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>> Frederica Freyberg: I am honored to be here to facilitate this conversation
with the esteemed Gwen Ifill. Before we turn it over to Gwen, a little insight
On Here and Now a couple from here at home.
of weeks ago we interviewed former Congressman Dave Obey. He told us that he believes that
the polarization in this country
is worse than he has ever seen, and it isn't just politics, he thinks, but society is also in
the same boat.
He tells us to take a look at what happens in the television people watch.
He says if you're a liberal you watch MSNBC; if you're a
outlets that reinforce their own conservative you watch Fox. He says the people watch media
views and don't listen to the views of others. Obey says societies don't work
that way over the long haul and neither do political systems. Both Here and Now producer Andy Moore and I had to
our heads when Obey said that.
news outlet standing that works for bridge that polarity. We are serving the mission. We feel like it's a sacred trust
to inform and engage viewers
across this state, be they liberals, conservatives or
We work diligently to tell both sides, all sides. Andy Moore offers these somewhethoughts. middle.
He says consuming political news
That's so Andy, isn't it? is like tak[LAUGHTER] through a fully operational car wash. [LAUGHTER]
Nuance and depth are lost in the noise and the spray
of social media, blogs and talk radio hosts eager to tell you what you already know or agree
It's no accident, he says, that one of Wisconsin's current US Senate candidates announced his candidacy on talk radio.
The reality of bias in the
media, Andy says, has nearly overtaken the perception of it. We work every day to preserve
the craft of journalism, the act
of taking facts that don't always go well together and turning them into truth.
Wisconsin Public Television shares this mission with PBS, and today we are privileged to
best. Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of be joined by one of its very
and senior correspondent for the Washington Week
PBS NewsHour. She is the best selling author of The
and Race in the Age of Breakthrough: Politics
White House correspondent O for the New York Times PBS, Ifill was political correspondent for NBC
and political reporter for the Washington Post.
A graduate of Simmons College in
Boston, Ifill has received more thaDr. Gwen Ifill.ary doctorate[APPLAUSE]I welcome
Gwen Ifill: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES] Thank you.
She has been our guide at the NewsHour to Wisconsin. Thank you, Frederica.
we would sit there in the morning we'd say did you hear [Lwhat happened in Wisconsin?or s[LAUGHTER]
Let's see if Frederica
is available. [LAUGHTER] And she would give us some sort
of guidance about what had
happened and leave us less confused than before. Everywhere I go, it's really fun
to travel the country and get out of our bubble and talk to people, but everywhere I go, I
Now I know how to get Washington Week on tell you, I learn something new.
a television set in a bar. [LAUGHTER]
You buy the bar.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] My mind broadens every time. [LAUGHTER]
I'm also happy to be
in Wisconsin today because, if you can believe it, it's snowing
so I get to tell all my friends, in Washington in October.
"Oh, snow? I went to Wisconsin to get away from it."
[LAUGHTER]
Not bad, not bad. I'm going to talk for just a few minutes about my love for what I
do and what we all do.
It's nice to be in a crowd where I don't have to sell us.
the choir. I know that you're members of
But also it's kind of good to be reminded from time to time how
valuable and why I could be doing anything else but I'm doing this. wAs you heard in my bio, Ie
started, wake me up in the
middle of the night, I'm still kind of a newspaper girl. When I was still in single
digits, not that I'm that much
older now, but when I was in single digits I wanted to be a
I wanted to write. reporter.
I wanted to ask questions and be nosy. I wanted to have a deadline
because I could never get anything done.
And the idea of working in a newspaper was very appealing to
me. I liked everything about it.
I liked the fact that it landed on people's front steps. I liked the smell of the ink, newsprint.
I liked the fact that it had a byline so I could get credit
for the work I did. And so I started out early on knowing I wanted to be in newspapers.
I got to college and I knew I wanted to be in newspapers. I tried out advertising.
Tried out radio. Nah.
Not so much. I tried out television. Absolutely not.
Hated it. Thought it was shallow and
We come full circle, don't we? lacked depth. [LAUGHTER]
And then when I came, I did that for a while and it
was fine, and I worked in Boston
at a newspaper and then I worked in Baltimore at a newspaper and I loved every minute of it, and
had I went to work in Washington
for the Washington Post, I started covering national politics and that was a lot of
fun.
I got to, as the lowest person on the totem pole, I got to actually travel around the
country covering the candidate
who was about to lose. [LAUGHTER]
a room, there would be this, So whenever I walked into
oh, no, she's here. [LAUGHTER] It's like the angel of death.
[LAUGHTER]
When I went to work for the New York Times I got the chance to cover a candidate
who actually won, who was Bill Clinton in '92.
Little did I know that was going to be a roller coaster that took
me all the way through 1994,
because there were always banana peels when it came to Bill Clinton that he would hit.
And there are some of us who
still compare our scars all these years later. If I hear "Don't Stop Thinking
About Tomorrow," I get chills.
[LAUGHTER] Things I still can't do.
It was covering the White House for the New York Times. But it was a perfect job.
as a panelist, which my idea Every now and then they would invite me on Washington
was a great idea. First time I'd ever done television was on a
reporters' roundtable called
Maryland Newswrap, which was a baby Washington Week, where we sat around
about the news of the week
in Maryland. So to me public broadcasting was
now encourage people to do on Friday nights which is empty my notebook. a Explain why things happened, I
how they happened.
getting phone calls returned. AndThere were two things thatdo Meet the Press. These shows were great for
happened in my life. When I would call people and
interview them, they would often
think, oh, she seems fine. And then I would meet them, and I could tell a lot about them by
how they responded. [LAUGHTER]
It was always, "Oh, you're Gwen Ifill?
You don't sound, I mean..." [LAUGHTER]
So you can always use that to your advantage.
[LAUGHTER]
But also after I started working in television and I was outed, as it were, people began
to return my phone calls, because they saw me on
these television shows talking sense and not talking smack.
So when I decided I was going to--
Russert, my friend and mentor, So I was happy. I was all set and then Tim
dared me to do television full time. We have him to blame for all of
this that's happened since. Because I said I'm really happy,
Tim, I don't want to do that all the time.
And he said, well, you know,
are you chicken? [LAUGHTER]
Some Irish version of "Are you chicken?" Or something like that.
[LAUGHTER] And he finally talked me
into trying it. And he promised to be my mentor and to protect me and to make sure that I had what I needed to
learn television. And he did for five years at NBC
friend as much as a boss, which is when PBS came knocking, he Nlooked at my contract, I was favor, which showed he was a
flew to New York and he said you still under contract at NBC, he
got to let her out of her contract, so she can do this because this is important.
And he could have kept me there.
He could have said, no, honest to goodness we got a legal hold on you, but he made it work so
that I could pursue my dream. And my dream, in this case, was a job I couldn't turn down which
and host Washington Week. It's a job that cannot tell you how jealous my other reporter friends in Washington are and
I just smile mysteriously and don't turn my back on them. [LAUGHTER]
Because things could happen.
It was an offer I couldn't refuse and I never, ever, questioned my decision to do it.
People say, really, you left
commercial television to go to public broadcasting?
have fewer people watching? I said yeah, but they're Wasn't that a step, don't you
smarter. [LAUGHTER]
I'm not sucking up to you,
it's true. It's reached the point now
around the country because if I just walk in a crowd and stand producers love to go with me
still, somebody will walk over to me and say something smart,
we start the camera rolling and I'm done. [LAUGHTER]
long ago where you may have heard they're doing something similar to the trouble that you created here in Wisconsin.
The difference being that their legislators came back more
quickly, and they actually passed a law which is now on the
ballot for repeal.
And I was at a, I think it was an apple butter festival a
job, and I'm wandering around and we talked to all these couple weekends ago, I love my
people who think this is a bad idea but we know we need to talk
to someone who thinks this is a good idea.
And I stood there for a moment. Then I walked over and bought So I sasome apple butter.ull my trick.
butter, the farmer said, And the guy selling the apple
"Oh, I know you." I said really? What do you think about issue
two?
He said, well I don't like it very much, or I like it very much.
Whatever it was I needed him
to say, he started saying smart stuff. We rolled the camera, went home.
[LAUGHTER]
And I got some apple butter out of it too. It really worked out well.
So the combination of opportunities has been perfect
for me because by the time I sit around on a Friday night in what
I call my sandbox where I invite
all my smartest friends to tell us what they know, not what they think, what they know,
I'm having fun. And if you're having fun too, an
dinner party. You've been at dinner parties iwhich were not cool and wheree you think how did I get seated
next to this guy? You don't want that.
I will tell you the places you can go for that kind of dinner
party on television.
[LAUGHTER] On ours it's kind of like you're hearing things the way
you hadn't heard them before. My goal in doing this is to explain why politics matters to people.
A lot of people are sick of politics for good reason, often.
mentality. There seems to be, as we were talking before, this car wash
I love that, by the way, I'm going to use that.
He's here? Don't tell him I said that.
Uh-oh. [LAUGHTER]
There's so much going on. There's so much heat and so little light that people think But it's true.
bother? So our task, not only on to themselves, why should I
okay, this is why it counts. the NewsHour but also on Washington Week, is to say,
This came to me naturally. I grew up, even though I look like I was born just yesterday.
[LAUGHTER]
I grew up when the Civil Rights Movement was in full flower. My father was a preacher and he
marched in the Civil Rights Movement. He brought home this notion that
mattered to us. What we saw on that television, which I am sad to say was black and white at that point, that
what happened on that television
the projects in some cases. And so as a result I always saw the lie, the connection between lwhat we do, how we say it, how
we tell it and why it matters.
And I always had this belief that government had an essential
A lot of people say the government just gets in the way. and impactful role in our lives.
listen and you can put your ear to the ground and if it doesn't do what you need it to do, it is also think sometimes you can
have not invested in the in part you're fault because you
government that's around you. It affects all of our lives. It then brings us to the front
row, which is where I always
wanted to be. I wanted to be sitting there and asking those questions.
It didn't occur to me until many
Which, you know, what are you years latgoing to do?n people will not answer your questions. [LAUGHTER]
trust the audience to understand But it doesn't mean don't ask and it doesn't mean you don't
history is not just an ego trip. when you're questions are not being answered. I believe being a front row to
My good day is when I beat you It's that I'm a stand-in, I'm a funnel for you, and that you're sitting at home saying but why?
And the hardest part, and Frederica will back me up on When I beat you to following it up.
this, in doing an interview is listening to the answers.
My great fear is that one of
then I killed my wife, these days I'll be interviewing someone, I'll have a list of my questions and they'll say and
and I'll say uh-huh... [LAUGHTER]
And next...
come prepared. It would be terrifying. So that doesn't happen but what does happen is that you have to
You have to come prepared ask and prepared to listen and prepared to know when news is
being made. My very, very, very first news
school committee which in the '70s was wrought. There was busing fights, there they sent me off to cover the
I went it cover what was were desegregation battles, and
supposed to be routine school committee meeting. And as I sat there, there was
all this gobbly gook and
bureaucrats, and then everybody leaped up and ran from the room.
I sat there thinking, okay, something happened here but I have no idea what.
then saved my career. He was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor And sand I know his name, who
Lewis Overby, to this day.
They just fired the He stopsuperintendent. on the Which I saw my life pass before to go fomy eyes. story.
This wasn't a good thing. I did not see this coming and I had to go and recreate, then
advance, learn the story, understand the relationships, understand what politics played din this decision and write a
story which ended up leading the
you have to not only listen, page one of the newspaper the next day. I learned from that moment that
Now, when I worked in commercial but comprehend. And that's what we're trying to get you to do.
broadcasting, I would do this in a minute and 10 seconds, a
in-depth. [LAUGHTER] minute 50, two minutes if it was
See what I'm saying? And that's a really hard one.
In public broadcasting, we don't
to you but we do have the time. hAnd that time is actuallyd invaluable. The resourcesHello?ve are thanks
[LAUGHTER]
Mr. President, I can't talk right now. [LAUGHTER]
Tell Michelle-- Yeah, I'll be in touch. Thank you.
And public television it's where [LAUGHTER]
all these things come together. It's where the questions are asked and hopefully they're
answered and we have the time to follow up, to listen,
representing ourselves. We hope you don't know what we and to press for an answer. We understand we're not
think. We hope we're representing you.
We hope that we're giving serious attention to serious
questions, whether it's learning how to count on Sesame
whether it's learning how the Senate counts on Washington Week. I hear a lot from our viewers,
and I never hear enough, but
what I hear often is a frustration with where we are right now in our politics and
our discourse, not just in
journalism but also in our public policy.
up. We can be frustrated, we can, I'm an optimist so I think it's a cycle and we're going to worke
our way around. I think it's been nastier than
it is now. There were no swords, last I
checked, being pulled out on the
floor of the House or the Senate, and that has happened in the past, but I do think that we
have a vested interest in understanding and knowing and being poised to ask the right questions and not just throw up
our hands and walk out. So we have this moment in Washington where were at this interesting crossroads.
There was this moment of
excitement in 2008 in which a lot of Americans, whether they voted for him or not, were kind
of proud that America had done
something kind of daring, something certainly I didn't expect.
You have to understand that one of the reasons I'm not a pundit is I never see it coming. [LAUGHTER]
I didn't see Bill Clinton getting elected even though I was there every day, and
So don't ever go by me. If you ever here me by accident say I think this is right, tell I me you must know I'm wrong.a.
[LAUGHTER]
But the point is that you're listening enough so that when it
Somewhere is there to explain what it means or to put it in some sort of context. The book I wrote a couple years
ago about breakthrough
candidates, it was the fulfillment of just that
I had been gathering string, as reporters say, inadvertently for philosophy for me.
years, kind of gathering information about different
people I had covered until I
looked up and realized in 2006, hey, there's something in common with all of these people I had
discovered and stumbled across
along the way. The people I had met when I was covering the school committee in
Boston and worked with the
people I met when I covered city hall in Baltimore and the suburbs of Washington and the
city hall in Washington and every presidential campaign which is they were people who were, especially the African
Americans, who were children of the people who had marched in these Civil Rights marches. Their parents had sat at the
lunch counters. The kids didn't know what the lunch counter was anymore, and
the doors that had been open for yet they were walking through
in the context of a 2008 them. So I thought there was a way to tell their story and especially
campaign where it looked like, at the very least, that Barack
impact on this. It was great. It was a very good way to view Obama was going to make an
should be said, you may recall the campaign, even though, it
during the 2008 vice presidential debate I came under
who said, you know, I think she's writing a book with the word Obama in the title, some assault for this by people
Really? And did any of them read the so she must be biased.
[LAUGHTER] book after it came out? No.
You know they didn't because they all fell silent. One thing I learned after years
as an African American in this
business is that a lot of things will be presumed about you, and it's just your job to do your
job and prove them right or prove them wrong. Hopefully the stuff they presume
right; the stuff they presume is that's good, you prove them
wrong, you prove them wrong. So we're in this wonderful
feeling pressured. moment where everybody is
Democrats are feeling pressured. Republicans are feeling pressured.
Americans are feeling pressured.
We're at a time in which people don't know whether their children are going to do better
than they did, which is kind of the most precarious moment
to be at in American history because that always goes back
to the incumbent. Whoever is in charge, pays
The good news about this is it the price for the fact that Americans feel insecure.
means these guys have to, and women, have to explain themselves.
They have to get up there ever
four, every two, every couple, six years, and say this is why
Barack Obama didn't get elected because he was black or because he wasn't black or because he was a senator from Illinois.
and people were thinking about
Abe Lincoln. He was elected the way people are always elected because he
made people think that he was more like them than not like
concerns, and to the extent that them. That he shared in common their
he is not doing as well now is because he seems more removed from people's concerns.
And the challenge for the people
They have to make people think who would take his job from him is they, now, have to replace that trust, that faith.
that they can do better than they're doing now.
moment. All the debates actually don't So we're in an interesting
spending and abortion and immigration and affirmative action and the nation's defense abroad and our security at home.
Whoever becomes the next
president is going to have to find a way to make a case that they are the best person to
carry those issues into the next
four years. It's a challenge for those of us who ask the questions.
It's a challenge for them to
answer the questions even though my mantra is that all news is good news.
So I'm going to take that and I'm going to run with that, and I'm going to hopefully get
and follow up on that too. your questions tonight
I will take questions about anything except, well no, anything.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
I'm going to anticipate one of them.
Those of you who were at the civics club today know
what it is. Yes, I liked it when Queen Latifah played me
[LAUGHTER] on Saturday Night Live.
It's extremely, extremely cool. And I'll tell you another story, too.
Monday night, probably I think
the Mark Twain Award is going to run at Wisconsin Public Television, I was there at the
taping on Sunday night at the Kennedy Center, and they gave me
the chance to introduce one of the clips that they were running
of Will Ferrell playing George W. Bush, which is
very funny, let me tell you, but I'd never met Will Ferrell,
I didn't know Will Ferrell, but this was fun, I got to hang out with comedians and
like I was somebody, stars back stage and pretend
not so much, and pretend to be a standup comic.
I'll give you a little hint, if you stay till the end you'll see Well, at the very end of it,
out, he accepts the award and he this point. At one point Will Ferrell comes
does his little standup and I'm standing back stage with the stars and he says, well, you
know, he says to his wife, I
love you honey but, you know, this is my night, I'm going to do whatever I want to do
tonight.
bender with Gwen Ifill, I will. If I want [LAUGHTER]ere and I want to go down and climb the Washington Monument and go on a
And I would tell you whether I did that but then
I would have to kill you. [LAUGHTER]
Okay, first question from you. "I appreciate your good humor,"
thank god, "who or what do you
credit on how you do it in these contentious times?" You know, if we don't have a
good sense of humor about this, we might as well throw up our hands and cry.
worth laughing at most of it, but I think it's always worth having a sense of humor about Tourselves for our part in it.s
Some of it is just wacky. Herman Cain came out with an ad this week in which at the end his campaign manager was smoking
a cigarette for no apparent reason. That was wacky and we talked
night, and everybody just went, I don't know what that was. [LAUGHTER] about that in our webcast last
But we don't want to laugh That's funny.
at things that matter in people's lives. But context is really important
because I really think that people don't respond well to us taking ourselves too seriously
idea of our own self-importance. and being too caught up in the
Like I should break out a pipe somehow and tell you this is
my friends, on Friday night. I what you need to know,
can't to that. Even though Washington Week used to do that,
not the pipe but the kind of
self-importance. What we want to do is come in your living room as friends who
have explained it to you. I think one of the reasons why
they are very popular on our Shields and Brooks are so popular on Friday night, and
program on Friday night, is because they're two people who disagree, they disagree with
information that they've gotten from actually talking to people other than their navels,
And it shows. And respect each other. >> It really shows. and the>> It does. other.
Get with it, girl.
[LAUGHTER] She digs through and
"Are there plans for a she gives me the hard ones.
successor to Jim Lehrer?" See what I'm saying? She's trying to get me in
trouble. If you've been watch watching the NewsHour for the past year or two, you've
we've been in this interesting noticed
transition period. We went from the, those of you
The Robert MacNeil who go way back know we were
then it ended up as, when I joined it was the NewsHour MacNeil/Lehrer News Report, then there's about four or five
we changed it to PBS with Jim Lehrer. Now, about two years ago
wouldn't retire, he doesn't use News that word, but he would gradually step away from the master plan is that he
And it's really gone kind of anchor chair.
flawlessly. What he did is he surrounded himself with a group of five
people who really get along,
respect each other, like each and don't have sharp elbows. This does not happen in
broadcast television, let me
on speaking tours. tell you. And as he stepped away, more and more, sometimes he went
When he wrote a book, you know, he writes a book a year. Shocking.
I don't know how he does that.
the office. ActIt's amazing.ow. And then he would publish a book hours before any of us arrive in
Travel to stations. Visit them. Sell his book. a year.
Do his work. Come back.
But each time he'd take a little bit more time off.
is that there are five of us, as So now the way we have emerged
you know. It's me, it's Ray Suarez who does a lot of our global health
coverage, Margaret Warner who does fabulous work traveling to war zones, I'll tell you a
moment, Jeff Brown who is one of Margaret Warner story in a
our co-anchors but also goes out and does arts coverage, amazing arts coverage.
Who am I missing? >> Judy.
>> Judy, my friend Judy Woodruff, and me.
And we kind of just cycle in and
out of the anchor chair. And you know what?
that because we didn't just replace him. People are kind of okay with
So the answer is there is no replacement for Jim Lehrer.
But what we have done is
recreated a program which now is something that you've never seen
a rotating cast of people who all have the same sensibilities. on broadcast television which is
Now here's the Margaret Warner story.
She was in Egypt... She was in Egypt not long ago.
the Israeli embassy. Was it Egypt? Anyhow, there was an attack on
It wasn't Egypt. Anyway, there was a huge fight
It was Egypt. There was a huge fight going on and she ended up in the middle going on.
Now, understand, she's sitting of it.
in the car, her translator and fixer was out in the middle of
around and pushed to the ground and roughed up. A CNN producer who saw it threw himself on top of her and then
grabbed her, dragged her through
back seat into the front seat and floored it and got them out Margaret wof the mob., "Drive!" And later on when they finally
found their driver who they had left again, later he said, "You drive like American cowboy."
It's a great, let me tell you. [LAUGHTER]
I love that story. I tell it over and over.
I gave her a cowboy hat when she came back. "When you know what is being
what do you do?" said wrong, factually,
which are purposely not factual Well, and say it in a wayart of ththat it slips right by you.w. SoBut when you know that it'sngs
wrong, I think that in our
the world is flat. setting the secret is to come back with another question. Someone says, well, of course
And you could say, what? Are you crazy?
Instead you say, you're saying, sir, the world is flat? And if he repeats it then you say, okay, you understand that
many scientists say the world is
round? And he'll say no, the world is
and clarity and I'm sticking flat and I believe in simplicity
with it. And then you stop.
to the viewers that the person Because you have made your point
You don't have to turn it into a is incorrect. You don't have to be rude about it.
story about you saying, aha, I have discovered you're wrong, but you've done your job which
is to make sure that people understand it.
Now, the complicated part of this is that you don't always
know, or sometimes if you're not
And I find that the hardest part listening as carefully as you might, it will slip by you. But you try.
is that there are so many shades of gray.
the truth. People think we're searching for
We're actually just searching for the closest thing we can get to accuracy.
Because I don't know if there's something as a truth. And often truth is subject to people's opinions about what
they believe rather than what the actual truth is.
out. There are many issues which particularly bring this dilemma
One of them is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in which there is no truth that
either side will accept from the
other. Another one is climate change,
of evidence but yet there are people who feel passionately in opposite of it. wherAnd so you negotiate it.body
You let the viewer have as much information as possible and you try to the extent that you can, clear it all up, but sometimes
you just can't do it.
"What or who was the most challenging story or person you've covered? Please explain."
[LAUGHTER]
Golly. So many.
Let me see if I can pick one [LAUGHTER]
for you. It was challenging, it was
Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, I covered starting in 1991 for the challenging to cover
twice when he was governor of Arkansas and he seemed okay. New York Times, because I had met him once or
that if you're going to spend a long time on the road covering And I had learned from covering previous presidential campaigns
And he didn't bother me. an individual you might as well not be bothered by them.
He seemed amusing, interesting and smart.
beginning to cover him, that you But I discovered, shortly after
could never wake up in the morning and be sure there wasn't
newspaper that you had missed. going to be a scandal in the
And so it was exhausting. Whether he had decided not to go to war.
Whether he had told somebody he wasn't going to war.
Whether he was ducking it. Whether there was another,
as one of his aides called it,
bimbo explosions waiting under a rock. No matter what it was, there
always seemed to be some
complication, mysterious land deals. And that was before he got
elected.
[LAUGHTER] And so after he got elected you were kind of always
on edge because on one hand,
there were things he was doing that were incredibly
On the other hand, there were things that were incredibly distracting. consequential.
you ever had the complete story. And you could never feel like
into a really kind of Nfascinating philanthropist and Bill Clinton now, of course, is that post-presidency he's turned
So, yeah, he's been challenging because you always have to be on ex-presidents fall short of.
"How would you describe the republican candidates for president?" [LAUGHTER]
Well, there's eight of them.
Where do I start? [LAUGHTER] I would describe them
as searching for purchase.
We have an interesting election right now. We have every single poll
showing that Mitt Romney, who many people presume eventually, if he can survive this, will be the nominee, always getting just
under 25%.
people spurt around him. He never seems to go above. He never seems to go below. While he's doing this, other
Whether it's Michele Bachmann, who jumped up at the Iowa straw poll, and even at that
straw poll people said to me, I really like her but if she
doesn't win, it's okay and I'll go to somebody else.
They weren't expecting her to be
the nominee but they were trying to make a statement.
who I think spiked before he And then we saw Rick Perry
got in the race. [LAUGHTER]
getting in the race seemed to have worked against him. And then somehow actually
Now, not to be discounted, And he's still struggling to get back.
because he's raised a lot of money and he's not going away.
And now the latest spike is Herman Cain who has almost no money by presidential standards but has somehow caught the
imagination of a lot of republican voters.
Now, the interesting thing to me about all of this is that it
tells us more about Americans than it tells us about these
individuals. It tells us that people are
discontent, that they are looking for something to hold onto and that the one unifying
primary electorate is they want him to beat Barack Obama. And if they can find someone who factor among the republican
that, that's the person who I eventually imagine will win the nomination because even though they are satisfied might do
love with people who catch your attention or catch your fancy, you fall in love and fall out of
accessible, in the end the one or speak to you in a way that's appealing and genial and
thing they all agree is they really, really do not like this president and want you to beat
him.
historically, the person who is And if next in line.ay, and reIt's how John McCain got thed up rallying around, at least
it. Bob Dole. So we'll see what happens. nomination, when you think about
to watch not because of the horse race parts but because of what the rise and fall, or the I think it's an interesting race
steadiness of some of these candidates tells you about where rise and dipping, or the
we are as a nation and how ready we are to change the direction
that we're on.
This is really hard work for you, isn't it?
[LAUGHTER] Just handing me cards?
>> I've got to listen. >> Oh, okay, that's right.
that's right. It's tough. [LAUGHTER] She's got to listen,
[LAUGHTER] "Have you ever considered lengthening Okay.
I consider it ever single week Washington Week to an hour?"
when I look up and go, oh, look we're out of time. I would love to.
This is something which we take to PBS, and your lips to God's
ear, we would love to be able to provide an hour of good public
affairs analysis that maybe included interviews and other things which we would have
on Friday nights. It is not up to us. It is up to individual stations. in mind for an hour
[APPLAUSE] So, you know.
broadcasting, it's not just someone saying I think I shall us to get the money to do it. So, as always happens in public
and then of course I have to make you an hour. There are about 85 different,
The other thing we like to do during an election year, and we won a Peabody Award for doing it lot of fun.
of Washington and do it in front last time, is take the show out
of audiences and big cities. And we had a ball doing that
for it. "Please tell us how you get participants on the panel for Washington Week ?"ewarded
I put a gun to their heads. [LAUGHTER]
Not. I offer them stunning amounts of money.
We have about a couple of dozen reporters in our stable. interesting process which I think we've gotten down.
They are people who cover all of the major beats in Washington,
and we keep track on a running
basis, if you go to our website you'll see that every single day we post the stories they're
writing during the week, and
if something happens? we Who wrote about Pakistan?ng, Who wrote about, you know, Afghanistan this week,
And my producers, I work at the Washington News Hour three days a week, Washington Week two days a week, e?
by Wednesday, I start getting emails. This is what everybody's
This is who is in town. This is who is going out of town working on.
for a wedding or a bar mitzvah or an 80-year-old uncle's
birthday or just has a date.
[LAUGHTER] And they tell me who's
it's Friday night, what are you going to do? available, because
And we always have more people who want to come on, as you can
imagine, than we can get around that little table.
names in the air. Who's available? But by Thursday we sit down and we start to kind of toss the
interesting story that nobody else wrote? Who is the kind of smartest person on the topic we want to
talk about that week? And then in the end we kind of
toss it around with a little bit of fairy dust and come up with a
chemistry experiment. Who will be fun around the table
with each other? When we try a new reporter, for
instance, who's never been on the program before, we make sure
we have a lot of veterans with them so that they can make them
feel more comfortable around the
conversation not a presentation. table and include them in the conversation because what I'm really aiming for is a
I want there to be exchange around the table, which turns whout is just a more delicateou thing than you would think.
It requires me to be the person who knows what everybody else might say.
four reporters. I talk to each of them that day, I interview all, we settle on
that Friday, and I ask them what do you want to talk about?
What do you know? What do you think?
And much of the time they'll tell me things I didn't notice
in their stories or they'll say,
you know, this is point I really want to make. And I will then show up with
10 questions for every panelist but they don't necessarily have questions for each other. And they're under strict pain of
Gwen rules not to talk in the green room when they're getting their makeup on because the worst thing that could happen is
they talk about the show so much
beforehand that when they get on the air they say, like we were
[LAUGHTER] saying, you know.
So they know on pain of Gwen they can't talk about it. But I do, I'll let you in on a
little secret, we do sit down just before we go on the air and
we go around the table and say what would you like someone to
ask you about?
And so John Dickerson will say be sure to ask me about what
Herman Cain in Iowa. they were saying about
That's all. He's not allowed to answer the question right then, but he's
allowed to ask it because the person across the table may have
spent the entire week worrying about Afghanistan and didn't pay
attention to Iowa.
So we're helping them on to keep the conversation rolling, and when it works, it keeps--
And then when they don't do what we want them to do, or they
don't bring up those issues, because I've talked to
all of them, then I interject and keep the conversation going.
What? >> Sorry, John's giving me So the ball's in the air. "How difficult..."
hand signals over there. >> Am I getting?
One more question after this
one. >> Okay, fine.
I can see. He's being very difficult.
[LAUGHTER] "How difficult is it to be
No more difficult than it is to the a woman in any business. a woman in the news business?"
[LAUGHTER] I went to a women's college
and didn't fully appreciate at the time all the things
One of them was that I could I was picking up from being in a women's college.
raise my hand and somebody wouldn't shut me down.
a leader and it was a perfectly reasonable place to be. And even though, let's put it Othis way, women in televisione
get a lot more comments about their hair and makeup and earrings than the men do. [LAUGHTER]
Even though one of my panelists did walk in last night
A friend from high school, she and say what do you think about this tie?
called me and said my ties are too boring. [LAUGHTER]
I said I have never heard a guy say someone complained about their ties.
people talk about their looks. But women say all the time that
What you understand, what I figured out years ago is you just try not to be distracted.
You're trying to be what you can
to tell the story. You don't want to get in the way
You'll never see me wearing those little party dresses they wear on cable. of your story.
[LAUGHTER] You know what I'm saying?
Because I'm trying to tell you the story.
you're paying attention to what I'm saying and not getting so distracted by what I'm wearing, or how I look, or how I say it,
or that I'm flirting with someone I'm talking to, that you're sitting there thinking, "really?"
Does Gwen have a thing going
with him? What's going on? What did she just say about
America blowing up? I don't know. [LAUGHTER]
that's the viewers, I have not So to that extent,
reached a point where-- It's shocking to me, actually, that I am one of the few woman
doing what I do. It is
surprising to me that when I first started doing Washington Week, that
Woodruff, who then was at CNN,
Now there's more on daytime cable but still not that much on hosting political talk shows. I find that amazing to me.
nighttime cable. And I think that's something
we hopefully can get over, but
we're still kind of stuck in a white guy world, and what you want to do is know that you're
bringing something additional to
the table. You're not just there because you're window dressing,
you're there so they can say
you're there. You're there because the world view you bring, the veil of your
experience, the kind of questions you might ask, the
somebody else would not. kind of evasions you might hear are something that maybe
That's the reason for diversity in the news business or in any business because you're bringing
something more. In addition to that, we're fast approaching becoming a
a majority/minority country, minority/majority country,
so it really makes sense that we hear from as many different voices as possible.
And the final question. And I don't trust her to have picked it-- Uh-huh, yeah.
This is a question
she wants the answer to, just so you know. [LAUGHTER]
"How often are your conversations with politicians
this information?" off the record? And how do you use
Politicians I know say nothing is off the record.
which is no one is talking to you for fun because they like your face. And to this extent, it's true,
they want to influence your thinking, they want to get their They're talking to you because
behind it so their names are not point of view in your brain and they use off the record to hide
I don't talk to politicians very much off the record. There are all these, in Washington, there are all these
layers of not for attribution ways of using information.
There's call me a campaign There's off the record. There's don't put my name to it.
official but not a White House official, an administration official but not a campaign
official, it's very, there are
many, many ways. I think, in general, every time that you don't identify someone
you're quoting, you lose a
little bit of creditability. That said, I find it's very useful sometimes to be in the
presence of people I would
use on the air but it would otinform my understanding of,et I could tell you who it was but recthey were off the record.ould
Okay, fine, the Chief Justice of
the United States. [LAUGHTER]
to meet him. So I would have no reason
I would have no reason to talk to him. And he is still, even off the
record, not going to tell me
anything about the deliberations of the court, but I would have
interacts, the way he thinks, and it just influences my understanding of him. I don't think that's bad but I
do think that when someone comes
to you and says, you know, if Mitt Romney comes to me and
Rick Perry is a real idiot. I'm not going to entertain that conversation with him. says off the record that
off the record to assassinate someone else. And I also know that when they I'm not going to use
trying to put in the shiv without them having to be responsible for it. sBut I have to say that veryre
seldom happens to me in this
situation, partly because so much of what I do is in front of
for the world to see, and any conversations that I have that a camera that it's on the record
are not on camera I use to inform the conversations
that I have on camera.
So, on that note, thank you all so much. [APPLAUSE]