Included below is the transcript from the Media Matters panel discussion held on May 12. Speakers included:

• Eric Boehlert is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively about media, politics, and pop culture. His new book is Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.

• Kathy Kiely, Congressional reporter, USA Today

• Lynn Sweet, Washington D.C. bureau chief, Chicago-Sun Times

• Dick Polman, national political reporter, The Philadelphia Inquirer

• Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. His new book is Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Please note that this is a rush transcript and there may be errors.

David Brock: Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. Welcome to our forum, Why Media Matters: The Role of the Media in the Democratic Process. I'm David Brock. I'm the President of Media Matters for America, and I'll tell you a little bit about our organization in a moment.

We're joined today by a distinguished panel of guests. We're here to discuss two books and the issues that they raise. Let me introduce our panelists first. Eric Boehlert is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively about media politics and pop culture. He's a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, writes frequently for the Huffington Post, and is a former senior writer for Salon. His book, which we're going to discuss today, is called Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush. It's published by Free Press.

Kathy Kiely has been a Washington correspondent since 1981, and Congressional correspondent for USA Today since 1998. Prior to joining USA Today, Kiely covered the White House during the Clinton administration as Bureau Chief for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. She began her journalism career with the Pittsburg Press, where she covered politics and other news. She was chosen to help cover the Democratic and Republican National Political conventions in 1980, and has covered every Presidential campaign since that time. Wow.

Dick Polman analyzes national politics for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has been cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as “one of the finest political journalists of his generation.” His online column has been cited by the Washington Post as one of the top five political reporter blogs in the country, and is touted by former Hard Ball TV producer, Howard Mortman, as “the immediately must-read political blog.” He has been a frequent guest on CSPAN , MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, and NPR. He has covered the last four Presidential campaigns and has also been a foreign correspondent based in London, a baseball writer covering the Philadelphia Philly's, a general assignment writer in the feature section, and a longtime Sunday magazine contributor.

In the early 1980s, he wrote three metro columns a week for the Hartford Current. A graduate of George Washington University, today Dick teaches advanced journalistic writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lynn Sweet is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, where she writes a column as well as a blog. She also writes a column for The Hill. Among other honors, she has served as a resident Fellow for Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

And Paul Waldman is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, and a senior contributor to The Gadflyer. He is formerly the Gadflyer's first Editor and Chief. Prior to joining The Gadflyer, he was the Associate Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Paul's the co-author of The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World, and the coeditor of Electing the President 2000: The Insider's View.

His writing has been featured in the American Prospect, the Washington Post and Salon.com as well as many scholarly journals. Paul's book Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and why the Media Didn't Tell You, was released in early 2004, and his latest book, which we're going to hear about today is called Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Let me just say a few words about Media Matters before we get started. I myself have written a few books, which you might be familiar with. One, Blinded by the Right in 2002, in which I chronicled my time in conservative media, and my break with it. And another, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy, in 2004.

As one reviewer of that book put it, The Republican Noise Machine, “constitutes a seamless propaganda machine conveying dubious scholarship, Republican talking points, and anti-liberal smear campaigns from think tanks and internet rumor mills to the FOX News channel, and talk radio echo chambers, and thence through a network of conservative pundits into the quality press.”

While writing that book, I realized that the phenomenon I was describing presented such a threat to our public discourse, and in fact, to our democracy, that I decided to form an organization to work to reverse it every day in every news cycle. And so in May 2004, just two years ago, our organization Media Matters for America launched. If you haven't gone to our website, the address is MediaMatters.org.

We are a web-based progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the media -- news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable or credible, and that forwards the conservative agenda.

Every day a team of researchers is analyzing a cross-section of media from newspapers and news magazines to broadcast network news, the cable news channels, online news sites, syndicated columnists, and the top tier of talk radio, and posting that analysis at MediaMatters.org.

We do more than provide information. We also provide consumers of news the tools to take action against conservative information that we document. So each piece of research is accompanied by the contact information for offending media, and we encourage our users to express their concerns directly to the media. You may register on our site to become part of the Media Matters network. I hope you'll go there and check it out.

Our topic today is The Role of Media in the Democratic Process. And I just wanted to start by giving one example of how that role plays out.

Six months into the Iraq war, a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that FOX News viewers were more likely than consumers of any other major media source to have mistaken beliefs about Iraq. Including the belief that U.S.-led forces had already found weapons of mass destruction there. This belief was held by one out of every three FOX viewers at the time, compared to only one out of ten respondents who cited PBS or NPR as their main source of news. So clearly, media does matter.

One of the biggest changes I've seen in the last twenty years in Washington is the expansive growth of conservative news outlets like FOX. Media that systematically misinforms the public with little, if any, regard for truth, as we've documented countless times at Media Matters.

On the other hand, over that same period, we have what I think is a significantly weakened mainstream media. And by that I mean the professional established news media that is suppose to investigate stories, interview multiple sources, sort the false from the true, cut through spin, and give citizens the accurate and reliable information they need to make informed decisions.

And all too often we've seen the mainstream media falling down on the job. That thought is really the focus of Eric Boehlert's book, so I'm going to start with him. I'm going to ask him to sort of put forth the thesis of his book, and then I'll turn to each of our panelists, to agree, disagree, or otherwise comment on what he has to say. We'll open it for a little discussion, and then hopefully take some questions from the audience. So, Eric, take it away.

Eric Boehlert: Thanks, David. I appreciate it. [Applause] In a way, even though David's book came out in 2004, my book is almost a sequel, in the fact that David described so well this Republican Noise Machine, and effect it has, and I think my book examines what specifically that -- affect that had from 2000 to 2005. I think -- my book sort of lays out in depressing detail what I think happened in the press. And how there was sort of this titanic shift almost from an inauguration day -- although we could argue it happened during the campaign -- from the same press corp that literally, you know, couldn't wait to get to work during the Clinton years, to investigate, and to go on TV and talk about what-ifs. And to talk about -- and to talk to the Republican sources on the Hill, and talk about what committee hearings and investigations there were going to be. And to what happened to the Bush administration, and it's just really, night and day.

I talk a lot about what David talks about in his book, and I think what drove a lot of it, is this -- this oversensitive critique of the liberal media bias. And I think the press has, for too long been way too sensitive to that charge. And I think they try to prove again and again that they're not being, you know, soft on Democrats. And I think the conservative attack on the press has been , very well thought out and very successful, but I think now the repercussions, from what happened for the last five years, we need to sort of deal with.

I was on FOX News yesterday and they were sort of giving me a hard time, and that's what I expected. And they said well, you know, don't you wish that this book had come out a year ago? I mean, look at the press, look at this -- this whole wiretapping scandal and, you know, the press is going crazy and everything. And in a way, I liked the timing of the book because I think it's time for a postmortem. We can look back now on what happened from 2000 to 2005, 2006. We don't have to wait til 2008 to -- to examine in detail what the press did during the Bush administration.

You know, whether it was the entire coverage of the war, the Downing Street Memos, the WMD's. John Kerry and the Swift Boat, what I call the Swift Boat hoax from the 2004 campaign. These things need to be looked at, I think they need to be documented, and they need to be discussed because we can't really let this happen again. To have the press do what they did to Clinton and then take such a hands-off approach to Bush.

There was an interesting letter in the Times today. It was a response to Bush's low opinion poll numbers. And they had half a page of letters, and one was said -- given that George W. Bush captured the White House by smearing two opponents -- Ozone Man Gore and Swift Boat Kerry -- and concocted phantom non-issues to frighten naïve voters (same sex marriage, gun control), it is somehow fitting that his Presidency has imploded. Not because of opponents to Karl Rove's slime tactics, but instead because Mr. Bush's own actions (ideology over reality) have done so much harm to the Americans and the world.

I think the writer politely left out the role that the press played, and you know, instead of Ozone Man, I would say -- Ozone Gore, I would say Exaggerator Gore. And then you have Swift Boat Kerry. I think the press needs to be held accountable for what happened in the 2000 campaign, and the 2004 campaign. And I think what's happening today in terms of not being fair with Democrats and not giving them, you know, whether it's keeping them off the Sunday shows, as Media Matters has documented, or lots of other ways.

They've held the Bush administration to a completely different standard, and I think again, there was sort of a titanic shift when Republicans came to town in how the press was going to deal with the White House.

Two quick points. It didn't happen in a vacuum. I think the White House, unleashed a very smart and aggressive pushback campaign with the press. There wasn't going to be the free flow of information that there had been for really generations. Bush was not going to hold press conferences. There was not going to be you know, sort of good faith, discussion off the record with reporters and things like that. And I also think obviously, after September 11th and Iraq, there was a war culture that only heightened I think some of the fears that the press had. And all of that played out I think with unfortunate coverage. But I'd also point out -- I think Bush got some of the softest coverage in 2005, which didn't make sense. Which wasn't connected with 9/11, or the war in Iraq. I think it just -- this sort of mindset had set in that the Bush White House was sort of super-savvy and super-sophisticated and running circles around the Democrats. And really the story in 2005 was how Democrats were sort of imploding, and if we look at where we are now, that doesn't look so good.

So that's sort of the thesis of the book, and that's -- and hopefully we can talk about a lot of these things, and maybe we can talk about some specifics, like the Downing Street Memo, or John Kerry or any other issues that we want to sort of delve into detail.

David Brock: Thanks, Eric. I think we'll start down on the end of the table with Dick, if that's okay. And then work our way back here, and then we'll have a conversation.

Dick Polman: Okay. I remember, when I was a young reporter starting out, and I would think of some perception that I thought was accurate based on information I'd gathered, and I would post it to an editor and the editors would say, well get somebody to say it. That use to be something you'd hear all the time. Get somebody to say it. Alright, go out and find a source. You can't say it yourself, you need to sort of go find, an opponent or a critic, whatever, to say it for you. And then it's news and then you can -- then you can use it. That was one of my early sort of glimmers as to what sort of the objectivity standard was.

Another aspect was just this notion that truth is always around the fifty-yard line -- always, you know. And that's where you've got a position that if you have people on this side of the field and this side of the field, it's going to end up somewhere along the fifty-yard line. And I've come, after a number of decades now, to sort of come to this conclusion that -- that you know, a lot of that is -- a lot of that's wrong. You know, fairness is good, and being thorough is good, and giving, you know, giving hits that are sort of justified to both sides is good. But when you come right down to it, the truth is sometimes at the ten-yard line, or the twenty. And you have to sort of be able to sort of state that, and then back it up, and then -- and go from there.

And I think what's happened the Republicans -- and I think this has been going on for a number of years -- in particular, Republicans I think have been very, very smart about how in some ways they can, tap into, they can exploit in some ways, this objectivity standards, this even -- even thing, so that, the first time I saw this, and I'll bring it up to the present day, was in the 1988 Presidential campaign which some of you may remember, and some of you it's probably just a piece of history.

There was a lot of -- this was when the Republicans were doing a lot of really intense negative ads on Michael Dukakis. The Willy Horton ad and some of these things. You know, really swinging it. And the Democrats did not have the same level of -- of negative ads going the other direction. They didn't want to conduct that kind of -- campaigns that way. And I remember picking up a cover of Newsweek that summer I think it was, and the cover was showing sort of in equal proportions -- I don't know if it was actually Bush, Sr. or Dukakis, but it was a Democrat and a Republican -- maybe the donkey and elephant -- slinging mud at each other. And it was sort of an equivalence. A false equivalence in a way. And I think in some ways I think the Republicans are very good at sort of -- of getting that, of playing at that.

I think a lot of this has been exacerbated now since 9/11. I think 9/11 has made it a lot more difficult, for -- to -- the pressure on the press to sort of ask difficult questions of a President in wartime. That I think has made it very difficult. Particularly in the early couple of years. Because then you get into these questions of you know, what's more important -- security or freedom. All the things that we still talk about this very day with the latest phone surveillance story.

But let me just mention one other factor, which I think may play into -- I mean, Eric may have some of this in his book, I don't know. That is that the economic situation right now of the mainstream media. I work for a newspaper which right now is in a major economic crisis. Our -- our newspaper chain Knight Ridder is imploding. It's going to be dead by sometime in mid-summer because the McClatchy Corporation bought it, and they're spinning off twelve of their newspapers into the ozone somewhere. One of them being the Philadelphia Inquirer.

So there's all these -- and part of it is because of, you know, flat circulation. The circulation worries I think have affected the way editors -- not just our paper, but a lot of other papers -- think through some of these questions about what's news and what isn't. It comes to play particularly on these questions of how hard to go after say one side -- in this case the administration -- because you realize you don't want to lose any readers. Some of those readers may be conservative readers. They may be supporters of the President in this particular case. You don't want to lose them. If you lose any reader, it's like a terrible thing. So you don't want to go from 500,000 to 400,000 to 300,000.

So there's this -- there's this I think -- and it's never explicitly stated, but there's always just something there that you don't want to risk being sort of too out there in a way that's going to sort of trigger some kind of mass, you know -- a mass exodus of readers. And you know, I get emails all the time saying because of what you wrote yesterday, I'm canceling my subscription. Yeah, I mean, frankly personally I couldn't care less, but it's out there.

So the one example I was going to bring up was the Downing Street Memo, and then I'll stop talking. When that story -- when that came out, in 2005, and here was the British saying, right you know, before the war -- well, you know, the -- looks like we're going to have a war. The “intelligence” is being fixed around the policy. That seemed to me like a fairly significant remark. Certainly coming from our own side, and one of our greatest allies. And so I spent a better part of three or four weeks trying to convince the paper -- hey, we should write about this. I want to write about this. I want to analyze it and see, you know, what it's all about. And that's how long it took. It took three or four weeks for me to get it in.

And when I finally got it in, we ran it on a Sunday, but we ran it on page six, which of course, anybody that knows newspapers, or is within the newspaper business -- the left-hand side is six, and that's not considered a good page either. The right-hand side -- you know, the eye goes to the right when you open it up. So if you're on page six, it's a bad page. I rarely, if ever, have been on page six. Ever. In the Sunday paper. So it was very interesting it was for that story, and there was no reference to it on the front page. It was just sort of stuck in there in this little funny, space, because I don't think -- you know, the idea that it was sort of going to be a stand-alone story by us saying that there was something wrong with the policy, as opposed to Democrats getting somebody to say it. I think that was all those things, and the reaction of readers I think all sort of come into play. And I think there's been a lot of that in the press.

Let me give you one other quick example, from today -- from what's going on today. A few weeks ago there was this story about Tyler Drumheller. Anybody remember that name? This, ex-CIA analyst who had a big splash on 60 Minutes, and a few other places -- Hard Ball. And he was talking about how they had an inside source in Saddam Hussein's inner circle who knew that there were not WMD's before the war, and they went to the White House. Once the White House heard there were no WMD's, they weren't interested in this guy anymore. The train was already leaving the station. So Drumheller had all this on TV.

There was hardly any coverage of that in the print press. We didn't have any of it in our paper. I had to put in on my blog in order to get it out there to whatever readers I had that might be interested. And I think there's another factor here going on for that today. It might be interesting to see if anybody agrees with this. Is that now there's so much sort of “bad news” or true news about intelligence snafus and covering up stuff that didn't go with the program and the White House -- there's so much of it out there, that now it's like it's almost not news. So you know, the paradox is that the White House in some ways gets an advantage there, because you know, a lot of -- a lot of media won't consider it to be news to report yet another person coming forward. So I think all these factors come into play here.

David Brock: Thanks. That's great. Lynn?

Lynn Sweet: I want to just maybe try and talk -- put a little context, historical context into some of the things that you talked about as to why it is, because the media's not monolithic, there is no we, it's me. You know, I don't get my instructions from central -- from the central office. You know, here's the plan today, what to do or not. And actually if you saw how papers really get out each day, you'd be surprised that we -- you know, that everything comes together from the crosswords to the front page, because it's an incredible process. It is. So the kind of -- with all respects, when I get broadsides about the press, we're talking about a lot of different organisms that live independently that might feed off the same Petri dish, but they don't necessarily, you know, do more than that.

During the period of the rise of -- you know, the -- the period that you talked of where the Clinton administration was attacked so strongly in the press was also the same period where you saw the birth of the cable TV news shows. Where the opinion -- where the shows came of their own, where MSNBC was spawned, FOX News was invented, and where you had the minor, cable networks such as, I think it was called America Talks. It became MSNBC. Where the shows used to be insider political shows. Someone like me would be on to say, tell us what really is happening on the immigration bill. And I would talk about some machinations over, you know, subsection two dealing with border security. With maybe a little bit of edge.

These shows shifted as the Clinton scandals grew. They came of age then. And especially then with the impeachment and the Monica Lewinsky stories, you saw a whole switch to more opinion, because that's what drove the show. You developed a different set of personalities. And I think that had a lot to do with what you -- with what people saw if you're talking about broadcast.

At the same time, for whatever reasons, which is probably the subject of about 500 other panels and books, you had the emergence of conservative personalities starring on these shows, and not people on the progressive. So in terms of how that whole genre developed, it was -- it had a life of its own.

The other thing is I just also want to point out that I think it's no coincidence that you have a lot more investigations going on when the House is controlled, and the Senate are controlled, by the party that is not in the White House. As much independent research as people do -- and I know a lot of investigative reporters who just do a lot of their own digging -- I think that it could be said fairly safely that when you have a different party in charge of the House and Senate investigative committees in the White House, almost by definition you're going to see things investigated, but clearly hasn't happened on the Bush watch because there hasn't been a change of power.

And for all the talk that's been happening lately of what might happen if the Democrats take control in November, you will see a change. It might not be as drastic as some of the Republicans say. House Leader Nancy Pelosi just today was sending around an email -- or email that she had -- you know, that's leaking out, that no, we're not going to do an impeachment if we take control because she felt the need to make that clear. So I think you will see a different environment where you will find that the press will hold President Bush to the standard it's always held -- and this is where I differ with you -- and it's the same standard. And I think when people figure things out to their satisfaction, they put it out.

Now why that might not happen is, you know, perhaps more at the core of your issue, but you know, the press doesn't go have a meeting and take a vote on anything.

Eric Boehlert: Can I jump in real quick? The false equivalence reminded of , of a Newsweek story last -- in the 2004 campaign, late September, almost the same story, that's where I remember it. It was dirty campaigning and boy, both sides are doing it. Newsweek did a -- it wasn't a cover story, but the feature on dirty campaign ads made no mention whatsoever to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth one month after that happened. One of my favorite statistics from the book, just for the Clinton-Bush years, Whitewater, the first two years when it was strictly a real estate scandal , ABC's Night Line did nineteen programs. Valerie Plame two years when it was the most serious criminal investigation of the White House, Night Line did three shows. So I think that sort of gives a sense of you know, the urgency and their lack of.

David Brock: Kathy?

Kathy Kiely: Okay. I think both of my colleagues gave you a pretty good overview of what's going on. I just want to reiterate and flush out a few points. One is that I used to work -- I've worked for five newspapers in my career, and so I can tell you from a first-person standpoint that the press definitely is not monolithic. In fact, if anybody tells you that there's a media conspiracy, just know this -- we should be so organized. Two of the newspapers I worked for are dead. They no longer exist. So there are real financial pressures in the media, and while the good news I think with the explosion of technology that has created all kinds of cable news sites, and internet news sites -- there's probably more outlets for information than there ever has been before. But -- and this might be the topic for somebody's doctoral thesis , I suspect there are fewer reporters, so -- because of these financial pressures -- and that is not necessarily a good thing. Because you can have as we all know, 80,000 channels and three programs running over and over and over again.

And that gets to one of the issues that Lynn touched on, which I think is one of the most important changes in the media, and that is the explosion of twenty-four-hour television news. I think it has fundamentally changed the way news is covered in this country, and not for the better.

When I first came into the newspaper business eighty million years ago newspapers set the agenda for TV and radio. We would wake up in the morning and hear our stories being read back to us. And to some extent, that still happens. But I can tell you that in every newsroom now, on every desk, there's a television set, and those TV sets are on. And when there's a car chase, or when there's, someone coming out and saying breaking news! I can count in nanoseconds the amount of time it'll take me to get a phone call.

And so I think -- I think that the pressure of cable news has created a kind of a mob psychology -- not just in the newspaper business, but in the country. And I call it the big story syndrome. It's kind of like everybody has to be covering O. J.'s car going down the interstate, and maybe we should have had a few people in Afghanistan finding out about this guy named Osama. But I guarantee you that if you went to an editor and said gee, I need to go to Afghanistan because there's this guy named Osama, you would have a hard time getting the interest and the commitment to do that story. That's not to say it doesn't happen. But it's tough. And it's tough because of the commercial pressures that Dick talked about.

And those are pressures that have to do -- you know, my -- I used to worked in the National Press building and down the hall from me was a newspaper that I thought had the best name of all -- it was called Der Spiegel. It was a German paper and it means the mirror. And the press is really a mirror of our society, for better and worse.

And Eric talked about the Clinton scandals, how they were played, versus what's going on in the Bush administration. Well, I would argue to you that one reason for that is that it's a whole lot easier to understand sex with an intern than -- and for people to get that story -- than it is to explain a complicated campaign finance maneuver, or whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction. In which case, you're asking the press to prove a negative. Which is hard for anybody to do, but especially an organization that doesn't have subpoena power. Which again gets to the point that Lynn made about the drivers of a lot of investigations of administration, that is Congress. We don't have subpoena power. There's a lot we can do, but there are things we can't do. So I think you have to factor that in.

The other factor is -- and I want to get back to this point about the various scandals and people buying into it. Our papers have to make money, and editors have to think about what sells newspapers. And these things may get reported -- it's our job to report the news, it's not our job to get people outraged about it.

And oftentimes I see stories -- I can remember a number of years ago when the father of the current President was President Bush, and I was in Georgetown and I was in a group of people. And it came up that I was a newspaper reporter and a guy came up to me and said, how -- you people in the press! You're just so soft on President Bush! How can you do this? Why, do you know that he once owned property in a covenanted community? And I looked at him and I said, yeah, how did you find that out? And he had to think about it. Well, of course! It was reported! What he was angry about wasn't that it had been covered up -- because obviously if it had been covered up, he wouldn't have known about it. It was the fact that it hadn't made a big splash. And stories about interns tend to make a bigger splash than complicated policy stories. Is that the fault of the press? Or is that the fault of the consumers who determine what sells newspapers?

So I just think that you know, we have to look in the mirror a little bit. The media is the mirror, and I'm not going to say that that we -- we absolve ourselves. I think the good news is discussions like this, I can assure you, happen every day. In every newsroom we're arguing about what ought to go on page one. We're arguing about what stories should go in the paper. It certainly isn't a monolithic organization. But there are these outside pressures created by cultural changes, and technological changes, and financial changes that I do think have had an affect.

David Brock: Paul.

Paul Waldman: Thanks. I'm going to make a series of broad, unflattering generalizations about reporters that don't apply in any way to the fine journalists who are sitting up here with me. (Laughing)

Eric talked about this whole liberal bias critique that the right has thrown at the media for a few decades now. What you hear them say is that reporters are a bunch of out-of-touch liberal northeastern elitists. Now, as it happens, that's largely true. The irony though is that that doesn't mean that Democrats get better coverage, and progressives get better coverage. In fact, a lot of the times it's just the opposite, and to illustrate that I'm going to tell you a little story that Media Matters uncovered a while back.

As a reporter I may as well say who she is -- Candy Crowley from CNN was giving a speech right after the 2004 election, talking about the election and her coverage. And she told a story about how she was in Iowa in the early part of the campaign with John Kerry, and they sat down at a diner to have lunch, and the waitress came over and asked him what he wanted. And Kerry asked if they had green tea, and the waitress said no, we only have Lipton's. And he said okay, I'll have Lipton's. And as Crowley told her audience she informed the Senator that if he wanted green tea, he was going to have to bring his own to Iowa. And probably a lot of other places in the -- in the country. And she said that she remembered this, it stuck with her because it just showed what an out-of-touch elitist Kerry really was.

Well, when Media Matters checked this out, they found out that she was a little bit mistaken. First of all, green tea accounts for about 20% of Lipton's sales in the United States. And if you're in Dubuque, and you want some green tea, you can get it at that snobby elitist grocery known as K-Mart. (Laughing)

So what does this tell us? Well, first of all, it tells us that the out-of-touch elitist in this case was the reporter. But that didn't mean that it manifested itself in scorn for the people of Iowa. No. It manifested itself in scorn for John Kerry, because he supposedly was the out-of-touch elitist. And so what do you see kind of running through so much coverage of social issues and politics when it comes to these sorts of questions? It's the idea that places here there are a lot of Republicans are truly American. Places where there are lot of Democrats, are not so much.

If NASCAR is something that's popular in places where there are a lot of Republicans, then it's the most American of sports. If reporters don't really listen to country music, then that is the rhythm to which true Americans tap their feet.

In all of these cases it's because so many of the reporters are, in fact, liberal northeastern elitists, and you know, I'm not excluding myself from that either. That those things that they perhaps are not too familiar with those are the kinds of real true American things. And as a consequence, they're all too ready to brand Democrats as being the ones who are out of touch -- not the regular guy. And so it's easy to convince the press that George W. Bush is in fact a regular guy, where someone like John Kerry or Al Gore is not a regular guy. And what is the real difference between Bush on the one hand and Kerry and Gore on the other?

Well, all three of them have tried to put on an act to convince people that they were ordinary fellows. The only difference is that George Bush is a better actor. This reveals something that I think is important. That we tend to think of reporters as very cynical, very jaded. That they're -- that they don't like spin, and photo ops and all those things. But what you see in the coverage is what really gets you scorn is not putting on a photo op, it's putting on a bad photo op. What gets you -- what gets you scorned is not spin, but spin poorly presented. So someone like Ken Mehlman, who is a walking ball of spin, who -- if his wife asks him -- sorry, he's not married. (Laughing) If he walks in -- if a friend of his -- that was completely unintentional. I promise you. (Laughing) I promise you!

If -- if his best friend says what kind of day did you have today, he'll say George Bush is working on the with strength and boldness on the important things for Americans and I had a pretty good day. He is not someone who's treated with contempt by reporters. No. He gets terrific coverage. Because he's a good spinner. And the -- it's the photo op that's poorly produced, it's the candidate who gives an unconvincing act of authenticity that is the one who gets the contempt. And I think it's more so with regard to Democrats than Republicans. It's tougher to convince them -- those alleged liberal northeastern elitists -- that a Democrat is a regular guy than a Republican is a regular guy. Because the assumption is if you're Republican and if you come from a red state -- especially in the south -- then you have the presumption of being that regular guy.

One of the consequences of this is that it's okay to make fun of places where Democrats live. On the campaign trail in 2004, George Bush -- every single day -- took potshots at Massachusetts, in attacking John Kerry. Can you imagine what would have happened if John Kerry had insulted Texas?! My God!

There was an ad that was aired in the Iowa -- in the Iowa primaries by, I believe it was The Club For Growth, a conservative group, against Howard Dean. You may remember it. A couple in their 50s or 60s talking about Howard Dean and they said that he should take his body-piercing, New York Times-reading, latte-drinking, freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.

Lynn Sweet: It was The Club For Growth ad.

Paul Waldman: Yes. Now -- now what was the reaction of the press to that? Aaah, sort of amused chuckles. Right? Think about what would have happened if a liberal group had said about George W. Bush that he ought to take his Field And Stream-reading, grits-eating NASCAR-driving freak show back to Texas where it belongs. There's a presumption that it's okay to aim those kinds of barbs at places where there are Democrats, and at Democrats themselves.

And I think there's something that -- this gets to what my book is about. The subtitle is What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success. I think that, because of the fact that there's sort of a natural personal affinity between a lot of Democrats and a lot of reporters. That they, you know, went to the same kind of schools and seem to have a similar sort of social outlook -- Democrats tend to assume that reporters are their friends. This means that the Democrat administrations leak more than Republican administrations. They want to be friendly to them. When they ask them questions, they -- the Democrats want to help out. On the assumption that in the end they'll get fair treatment.

Republicans don't have that assumption to start with. Their immediate assumption is you're out to get me. You're my enemy. And why should I tell you anything? The result is, partly that Republicans end up getting better coverage, because what they understand, and Democrats don't, is that ultimately it's about who succeeds and who fails. And if you win, you will get good coverage. And if you lose, you will get bad coverage. And it's not anymore complicated than that.

And so when there's a political conflict, Democrats are always worried about how things are going to look. And whether or not David Broder is going to write a column tsk-tsking them for something that they did, like going too negative. And that's why they always end up apologizing whenever they get a little mean.

You may notice Republicans never apologize. Because they understand that if they stay unified and if they win at the end of the day, they're not going to suffer in the reporting. They're going to be celebrated as winners. And the Democrats, in turn, are going to be scorned as losers. And you can see that undercurrent running through so much of the coverage. Democrats are weak. That they are a bunch of losers. And that even if they're on top for a moment, in the end, they're going to -- they're going to lose and lose badly. And you can even see -- you even see now when they're riding as high as they could possibly ride -- occasionally you'll see stories about how, you know, this is all going to come crashing down, and here's how they're going to be squabbling about it when it does.

There's one thing I'll mention, just at the end. The New York Times did a pair of stories on the eve of the 2004 election about what would happen to each side if they lost. The story about the Republicans was something about how they were going to stay unified and keep fighting, and the story about the Democrats was how they were going to devolve into circular firing squads and bicker forever and ever.

Now that was a prediction about the future. Now, I'm not saying there's no truth that led to that kind of perspective. But what it shows is that there is a hostility towards the left that doesn't come from the fact that reporters are -- have different opinions than Democrats about abortion, or about gay rights or anything like that. It's not about issues. It's about the fact that they think they're a bunch of losers. And the sooner that Democrats can realize that, the more effective they can be politically.

Eric Boehlert: And I would just add a quick point, and if you want to -- particularly last year -- if you wanted to see that theme played out every day, every day, Democrats are losers. All you had to do is read ABC's The Note. That was the theme of last year. Democrats are losers, and they're being run circles around.

And another reminded me one of my favorite Washington Post stories four months into Clinton's term he was down in the 40s job approval, and they ran a big story. It was called Another Failed Presidency? And I haven't checked, but a month ago the Post had never used that phrase regarding Bush.

David Brock: Thank you. I'm going to, make one observation. I'm going to try to stay in my role as neutral moderator, but I do have to say that -- (Laughing) -- I think Lynn and Kathy have given us one of the stronger arguments I've heard to turn over the Congress this Fall to the Democratic hands, because then we'll have a press that isn't acting like lapdogs.

I wanted Eric to address the question of this -- this media conspiracy, mob psychology, et cetera. One of the -- one of the things about Media Matters is that we document what we document and we don't have to say why things are happening the way they're happening. We don't make any accusations of people's motives or talk very little about bias. I've read your book and I know that you have some thoughts about why this happens. And I -- I don't think that you're characterizing it as a conspiracy. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Someone asked me the other night, you know, about this, what -- wasn't the biggest story in the world, but the reaction to Stephen Colbert's and quite aside from whether you know, one felt that what he said was appropriate or not, or was funny or not, just remarked about the fact that in the first few days, it was if it had not happened at all.

Eric Boehlert: Right.

David Brock: Not even a sentence. Not even a reference to it. And how could that happen? How could everyone have decided to leave him out of their stories when, in fact, you know, there is no allegation that there's a conference call, and they're all deciding --

Eric Boehlert: (Laughing) Right. Right.

David Brock: Just sort of what -- what is that all about?

Eric Boehlert: Right, right. If everyone -- right, if we have all these independent news organizations, how can they routinely come to almost the exact same editorial decisions? A quick point about liberal bias I stay away from it, too. I mean, if you think about liberal bias, what -- the argument is that essentially all reporters are essentially Democratic operatives who purposely spin the news in order to achieve a political agenda. That is probably one of the most far reaching conspiracy theories ever hatched, and yet people take it seriously. So thankfully, most people on the left do not ascribe to any sort of conspiracy. It's not a bias. People don't do this purposely because they're all trying to advance the Republican agenda.

My argument, and I think, other people, is there's a mindset, and there's this group thing. And I understand it's dangerous to, describe all media outlets as the same, and you can't. And yet you come back to the same thing. Downing Street Memo. How could literally every news organization in America know that that memo was out there? And every news organization in America, for six weeks decide we're not going to print and we're not going to talk about it. It's --

Lynn Sweet: Wait. Wait. When you say that every news -- do you really mean the elite national press, or do you mean the -- a paper, daily paper in Montana, Wyoming, downstate Illinois, upstate New York?

Eric Boehlert: Every -- basically every news organization in America. I mean, for instance Tim Russert opened five weeks after the Downing Street Memo was -- was printed in the U.K. Tim Russert opened a program. He's talking to Ken Mehlman. And he says now let's turn to the now-famous Downing Street Memo. And Tim Russert was the first person on an NBC payroll to use the words Downing Street Memo on the air.

So it was famous, but no one had bothered to report on NBC to the American public, or ABC or CBS or NBC, or anybody. So it is very peculiar and puzzling in that these -- these media companies and everyone on staff is different, and yet everyone oddly seems to come to the same conclusion day in and day out.

I think, again, it's -- it is the -- there's a certain fear, the liberal bias critique. I think, as has been discussed here, the economics not only are news organizations losing readers and viewers, they're losing jobs. There are fewer job opportunities. I think that -- that has to affect how you do your job in D.C.

If there are fewer bureaus who are going to do any sort of hiring, I think it's sort of natural that everyone becomes a little more tentative and doesn't want to lose their job. Because it's not like the old days when there are other people hiring.

So I think there's -- there's an unfortunate mindset. I think there's the economics. I think the liberal bias. And I think there's just -- as Paul was talking about, there's this sort of reverence for the Republicans. They're the natural tough guys. They're the winners. They're savvy. They're sophisticated. And the Democrats are just sort of these -- these helpless people who wander around the halls of Washington.

Kathy Kiely: As somebody -- I me and my paper, just ran a story yesterday , that made a lot of headlines about, the NSA collecting data from your telephones and mine, and creating databases of patterns of phone calls, and name names of companies, and have the President of the United States on our backs. I -- I -- you know, I've -- reporters love good stories. Editors love good stories. I think one thing that a lot of people don't understand who are in politics who are advocates for a cause, which is wonderful. Reporters generally aren't like that. Reporters are people who psychologically have a problem with commitment, and we love being sort of in the middle, and looking at the one side and on the other side.

And the thing that I like in it, too, is we're like horse handicappers. You know, when I look at a politician -- because I do a lot of political writing -- I don't look at them like, well do I agree with them or don't I? I mean, that's for when I go to the voting booth. When I look at a politician, I think is he or she a good piece of horseflesh? Can they go the distance? And that's how -- it's just a different mindset. And I think people who go into the media tend to have that mindset.

Now, why are some things happening? I'm going to let Dick talk about the Downing Street Memo, because I personally haven't -- that's not my area of coverage and I don't know that much about it. But I'm just going to suggest, because you brought up Stephen Colbert -- I was not at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but I think he came after George Bush. Right?

David Brock: Yes.

Kathy Kiely: Okay. One reason you might not have seen that in the Sunday papers is that it was after a lot of deadlines. So it's not necessarily a media conspiracy. It's just that we have these deadlines, and depending on when you get your newspaper, where you live, the paper you get was produced and had to be put to bed at a certain time, and that may have well been before Stephen Colbert spoke. Somebody had to leave the room to phone in or write it on their laptop, and so that could have been one reason.

Another reason that Stephen Colbert got less play is that George Bush made fun of himself. Okay? That's news. People like to read about that. So he's the President of the United States. Whether you like it or not. And the President of the United States is an attention-getter, and he's going to get coverage for that.

The other thing that I will just say about the editorializing -- and I'm not editorializing, you know. I just think that I'm just trying to give you a sense of how people's minds work in this business. I think the reason that Colbert got some negative coverage is that he made fun of somebody in a -- in a continual, non-interrupted way. He made fun of somebody who was in the room.

David Brock: The reporters. (Laughing)

Kathy Kiely: And that -- that -- well, no, he actually made more fun of George Bush. And I will just -- no, actually -- I -- I've been involved in some of these press dinners, and I will tell you that I was involved in a gridiron dinner when Bill Clinton was President, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal was in full play, and there were people suggesting skits we should do, or jokes we should make. And I remember saying remember, he and his wife are going to be in the room. And there is a difference in how an audience generally reacts to a joke when the butt of the joke is in the room. So I think -- it's just a psychological thing. I think Colbert may have made people uncomfortable by going after Bush in the way he did -- when he was in the room. So -- and I'm just giving you an example on the Clinton side of things, to show that the thinking goes both ways.

Eric Boehlert: If I could just say -- just very quickly.

David Brock: Sure.

Eric Boehlert: The -- Stephen Colbert and the Downing Street Memo may in fact be two symptoms of the same thing. Which is that in both cases I said it was part of I think the problem is that he made fun of the reporters, and that may have made people a little unhappy. With the Downing Street Memo, when you go back now and look at -- do a critique of some of the things that the Bush administration said in order to bring us into Iraq, you are also doing a critique implicitly if nothing else, of the press's performance during that time. And I don't think there are a lot of reporters who are very proud of the -- of their profession in general regardless of what they wrote their organization did, who are all that proud of how the press performed in the run up to the Iraq war. And so when you start to go back and look at things like the Downing Street Memo, or look at things like what Tyler Drumheller was saying, I think it makes a lot of people uncomfortable because you're naturally raising those sorts of questions about why the press didn't do its job.

David Brock: Dick?

Dick Polman: Yeah. I wanted to throw in a -- what I think is an important caveat about the awful job we've done. I'm saying this, you know, in terms of the nature of what the way this discussion seems to be going. I think it's important to -- to at least give you all an exception to the general rule that we're talking about. That there actually was some very, very fine work done on the pre-war intelligence stuff by, as I mentioned before the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau. The Knight Ridder newspaper chain. Their Washington bureau here in town did some fantastic work which it's been -- it's interesting because it's been largely -- this -- this gets to something that a lot of people don't even know about it, or it's been overlooked precisely because everybody gets so focused on the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CBS, and so-called major first tier newspaper, and broadcasts.

The Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, all this stuff I think is available. Actually, there's a terrific story about it which you can all read on the American Journalism Review website, ajr.org. They lay it all out. And I'm sure the website itself, the Knight Ridder website, probably has all their stories. But they did stuff you know, February 2002, September 2002, October 2002 -- this is long before the war. They did stuff saying that there was a lack of -- a lot of intelligence, people were saying there wasn't any WMD material out there. In other words I know this came up a second ago -- it is difficult to prove a negative and sex does sell better.

The Knight Ridder Bureau actually did prove the negative in a lot of ways. Or at least they raised very serious questions about it. And as a matter of fact, when the Downing Street Memo came out, and they saw it they kind of realized well, we've actually covered some of this material ourselves in print.

Now the problem is that -- that Knight Ridder, you know, goes to sort of medium-size cities and small towns -- 32 papers, at least until recently -- and a lot of them picked it up. A lot of them didn't. But it didn't get into that, you know, the Washington Post and New York Times is going to run it, I mean it just gets kind of ignored. And then later on when other people replicate the same kind of reporting, there really where not any references back to what Knight Ridder did. So I think it's important to mention that.

And I think it's difficult -- it might have been Lynn who said this -- that it's important when you learn -- I think the difficulty with doing critiques of the press is this very question that they're not monolithic and there are always -- it's very, very difficult I think, to track every single thing that's going on from every single media because there's a lot out there. I have to say -- I just happened to look at Eric's book on page 201, he's talking about the Swift Boat coverage and he says on September 12th the Philadelphia Inquirer in a page 1 2000 wrote an article on the Swifty phenomenon made no mention of the glaring gaps in their allegations. Well, I'm going to -- I'm going to check when I get back to the office, but I am 98% sure that in August I did a piece (Laughing) on the front page which I used the term “fact challenged”, in maybe the third paragraph I think -- I know I used the word fact challenge in there. And that was actually ironically enough, it was probably a mistake on our part. That was -- that became, I think, our first hit at that story was a story which immediately called it fact challenged. In some ways maybe it was too much of an assorted analysis the first time out of the gate. But then you could also argue maybe that that's the way the press should operate.

And one last other thing I was going to mention, because we've talked about technological changes. I think what's going on now is -- also, is that there are many -- that the -- I'm fact checking. I think the press now, when it's doing its job in the best possible way, has more resources available now because of the internet, to fact check stuff almost in a real time than they ever had before. I mean, I've covered a million Presidential debates. It's really, you know, on the scene in those press rooms, it's really one of the hardest, the most brutal, and unpleasant kind of journalism tasks to have to sort of write like against these 45-minute deadlines while these guys are talking.

One of the things that's changed a lot I know since 2004 is that now there are very good nonpartisan websites that you can go to as you're, you know writing. You go to another screen and as these candidates are making these allegations, [Audio Skip] Check.org which I think it out of the Annenberg school in Philadelphia. You'll see stuff posted right away with references back, and you can really judge it, and -- and really inform your reporting with good sort of analysis as you go. So in some ways, you know, the internet can be crazy and we all know that but there are definitely resources that make us better.

Paul Waldman: A quick note on the Knight Ridder -- what are the two men's names who wrote most of those great stories?

Dick Polman: Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel.

Paul Waldman: And so I was talking to a woman recently, she's working on a PBS documentary on the press and the war. And she was talking about what great work they did. And she had talked to one of them and she said how come I never saw you on TV? And you wrote all these stories and I think one of them is younger than the other, and she said it'd be great on TV. He said no one ever called me.

Dick Polman: That's right. Nobody knows Knight Ridder. People think Knight Rider, they think of some old TV show. (Laughing)

Paul Waldman: Yeah, I'd like to add a point to that. You're absolutely right. I mean, those guys were absolute heroes of democracy for the work they did before the war. And in any story, whenever the -- the bulk of news organizations gets it wrong or ignores it, there's always some journalist somewhere who is getting it right. I think this gets back to kind of the heart of what we at Media Matters do and why it's different -- the progressive critique of the media is different from the conservative critique of the media. People often like to make equivalences between us and those people on the right who are always screaming about liberal bias.

The conservatives tend not to believe in the enterprise of journalism. If -- what they see in the media is not telling you that you know, George Bush is eight feet tall and walks on water, then they're going to complain about it and say it has a liberal bias. The truth is really of no interest to them.

The progressive critique of the media is something that accepts and celebrates good journalism. We believe in journalism. We want journalists to do their job in the best possible way with the most accuracy and the most reliability that they can, and that's the big difference.

David Brock: Okay. If no one on the panel has anything else, I'm going to try to open this up for questions from the audience. Yes, in the back here.

Question: There are a lot of very good internal reasons why the press seems to favor Republicans' point of view or at least accept the framing [Audio Skip], but I've also read some passing about the increasing concentration of media outlets and a dwindling number of public and private corporations, large corporations. And I haven't heard anyone really talk about whether or not that is part of the reason why the media may be dancing to the right or if editors are still largely independent of their corporate message.

Lynn Sweet: I just want to -- I wanted to do something that the people I cover do, and that is not accept the premise of your question. And that is, and this is the first part about whatever you heard here. I don't think I conceded that any -- that -- you remember, I'm the one that said there's not a monolithic press. So certainly there's not a monolithic Republican framing. So I want to -- that -- I'm not an expert on the second part of what happens with the consolidation within the news business so I won't address that. But I just want to go back and underscore my first points made, and deconstruct a little bit your question to say -- I, you know, I hope that you had -- that you have sat through this and that's still what you think I, you know, I kind of don't know what -- what to say that might be more productive for you.

Question: _____ that three of the five panelists sort of suggest that they were assembling, at least through the offer of acceptance, of a right wing point of view in some of the reports.

Eric Boehlert: Yeah. I mean the question -- I did not really deal with that in my -- in my book. I didn't feel strongly enough or have enough proof. I mean there's certainly this argument that NBC, you know, certainly covering a war -- I mean, owned by General Electric, they're in the war business. I mean, they have massive contracts with the government does that affect their war coverage, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Waldman: You talk a little bit about Phil Donahue in the book, right?

Eric Boehlert: Well yeah --

Paul Waldman: Does that come into play here do you think?

Eric Boehlert: Well, I don't know. I mean it -- to me, it's a what-if and you know, Phil Donahue was famously sacked months before the beginning of the war that there -- there was leaked an internal NBC memo saying this is not the face -- this is not -- we do not want to have Phil Donahue as a -- as a anti-war advocate, as the face for NBC news or even MSNBC news - when everyone else is running the fluttering flags on the corner. At the time Phil Donahue was the highest rated host on MSNBC, even though they claim he was getting fired because of the ratings.

But I -- I don't embrace that argument just because I don't think there's enough proof, and it seems -- it seems a little too conspiratorial for my take, even though I'm quite critical of the press.

Dick Polman: One -- one -- one very -- very quick comment. I don't think it's -- it's really a question of right wing or left wing. I think they just -- like I was saying, I think they just, you know, they're concerned about readers. And you know, if there was a, if the President -- if the situation was reversed right now and it was a President from the other party then they would probably be even more interested -- concerned about you know, losing liberal readers. Certainly in my market, a city -- a blue state city, they would be. You know, so it's -- it's money. It's way above ideology, or below ideology maybe.

Kathy Kiely: Yeah, I mean I -- I agree with Dick. First of all, I -- I don't think there is - I think as I say, I think reporters and editors are interested in stories. They tend not to be politically ginned up in the same way that maybe people in the political sphere are. Because we would go into politics if that were the case. We'd be working for members of Congress or for campaigns. But we work for newspapers. So there's a different mindset.

And the other thing I would say is that I've worked for five different newspapers. Never in my life have I been told what to write, how to write a story, and if I were, it would cause a huge scandal in the newsroom. I mean, reporters are anti-authoritarian people. And people who become editors are former reporters. So there may be a lot of things wrong in the media, but it's not -- and there may be things the media doesn't do that they should be doing, but the kind of bias that you need to worry about if you're a reporter or you're an editor is not anything nearly that bold. What you have to worry about is what are -- what's the story out there that you're not seeing? What's the point of view that you're not seeing? What's the story you're not putting in the paper because your own viewpoint, your own biases are blinding you to it?

But in terms of trying to put a -- a news report out it's -- people do a pretty good job I think of trying to deliver a multifaceted news report. The one thing I will say, and Dick kind of touched on this point, and it especially is a dilemma for us in political coverage -- as my colleague, Jill Lawrence once said in a postmortem that we had at my paper just -- we all got around and sat around and talked about our political coverage so we do criticize ourselves -- and I thought this was a great observation. Jill said, fair isn't necessarily balanced. And I think that gets to the point that Dick talked about where, where's the truth? Is it -- it's more comfortable to say it's at the fifty-yard line. It's much easier if you're covering a Presidential debate to say well, Candidate X made three bloopers, but then so did Candidate Y. Even though Candidate X may have made more bloopers proportionally than the other one.

And again, you just are in the situation where I don't think it's because the editors and reporters favor a particular candidate, but they're concerned about about being fair and -- and being able to defend that to readers who might complain about it. So I'm not saying it's right, but that's the kind of thinking that goes on. It's not gee, we really out -- or we're really out to get this candidate, and let's -- let's see what we can do. I mean, I think it's much more subtle. And people are making a good faith effort but that's -- that's a hard thing to -- it's a hard thing to be fair -- it's just -- it's a very hard thing to do. And so we're struggling with that. But it's an honest struggle. It's not a conspiratorial thing. And as I said, we're not organized.

Paul Waldman: If I could just very briefly -- one of the problems with that -- that impulse to go to the he-said, she-said because that's kind of the safest thing, is that it gives the advantage to the less scrupulous side. Because if one side is going to come out in a lie, and the other side says well, wait a second, you're lying. And then what's in the story is you know, Republicans said X, and Democrats say Y, and we really don't know what the truth is. Then the liars are the ones who win.

Eric Boehlert: Well, just look at the Swift Boat hoax.

David Brock: The second question? Yes.

Question: What if the _____ magazine. One of the quickly emerging pieces of conventional wisdom now that Bush's poll numbers are plummeting, is that he's not conservative enough. We saw this on the front page of the Washington Post two days ago. That if only Bush had listened to _____ The Club For Growth more he'd be doing better. And I wonder if you guys could talk about -- a little bit as Bush's poll numbers are down _____ going after the administration. How does the press be careful to sort of deal with the conservatives who are unhappy with Bush versus the rest of the country who is unhappy with Bush?

Eric Boehlert: Phase two is interesting, because as I mentioned, I think you can almost do a postmortem on so many aspects of the Bush presidency and you can do a postmortem on the press coverage. How it's going to -- I mean I think the danger is they're -- you know, they're going to give away too much credence and time and space to a very small click of beltway conservatives who have been help -- who have been driving the agenda for 5-6 years. And I imagine they'll probably get a very wide airing over the next however months. And the conservatives who are clearly heeling away from Bush across the country, according to the polls, will not get that kind of attention. They just don't have the megaphone that Grover has and other people.

Dick Polman: I wrote the same story -- same morning. You know, and I think it's easy -- you know, as a mainstream media person so-called, you don't want to just do poll-driven stories all that much. You know? Because it's too easy and it's every click of the -- of the mood. But I think what happens in a case like this when -- when -- conservatives bailing out in some ways gives the mainstream media some cover for writing about this. You know, in a -- in a -- in sort of a comprehensive way. It's like -- it's not like you're just saying oh now he's down to 38%. Now, it's 35%. You don't want to write those stories. But you know, if you can say with statistics to back it up that oh, he's at 31% and it's because people are bailing out -- you know, it -- it's -- I think it makes it -- you know, those in the press who are perhaps worried about being perceived as just Bush bashers, it makes it easier for them to sort of to write about it. And particularly when, as I know in my case, you know, there's -- there were a whole slew of conservative voices out there to sort of, you know, to kind of -- to pack your story with saying oh, yes, we're bailing out and here's why, and it's doom and it's all the rest of it.

Although, I can say, by the way, it's also interesting -- it doesn't necessarily help you with the readers because I still get Bush defenders emailing me. I don't know if they have like, you know need remedial reading courses or what. But it's like they don't see all the conservative voices in the story. They still go back to the fact that it's there at all. But having said that, I think what Eric is saying -- I think there's some truth, because what it does is, it gives you cover, but it also means that you're going to be addressing in a major way -- you're going to be giving them a fairly large voice because it's like and that's news, you know? It's not like alright the liberals are bailing, the independents are bailing out. The liberals bailed out, you know, in 2002 or whatever.

But now these guys, you know, what's going to make them happy? What are their concerns and grievances? Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal - yesterday same thing. It does give them a bigger megaphone.

David Brock: I think we can take one more question. Yes.

Question: Hi. My apologizes _____ was talking. I think one _____ since I heard from the panel regarding during the Clinton administration that the scandals in that administration was easy to cover. That it was about sex and it was about interns. My questions to you, for you guys, is then how can you -- what's the explanation behind the traditional media not covering one of the scandals that's becoming huge in Washington involving possibly multiple Congressmen, prostitutes _____ limousine. I'm talking the Duke Cunningham scandal. Which may, or may not be directly related to the head of the CIA resigning. Is no media covering it immediately after he resigned, but we know back when CNN was buzzing about it. Now if that was the Clinton administration, if that was his CIA director resigning, and if there were characters like _____ fingers and “Dusty” Foggo _____ -- you can bet CNN and MSNBC would be talking about it 24/7, and it'd be on the front page of the New York Times and the LA Times and everything else. That's one question.

The second question I have for you guys is, one of the explanations I heard was well, during the Clinton administration _____ historic _____ to cover _____ because Republicans were in the majority. But you know, at that time I'm _____ college intern summer of '94 here. And the Democrats were in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House. But there's _____ so media, they had no problem writing stories after stories, you know, seeking out Republican operatives on the Hill and putting them away the Clinton administration day after day.

I don't see the same thing. You know? You hear are stories about how the Republicans caucus was united. The Democratic caucus did a lot of great things, you know? They're fighting. They're scraping. But no one's talking about it. So if you can explain the comparisons, I would like to know. [Applause]

Paul Waldman: Would someone like to take that?

Kathy Kiely: Well yeah. Long laundry list.

Paul Waldman: Brave one? (Laughing)

Kathy Kiely: Yes, I'll be brave. I'll be brave. I was the one who talked about the difference between the scandals, and it wasn't that I said that the Clinton scandals were easier to cover. In fact it ruined my life for about four years. It was that they were -- I think they were easier to sell. They were easier to interest readers in. So I think they tended to have maybe more legs as a result of that.

I think I would differ with the premise of your question that the limousines and allegations of limousines and prostitutes and Duke Cunningham have not been covered. There was a front page story in the Washington Post about that. I believe it was last weekend. I think the other allegations you brought up have not been proven. And generally when reporters think they have a good story, and it doesn't go in the newspaper, it's because you do not have it nailed down. Maybe that means it isn't true, or maybe that means that you have more reporting to do. I have never ever known a reporter or an editor to pass up a chance to leave the newspaper with a really juicy story.

Paul Waldman: Yeah, but that didn't stop anybody. You know, not having things nailed down didn't stop people in 1998. There was a frenzy and I don't know -- you know, I don't know what the kind of appropriate objective level of coverage for the current prostitution scandal is. But you can see -- you can put point to some individual articles, but the question is, how big is it?

Kathy Kiely: Well, and I would say let's go back to that story. That was Duke Cunningham is not in Congress because of a reporter. I mean, that was one of the rare stories where -- I mean, it doesn't always happen, but sometimes a reporter without subpoena power just on legwork can make something happen. And that's an example of where the press went and did -- did its job. We -- we all know the reporter. He's a colleague of ours. Marcus Stern. And Duke Cunningham is not in Congress today because of a reporter. And he's a Republican! So I just -- you know, I pause at that to say that there's a bias in favor of Republicans, I just don't see it. I mean, I work for a newspaper that has a President mad at us today because we wrote about this National Security Administration data. So it's just -- I just don't -- I can't buy that there's a bias in favor of Republicans in the press.

Lynn Sweet: If there are charges like you -- you know, that are out there and they're -- they're proven, I see nothing that you said that supports the conclusion that it would not be a story.

David Brock: Okay. I think we'll just do one more.

Question: You had talked earlier about the fact that in earlier administrations there was free flowing information between the press and the administration. More informal context and so on. And then all of a sudden when George Bush steps in, all that stops. And the press conferences stop, and the daily press conferences with the Secretary become stonewalled. And it amazes me that I would have thought that journalists would have said hey, we've got a problem here, and let's go after it. And I'm -- I'm wondering, how can that -- that in and of itself would be a story, and yet has never seemed to come out.

Kathy Kiely: The press is never a story. I mean, with -- we write about our problems, getting access, you know. People are going to say the whiny reporters. But let me just go back -- let me say this. Let me say this. That there -- that this problem with access to the White House has been a gradual one. You may not remember -- sorry about this, Neel. It was the Clinton administration that created a big ruckus at the very beginning of Bill Clinton's term when they suddenly closed off this certain corridor that went up to the President's -- that the Presidential Press Secretary's office, and near the Oval Office -- and that was gradually ratcheted back. I think no matter what party is involved Presidents want to control their coverage. Most politicians do. So there's been this constant tension.

I personally think the worst thing that ever happened to Presidential press briefings was the televising of them. Because it took away the informal give-and-take. It made for much more posturing by both the Press Secretaries and the reporters. If -- and you know, it's great. The public can see it now. I think it's definitely changed the nature of the exchange, and not for the better.

Lynn Sweet: And see, they're much overrated as a source of news in this town. The news -- those briefings in the White House. Now it might change. Today was the inaugural gaggle that Tony Snow gave this morning. The -- the amount of reporters that actually participate in that White House briefing everyday is -- is small. And however that briefing gets a life of its own, but it's -- I just recommend to people that for all the kind of media issues that we're talking about, that the briefing -- it might not -- the briefing is just one part of an element of a lot. It's -- it's -- it's not the bread-and-butter of what it is I think we're talking about here. It's kind of a glorified press release. This is what the administration might want you to know today. Here's the message of the day. Here are some things we're doing. And I found this true so often during the Clinton administration, as well as the Bush administration, with the exception of this scandal operation shop that Clinton's White House set up on the side.

I would just not get too fixated on that White House briefing as the end-all of what's good or bad in Washington journalism. It just -- have that out there. It might change under Snow, but it's not what most people do everyday.

Kathy Kiely: Right. And I also -- I just want to add one thing, because my editor would kill me if I didn't. It's not like we're taking this lying down. I mean, my newspaper and the Associated Press are leading an effort to eliminate the unwarranted use of unnamed sources. It's not that we don't use them. In fact, the story I keep mentioning, the NSA story, did use unnamed sources for obvious reasons. What has happened in Washington over a series of administrations -- kind of like since Watergate. It's almost like this status symbol -- I'm so important I can't be quoted by name. You know. And reporters think oh, I have unnamed sources. That must be really important. When it's something really mundane. And it's just ridiculous how often people don't want to be named.

Lynn Sweet: What's also ridiculous is, Kathy, it's at the point where there's transcripts that the White House puts out --

Kathy Kiely: Yes.

Lynn Sweet: Where this source is senior administration official. It came from a briefing that maybe 50-60 people were at. And --

Kathy Kiely: Yeah.

Lynn Sweet: The transcript it out on the White House official website for the world to see.

Kathy Kiely: Well, I'll give you -- I'll give you a classic example. So what we're doing with the Associated Press as well is we're lodging formal protests every time that happens. We had -- there was a conference call, you may remember, one of the big issues during the last campaign was re-importation of prescription drugs. And whether or not this should be allowed. And Candidate Bush said well we'll - we'll check into that. And the next administration, we'll study it. And so our reporters who were covering that issue kept calling and saying well, when's that study going to come out? When are you going to make that decision? Oh, it's coming along directly. Finally the day that it was announced, the reporter for our paper who covered that beat was out at lunch. And they had a 10-minute notice for this conference call, so that tells you how much they wanted this news out.

Because this reporter was out of pocket, I handled the conference call. And there were four senior administration officials on that conference call. All names you would know. The press person who was handling the conference call started out by saying -- and this person will be on the record for his opening statement, but on deep background for the question and answers. Whereas this guy will be on the record for question and answers, and on deep background for his opening statement. And it just went on and on like this. And the permutations were mind-boggling. I thought thank God I'm running a tape. I can't remember all this stuff.

So the questions were asked and, of course, the decision had been made not to re-import drugs. And a number of people asked questions, and since it's not my beat, all the obvious questions had been answered by the time they got to me. I didn't have any penetrating question left to ask, so I just said, you know, look, I'm -- I'm with USA Today and I'd like to protest the off-the-record nature of this conversation. This is an important decision that affects many Americans and I think you on the phone should be willing to let taxpayers know who's making this decision and why.

Three of the four people on the line immediately caved and gave me their names and titles, and you know, one did not. But they were very angry about that. The press person. But I just think that's an illustration -- we agree that the manipulation of information happens. We don't want to be part of it. We're doing the best we can to fight against it. And --

Lynn Sweet: At that point the press --

Paul Waldman: The solution is for --

Lynn Sweet: At that point the press core should be more militant. There have been some times I've been to White House briefings where I've protested. And I'm not a regular, and I would notice that it was excised from the official transcript. And I come from the -- my roots are in the kind of street brawl of Chicago journalism. And no good city hall reporter would ever stand for a mere daily official trying to pull that. And sometimes I wish some of that sensibility would carry over. A little more of a mob militant mentality when it comes to trying to put people on the record. And my experience also has been by the way at these briefings, and this is true of the Clinton and Bush White House, when they are basically to explain a program that will be announced officially in two hours. If they are that worried about the identity of these people, they should just write down the talking points and send out a briefing memo. Because -- and then if you have a question, call it in to somebody who could talk to you. Because frankly, you don't often, when this senior administration official is briefing you on something -- it really is just the facts surrounding some program. It is not all that mysterious.

Paul Waldman: Exactly. And the solution is for -- for reporters to play hardball. You know, at Media Matters we call this spinonomous sources, which is when sources are granted anonymity, to give you the same spin that the rest of the administration is giving you. And what the reporters should do if they, you know, really have some courage is to say you know what? That's the same spin that's coming out of anywhere else, and I'm not going to give you anonymity. And if you want to talk on the record, that's great. And if you don't, tough luck. I'm not putting your quote in my story, and I'll go get a quote from one of your opponents.

And if they start playing hardball like that, then maybe you know, eventually the administration would ease up.

Dick Polman: Well, there's one other thing, too. And that is that you also make the argument I think -- I mean, I don't even work -- I'm not even based in Washington. I'm based in Philadelphia. I come here a lot. But I have sort of an outside-the-beltway perspective on these things. And you know, my attitude is you know, the White House or any White House that has that kind of attitude as you were describing, well you know, sometimes access is overrated. I have to say in some ways. You can -- there's a million ways to work around it now. There's a million other kinds of -- there's people who used to work at the White House, or who know these people who are willing to talk about it. There's all kinds -- you know, my palm pilot's filled up with all kinds of people who -- who either have been in the White House before, or know this White House, or know this crowd, or worked with this crowd.

There's a lot of ways to get -- to gain understanding where you don't have to be, you know. I always remember there's this novelist named L.P. Hartley. He wrote this book years ago. I forget what it's called. The Go Between. A British guy. And the first line of the novel is that the character flew too close to the sun and was scorched. I always think that way about, you know, the ax -- Icarus. Like Icarus. Yeah. You know, that's the axis. You get too close to these people and you just -- you just get scorched. Sometimes you can have more independence of mind, independence of thought, just to sort of steer clear.

David Brock: Alright, well, thank you. We're going to wrap up. First I just want to -- I want to thank our three non-advocate reporters for being here. For their hard work. [Applause] _____.

And for our authors, there are books for sale in the back. They're happy to sign. Eric Boehlert's Lapdogs. And Paul Waldman, Being Right is Not Enough.

Thank you very much. [Applause]