important hearing the morning that some scandal breaks out and nobody's there, it's very disappointing.
MR. SCHIEFFER: I love the professors's point that polls show that people really are interested in foreign affairs. I always remember what James Reston once said. He said people will do anything about South America except read about it. (Laughter) So I might take a little bit of issue there.
I think, number one, there are these incredible financial pressures on all of the networks now and I think that has been the main thing that has caused the scale-back of overseas coverage.
But the second thing is that historically when there is not a foreign threat to this country people turn inward.
MR. KALB: Involving U.S. forces?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Involving a threat.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, people suddenly became more interested in what was going on in the United States than what was going on out there. I think we've seen that happen down through the years with this country. We tend to turn inward when there is no threat out there, so I think that was also a part of it.
I would also say that just because people are not interested is no excuse for not covering the news. I am one of those who believes we have a certain obligation to educate and we should push that, but it is very easy when interest falls off in foreign affairs to not cover foreign affairs. The situation, one thing feeds on another.
MR. HESS: Are we already getting to that point in this story?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, we are now suddenly interested in what's going on in Afghanistan and we're suddenly interested in what's going on in the Islamic world because we see a threat there.
MR. HESS: But if you pick up the morning newspaper, I think there may have been one story on the front page of the Post this morning, but only one. Several stories on Enron, as you know.
MR. SCHIEFFER: A lot of stories on Enron.
MR. HESS: And a certain sense that this is already passe'. We won the war, more or less, in Afghanistan. The President tells us it's going to be a long war and so forth. But nevertheless, where's the shooting?
Having heard all of the interesting things that we've said about the past, what about the future?
MR. SCHIEFFER: I'm not sure we have lost interest in it. I think what sets this situation apart from Vietnam where people never understood why we were there, we'd gone off to this country that most of us had never heard of and we were there to do something or other, I'm still not sure what. People know what this is about. Americans were killed. And Americans don't forget that. So I'm not one who believes that we've lost interest in it. I think the incredible popularity ratings that the President has go right back to the fact that Americans still believe something ought to have been done about it. What's he got, 84 percent approval ratings? I mean I said on television the other night, he was so high before the speech he might be the first President to go over 100 percent. (Laughter)
MR. RUDMAN: With a margin of error. (Laughter)
MR. SCHIEFFER: So I don't agree, Steve. I think people are very interested in this.
MR. HESS: And you bring this back from CBS? The word is that they're sending people back overseas, opening bureaus, doing things?
MR. SCHIEFFER: We've got a bunch of people in Afghanistan.
MR. HESS: You do indeed, but—
MR. SCHIEFFER: We haven't opened a bureau in Rio yet.
MR. HESS: Important things are happening in Rio.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Of course.
MR. KALB: Is journalism capable of covering more than one major story at a time?
MR. SCHIEFFER: With difficulty.
MR. KALB: At this particular point everyone—again, there's the fire analogy. The fire is Enron and everyone's rushing there. It seems as if a lot of the people who were directing their energies towards finding out about terrorism are now being turned in another direction.
MS. PAGE: It's true that we took, on September 12th we took our Washington economic reporter and put him on the Pentagon because we needed an additional person there. And as of about January 1st he went back to doing Washington economics because we had the budget coming up and important stories on that front. The economy's a good story too, the recession. So those are the kinds of decisions people make.
But I agree with Bob that even though Enron is today's top story, that terrorism and homeland security continue to be a very compelling story for readers and for news organizations.
I don't think there's a sense that the war is over. I think that doesn't happen until Osama bin Laden, we know where he is and what's happened with him. I think there continues to be a lot of concern that there will be another terrorist incident, and that certainly will focus attention once again front and center on this issue.
MR. SCHIEFFER: This war will not be over for me until we can take down these barricades around the United States Capital, until we can open up Pennsylvania Avenue, until a free people can walk among the symbols and monuments that represent their freedom. That's when this war will be over. We're only now beginning to understand when the war on terrorism began and only now are we beginning to understand what a price it has already extracted.
MR. KALB: Bob, but doesn't it follow that CBS and all of the networks, not directed at CBS, but that all of television news now should be doing more about what is going on inside Afghanistan, inside Pakistan? CBS did a piece on the southern Philippines which was first rate, way ahead of everybody. It was a serious piece of journalism. There are a lot of other places where we know there are terrorist cells. Why aren't large news organizations doing coverage of that sort?
When you say that we're not backing off the story, you're not backing of the homeland security part of it, but that's a foreign side of it. That still seems to have the measles. You're still not embracing that story.
MR. SCHIEFFER: We can always do better, and I think your points are well taken. We're trying to do better.
MR. KALB: But in what way are you trying to do better if in fact a CBS anchor went over to Afghanistan, and he might have gone over twice as I remember, and that's fine, and that's good and it demonstrates an interest and it brings along CBS. But where are the other networks? Where is even CNN which is supposed to be involved in this on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis?
What happens with USA Today, Susan? For example on foreign coverage. If you know, how many people did you have for example in Afghanistan, Pakistan in October/November as opposed to January, looking ahead to February?
MS. PAGE: At one point we had I think seven or eight people in the region in October and November. I don't know the precise number. Now I would guess we had three, which reflects a continued commitment for us to have three correspondents in a region that we customarily wouldn't have any.
I actually, I think there continues to be a commitment to the story, I do. I think that's going to continue for the foreseeable future until another, until there's another chapter. I don't think we're at the end of journalist interest in the story.
MR. HESS: But Warren and Gary Hart's report went well beyond terrorism. It went way beyond. Talk about that. What else—We've immediately brought this back to terrorism. What else should they be covering at this point?
MR. RUDMAN: I felt that certainly some of the columnists, more probably than the news reporters, and even on the television networks Bob, where you will have a two and a half, three minute sometimes, for lack of a better word, editorial or opinion piece. There are four or five parts of that report which deserve extraordinary attention which have nothing to do with homeland security. They have to do with the organization of Department of Defense, the organization of the State Department, public diplomacy there's a lot been written about, a lot about education and science, a great deal about the economy because without a strong economy you're not going to have strong security. And I've been a little surprised that some enterprising columnist or television person has not gone through the report and said you know, here's a piece, and I can tell you the cast of characters you would interview to see whether they agree, disagree, take a different point of view. There's a lot in the report. After all, it is only the second report of this type done in an entire century, and it was designed to look at America in the coming century in a way of how is our government organized, is it organized coherently?
So yeah, there's a lot there. But in fairness, I'm not here to defend the press, but I'll tell you, I've got a lot of friends in the press. I know who the good guys are and the bad guys and girls. Good girls. (Laughter) I would simply say that they're up to their eyeballs in trying to cover things that their editors assign them to do. There's a lot going on. There's Enron. There's the new budget, soon to be maybe a new Gramm/Rudman, right? After what we've seen. And all kinds of things going on here, and unless you've got incredible resources, which I don't think these folks have, I don't expect the reporters to go out and do that but the columnists certainly ought to be doing some things. The think tanks generally do some great pieces, already have, but they have very limited readership unfortunately.
MR. HESS: Tom, is that what you're going to teach the next generation of young people who want to be journalists?
MR. KUNKEL: We're trying. I mean one of the great concerns I have, one of the strengths of Maryland is public affairs reporting. We try and make that a specialty considering where we're located. But I worry, especially the broadcast students are terrific, but at any given time we have seven, eight broadcast students working in the state capitol in Annapolis and that's many times over the representation of any other broadcast news probably in any state capital in America. Because local stations especially have more or less gotten out of the business of public affairs reporting.
I used to be in the business and now I'm one of those people on the outside that gets to chuck rocks. It's a very difficult situation because these folks have finite resources, they do a terrific job. There's always more to cover than they have people to cover them. But in the shakeout it seems to me that the whole notion of public policy and the public trust has been getting the short end of the stick. I think that's something that we have to seriously address. There's no silver lining into this terrible tragedy that occurred, but I do think one thing that's happening is the media are examining their responsibility, their obligations, where they put their resources, where their budget cutting went too far. One can hope, and I agree, I think they are sticking with the story by and large. I think the media have done a terrific job with this story and I just hope that as things settle down as they inevitably will, that we sort of doing go back to the same old same old.
MR. RUDMAN: We've got one important missing guest here this morning and that's the CFO or the CEO of CBS or NBC or CNN. Ask them the tough questions. Why are they cutting the budgets of these news organizations.
I looked at the number of bureaus that were cut overseas by the three networks in the last three years. We looked at that as part of our study. It's incredible the number of bureaus that were just closed. How in the world do you expect to get that kind of coverage, no matter how good you are, without people on the ground?
With all due respect, my friend Bob can't answer that question but the CFO or the CEO of CBS might be able to. You ought to invite them down, put them on the griddle.
MR. KALB: A number of them have been brought down and talked to and they're quite remarkable people. They're very successful people and they have many skills, and one of them is reflected in some of the comments that I hear this morning. There is the most gentle criticism, really, of the media. We should have done a better job. Fine. You should have done a better job. But in fact, why didn't you? And what is to prevent you from again not doing a better job six months down the road or a year down the road if those CEOs are intent still, and you talked about this Bob earlier. The economic pressures on the industry today are phenomenal because a lot of the people who run the networks are not really news people any longer. They have very little relationship to news. They are business people and they want the bottom line to be justified. How do you justify an additional bureau in New Delhi, for example? It's very hard to do that.
Is there any indication from the newspaper side that you know of, Tom, in your studies, where a news organization is increasing the budget in anticipation of a far more demanding news agenda? Is there any evidence of that?
MR. KUNKEL: I think we're seeing a lot of evidence in the last couple of months that many major news companies have sort of, even in a recession, thrown the budget out the window and put the resources they felt like they had to into this, and I think that's entirely commendable and they're continuing to make that commitment.
A little further down the road we'll see.
I think we have to be careful that we don't lump, like any institution the media is more than one thing, more than one entity, more than one person. The New York Times has been cuffed around a little bit today and rightly so, and I don't know, but my sense is that after September 11th there was hell to pay inside The New York Times about why they missed that one.
But having said that, the commitment they make to cover news is astonishing. Many companies are that way. The Newhouse newspapers around the country which used to be not very good at all, have transformed themselves into some remarkable kinds of news organizations.
So I have to say, in the last year I think for the first time I'm starting to see a little bit of soul searching on the part of the CEOs and the CFOs that you talk about. They typically don't come to these kinds of forums because they don't like to get beat up any more than the rest of us do, but I think they maybe are finally starting to think that the pendulum maybe swung too far.
After all, for these news divisions that is the product, and if you take too much flour out of the cake eventually you're not making a cake that anybody wants to eat.
I try to be optimistic and I see some hope but I think the next six months or so will be very telling about that.
MR. HESS: I think it will be telling, too. I think you can read the same data otherwise. In other words, it is true that these organizations have done a tremendous job in breaking the bank and moving their resources, very expensive resources, over to Afghanistan and Pakistan and so forth.
Comes the end of the year now, they say well, we have to make up for that cut some place else, which I have a feeling for people who read balance sheets, that that's much more likely to happen than the idea of something else happening.
On the other hand there is one thing, if you're right and this actually is both Bob and Susan say this is true. If they can show that there is greater interest in this story, that this is the story rather than Gary Condit or something else that people really care about, then indeed those would be resources well spent. So to me that is sort of, of the balance. And I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball either.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Let me just say something in response to this. Number one, I don't mind coming to these forums, and I'm very used to being cuffed around because the news media was being cuffed around when I came to CBS. I don't know any—
MR. KALB: —story.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Yeah, 1969. I don't know of any industry that does more soul-searching, that does more second-guessing of itself, that does more reexamination, and we don't do it like any other business does. We do it out in public and everybody knows about it.
So I really have no apologies for that. But I think there is one point here that we kind of haven't talked about. The news media, the television networks, we're there to explain, we're there to tell people what's going on, but it's the American people who decide what kind of a government they want and it is the American people who decide whether they want to believe us or not.
You know, I covered George McGovern's campaign and he spent three months telling people about these people, and I can remember it very well, that put on rubber gloves and broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and how there are a bunch of crooks operating at the White House, and George McGovern lost by the greatest landslide up until that point in American politics. People simply didn't want to hear it and they didn't want to know about it.
Three months later when the people in the White House began to rat on each other they had a different point of view. And Richard Nixon who had been elected with the greatest mandate since George Washington had to leave the White House in less than two years.
People decide when and where they want to make changes and they are the ones who decide the direction this country goes. We have a very important part to play in that, but we are not the decisionmakers and we are not the people who decide the policy of the United States.
MS. PAGE: But of course, Bob, as both of us said at the beginning, nothing we say is really an excuse for not having—
MR. SCHIEFFER: And I don't mean it in—
MS. PAGE: No, I know you don't because you started your comments by saying that. Of course the reason that we have the privilege of the airways and the pages of the newspaper is to show good judgment, to do stories even if the American people don't think it's the right story to do or the President doesn't hold an event.
So that's clearly our goal and our purpose, even if we sometimes fall short.
Just one other thing. It's certainly true that newspapers and networks have thrown huge amounts of money at this story since September 11th, even with the recession, ad revenues are down, putting additional pages in the paper even though that's costing a lot. But it's probably unrealistic to think that's going to go on forever, because newspapers that pay no attention to the bottom line are no longer published. So I'm certain there will be an accounting at some point about what you continue to fund and how you make sure that you're continuing to make a profit.
MR. KALB: Think about the national budget, for example. The one suggested, proposed by the President only this week. For non-military spending, a decided cut. For military spending, a huge increase. And I wonder what the news organizations are going to do if that is reflective of any kind of large corporation judgment. There may be things that you'll cut back on and things that you'll allow to expand.
MR. HESS: Let me ask Warren a question. The President gave a remarkable State of the Union, at least the foreign policy part of it, which suggested a new doctrine, a new way America should be thinking about the rest of the world. You who spent 12 years in Congress and understand the media, isn't this a time that we should have a discussion the way that William Fulbright, for example, had a discussion, public discussion on Vietnam? And then of course the media would focus on that because as they say, they cover what you're doing as opinionmakers?
MR. RUDMAN: Absolutely. But let me just add something. I don't see how they can do it until the people who are the folks who will either make it happen or prevent it from happening start doing something. I mean if there are major debates in the Senate or in the House on what is really a new doctrine of foreign policy, I mean if you listen closely President Bush has said something really remarkable and he well may be right, but that's going to be—What he is essentially saying is no longer are we going to sit back and wait to have the first blow inflicted on us. We've identified some people out there and we're going to, unless they change their ways, we're going to get them. And I'm putting it in my New England lexicon. That's what he said.
But unless you get a lot of debating on this on the floor of the Senate and the House, I mean the news media can't debate each other. There can be OpEd pieces. But to get some really meaty reporting on this you've got to get people standing in the Senate making their points with emphasis and with a little colorful language, and now you have a story. But until that happens, that's not going to happen.
MR. KALB: Bob, do you expect it to happen?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Let me just add one thing because I think it sort of adds to this discussion about why is news sometimes overlooked.
If you'll look in The New York Times today there's an extensive story where Colin Powell says that he is right behind the President on the "axis of evil", where there's no daylight between them, and he goes on to outline any number of things.
Colin Powell said all of those things Sunday on Face the Nation. He did not get one line of pickup. And the reason it didn't was you had this Enron thing that just pushed everything back. So that's another example of how news sometimes—If the news is important it eventually gets out but sometimes it will get pushed aside for awhile.
MR. HESS: Are we not having this debate right now because the Senate is controlled by Democrats at the moment and the President has, as you point out, an 84 percent approval rating? You don't take on a President with an 84 percent approval rating?
MR. RUDMAN: I think people in history have taken on Presidents with 84 percent approval ratings. Those Presidents eventually had 24 percent approval ratings. (Laughter) I don't really think that people are not going forward right now because of that.
I believe that like the press my experience with the Congress is it has a very small digestive system. You can only digest a certain number of meals in a certain amount of time and they have some major meals on the plate right now. They've got Enron covering 11 committees, they've got a new budget covering almost every committee, they've got the President's new foreign policy initiative and who knows what else? You've got to give a little space here and then everything will be consumed and the press will have its story.
But I think we expect too much of the press and the Congress, that everything that's important that's going on at the same time gets coverage. It doesn't happen. I never saw it happen and it won't happen.
MR. KALB: Bob, you agree with the Senator on that point, right? It's not about to happen tomorrow.
MR. HESS: Everybody agrees that we're not going to have a great debate on—
MS. PAGE: Although you'd think that the fact that the Secretary of State agrees with the President on foreign policy would not be news in any case. (Laughter)
MR. KALB: That's right.
MS. PAGE: The news—
MR. RUDMAN: Well this Administration certainly—(Laughter)
MR. SCHIEFFER: I think it is news that they agree.
MR. KALB: I found it interesting that he felt the need to say that.
MR. SCHIEFFER: That's why I say it's interesting.
MR. KALB: We have time for questions, so those of you who would like to ask a question raise your hand, identify yourself, ask your question. We'll get a microphone to you.
Q: I'm Paul Mann from Aviation Week.
Some of you said the interest in the story remains high. I'd like to make a counter-argument that the interest remains much too low in the terrorism story.
September 11th has changed nothing, or virtually nothing, about the issue of America ginning up $75 or $100 billion and buying every last ounce of nuclear material that Russia is willing to sell.
Sam Nunn and Graham Allison of Harvard and many others have been saying for years, since December 1991 practically, that if the United States wants to make a real dent in the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, that even if it costs $200 billion it would still be cheap compared to what we'll have to pay if a terrorist gets hold of a nuclear device.
The press is not covering this today. Where is the sense of urgency in this country? Where is the sense of urgency in this White House and in the National Security Council about corralling Russia's huge nuclear inventory? It's the largest in the world. The public is oblivious to the fact of the dangers of these. Everyone here knows how insecure they are, literally in physical terms. You put electronic protective devices on them and the Russians don't have enough electricity to power them.
Why are we still missing that enormous story?
MR. KALB: That's interesting too. When Graham Allison, along with Senators Nunn and Lugar at the very beginning of the '90s were pushing this idea of the U.S. getting the dough, buying up the loose nukes, as Graham Allison put it, in the Soviet Union, he was so frustrated about his inability to get a story on television or in The New York Times that he ended up having to do OpEd pieces, a perfectly fine way of communicating. But he was in a sense limited to that. The rest of journalism didn't come along for the ride.
I remember that very well and it's a very valid point. Would anyone like to comment on that?
MR. SCHIEFFER: I would just say, I completely agree with you on that. But I would disagree that we haven't covered that story. I'll bet you I've done dozens of stories about that. I have interviewed Senator Lugar, I've interviewed Senator Nunn, I've done it over the years, but it just seems to be one of those things that you can't get people interested in. And I think to this day—I think you're right about this. I think people still don't see the connection between that and the threat of terrorism right now.
MR. MANN: Why?
MR. SCHIEFFER: I don't know the answer to that. Sometimes, as I said earlier, I think people still cannot comprehend how awful the explosion of a nuclear weapon would be. We know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that was a long time ago, and you just have a difficult time getting people interested.
We can do the stories but we can't go out and go door to door.
MR. MANN: Is it an absence of interest, or is it a psychology of denial? A very high level Defense Department official said to me two years ago, I can't get people inside the Pentagon to focus on weapons of mass destruction because nobody wants to hear about it because they don't think there's anything we can really do about it.
MR. SCHIEFFER: I think that's part of it too.
MR. KUNKEL: I think it's a combination. News is an organism. It breathes. These stories have lives.
To me one of the most amazing stories of my lifetime is the fact that the culture of smoking changed so dramatically, it seemed like almost overnight. But that is something that people in isolated cases were writing about for years and arguing about, but suddenly it got traction with people, there was a sea change. Then the movement almost, it seems like almost overnight. The Enron story got traction almost overnight. This is a story that I know he's covered it, I've read that story in various places, but it hasn't got that match yet. I don't know what it would be to take to ignite it and at some point it might.
MR. SCHIEFFER: —their 401K's evaporated, they suddenly understood—
MR. KUNKEL: So I think it's one of those things, I suspect if you did a nexus search over the last five years you would get hundreds of hits across a variety of media on that very subject. But it's not got that momentum to push it over the tipping point—
MR. SCHIEFFER: —a story when a person thinks it has an impact on their lives. That's when the stories get played and has resonance. Sometimes we haven't done as well as we should. And sometimes I can't figure out how to do that.
MR. MANN: Maybe you could go talk to President Bush about it. He cut that program. He certainly didn't think it was the answer. I think they've now put more funds back into it, but—
MR. HESS: It's not just getting the public interested, it's getting the Administration interested.
Q: I'm Matt Storen, a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center.
I wanted to ask Senator Rudman, given the fact that there has been, as you said, pretty good reception for the recommendations of the commission in Congress, and I'm not sure whether that was post 9/11 or pre 9/11, what do you think would have been the material benefit if you had gotten more coverage in the major media, particularly the Times and the networks?
MR. RUDMAN: If you're asking me do I think it would have prevented September 11th, if you're asking me that the answer to that is no. Do I think we would be much beyond where we are in terms of making a number of institutional changes across the whole 43 agencies of this government which have responsibility for homeland security in some way? The answer unequivocally yes. The Congress took great interest in the report as early as February. Bills were introduced in the House and the Senate to implement some of the homeland security issues. I think we would be down the line from where we are, but I expect we'll get there.
This is a lot like the war on terrorism, to prepare against terrorism is going to take some time. I think it will be two or three years before, no matter what we do or how we do it, we'll have the structure in place to do it.
I want to make a very important point that's been overlooked by a lot of people. New York was a remarkable place for this to happen in that it is the best prepared city in America for this to happen. 60,000, 70,000 police, about half that number of firemen, thousands of emergency service workers, drills every month almost in New York to deal with major disaster. There isn't another place in America, including Washington, D.C., that is prepared for what happened. And when this does happen—I didn't say if. I said when this happens again in America, an act of mass destruction or a mass disruption, you're going to find that we are not prepared, and without the federal government in a very key role we're going to have difficulty.
So my answer to your question is we would have been better prepared. Hopefully we've got a period of grace and we will be ready. But this is a very complex issue. You don't like to scare people but the fact is that I'm worried about a weapon of mass destruction. I'm very worried about that. I think to assume that we are not at risk for chemical, biological or nuclear attack in some way at some level is to be extraordinary complacent, based on all that we saw over a four year period plus all that I saw in the intelligence work that I've been doing for the last eight years.
MR. HESS: Is that your lead, Susan? Is that your lead, Bob? That's a pretty strong statement.
MS. PAGE: If you were writing a story about—
MR. HESS: Why not? You had Warren Rudman just saying—
MS. PAGE: Not if but when. Yeah, I think that would be a good lead.
MR. SCHIEFFER: It depends on what happens with Enron today. (Laughter) Or that brush fire in Southern California. (Laughter)
MR. KALB: We've always enjoyed Bob Schieffer's deadly honesty.
Q: Phil Dine, St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Somebody mentioned the story about Colin Powell and a possible rift or agreeing with the President. To me that points up one of the problems. The media so often looks for division or conflict or rifts rather than the substance of a story. I don't know how many stories there were after September 11th about whether Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Powell and so on were all on the same page. It seems to me that's inside the beltway sort of fodder and it doesn't really get to the substance of the issue.
Similarly, I don't think as Senator Rudman said, we should have to wait until stories are handed to us on a silver platter by virtue of the Senate debating them. I mean if an issue is important there are plenty of ways to make it interesting whether or not it's being debated. In fact you can make it more interesting you can be more creative and frame it your own way.
Lastly, I think resources are often a scapegoat in these kinds of discussions. It wouldn't have cost anything to write about Senator Rudman's report. To me, and this is what I'd like to comment on, the real issue is simply the failure of informed editors to calmly, rationally think about what's out there on a given day or week, what do we need to cover, and where can we make a contribution instead of simply following the herd mentality of the soccer moms that Susan Page referred to.
MS. PAGE: Not the soccer moms, it was the soccer players. The soccer moms do a great job. (Laughter)
I would just like to say on the rift in policy, although we've kind of made fun of the idea that it's news that the Secretary of State supports the President on foreign policy, those actually go to the substance. The reason people covered Paul Wolfowitz's views is because that's the substance of what do we do about Iraq. That's a very big substantive story. Nobody cares how Paul Wolfowitz is personally with the other players on the foreign policy team. It's the substance of that debate that makes that a compelling story.
Q: My name is Janice Irvin from (inaudible).
I would like to throw in a stereotype. I think it was already discussed that Americans have to die until something happens. We think it's a sign of American political culture that it really is difficult to do preventive measures, whether it is drug war or weapons of mass destruction.
I would like to know from you how you think you can change that? If you look at domestic programs, at weapons of mass destruction, they were always cut back. Even last year the Administration tried to cut it back 30 percent. Already all the estimates are there that something is going to happen.
I have the impression that it's difficult to sell programs who are acting to present things, but it's more easy to sell programs to right things. I think that's even increasing with the new budget of $450 billion for defense spending but almost no increase for domestic programs to enhance security.
MR. KUNKEL: I would say, I think you make a good point. My colleagues said earlier that the people really decide, and part of the problem for the media, I think America's such a big country that there's a certain level of fatigue that sets in because in fact we need to spend more money on homeland security but we need to spend more money on literacy, and we need to spend more money on pre-K education and we need to spend more money on the poor. We need to do a lot of things.
I don't think people are not empathetic or sympathetic to that, but it's like sometimes I think there's a feeling it's too much, it's too much, and I think that leads to some of the shutdown.
I think what the media can do is try as best you can, write about, broadcast about these issues, try and keep the things you think are important in front of people. But ultimately it's got to be the people that decide what to take on as important or not, and then have that voiced through their representatives.
MR. KALB: Are there any numbers on the ratings side that indicate that stories about terrorism, stories about Afghanistan that drew a ten three months ago are now drawing six?
MR. SCHIEFFER: I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think they rate like that.
MR. KALB: They rate them minute by minute—
MR. SCHIEFFER: Yes, they do, but I don't know.
Q: Peggy Sams, freelance journalist.
It's very evident that there is a choice on what stories are going to be appearing or not and I'm getting more and more the impression as I go to these panels that that choice is often made by, it's made by the editors or in the broadcast media by producers, not so much someone like you, Bob, the talking head or the one the audience sees.
I'm wondering if that is the case in your case? Do you make the decisions about what's going to be on the show?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, I'm the anchor of Face the Nation and we have a little staff of two.
Q: So you decide what the show's going to—
MR. SCHIEFFER: Karen Pratt's the executive producer and I'm the one that the public sees, and the two of us decide. But on the evening news do I get to decide whether I'm going to be on Dan Rather's broadcast? No. That's done by Dan Rather and the executive producer in New York.
Q: Along that line—
MR. SCHIEFFER: That's the same way it works at every newspaper I've ever heard of.
Q: There's been some books out recently about bias in this, and that there are certain stories that won't get on. I'm wondering, there's been a story recently, I've been hearing in the conservative press the last few months about the relationship of drug money to terrorism. And at the wonderful Super Bowl game last Sunday there were some ads that were doing it, and there seems to be outrage among a lot of the public in letters to the editor and all that, how dare that connection be made.
I've not seen a story in the major press about that connection. I'm wondering, is this a bias?
MR. SCHIEFFER: May I take a pass on that? I may be the only person in the room who didn't see the Superbowl. I know there was some controversy about some ads, and I didn't see it.
MR. RUDMAN: I can't believe there's any controversy about those ads.
All I would do if I were the editor of anybody who got that, I'd tell them to take a hike. The facts are overwhelming. There is connection between terrorism and drug money, and if people don't like to hear about it, good luck to them. The bottom line is those ads were great ads. For those who didn't see them, they were ads of average Americans who were simply saying gee, I occasionally go out and snort a little cocaine and do this, but I mean you know, you mean I'm killing somebody? And the voice-over was saying you're part of this whole narco-terrorism by supplying the money to them. It's absolutely right. It's been proven years ago. That's not even a question of debate. People don't like it, too bad. A lot of things people don't like. Too bad.
Q: I don't see it in the press.
Q: I'm Peter Shoettle from Brookings.
My question builds on Bob Schieffer's comment that news is what affects the individual, has an impact on the individual.
My question is the coverage of foreign news. One of the mega trends in the last few years is globalization. A third of the U.S. economy now is somehow or other related to exports/imports. And yet the coverage of foreign news is declining as this daily impact by millions of Americans on what happens to the economy in Mexico, Pakistan, and elsewhere is increasing. So I see a huge disconnect.
I would perceive that developments in Mexican economy, American companies outsourcing to Mexican sources, has a huge effect on masses of Americans. I see no coverage of it. How come?
MS. PAGE: I think there's been a fair amount of coverage of globalization. We did a series last year about, during the presidential election in 2000, about globalization as an issue in the presidential election. I think there's actually a fair amount of—I think there's an increase in kind of financial coverage in foreign countries because of the sense that lots of Americans have that the company they work for is actually headquartered in Germany.
So I guess I disagree with you. I think there is a fair amount of coverage of kind of the economic globalization of the world and that's reflected the lives that Americans are leading now.
MR. SHOETTLE: Let me amend it, by having more foreign reporters based there. How many reporters do you have in Mexico or a bureau for the networks in Mexico?
MS. PAGE: We have one reporter based in Mexico. We don't have a huge foreign staff, that's certainly true. But we have a much bigger foreign staff than we had ten years ago.
MR. SCHIEFFER: We don't have anybody there, I'll be very honest with you. I agree with you. I think we ought to do more stories on globalization. It is a very difficult story to tell in a minute fifteen or a minute thirty. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
What it boils down to is if we could somehow explain to people that if the Mexican economy is good then you won't have a lot of people unable to find jobs in Mexico coming across our borders and invading the work force in this country. If you can explain it to them in a simple way like that it seems to get through. But sometimes these stories are so complicated from the outset that I think sometimes we tend not to cover them just because we're afraid we can't explain it. And if there's a failing, I think that's where it is.
MS. PAGE: That's a very interesting question.
MR. HESS: At what point does something become so complicated that you throw up your hands? In other words, my hunch is that Enron may be a story not with the legs that we expect, but while it's about shredding paper we understand it. When it gets to derivatives I'm not sure many people are going to or rather care.
At what point do you have to work harder?
MR. SCHIEFFER: That's a very good point, but I'll tell you what gives this story legs. People can't understand all this, I don't know what derivatives are myself. Here's what people understand. The rich guys got richer, the little guys got screwed. That's what makes a news story and that's what people understand.
MR. HESS: But that is only going to get this story so far because after that—
MR. SCHIEFFER: Jimmy Carter got elected President by saying I will not lie to you. In the days before Jimmy Carter, that was the least that we expected of our public officials. (Laughter) But he made a presidential campaign out of it. You can't get through some things.
MR. KUNKEL: On the globalization point, real quickly. I actually think that's one of the hopeful things about media and foreign coverage because increasingly it's clear that we're all interconnected and whether it's your factory job in Iowa or international terrorism, I think Americans realize that we are all interconnected. The media industry is realizing that and is trying to do a better job not only of reporting from abroad in some instances, but in the reporting in the United States trying to tie together what transpires in China and how it affects the export of apples in Washington State. You're seeing a lot more of that kind of thing.
MR. KALB: There are certain stories, Peter, that The New York Times and The Washington Post and the LA Times can do much better than the CBS Evening News. Just given the nature of the instrument you're working with.
Q: My name is (inaudible) from American University.
You were just talking about creating foreign bureaus or foreign reporters, but don't you think it's something to do with internet? Instead of expecting the CBS to go to Japan or something, people just go on-line and check JapanTimes.com or instead of reading the newspaper, read something. For instance in Colombia, people just go on-line and check El Tiempo.
MR. KALB: Thank you.
MR. SCHIEFFER: I think that's a very good point and I think that goes back to something I've heard Marvin Kalb, Walter Cronkite, everybody I've been associated in journalism with over the past 40 years say, and that is no one can be an informed citizen by depending on one particular news outlet to get their news. Everybody at CBS reads the newspapers and I assume a lot of people at the newspapers occasionally watch CBS. (Laughter) You've got to have a variety of sources of information and that in the end is what is the saving thing about all of this.
The news, the truth if it is the truth, eventually comes out. Sometimes not as quickly as we wish it would, but it eventually does. Or at least it has in the history of this country.
MR. HESS: Go back to the internet part of this equation, which was really so interesting. USA Today certainly has an internet unit.
MS. PAGE: Yes.
MR. HESS: Have you any sense that your consumers are drifting away from the print version that you sell on the newsstand to the internet version that we get for free?
MS. PAGE: I don't think so. I certainly haven't seen that in terms of our circulation numbers.
One thing to say about, someone who's very interested in Japan can go on the internet and read about Japan. But the thing that you lose there if it's not in USA Today or on the CBS evening news is that you're not informing everybody. Certain people wouldn't bother to go to Japan.com.
So while the internet is providing an explosion of information, it doesn't do the same things that mainstream news outlets do, and it doesn't kind of substitute for the obligation that mainstream news outlets ought to feel.
MR. KUNKEL: The internet's a wonderful tool but there are no rules. I think there is always going to be a role for media from the standpoint of we're gatekeepers. Somebody has to sort of take what's happening, filter it, prioritize it, explain it. I think that's mostly what news consumers want. That's essentially what they're paying for when they tune into watch CBS. I think that's always going to be important. But the internet is a wonderful tool, but everything that's out there is not all true, as you well know. Not everybody realizes that.
MR. KALB: We have time for two more questions.
Q: My name is Mary Norman and I work with the Bosnia/Kosovo Support Committee.
I was wondering is there any reason, or would there be a reason for suppressing, for the media to suppress a story? Not just because it might not be of interest to the people that are reading it or for instance Condoleeza Rice asked you to suppress these videos from bin Laden. Would there be any other reason that you would want to suppress, would an editor ask you not to write a story for some other reason?
MR. SCHIEFFER: I would say if it were some sort of troop movement in time of war where you might endanger American lives, I think that might be one reason to suppress. I think it's fair to say, some people wouldn't agree with me on this, that in time of war that news organizations are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to the government.
Frankly, I did not agree on the particular about suppressing the Osama bin Laden tape. I thought the more people knew about Osama bin Laden the better it would have been for all of us. I wasn't worried that Osama bin Laden was going to convert anybody to his cause in America if they saw that tape. I thought it would have the effect that Tokyo Rose had during World War II. So I didn't think that there was any reason to suppress that tape. I think CBS did not run it one time or so. But other than troop movements, putting people's lives in danger, I can't think of any other legitimate reason to suppress things.
MS. PAGE: When there were U.S. citizens in Tehran hiding out in the Canadian embassy, lots of news organizations knew about it and nobody wrote about it. But that's really incredibly exceptional. And I think very difficult, when a story is out there, very difficult to get everybody to agree to not do it.
MR. SCHIEFFER: That's right. I think a lot of times when you're presented with that kind of a situation and people say that must be a very hard judgment. It's not a very hard judgment. When there are legitimate reasons to suppress a story, and I think I mentioned a couple of them, it's very easy. And most news organizations are willing to do that.
MR. KALB: The last question.
Q: Hi, I'm Greg Davis. I run a small company.
My question is on the coverage that both the print and electronic media provide. I see a lot of who, what, where, when and how, but in the United States I don't see a whole lot of why. There's a great deal of how. You get these intricately designed diagrams of how something happens, but I just don't see anything these days on why. I see a lot more of it in the European press, but I don't see it in the United States press. I think that's a big gap. I recognize you can't do it on the electronic media because you've only got a few minutes or a few seconds to do your sound byte for the news broadcast, but the print media I think is very deficient in this area.
MR. KALB: Thank you very much for the question.
MS. PAGE: I agree with you certainly to the why. And actually, not to defend the press, but I actually think we do a fair amount of the why. Why are we a target for Islamic extremists? That's certainly a story everybody did in the wake of September 11th. Not to say we shouldn't do more, but I do think we see that as part of our agenda.
MR. SCHIEFFER: We also have to tell the who, what when because until people have the basic facts that's what all analysis is based on. So yes, we should do more of the why.
MR. KUNKEL: The other part of that is the why is the hard part. And it's also the part where the conventional journalist who's trying to be objective runs the greatest risk of becoming subjective and getting him or herself into some trouble. So it's important that they go after the why and try and explain it, but it's also important that they watch where that line is.
MR. HESS: That brings to an end the tenth session of the Brookings/Harvard Forum on the role of information in the war against terrorism.
We thank our remarkable panel who have answered the question of why the news media ignored the Rudman-Hart Commission findings. There's one other person we should thank for this panel, and that is Madeleine Kalb who actually proposed to us the idea for this panel.
Next week we have a program that we're going to call "Back from the front". As you know there have been two Americans killed, service people killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan. There have been eight journalists and one tragically —we hope it will work out— but at the moment tragically a kidnap victim in Pakistan.
We're going to bring together a panel of journalists who have been there and have now come back from Kabul and hear their stories and relate to that what's happened to war correspondents.
Thank you very much for being with us.