Trust. News. Democracy. First Day Keynote

e e e e e e e e e ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Mark upter grve president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation good evening everybody on behalf of the LBJ foundation and more perfect our partner on this conference it's my privilege to welcome you to trust news democracy at the LBJ Presidential Library you'll be hearing from the founder and co-chair of more perfect the singular John bridgelin later this evening as he introduces our guests Caris swisser and Larry Wilmer I I want to thank you all for being here thanks to our participants in the conference who you'll be seeing over the next couple of days and many thanks to our sponsors without whose support this event simply wouldn't be possible including our presenting sponsors the MacArthur Foundation Donald E Graham Lucy Johnson and Ian Turpin and Linda Johnson Rob and family reflecting the views of so many of our presidents Ronald Reagan said during his presidency there is no more essential ingredient than a free strong and indent press independent press to our continued success in what the founding fathers called our noble experiment in self-government trusted news and information are the lifeblood of a thriving democracy without them our noble experiment will fail and the challenges we face with our current media environment are as deep as the stakes are high over the next two days we'll examine our fragmented media landscape and the propagation of misinformation and disinformation their adverse effects on our democracy and solutions for a stronger healthier ecosystem we couldn't begin more auspiciously uh as we welcome Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein beacons of journalistic Excellence whose Watergate related archive is housed at the esteemed Harry Ransom Center on the other side of this campus and we are deeply grateful to the Harry Ransom Center for partnering with us on this program tonight now to introduce the legendary Woodward and Bernstein is my friend the executive director of the Harry Ransom Center Dr Steven Enis good evening it's a pleasure to welcome Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein back to the University of Texas at Austin for trust news and democracy my name is Steve Enis I'm director of the Harry Ransom Center Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward became forever linked very early in their careers when still in their 20s they broke the story of a Breakin at the Democratic party headquarters leading eventually to the National crisis we know as Watergate and ultimately to the resignation of President Richard Nixon together they co-authored two best-selling books All the President's Men and the final days deeply researched accounts of those events the first of which has been burned into the consciousness of an entirely New Generation by the popular film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in 2003 Woodward and Bernstein placed their Watergate files at The Ransom Center which contain more than 250 of their reporters notebooks first drafts of History if you w if you will drafts of stories that they developed during those tumultuous years collected Source materials and photographs as well as materials related to the writing of All the President's Men and the final days as a result The Ransom Center will forever remain a primary destination for the study of this crisis in our nation's history for many people such such extraordinary history making so early in one's career might be sufficient but for nearly five decades Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have been chronicling our ongoing National story through insightful reporting and a string of histories Each of which has itself made news Carl Bernstein is the author of three additional best-selling books including recently the life of Hillary rodom Clinton he currently serves as a political analyst for CNN and is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair he was born and grew up in Washington DC and and began his career in journalism as a copy boy for the evening star before becoming a reporter at the age of only 19 a history he has recently recounted in the Memoir chasing history a kid in The Newsroom Bob Woodward remains a close Observer of the American presidency and of current affairs he is the author of numerous books chronicling the deeds and sometimes misdeeds of eight presidents including the agenda inside the Clinton White House Bush at War and Obama's Wars most recently he has given us a series of book of books Each of which has offered a shocking inside perspective itive of the Trump presidency the titles of which if you'll forgive me read something like the seven stages of grief fear rage Peril I can think of no better voices to engage on tonight's theme trust news and democracy joining them and moderating this conversation is Dr Mark Lawrence director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum Mark is also a historian of the United States and taught as a professor here at UT in the department of History before coming to the library in 2020 with each passing year it becomes clearer that Watergate was not a distant historical event but one that raises still relevant questions about the extent of Presidential Power and the resiliency of our constitutional system of government as recent history reminds us our founding Constitution doesn't work on its own but instead requires our constant care and attention it requires an informed citizenry full participation in our political process and a system of representative government that is accountable to the people few have been as attentive to the role of the press in advancing these obligations as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein please join me in welcoming them to the [Applause] stage well thank you Mark upd Grove and Steve Andis for those terrific introductions and welcome to to all of you what a great sight it is to see this pretty big Auditorium filled up and I think um that attests to the exciting program that we have ahead of us both today and all day tomorrow and certainly the stars of our show who are up here with me on the stage tonight I am truly honored to be here with none other than I don't think I should even use first names Woodward and Bernstein uh it's it's really a great pleasure to to be here and there's so many things that we can talk about in the short time we have together tonight uh of course I want to talk about Watergate I want to talk about connections between Watergate in our present moment but I want to start with oh why would you want to do just in case anyone's interested um but I want to start with a little about the two of you how did you come to journalism how'd you get involved in the journalism World Carl um I was 16 years old uh I had one foot in the classroom one foot in the pool hall one one foot in the juvenile court and uh it was doubtful that I was going to get out of high school and my father had the foresight of recognizing that and he knew I could write a little bit and he knew somebody at the Washington star the great afternoon newspaper uh in the capital of the United States and he went to this friend and said hey could you get this kid a job as more or less an office boy as a copy boy and I got the job uh John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were running for president when I when I went to work there within two weeks I was was able to cover Kennedy because he came to my high school and they used me as an old-fashioned leg man because I knew the territory but uh I had the greatest apprenticeship this 16-year-old kid with the best seat in the country learning from the greatest reporters in many ways in the country at the height of the Civil Rights Movement uh VI am etc etc and uh thank God my father had the foresight because I never did get out of college and uh I went to The Washington Post uh six years after I went to the star Bob how did you get into journalism um I started in journalism uh looking at things I was not not supposed to see just a job I was a janitor in My Father's Law Firm and um I could not help but notice the papers on his desk and his partner's desk and I found them very interesting uh and uh this was in Wheaten Illinois which is where Wheaten college and uh Billy Graham reigned and so there was a kind of uh sense of of we're doing things right and uh I then went up and I mean the one of the lessons is the janitor always knows don't think that the janitor is just being a janitor and uh in the Attic of the law firm were the disposed files in alphabetical order and I was able to uh just take the names of my classmates and uh and look at their family history and uh one of the basic lessons is the the family history was one of propriety and you know everything's going fine and then you looked at the disposed files and you discovered that there were IRS problems assault problems sexual assault problems and so immediately you see ah not everything is as they are telling us so fast forward to 1972 I believe it was a Saturday morning a call comes into to The Washington Post there's been a Breakin at the Watergate complex the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee how did you wind up working on that small story that no one wound up caring about well I real quickly I was I'd been there at the post nine months and the city editor liked to give me assignments called me on that Saturday morning woke me up and said go to the courthouse and I've been covering night police for 6 months and uh went to the courtroom where the five burglars were being arraigned and they were all in business suits now covering uh night police for 6 months I had never seen a burglar in a business suit and that is electrifying and then uh the lead burglar James McCord the judge asked where he worked and uh mcord said CIA and the judge said speak up so we can hear you see CIA and I was sitting in the front row and I think I blured it out holy Carl uh I was in The Newsroom that morning I was the chief Virginia uh reporter for the for the paper and I was doing a profile of uh someone running for governor and I saw this commotion at the city desk and I went up to find out what it was and was told there had been a break in at Democratic National headquarters and I thought to myself well that's a hell of a lot better story than this thing that I'm doing on the lieutenant governor of Virginia uh that can wait and I said to the city editor I'm going to make a few calls and just around that time Woodward had had phoned in the names of the burglars and I got the names of the burglars and I began a series of and I was kind of known for being able to work the phones pretty well and uh I got the names of the burglars who met most of whom lived in Miami and I started calling their wives down in Florida and uh in Pigeon Spanish and English uh I was able to find out yeah they work for the CIA as well as a good number of other details about them uh and Bob and myself were two of six reporters uh whose names were listed in the story that went into the next days paper based partly on what we were doing and there was an important sentence in that first story which is uh it was not known uh who might have sponsored this and what the purpose was of the burglary and if you think about it the next two years were answering that question the sponsor was Richard Nixon and the purpose was to destroy the other political party and its candidates the Democratic party but through an illegal massive campaign of political Espionage and sabotage intended to undermine the very system of democracy uh the free election of the president of the United States and now we find ourselves with two criminal presidents involved in undermining the most basic aspect of democracy the election of the president of the United States so you dug into that story in those first weeks following what the White House characterized as a third rate burglary at what point did you know that you were onto something that would lead to Richard Nixon and to the consequences that the Scandal would ultimately have well it was incremental but tell your story about your the thunder clap yes uh we we we had found a bookkeeper first of all uh we decided it was necessary not to talk to people who worked for Richard Nixon in their offices and try to learn things from them but to go to their homes at night you figur out I kind I kind of thought let's go to the offices and you said you know yeah so we went and banged on these people's doors at night and very quickly learned from a bookkeeper who uh saw the book books uh the finances of Richard Nixon's reelection committee uh that they were paying for undercover activities illegal activities and from that uh we learned that one of the five people who controlled the funds that paid for the burglary at Watergate and other un undercover activities against the Democrats was the former Attorney General the manager of the Nixon campaign Nixon's former law partner John Mitchell and so we wrote a story that as Ben Bradley the editor of the Washington Post said to us you better be right because there's never been a story like this before and the story was that John Mitchell controlled these secret funds and it was a matter of putting the money and connecting the money to the operation and the individuals and you know you you want what's the this about and uh we finally put it together in an October 10th 1972 story I remember sitting by your side at your typewriter and we had information and you you put it you you said it that Watergate was only part of a massive campaign of Sab sabotage and Espionage and it was kind of uh yeah we had it but it was uh a very creative reach well but also we learned something very early and that was that the Nixon White House was out to make the conduct of the press the issue in in Watergate our conduct in particular uh rather than the conduct of the president and his men it was nowhere Illustrated better uh than in that first story about John Mitchell which you know it made it obvious Nixon's campaign manager former law partner and uh but yet the White House would we would call every time we did a story and they would give us what we called non- denial denial they would attack us without addressing the facts in the story and I called the white house that night of the Mitchell story and I asked the deputy press secretary uh after reading the story would he respond on to it and he called back and he said the sources of the Washington Post are a fountain of misinformation so I typed that out as White House response I said yes go go on he said that's it and I said well aside from this geyser that's going off in our back yard is a story true did the former Attorney General of the United States control these illegal secret funds the sources of the Washington Post are a fountain of misinformation he repeated and but I had a phone number for John Mitchell in New York where I thought I could reach him and so I called Mitchell in New York about 11:00 at night 10:30 at night and he answered the phone I identified myself and said we had a story on him in the next day's paper I'd like to read to him he said go right ahead uh and get your response he said fine and I got as far as John and Mitchell while Attorney General of the United States controlled a secret fund and Mr Mitchell said Gee Jesus now I kept reading by which time the drift of the story was under unmistakable and Mr Mitchell said Jesus he said a third time and he paused and in a a really aggressive voice says Jesus Christ all that crap you're putting it in the paper if you print that Katie Graham referring to the publisher of the Washington Post Catherine and Graham is going to get her tit caught in a big fat [Laughter] ringer and uh and then there was a pause and and to this day the most chilling moment as a journalist as a reporter I've ever had Mitchell said to me you wait and when this campaign is over we're going to do a little story on you two guys and he slammed the phone down and it was a kind of threat as well as indicative of the Nixon uh presidency's view of of the press and uh I called Ben Bradley the editor of the paper at home and and he said he really said that and I said he said you have good not notes I said yeah and Bradley said all right put it all in the paper but leave her tit out couldn't resist I couldn't resist couldn't resist one of our tonight and and tomorrow certainly in the second day of the conference is to think about the state of Journalism the field of Journalism and I wonder in thinking back over the Watergate story what was it that made you so effective that made you successful um in pursuing that story well it it was the culture of of the Washington Post it was go get good stories and Ben Bradley was the editor and he never he he had a way finally figured this out many years later he had two modes and one mode was you go in we've got this we're working on this oh good be patient you know dig into that and then the other mode was you tell him something he'd say where's the story I mean no ambiguity he wanted it at that moment and so it was a sort of a patience and sort of a uh okay deliver now Carl you've spoken a lot it seems to me about just the sheer Sho leather that went into it you've talked about knocking on doors talk about that part of it the maybe less glamorous piece of the of the investigation that obviously paid enormous dividends I think it's uh it's the what you see uh today when you see good reporting is that same technique of you having idea of who has information that you want to seek and you go seek that person out and you do it in a place and an environment where uh where you're liable to be able to establish uh some kind of notion for the other person that you're there with no preconceived notions of where this story is going you're there to find out what Bob and I a half century ago started calling the best obtainable version of The Truth uh and and really it works that's the lesson you can have an internet which facilitates all kinds of uh mechanics that would have saved us a lot of time not spend all the hours we did looking up addresses in in green phone books you see I think the internet would have been an obstacle in a I'm just saying to get us out there yeah not but you know it's okay to use the phone book if anyone remembers what they are and and um that essential notion of this one of the problems of the press now is people spend time in the office they send emails out to the White House and say will you comment on this story and then three Deputy press secretaries sit around in a computer and say now how can we answer that without saying anything and they're very good at that and so um the same sentence the sources of the Washington Post or a fountain of misinformation yeah well and but it's it's get out you know uh knock on doors sh show up use the phone it's amazing in uh this story what where we could track people down on the phone uh you're down in Florida finding this $25,000 check that wound up in the Nixon campaign and you're calling me and say it's made out to Kenneth H dolberg well who's Kenneth H dolberg we had no idea we checked the morg uh there was you know and there was nothing in the clippings and somebody said well let's look in the photo file and in the photo file there was a Kenneth H dolberg pictured with Senator Hubert Humphrey and just so oh let's go to the library and get the uh Minesota uh St Paul U phone book and look up and there's a Kenneth H Dober so I just called him and said uh uh you know there's this check in your name um where U you know tell me what happened and he literally said well I know I shouldn't tell you this and words you love to hear you you learn silence you don't say yes you let the silence suck out the truth and and he said so okay I'll tell you and uh I gave it uh to Maurice STS on a golf course now Maurice STS was the chief fundraiser for Nixon what and I remember we you know we're putting the story together you're still down in Florida doing the leg work and Barry susman the city editor of the post turned to me and he said we've never had a story like this the idea that $25,000 in campaign money would go to the burglars and I mean it just it was astonishing follow the money um here here we sit right in in 2024 on the 50th anniversary of President Nixon's resignation later this summer I wonder with all all of the thinking and writing that the two of you have put in the enormous number of other histories of Watergate is there a question though that still lingers in your minds that keeps you up at night puzzling over in connection with Watergate what don't we know that you wish we knew I think we know the most important thing of all that one we had a criminal president of the United States and that the criminality was vast and was intended to undermine democracy itself and that not only did we did we have that criminality but that the system worked I think that we what we see now the difference between that criminal president presidency one of the differences and this present criminal presidency is that that we have not seen the evidence that the system worked in the Trump presidency yet and that we had the Press did its job in Watergate there was a committee established headed by Senator Sam Irvin of North Carolina to after we had done our stories Irvin had called us said he wanted to undertake this investigation uh would we tell them our sources we said no but certainly seems to us worthy of Investigation by the con Irvin uh what thought about this in about it in his final report and he asked the question what was Watergate and he said Watergate was a systematic effort to destroy the system of selecting a candidate in the Democratic party and then he asked the question why Watergate and he had very good answer I thought and that is a lust for political power and I think that you listen to the Nixon tapes and so forth we have this one right after Nixon W 49 states and Nixon's talking to Kissinger and uh and he says uh we will outlive our enemies the Press is the enemy they just didn't want to say it once he had to say the Press is the enemy The Press is the enemy the establishment is the enemy and and he said to Kissinger you know this idea of enemy we're going to outlast and he said to Kissinger write that on a Blackboard a hundred times and never forget it I didn't know kissing your had a Blackboard talk about your emotions what was going through your heads on August 9th 1974 the date of Nixon's resignation uh Bob and myself uh were in a little anti room off The Newsroom floor there's a picture of the two of us that shows up every once in a while and uh we're watching television while he gives his announcement that he's going to resign the next day and my feeling certainly and Bob can can tell you if his as consistent with this was one of of absolute awe the idea that the system had worked that we had done the Press had done its job that the Congress of the United States including courageous Republicans who had gone to Nixon that week led by G Barry Goldwater the former Presidential nominee of his party to tell Nixon that if he did not resign they would vote to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate of the United States all that the system had worked that after these two years and certainly in awareness of our own role uh but that now maybe um the country could move on as well but uh Katherine Graham the owner of the Washington Post and publisher uh after Nixon sign wrote us a letter on yolow legal tab dear Carl and Bob you have the original of this I just have a Xerox and and she and and she said um now you did some of the stories and Nixon's gone quote don't start thinking too highly of yourselves and let let me give you some advice and she and she said and the advice is be the Weare Beware of the demon pomposity Beware of the demon pomposity and she's so right about that I mean right not just then but now demon pomposity infects so many institutions certainly politics and Hollywood and uh Wall Street even Academia sometimes it's shocking to hear and um pomposity you people don't like pomposity and and and for good reasons so you know I my approach to this is try to arrive at a point of self understanding or to the extent that's Poss uh and realize uh I'm a reporter I'm not something else I'm not an analyst or a theoretician I'm trying to find out uh do the basic laboratory work of a reporter and the laboratory work of a reporter is talking to people and listening and you and I've talked about this so many times the the importance of listening I actually have a little technique of doing an interview and I've taping interviews with people's permission and my wife Elson saying you sure talk a lot and uh so and she's right so I take this finger and put it over my little finger and jam it in and it is a memory a to remind me to shut the f up and listen and listen finger now I tell you that finger sore because it is just a habit to talk now you want to be the silence is important in reporting it can suck out the truth I think that's right but on the subject of of Katherine Graham the great publisher of of the Washington Post and and it goes to to the question of of in Watergate the Nixon people had made clear uh that they wanted to ruin the Washington Post they had uh knew that the broadcast licenses of uh the post stations which were the financial lifeblood of the Washington Post company were up for Renewal before the FCC and they were out to make sure that those uh light licenses were not renewed and right around the time of of that John Mitchell story I got a call from a security guard downstairs at the post saying there's somebody from the committee for the reelection of the president here a subpoena server who wants your notes under subpoena and I said just a minute don't let him upstairs and uh I called Ben Bradley in his office and I said uh the guard's got us somebody with a subpoena for our notes down there and Bradley said well tell don't let him upstairs I'm going to go talk to Catherine and he ran upstairs to kathern Graham's office and then he came back to my desk and he said they're not your notes Catherine says they're her notes and if anybody's going to go to jail it's going to be Catherine Graham it gives you a notion of what was its stake in Ben was ecstatic he and and he said just think of that Katherine Graham her limousine pulls up to the DC women's detention center and out pops our gal as he called her going to jail to defend the First Amendment and Ben got a little excited and said you know that new that picture will run on every on the front page of every newspaper in the country no uh the world it will be and uh the end of that story is they backed down they they just exactly right they folded when they saw that um she was going to uh stand up and was in it for the distance yeah and was willing to go through whatever was required let me steer you a little bit toward the the present moment in in American politics but I want to call attention to the fact that the two of you teamed up recently on this really brilliant forward to the new edition of All the President's Men that very skillfully weaves together the Nixon story and the Trump story and it really highlights a lot of similarities really between the two men and and the circumstances that surround them let me ask you to talk a little bit about some of those connections that you draw between the two and frankly also uh the limits on those those connections in what ways might these two men be quite different from one another so many of the connections or the similarities are obvious uh a secretiveness a intentional distance from what the American people need I mean I I think the job of the president is to figure out what the ne next St stage of good is for a majority of people in the country and then develop a program uh you found uh in Nixon and in Trump uh the program was what's best for me politically what's easiest I did three books on Trump and uh I mean the extraordinary after doing the first one fear which would said uh the Trump presidency is a nervous breakdown uh uh he agreed to talk and uh I had an arrangement where he could call me at any time at home I could call him at the White House any time and so my wife Elsa and I are at home and the phone would ring and the qu you know is it one of our daughters is it a friend is it a robo call or is it Donald Trump and it would often be Donald Trump uh and those are all published and and you see again uh and particularly focused on the event of that last year of his presidency 2020 the Corona virus and I was able to establish from his National Security advisors he was warned that this was coming uh in January of 2020 and he kept blowing it off and saying it's not going to go anywhere and by summer uh he's calling Trump is calling me now he's five months away from the election and saying uh you know how I'm calling to see you know just check in and I said well how are things going and he said great and I said well how about the Corona virus 140,000 people have died in your country because of this and you've been warned 6 months ago when there were no cases and he and he said don't worry don't worry it's going to go away and if you listen to the tape of this I mean I I'm flabbergasted and I said you know but what's the plan what are you going to do and he said oh well I'll have a plan in 105 days did the C that was election day was to late he should have had a plan should have stepped up and of course this is the problem with Trump he he does not identify with the needs of others he's very intensely devoted to the his own needs and that's politically and personally and I you know he look at now he's back he's running again night before last I ran into Hillary Clinton of all people and she would and I and she said what's going on in America and it's good question and part of the answer the question is is from this new forward we did all the president presid men because we said in there for the first time Donald Trump is the first sedici president in the history of the United States and consider you know Jefferson Davis was seditionist but he was not president of the United States Donald Trump is the first seditionist and that is what January 6 is all about and and that introduction begins with George Washington in his farewell address warning the people of the country that the one thing that our Constitution that our system that could not grapple with is if we were faced by the character of men who would take it upon themselves to do things outside of the system and Washington said that's what's going to come that's what's not going to he didn't say it's a worry he just forecasts that it's going to come and of course one of the great things things that Washington said about the Constitution he said the Constitution is an experiment and it indeed is an experiment and if you think back 50 years ago the Constitution really did work the experiment worked and I listened to a talk that Steven Brier the former Justice of the Supreme Court 28 years he served resigned two years ago and and uh Brier said openly and he said the question now is is it going to work again and there's a doubt a a major difference it seems to me one major difference between the Watergate period and our own moment is the media landscape um you were it seems to me young journalists in the water at era in what I might call a golden age of Journalism you uh there was so much public confidence it seems to me in the media and journalists could become Superstars I think I wanted to be like you when I was when I was uh uh growing up in the 1980s that obviously has changed a great deal right I I wonder if you could talk about maybe you don't agree with my suggestion that this was a golden age uh but uh perhaps you could talk about what has changed in recent decades that results in so much distrust for the for the media making it much less likely that the media play too nostalgic I think we can we can sugarcoat uh great reporting really great reporting I think has always been the exception not the rule but but I do think that there was a more pervasive uh ethic in the period when I grew up at Washington star The Washington Post uh of the best obtainable version of the truth to go back to that phrase that Bob and I used 50 years ago and but I also think we need to talk about consumers of news because what what occurred in and if you look at polls during the uh the Nixon presidency NX was supported through Watergate by most of the people in in this country until the tapes and once the tapes came out people saw for themselves heard from for themselves the words of a criminal president and public opinion started to change I think the the biggest difference is not necessarily just uh they not enough people doing this kind of bang on doors and go out at night and get get the information that way uh which is a big problem huge problem but also more people and there's no metric that I can give you for this uh but more and more people of all political Persuasions are not looking for the best obtainable version of the truth they're looking for information that will reinforce what they already believe what their religious political uh social values are uh and and that is a huge huge cultural difference but but but the media report rep in has changed uh first because of the internet the impatience and speed give it to me right now summarize it and so you talk to reporters and they are in the office they said be why are you in the office I asked some of them because I have to update the story six times I can't do it from a phone booth and I need my computer computer and so we have a lot of office reporting and that uh that is crippling to journalism you have to go out and I remember doing one of the books on uh one of George W Bush's Wars and there was a general who would not talk and sent emails intermediaries phone messes said just nothing so the old Bernstein method I found where he lived and I went and knocked on his door but I did it just at I mean the best time to knock on somebody's door is 8817 on a Tuesday night because if it's Tuesday it's you know it's not Monday and it's not the latter part of the week 8817 8:15 people will have eaten so and and this was a time when it was still light out so you know the bodyguards wouldn't get me and so I knocked on the door and he opened the door and he looked at me and he said are you still doing this and I just was plain-faced and and now this is somebody who wouldn't talk to me wouldn't answer an email wouldn't answer the phone and he you know just the silence and the presence I guess uh and he said come on in talked for two hours then I was able to come back and develop a relationship of trust with this person who was a no he went from a no to a really important yes why got to show up and it's some I mean it's awful when you do this and I still do it sometimes I'm sure not enough to tell my wife elsea I'm going out to knock on somebody's door and then I'm back 45 minutes later and and and I say I got the door slammed in my face that's it that's hard so maybe you just answered this question but let me ask you if you were giving advice to a young person who wants to follow in your footsteps to be that investigative reporter who has real impact what advice would you give I would say the first thing is respect the people that you're talking to that and listen be a good listener reporters tend to be lousy listeners look at how much you see on television that reporters think their job is to manufacture controversy so you'll see a reporter with a microphone up on Capitol Hill running up to Mitch McConnell and asking a question that he knows is going to provoke an answer that is just going to be McConnell boilerplate and then he takes the microphone and goes up to Chuck Schumer and he knows the response is going to be Chuck Schumer uh boilerplate and and then he does a story about this Titanic war of words is that really getting closer to the best obtainable version of the truth no manufactured controversy is not our job we haven't talked about social media incidentally which has another huge presence in our culture and particularly among young people which has no pretense through it as a through line of the best obtainable version of the truth anybody can say anything they want and pretend that that this is real real news but I but I think that in terms of advice back to what Bob is saying use the old tools I happen to think that that some of the some of the new tools are great in terms of saving some time you know to get you to get you out but once you're out there and that's the objective is to get out there and then keep going back methodically going back but what's the common characteristic most people have and that truth well we wish and uh yeah yes often they do in the right circumstances but I but I think uh you need to take people as seriously as they take themselves you've got to go in in a way and give yourself some time not be impatient oh I've got to run out to another interview or I have to sometimes I I try to leave 4 hours of time before I have to do something else now I normally don't get 4 hours but sometimes you can get two and you don't want to be on a schedule and I think it's insulting to people if you're on a schedule oh I'm sorry I've got to go you know interview the speaker of the house or something like that and they're uh it's not paint by numbers it is get I mean and the best example is you going to the bookkeeper uh and determine not to leave and determine you you know oh can I have a cup of coffee uh you know I mean that's you know that's you you won't leave and here we are well friends let us hope that they don't leave and or at least uh make many return trips to the LBJ Library this has been a fantastic conversation I so appreciate both of you uh being here for this terrific event I wish we had another hour or two to pursue a whole lot more questions but thank you Bob Woodward thank you Carl Bernstein ladies and Gentlemen please welcome John Bridgeland co-chair and CEO of more perfect good evening uh Woodward and Bernstein I what a gift to the nation and and what a spirit of humility you all have to remember that that sign to listen more in this country when my daughter asks me uh tomorrow what was the theme of that wonderful talk I think I'll say the janitors always know and they continued to know and trust and democracy the role of the media in this country is uh is really democracy's immune system and uh they gave us a glimpse uh again on that wonderful history I have the privilege tonight um of introducing two other extraordinary leaders who you'll hear from Cara swisser is New York Magazine's editor at large Silicon Valley Seer and host of multiple podcasts including on with Caris swisser and pivot who her new book which is on sale uh is burnbook a tech Love Story which I hope you've all purchased as she quotes in burnbook if you invent the ship you invent the Shipwreck what we need is a lighthouse and there's no one better than Cara to shed light on the threats and opportunities of tech digital media and AI for our democracy she's joined by Emmy Award winner Larry mil Wilmore who has been a television producer actor comedian and writer for more than 25 years he hosts Larry Wilmore black on the air on the ringer podcast Network and be can be seen on Netflix amend hosted by Will Smith he also was brave enough to host the White House correspondence dinner in 2016 which is quite a ride for those of you who participated in it as a child Wilmore found interest in science magic Science Fiction and Fantasy so part of me feels like he came into Austin to see the solar eclipse and somehow we got lucky that he joined our Summit to moderate this discussion is one of our very favorite people and partners and we're currently working with 31 of the nation's presidential centers across the United States and I have to tell you we shouldn't say this but the LBJ uh presidential librar and Foundation has just been such a privilege to work with particularly because of their extraordinary leader the president and CEO please welcome mark up to [Applause] Grove Cara Larry welcome hello I'm going to start off uh ation the same way that Mark Lawrence started off with with Carl and Bob and that is to ask you how you got into your chosen professions and Carol let's start with you how did you get into a reporting why did you want to be a reporter before car goes can I just thank W and Bering for opening for us I just thought that was nice wasn't that nice that was so nice they did a good job I thought they were all thought they did a good job I think they have some promise I think so too I'm going to keep my eye on those D yeah yeah you should yeah um me how I started how you started as a reporter I I wanted to be a spy um and I was the yearbook editor which is a fe which is a job of men's power in high school um but I was not in newspapers I didn't work for newspapers and I really wanted to be a spy and I I am gay as obvious as is obvious and um and uh it's true come on let's stop no I'm glad you said it there's not a lot of questions here um and and and I couldn't be in the it couldn't I I wanted to be in the military in college to start with I wanted to do military intelligence essentially my dad was in the military he was in the Navy he he served uh until he died early um and I couldn't because I was gay and it was pre don't ask don't tell which the clintons did but everybody had had a terrible history of doing this and so I couldn't be in the military without telling essentially and so I didn't and I I was going to do some other public service but it was really hard at the time when I at that time people don't remember that but it was true and so I got into reporting which was similar it was adjacent to it to to analysis because I was going to be an anal analyst essentially like you know on homeland but you know 100% less wacky um and and I couldn't do what I really didn't want to do which was serve the country and um I would have been a fantastic Admiral at this point I would have been have a boat and things like that but anyway that was lost to me and the whole country um so sorry uh and so I got into reporting and I started writing for the student newspaper the the Haw at Georgetown University I wrote columns I wrote all kinds of things and my freshman year I won the journalism award which was usually won by a senior because frankly I was better than them and I was let's be clear um and so I went it was I started working for the Washington Post really early actually it's where I met uh um both of them I was I was just I worked in I was a news Aid and all kinds of small level things and I did story I was a Stringer from Georgetown University um which I got the job because they wrote a story that I wrote for the college newspaper and it was full of errors and I called them and told them they sucked and they said come down here and say that to our face and I did and they hired me so that's there you he's always the best policy it is apparently Larry how did you get into the world of Comedy um I also want to be a gay spy um when I actually wanted to be an astronaut it was now what if I was actually a CIA agent right now well you could be and you could be throwing us off right now by saying what if I was what if I was right cuz that's the double speak of a spy right that's right man they're so good um but I was always funny I come from a funny family my parents they they're not like consciously funny they're just funny like they don't know that they're funny they're just funny people and my brother and I used to always make fun of them and I I never thought it was a possibility to be in chiz until I realized that um it was the only thing I really wanted to do and I I first I was a theater major in college and I started as a standup comic and I was kind of trying to do acting and comedy at the same time but I realized during that time in Hollywood they didn't quite know what to do with me I was a black comic and I did political humor I did U you know satire stuff like that and at that that time they were really casting you know Hollywood Shuffle did a Robert Town's movie did a good take on this if you were from the ghetto you know and it had a certain kind of feel that's what Hollywood wanted and I felt like I needed to carve out a space for myself which is why I started writing and producing and went behind the scenes and uh kind of did that wrote for shows like a Living Color fresh prints things like that started creating shows and then when the by the time the Daily Show came around I was back to performing and had wanted to create a space for myself myself and that's how the Daily Show came about of me coming back to performing coming back to my standup roots and doing that and now I'm kind of kind of done all kinds of things in chiz producing writing performing that type of thing but I like uh being in front of an audience it's probably the most fun so uh obviously the the theme of this conference is uh is the news ecosystem very complicated and fragmented uh media ecosystem in which we find today which in so many ways compromises our democracy uh I want to go Larry to a a quote that you uh that from the guardian an interview you did with the guardian in which you said I think the term Fair reporting is overused when it comes to journalism I think saying they want to report evenly is more accurate what do you mean by even reporting I'm like when did I say this I must have been talking about CNN because I was always slamming them everything was breaking news in CNN in at some point I'm like at some point you're actually going to break the news you know and um they people like a lot of news organizations like to use these slogans like they're trying to Gaslight us into how they're covering the news rather than covering it and at the time that phrase was being used a lot I think that we're covering this fairly you know which in my mind they were really making an effort to cover it evenly and by that they were trying to appease the audience into showing that they were covering both sides is something which in their mind was fair but I'm like no that's even fair is covering the story in the way in which it should be covered that would be fair reporting you know in my mind right so evenly when you're covering something evenly you catering to the audience when you're covering it fairly you're catering to the story and there was too much catering to the audience as far as I was concerned and not to the story like who cares if you agree with something or disagree with it I said I disagree with myself constantly you know I may have an opinion but the facts change my opinion about something news should be as surprising by the people who deliver it you know I shouldn't be able to predict what a journalist is GNA say you know car you know interesting you said that about CNN though I think the best quote recently has been Christian amanor which is truthful not neutral which I think it kind of says that a little better is that there has been this um this way that we have I I don't do it this sort of it's called both sides of them for everything right that's how we're using it widely but I think the Press was so scared not to be reflective of another side you end up going to that Diner and asking unqualified people unqualified question you know the diner thing like what do they know why are we talking to them we were talking to some normal people um is it a Waffle House or Denny's like I want to know me like that makes a difference you know one of the things you get a lot when you're in the Press is like you know why don't you talk to real people and I go well I'm a real person they're like you're not a real person like I'm a real person like why why don't you come to where I was living in San Francisco and come visit my neighborhood why do we have to go to your neighborhood why don't you know about us and so I think it's I think the Press gets nervous about that and I think something that I've done and a lot of people have done lately is not do do that anymore yeah um in the journal when I worked for the Wall Street Journal they called it the to be sure statement which drove me crazy which is you I would say I was writing about web van and I did all the reporting and I knew it was a disaster and so I wanted to write it's going to be a disaster and here's why and they wanted me to get when I went back to this and I said this is going to be a disaster get someone to say that one which is I think false reporting as far as I'm concerned and then put in the to be sure statement to be sure some people think this is going to be a success and so I wrote it I put it in I said to be sure some people think it's going to be success they're all idiots and they took it out and I was like but they are it's not of course collapse so to be sure is journalism um are journalists in Mass Vehicles the the big responsible is it better than when you started 30 35 years ago it's a mass vehicle well you know the Washington Post I mean no I'm not at those places joural years ago but but is it but but as a as an observer as a reader as a consumer no it's changed drastically those businesses are in distress the businesses yes but the journalistic practices are they more responsible now than when you started you just said the business is yes so it doesn't really matter if anything else matter if it's not a good business you're not going to survive unless you're at the behest of billionaires right now and several billionaires own Publications so that's a that's an unusual thing to have to deal with because you never know if they're okay maybe their kids aren't you know you never know when they're going to say maybe lose their minds over after buying a social network for example um and but there's a church State no but there not necessarily not necessarily so you're at the best of billionaires if you don't have a good business you don't have journalism that's it that's the whole enchilada whether you realize it or not it's the news business it's like show business right there was there was a time when the news wasn't part of the profit center of the networks you know it was considered a different part of the network there was a news division that was separate from the entertainment Division and I think when they combined those Network talked about that brilliantly when now the news had to get ratings you know and it had to perform Broadcast News too you know and they just put it in a whole different performative ceg God you look at Network it's amazing everything came true it's amaz and he was writing about the past that's what's fascinating about Patty tki was writing about what he had already observed he wasn't predicting the future yeah so let me talk about comedy so there's there's record numbers of news avoidance today right people think the news is depressing and they're tuning out uh so I assume that they're going to comedy shows to get their many people are getting their news from comedy shows do you feel responsibility when you relate the news in your comedy do you feel a responsibility of in getting it right of course not no that's I've never thought about getting it right it's for me it's always what is the truth here what is my point of view there's if do I have something to say about this that is worth saying that's the but I'm not reporting in on something I'm I have an observation of something which is different you know that to me is what the comedy is I don't know if people get their news from Comedy like the way you know people said they used to get it from John Stewart or something like that I think they get their opinions confirmed by the shows more than anything else you know like I think John Stewart um or I should say John Oliver just delivers this this Grand Soliloquy to confirm what people are suspicious of in the first place yes puts it together puts it together in beautiful way does a lot of research about things and gives people a nice little meal of something that they probably already agree with or suspicious of you know or that type of thing or illuminates them and something but I don't think it's their I don't think it changes people's minds about things which people sometimes think or they want comedy to do that it rarely does that you know it's not a needle mover in that you know um I think occasionally and by the way here's what I I'll also say this I think funny goes farther than serious quasy funny commentary so when people talk about like thinking that John Stewart or Oliver you know will change people's minds not as much as Tina F just doing Sarah Palin would you know because that's just pure funny and just the mere the just the ridicule of that just people go oh you know like she might be president no you know because she got it the essential truth that's why that's correct and it was so funny it's infectious the same thing happened I think with Al Gore and 2000 Saturday Night Live this was their best the 2000 election was Saturday night Live's best um attack on the election I felt because I felt they went after Bush and Gore with the same amount of fervor you know and the whole Gore thing was the lock box if you remember that whole thing you know and Bush will pharoh's Bush was so funny too and just completely just took the pist out of him also but through laughing at that people just had a different appreciation of that insights into that but no one remembers the commentary the funny commentary about it that's what I mean but but so I have to say I push back I have you our kids I have a lot of more kids than you do I think but it was how many kids do you have I have two I have four okay Larry try to keep up with the lesbian try to keep up that is that is I've been trying so care there there's a lesbian inside me trying to get out you know that yeah it's a good life it's a good life um if now I've forgotten what I was going to say I'm thinking of something else once I said once I said there's a lesbian she got all flustered um my kids do get their cues from it though they get their thinking moments and I think bringing it together systemically is important they love John Oliver they love they're 18 and 21 and they they get their news from lots of places by the way and a lot more substantively than you think of young people I think that's the Canard we have that young people only will watch news or tiny Tik Tock things or dances or makeup tutorials you know I tell this story a lot of my son who I was doing um an interview for Frontline for about they were doing a Twitter one and I like front lines so I was doing it I don't do a ton of those and my son called during it and he said what are you doing I said I'm doing n your Frontline he goes I love Frontline I was like really and I didn't know this I was like H interesting and he started Des cribe every show of Frontline that had been on over the past year I know I was like impressed I was like Well Done Cara and um and he um and so I put the put it on because all these people I was like oh look a live 21-year-old listening to all your that loves your content right here he is it's a lie that he does they young people don't like substantive things and he goes He describes the show I love this show I love this this was interesting I didn't know about this about Chile or something like that and he goes um and I said gosh Lou I didn't know you watched PBS and he said I don't watch PBS and I said but you do and he goes I watch YouTube which is where he got all and that's how he related to it like through the distribution and the content and not no longer the brand so it's just a different way of receiving information but it's no less substantive I I I don't buy that about young people I don't I want to talk about social media in one sec but let me just go back to Comedy for one more you you said that um one of the reasons SAR live did it so well in 2000s because they did both Gore and Bush right sort of evenly do you feel responsibility if you're doing a joke about Biden to do one about Trump do you feel like youd have to be sort of evenhanded in the comedy no not in that sense not the evenhanded nature I just for me personally I just have to make the point that is the relevant Point like when I was covering uh uh Hillary Trump right and people were some people were calling Hillary a liar saying she a lied about this and some people saying Trump was a liar blah blah and my point was look both of these people are liars the difference is Hillary lies like a politician okay you know the way the politicians lies she's very good at that lies like a politician problem is Trump lies like a crackhead yeah right I mean he Rambles right it's like is he trying to sell me my own VCR like what's going on you know I don't know whether he's like sleeping with on the street you know I like all this crackhead behavior that one's a yes goad yes so to me I'm not both siding that I am using both comparisons to tell you what I re my real observation of this guy is a crackhead and is acting like that and so that's why I'm giving you both examples to that you know but not to do it for its own sake you know I I don't feel the responsibility of that I guess I guess you could say let me quote you from your excellent Memoir burnbook Tech love story which by the way car will be signing after the program is that righted right so if you haven't bought uh the best selling burn book you have a chance to do so after the program and and Caris swier will sign it for you but you write in the social medias in in Social media's new paradigm engagement equals enragement and it is addictive this is made worse by people who run these companies whose first instinct is to let all through the gate regardless of the potential damage of danger and oh yeah we paid for all of it by funding the creation of the internet with taxpayer dollars and then with our own data they owe us yet when the violence actually does harm the companies respond with nothing more than apologies and persistent insistence that they will do better yeah yes why aren't social media companies held responsible for the content they purvey because our government has abrogated its responsibility to do its basic job with the most important industry in history so um I I it's it's astonishing these are the richest people in the history of the world the most valuable they're trillion doll companies multi-trillion dollar companies they have unlimited power they they they're in everything they're ubiquitous in our lives in our work in our social life in our kids lives in our own lives it's addictive it is it's like cigarettes it is you and you have you also have to use it that's thing you must be on it or else you can't work you can't communicate you know it's not there's not a choice necessarily unless you go full late and and people just don't do that they just don't and so here they are with all the advantages and our government has decide and and making all this money based on a technology that we created right that we that the government created for lots of different reasons um and taking advantage of it but not paying their fair share of the damage causes and that's a similar it's a similar story to opiates it's similar story to cigarettes you know and I use this example because it's the best one right now is Alaska Airlines they blow a single door there's several lawsuits there's going to be dozens of lawsuits there's there the CEO was fired there there's Congressional investigations there's State investigations there's going to be there's so much liability attached meanwhile there's all this evidence of problems with kids for example you could pick any one thing that they might have done or been part of right a good example of this sorry thing was Mark Zuckerberg was up on the hill again where they again performatively deal with him and never do anything never actually pass anything and um uh Josh Holly one of my least favorite um Senators um but who should know better who happens to be very smart um said apologize to these parents and there were parents there whose kids had suffered on the due to Social Media stuff and they all had pictures of their kids up facing Mark Zuckerberg which was something else to see and Josh hly said turn around and and apologize to them like that and I personally said you need to apologize to them for not doing anything because you're the per who who who in this room could do something about it right you sir stopped with your performative stuff that they then you put online on Facebook to raise money the most cynical act ever um so Mark did turn around and said instead of a apologizing and of course Holly said nothing about this he said I'm sorry for what happened to you what is that Larry sorry for what happened to you I'm sorry the weather here in Austin is warm it's not my fault like that's what that's saying it's not it's not an apology it's a how did this happen kind of thing when you're at the scene of the crime and you're one of the perpetrators and to me it's our government not we're about we're maybe about to pass the first privacy bill in 25 years from Senator Maria canwell who used to a tech executive is doing it I'm not so sure it's going to pass so but this is the first one in 25 years that's the only law that we've passed in 25 years Larry was talking about TV news when uh in its nent stage and it was in the 1950s and there were 15-minute broadcasts but at the time television was the dominant medium and it was considered by the government to be a public trust and the reason you had news broadcast was was because it was in the public interest to do so even though they didn't make money they would later make money as as their own entities but why isn't the internet considered a public trust why was it not in in its nent days in the 1990s when you started covering it considered a public trust it was I don't know that's a good question you know what it did instead it gave it broad immunity yeah they instead of allowing it by the way it's a great thing to do it's just the opposite they protected it you know look Donald Trump got sued and lost rert marach got sued and lost paid a billion close to a billion dollars and dein's facing another lawsuit these guys get a law that says you can't sue them yeah you can't you that we're not going to pass any laws also we can't sue you also you have total purview over our lives and make decisions from a small group of people in Silicon Valley who are very homogeneous by the way um making these decisions about every everybody's lives it affects them that that more people are not and and by the way you can't get off of this stuff you can't leave either and so I don't I I have no idea why I'm I'm waiting for an Anti-Trust Bill I'm waiting for an algorithmic transparency Bill I'm waiting for a um oh there's dozens of bills we can have H hacking disclosure I think one of the distinctions is the nature of the medium itself um whether it was film or television and radio you had Gatekeepers in those mediums who presented something to the public and you know mostly they were selling soap is what I call it you know you had sponsors who were also responsible for delivering something to the public those people were accountable you know to the people as entities of delivering something you know a product the when the internet and these things came along they presented themselves as a Town Square you know as information that was crossing you know from one person to another from people out here it wasn't looked at as broadcasting you know so it was thought of differently people thought oh this is democracy you know we can say whatever we want why should private yeah it's all private why should the government get involved in these types of things so I think they stayed away from that type of thing that's what it feels like to me not realizing but there actually are Gatekeepers here you know someone actually is presenting this to you you know it's whoever owns this modern media companies I mean to me you know there's a big debate about Tik Tok and all the all of them are modern media companies and they should be governed the way modern media companies are meaning you can sue them now there's a lot of protections of media companies liable laws and everything else which is appropriate and they deserve similar protections arent they make you know Elon did this recently on the Don Lemon interview we were just talking about where he said well the newspaper has you know what 20 articles a day I'm like no it has hundreds but okay fine fine we'll go with we'll go with your number sir um he's breaking news breaking news yeah that's right um uh now you've got me off again um so he said we only have 20 and and we have you know 500 million or 5 million coming through in a day and my answer to that and Don did not go back and I said well why'd you build it that way like it's your fault that you have a system that's so toxic that it spews toxic waste out at a at an alarming rate that you make well he doesn't make money off of it but other companies do um uh Twitter's never made money by the way at all um but like Facebook it's allowed to spew toxic waste and do nothing about it like why why is that why do they get to do that and then they get to make money off of your data so they charge what they do is they take in a a platform you paid for you then give them your data they take it eat it vomit it back up to you and charge you and say please say you're welcome like I don't get it I don't get it we're we're cheap dates to these people we're cheap dates yeah and it's like why are they spinning why do they want to ban Tik Tock it's like um Facebook is already doing these things that you're afraid of that Tik Tok might do you know except in this case I'm going to disagree with you because the Chinese government is always involved with every Chinese company there in this case Facebook wants to sell you socks on Instagram yes the Chinese government we don't know what they want to do and they are a foreign adversary so I'm gonna say they well then I will take a slight disagreement I would say that they're not a foreign adversary no no no no no I would say that the phone that you're looking at Tik tock on is already made in China so yes China that is 100% yes China already is in your hands following you around you can get rid of Tik Tok but you know you're still being followed around by alleg you had a conversation exctly on black on the air uh with uh Taylor Loren from The Washington Post about Tik Tok you were talking about Tik Tok what I did not realize and realized in during the course of that interview is that meta has a lobbying campaign against Tik Tok for years for years and has sort of demonized him but right what should we think of Tik Tok Bare Bones it what what what is obviously their owned by the Chinese and that is in itself it's a Chinese company Chinese company but but we know what that means in China very it tends to mean that like let me give you two examples very quickly and then Larry in on what he thinks Tik Tok means is every company that's in China has involvement by the Chinese Communist party is just the way it is that's that country I'm sorry they they for example Jack Maul one of the greatest entrepreneurs he started Alibaba he disappeared at one point for a while it's like in this country suddenly Jeff bezo is disappearing and then being quiet and he's not quiet these days but he um you know just disappearing these people just like I think we'll put Steve Jobs in the cooler for a while that kind of thing that happens in China like when that governor of South Carolina disappeared yeah right um so so that that's one of the issues the other one is that it's um that Mark absolutely in an interview with me he he he sort of put out this X or me argument where we are the national champions X wants to run the Chinese internet which is all true but when he said that to me he goes well it's G or me I go don't like the choice I'm going to take you obviously but it's like like a bad date like I have to take the B bad or worse and in the case of Facebook they are they're information they're rapacious information thieves that's what they are um but it is in a different interest than what's happening in China and so I am concerned that we allow that that we allow a foreign government to they wouldn't they wouldn't be able to buy CNN they couldn't buy CBS they couldn't buy the Wasington waston post or anything else so why should they be able to have a and we can't go the Washington Post started showing cats playing the piano you know I would be concerned that the Chinese company would be interested in buying that you don't know what they're going to do and that's the well let's what what is the worst thing that they could do with tiktock what are you talk everything like like what would be the worst thing just like what they've been doing Forever on social media by buying ads by creating Discord and partisan nature years ago on faceb Facebook and I believe it was the Russians who did this but they had ads on there that Hillary Clinton was a lizard was act and it worked by the way let me tell you a lot of people wait you're saying she's not a lizard she's not a lizard I've attempted to scratch her face and it did not work secret service intervened but I've seen a lot of dead skin when I've been around okay F but I actually called them I'm like Hillary Clinton's not a lizard why is this showing up on your platform they're like well everyone has a right and I said I think it's being bought by the Russians and of course they were paying in Rubles at this point and you they were trying to create an information war and we we have won the CL War say against Russia but they have been able to more cheaply attack our democracy at its roots by partisanship and it so is it happens domestically too by the way I feel like we're just better at that though still we're better at dividing ourselves than they're at dividing us no but it's it's it's we've been at it a lot longer it is but it's been fueled by this ability to to to part us and I think like the use of bots by these countries and not just not just other countries it's domestic too it's domest it's now being used by domestic and so these Bots are constantly creating rage that then creates engagement then then creates more rage and so right but those Bots are on X right not just X it's all over no but X isn't the Chinese you know well we don't know who's they're doing we the problem is you can't trace but I mean but it's on that platform like the things that you're saying can happen on Facebook can happen on X can happen why why let them have their own company that we don't have full insight into that's all it's just they can't buy if they can't buy and the other part of that equation is we can't be in China no us company can be in China so if we don't and the reason why we can't be in China because we'd spy on them that's why and they know that so if we don't have reciprocity why are they allowed here that's just my feeling I would argue that we're already spying on China not via social net not via social network is used by 170 million people well because the Chinese are already doing it to themselves yeah true that's true that's true why did Carol why did Elon Musk buy Twitter some have talked about the decline of Twitter as being cultural vandalism and clearly it's deteriorated under his was such a fine product before but it is has changed discernably a right bar it's now a rightwing bar yes what did he want to do what was his intention it is it's a bar it's a bar from Star Wars now it really is Cantina why don't you take that one why did he buy Twitter that's no no I you know this I have hear your thoughts uh all right well for me it feels like just an ego move I mean you you know a lot of these billionaires are in bubbles right um and part of being in a bubble is people are going to kiss your ass all the time and all that type of stuff this is the ultimate type of bubble to be in where you just get to be I mean the thousand pound gorilla like like nobody's business you talk about about controlling the narrative from you know uh from this standpoint had to have been the Allure of this it wasn't just wanting Free Speech because he wouldn't be doing all that tweeting himself you know I think he wants to be the object of the attention on X so to me was self-serving that's what it looks like to me more than any kind of altruistic thing and by the way I'm a huge fan of SpaceX you know I've Loved A lot of the stuff that you know what SpaceX tried to do we talked about this before care like when Tesla came out they had some really great ideas and what his mission was when you heard Elon talking about some of his just green ideas and climate ideas and things like that has some really good ideas behind them you know but something happened where you just turned and there's this attention grab that just became this narcissism this narcissistic thing and he chose a side in it as well you know and a lot of that side that he chose I think is an ugly side too you know so it's just not very it's just not very appealing I think he's got it pretty right I mean this is someone who that was about 10 5 to 10% of his personality the Dank memes the weird jokes the the sort of hateful stuff was about 10% and the rest was really interesting for a long long time here and I've known him for a long time and the stuff he did at Tesla was groundbreaking no question although very they're in very much more trouble now because there's a lot of competitors and they haven't kept up with the products and he's ruining the brand through through his Antics on Twitter so that's an issue SpaceX another groundbreaking company by the way let me just say he didn't do it alone there there's an executive named Rebecca I mean uhw Shotwell who runs SpaceX she doesn't get any attention she's the reason it's doing so well um uh very few women are in that sector so I'd like to call attention to her um and and there's a lot of other things starlink was really smart but what happened I think as you get that rich and you're surrounded by enablers and yes people who are what I say they lick you up and down all day and you're always right and there's I have to get that image out of my head well some of them like that it's like that Elon on the yacht image right okay all right yeah you know that you SE I've seen that picture yes I have he doesn't like it um so you um so you have all these people doing this all day and then you get a sense of your own like God he already had those Tendencies you know when he was in the beginning of the book I talk about him saying I can change Trump's mind and I was like well thank you Jesus but you're not going to this man's been a lifelong racist and all kinds of things really you're going to I can do it like he had that kind of mentality a lot of tech people do I think Co something happened to him during Co very he suddenly started talking you know the pedophile stuff started to pop up which was odd yeah um I think the what was his switch you think he made it was Co I think he you know they wanted to close down one of his companies he's very much like I'm My Own man I'm a man of the people even though he's the richest man in the world which is kind of funny he started to get the victim complex that a lot of these people get um uh I call it grievance industrial complex um and and they love to be agreed even though they're incredibly blessed which is really astonishing I think Co did we've read in the Wall Street Journal about his his partying which is everybody knows about um and I think that had an effect on him um and then he and then this part of his personality just took over the rest of it and a lot of people get rad you've met people who've been radicalized right in different ways uh what do you mean by radical just look like that suddenly my mom's a good example she hated Trump and then Fox News every day she's like she loves Trump and then she hated him for a while and now she loves him again like it's it listen that wasn't social media that was just the persistent repetition of of hate and misinformation and I think he got pulled into that in a lot of ways yeah that's interesting yeah there a lot a lot of them are like that but he's not alone quote you from uh a New York Times editorial that you did uh six years ago Facebook you wrote as well as Twitter and Google's YouTube and the rest have become the digital arms dealers of the Modern Age they have weaponized the First Amendment they have weaponized Civics discourse and they have weaponized most of all politics yeah if you could reform I want to ask you both Larry we'll start with you uh if you could reform social media if you could put regulations in place what would you do that's a tough one you know I may have to go second on this because I have to think about it I I because I don't think in those terms my I'm the opposite of that you know I'm more Freer in terms of speech and that type of thing in how I view things so um you don't have to go to speech it's a business model problem is what it is and we tend to focus on as a speech problem and and they use as a fig Leaf because they don't know it at all I've been in speeches the Mark gave a speech at Georgetown where he was misconstruing the first amendment so badly I wanted to rush the stage and hand him a copy which I keep with me I was like it's real short it's first it's easy to understand like government shall make no law not Mark Zuckerberg you can make any law you want and you do often um and so he does when it pleases him and when he doesn't he says First Amendment which is interesting um but it has nothing to do with any of these companies the First Amendment at all in in many ways and so it's a business model problem it's an advertising business model that enragement equals engagement and they win by taking our data so why not attack the data issues the business model issues um and ways they they the ways they capture our attention it's not free speech it's the model is made it so that you could let me give you an example Google Google a search right not as many people do search as they used to but they do it's a big it's a big business they when you search you don't linger there you essentially are just searching for something so it provides speed context and accuracy that's the architecture of Google search Uber call the car it comes that's the architecture of it the architecture of social media is virality engagement and speed guess what that ends up in Rage it just goes right to rage and so their business model is Rage so start to pass laws about data privacy about the business model itself it attacks the business model and the DAT the data steal and the need to create that and then also hold them liable if things have those parents be allowed to sue them they might lose but why can't they be why can't those parents Sue those companies and get disclosure on what's Happening inside those companies yeah so yeah think um I do think rage gets a lot of the headlines but it really is only part of it you know but that's the part that concerns people because a lot of bad things come out of that or whatever but there's so much more here's an aspect of it that people don't realize cuz I'm in this business and I realize it people broadcast themselves there's a cost to broadcasting yourself you know people don't realize what happens as a result of that you've made a public profile of yourself you know you're putting yourself out there now you have created um this Avatar that isn't quite you it's representative of view but slowly especially young kids don't realize that they are blurring the line between who they are and what this representative of them is you know that's what a broadcast is it's representative of you it's not you you know um and so when uh you know young people especially children are watching representatives of people because it's not real you know they are getting a confusing sense of who they should be so this isn't in the area of rage you know it's not in the area of misinformation or that this is more in the area of identity which is really a subject that you know like I don't know how to govern this type of thing when I say I don't know how to govern that how do you govern that but this is a problem because there I think is suicide like at one of its highest rates now for young people especially men yeah okay so and this is especially a man problem when you know not that I'm a doctor in this but you know as a boy who grew up to be a man my identity is very important to to to boys becoming men who who am I what's my place all these things we put a lot of stock in identity right you know um it's very very self centered and self- serving when when that is built on shallow ground you know and built on these false images you are setting yourself up for some really bad stuff but I think the girl problem is even probably even worse because the presentations of women Prim mely a sex objects in a way that you could have never have seen coming you know where it's um you know they're doing this willfully you know this isn't like the exploitation of the early days of porn and that kind of stuff it's presenting yourself in these sexual ways that you know are doing so much harm to kids that a lot of the Gen Z generation aren't even having sex that much because there's so much of this over stimul uh stimulus that's happening you know there's also deep fake porn happen there's actually a good story in the another thing of using these tools I think one of the things that I think about a lot you know you have the Washington Post symbol I mean the their motto democracy dies in darkness which is very dramatic right I think democracy dies in the full light of day and that's what was has happened to us we can see I agree with you occurring in real time and the greatest let me pay him a compliment the greatest troll in history is Donald Trump he knows how to use these things and and he knows how to every time we every time the Press always goes it it kills me they're like can you believe he said that I go I believe it because he does it's a it's he's doing it as a trick it's a trick he he now has become the character that he played on TV right but he and now I think he really thinks it like he's moved into some cognitive situation happening he could pass Li detective test easily he's now full crackhead like any crackhead yes exactly um but um he was just playing one before um but I think you what the way he used social media the way JFK uh use television or FDR use radio or Hitler used radio like a lot there's there's a great book I just did a interview with Tim Ryback who talks about Hitler right before he took over and the use of media is is very similar they're very similar ways to use it and and when that happens you get you do get all those signals from people that never before could give you signals in the same way and it affects you drastically because that's because you AR you aren't Comm you aren't doing meeting in person you're not doing bars you're not doing Church groups whatever happens to be your way of community and I think all of us are at a loss because of the lack of face-to-face contact and what happened during covid which brings me back to Elon is everybody then had to rely and live online during that period And so everything was accelerated including the the values of these Facebook has never been more valuable Apple's never been more valuable they all of them Microsoft every single one of them and so during Co itel accelerated trends that were already happening and now we're hooked all of us uh president's almost inevitably have fractious relationships with the Press uh but Larry you participate there's one day a year when the arms are laid down and that's the the White House Correspondence Dinner you were the host of The White House correspondence dinner for what was Barack Obama's last uh appearance in 2016 what was that like well their arms are down but their middle fingers were up let's just say uh it um it was a very surreal comedy I should I should have got it's like you're at a family reunion but you're not in the family is is a phrase that I've always used um it's just very bizarre you know because it's not really a audience there to see comedy unless it's the president you know who was very funny by the way and I even told him that's not fair he's that funny before you don't see me going around presidenting you know everywhere you know stepping on his toes right no I don't do that so stop doing that um very surreal I treated it as a roast and I found out that you know many of the journalists are very prickly about you know as you know too care when you go directly and question you know some of the things and I'm doing it in a roasty way it did not go over well some people actually Don Lemon who I called on edge journalist sure like that let's J gave me the finger of course you know but he gave me a nice friendly finger I should say whereas Wolf Blitzer I think probably one of my children killed he was not very happy with what I I said about him he was not very happy about it yeah but that's okay but it I don't do it to be you know for the affection or to be you know for them to say hey we like you it's like there's something I need to say here and you know if we don't age that's okay I got no problem with that but I think it's good that we say this right now Caris Swisher will sign your book uh and uh you can hear Larry Wilmore on black on the air and uh it has been our Delight to have you here tonight Caris swier Larry Wilmore thanks so much it's been a pleasure thank you thank [Applause] you oh yeah come on thanks a this one okay

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Length: 107min 25sec (6445 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024