Announcer: Once upon a time, there were a handful of national television news organizations telling America the way it is each day.

Their voice-of-god anchors were reinforced by strong local newspapers in every city and town in the nation.

Then came 24-hour cable news, followed shortly by talk radio and then by the rise of ideologically polarized cable networks and finally the Internet, with its infinite voices but almost no filters between facts and falsehoods.

We live in a new media environment, often presenting more heat than light, and figures speaking, often shouting past each other rather than listening to one another.

How has the landscape of American news and public affairs changed as a result, and what is the impact on American democracy?

Announcer: This episode of "The Whole Truth" was made possible by the Doran Family Foundation... AMETEK.. and by... for hundreds of years, in English-speaking courtrooms around the world, people have sworn an oath to tell not only the truth, but rather the whole truth.

The oath reflects the wisdom that failing to tell all of the story can be as effective as lying if your goal is to make the facts support your point of view.

In the courtroom, the search for truth also relies on advocates advancing firm contradictory lines of argument and doing so with decorum.

All these apply to the court of public opinion, what John Stuart Mill called the marketplace of ideas.

So this show intends to be a place in which the competing voices on the most important issues of our time are challenged and set into meaningful context together so that viewers like you can decide for themselves the whole truth.

We begin tonight by looking at the new media landscape.

I think it is hardly controversial to declare that in today's news environment, the lines have been somewhat blurred between the expression of fact and opinions, between satire and serious analysis.

The media environment today is wholly different than it was 20 years ago.

Has the media industry changed for the better?

So let's examine what constitutes a working marketplace of ideas in a democracy in the 21st century, and let's ask whether the media which watches over this marketplace is doing its job.

Eisenhower: Joining me for this conversation are Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," editor-in-chief of "The Daily Beast" and CNN contributor John Avlon, and Al Hunt, Bloomberg News and Washington editor and longtime reporter and columnist for the "Wall Street Journal."

Gentlemen, welcome.

Our topic today is the media.

Everybody agrees that politics is in trouble.

How's the media faring?

Journalism is reinventing itself.

Do you see--see patterns forming?

Newspapers were a dominant form for a hundred years, and they were basically a license to print money from after World War II through around the early 1990s.

Then the Internet rose.

Some people managed to get taken by surprise, but it looked like that form factor would be dominant in and upon itself.

And then around 3, 4 years ago, the rise of social media was another revolution on top of media.

People don't necessarily come to websites' home pages.

They come through side-door traffic and social media.

So it's a total different means of distribution.

It does elevate individual news brands-- uh, individual writers who have their own following.

It puts a premium on some old ideas-- great headlines, great framing of stories.

Do these norms mean anything in the current media environment, or-- I assume they mean something.

How much?

They do.

I think it's a big mistake to assume that because of the media fragmentation, which is profound, that all of a sudden it is a fundamentally lawless environment.

What you instead have, I think, is almost a crowd-sourcing of fact-checking.

And yes, some people-- you can have online mobocracy where people fall into groupthink and they're pushing their own team's agenda.

That happens, obviously.

You've got trolls on either side.

But--but I think the overall impact is actually one of a democratization of fact-checking, and I do think that quality does rise.

Breaking news does rise.

Matthews: You know what?

We have--you know, I say that our kind of program is fact-based but heat-driven... [Others chuckle] heat-driven.

And so it's exciting, they try to make it exciting.

But, you know, when a producer gives me something-- and I'm doing this for 21 years now-- I want to know where it came from.

What do you mean, a fact?

And so you looked at the "Journal," the "Times," the "Washington Post," the "L.A. Times," AP-- there's no more UPI.

You got to really limit yourself to what you know has been edited.

Right.

And I do think that's still my job because television doesn't have a corrections page.

If you get it wrong, you have to really explain yourself.

So you have to get the basic facts right.

Hunt: I think the overarching question, which you started with, David, is the state of the news media today, and if you were one of those Penn students that you and I teach, you can get more information, better information, more diverse information than any of us could when we were sitting in those seats years ago.

Absolutely.

There's no question of that.

If you are the welder in Toledo, that's what I worry about because basically you are a relatively passive news consumer, and you tend to go to those sites or those outlets that confirm whatever prejudices you start with.

So in that sense, it becomes polarizing.

I think it is also true-- because that individual has essentially fallen away from sort of centralized news sources.

Right.

Exactly.

Uh, network news shows clearly aren't as good as they once were.

I'm not a big fan of cable news any longer.

But there's a lot of good stuff.

There's a lot of good stuff out there.

Charlie Rose is the Ed Murrow of our day.

Uh, the "New York Times" is as great as ever.

It really is.

I love it when the right- and left-wing critics criticize the "New York Times" because almost all the material they use, they originally get from the "New York Times."

It'll spend time doing a long series for one year on nail salons.

You think, "My God.

Could anything be more boring than that?"

Until you read it and you find these young Chinese, Latino, and Korean women are being absolutely treated almost under slave-like conditions.

So there's a lot-- some of the local, uh, for-profit and nonprofit outlets are really doing good stuff.

How about this democratization idea?

Now, I understand in your business, you're online and so forth, and so you have a lot of people who are interactive.

How about you, Chris?

Well, I don't think democratization is a good thing in the sense that look what was happening during Ferguson.

There were people on the air saying, "Hands up" when there was no, in the end, evidence that that ever happened.

And that became--and then people would say on my program, "Well, that's what the people think."

I said, "It doesn't matter what they think in the streets.

Something happened, or it didn't happen."

Right.

These are factual questions.

It's not opinion here.

You get into the idea that the street can decide what happened, you're in trouble.

Well, obviously the key is that-- I'm an optimist, basically, but we're gonna go through a lot of difficult challenges and transitions, and I'm not worried about those Penn students.

I am worried about that Toledo welder.

Avlon: And look.

It does come down-- I mean, one of my favorite quotes in politics is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, right?

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.

Right.

One of the challenges of fragmentation and the rise of partisan media is people come to debates armed with their own facts, and so I think the role of the quality news organizations that try to be more independent-- or shows like "Hardball" or shows that have a diversity of viewpoints and, you know, on different networks-- and even partisan networks have great shows-- is to actually be a site that calls B.S.

And to actually, you know, call balls and strikes and to try to get at the truth.

I think people are thirsty for that.

They're gonna be the cheerleaders who play to the-- the cheap seats, and that will be a business model that works.

The challenge is to show there's a business model that works if you're not bottom-feeding.

Eisenhower: There's much more of this outlying than there was.

In other words, there was a media environment 25, 30 years ago where this was really-- there were not outlets... Mm-hmm.

for this kind of thing and so-- Matthews: The question is, how many people want an honest debate?

I mean, I love it because I love fighting.

Ha!

But Sunday morning used to be the beat for opinion and analysis and a bit of debate, and, uh, it's still there, but it doesn't have the power it used to have.

I think morning television has more power to set the agenda.

From the point of view of what I would say is conservative media today that--that media still exists.

They still run--they are programming against what they still see as, uh, liberal opinion.

Right, but...

Effectively.

It's much less powerful today, correct?

Well, we'll see who is Goliath and who is David.

Yeah, who's David, right.

I'm always aware, because my wife was in local television, always be aware of who's watching and make sure that they're represented on the screen.

Um, I think it's a matter-- for us, anyway, we found that when you cross-pollinate politics and pop culture, you increase the accessibility.

You give people-- a new audience, particularly a younger audience, a way in, and that that's really valuable.

I remember, as a young guy, as a younger guy, I remember watching Jeff Greenfield on "ABC News" quote the who during, you know, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

And that had the shock revelation.

A lot of Chris' early work, also, had a lot of politics/ pop culture overlays, and that increases the accessibility.

Sort of a boomer legacy, in a way.

Yeah, and it's still absolutely-- it's still absolutely true.

One of our great "Beast" headlines that I used when we were talking to the editorial team is, "Ted Cruz is the Miley Cyrus of the Senate."

Uh, the story did great.

It was a way of kind of expressing that he was shameless and would do anything for attention.

That makes the Ted Cruz story much more accessible.

Uh, we're talking about the fusion of celebrity entertainment-- news, I think, under old journalistic norms, I think a line was drawn between entertainment and news, and a news organization would not touch this.

We've seen a--we've seen a change here, and we actually have a clip that illustrates it in an interesting way.

The reason it's so important to keep down costs is so we keep college affordable.

And the president knows his stuff, y'all.

That's why they call him the POTUS, which means "person on top"-- w-what is it?

Jimmy, POTUS stands for President of the United States.

Tariq Trotter: ♪ He's the POTUS with the mostest ♪ [Crowd cheering] Let's keep the rates down on college loans.

Stop.

The loan you save may be your own.

The truth of what a reporter is saying is all in the direction their face is turned.

News story, war story.

[Audience laughs] Trust me on this.

Total bull[bleep].

[Laughter] Today marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

I know because I killed Hitler.

[Laughter] So--so the "New York Times" took a slide-- didn't redact it properly, and in the end, it was possible for people to see that something was being used in Mosul on Al-Qaeda.

That is a problem.

Right.

But you have to own that, then.

You're giving documents with information you know could be harmful which could get out there.

Yes.

Fusion.

We have comedians here, in these cases, essentially leading dialogue or creating, it seems-- there was a time, I believe, where Jon Stewart was the favorite newscaster for, say, 21% of all people, most trusted, under 30 or 25.

What always impresses me is that the audience knows what he's talking about.

They always are ready for the setup.

The punch line-- they get it.

So they're following enough news-- they're skimming the cream of the news, somehow picking it up.

They're not sitting around reading broadsheets, I don't think.

So somehow they're picking up enough information to get the joke, which tells me somehow we're transmitting, through osmosis or whatever, to the millennials and the younger people, what's going on.

Even if they're getting the information through the flipside, which is they're connecting the dots through the jokes to the content, you know, what Stewart does so well and what I think Maher and John Oliver and others are doing is they're having-- they're serving as gateway drugs to real news, right?

They're engaging younger people in a deeper civic conversation, and when John Oliver does an unexpectedly serious, tough interview with Edward Snowden, that starts to change minds and open eyes.

And Stewart's done a great job of that on "The Daily Show," but that model is proliferating, I think, to the vast betterment of society.

Matthews: How many proceed to the more serious news?

Avlon: I think as they get older, they will.

Hunt: I think they do that, but they also puncture some of the-- some of the people who deserve puncturing.

I mean, Jim Cramer will never be the same after he went on "Jon Stewart."

Stewart and Oliver and Colbert are geniuses.

They really are, and the news that I grew up with 40 or 50 years ago where they said, "Jeez, we can't mix these two"-- well, of course we can today.

We have to, and it sometimes can be just enormously effective.

I also think that most of that audience, frankly, is very well-informed.

Eisenhower: I think we actually did mix it more than we appreciate.

I think one of the funniest political commentators and one of the more perceptive ones was Bob Hope.

Matthews: Will Rogers.

Eisenhower: Will Rogers.

Yeah.

Will Rogers' column was really great.

Matthews: You know, I think Broder was the best, probably, for years-- 30 years of journalism in politics.

He always referenced, like, baseball.

So he would find his outside--outlet passes to something else.

I think we have to look broader than that now, in just the culture.

You won't connect to people if you just do politics down this way or news just that way.

Well, you're saying a gateway drug.

In other words, something can be done in comedy that can't be done in news.

Avlon: Well, first of all, I think it calls B.S.

very effectively.

It entertains as it educates.

That's a totally valuable role and intersection.

You know, Will Rogers' column for the "New York Times" syndicate back in the 1920s was enormously valuable in drawing more people into debate.

I mean, it's an old tradition, right?

Nixon goes on "Jack Paar."

he's on "Laugh-In."

Uh, you know, obviously, you know, Bill Clinton goes on "Arsenio Hall."

So when, you know, Barack Obama is on "Jimmy Fallon" and he's slow jamming the news but he's talking about college loans, he's found a way to get a serious issue in there.

And we can have debates about what's presidential-- Hunt: And reach a different audience.

Yeah, exactly.

An important audience.

And that's valuable, so, you know, there's no shame in a democracy in meeting the people where they are, as long as you're not dumbing it down, and I think the assumption there needs to be that the American people are smart, but not necessarily informed... right.

And so therefore you've got to try to reach them in new ways.

Eisenhower: I think that's the whole theory-- Matthews: That's the old rule of public speaking.

Overestimate their intelligence; underestimate their knowledge.

Eisenhower: Yeah.

All right.

Looking at journalism, where do you expect it to be in 10 years?

Are you, uh... Well, I don't know where cable's gonna be.

I don't know where anything's gonna be.

I think that-- I know that my kids don't own TVs.

Mine don't...

I've got grandkids who will grow up without TVs.

They'll grow up with only thinking telephones are where you have somebody you're talking to, you're actually looking at them.

They don't know what a telephone is.

They're living in a totally new world-- what we used to call, you know, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy watches.

Is that gonna require an entirely new vocabulary, vernacular-- Matthews: They're not gonna sit around like they do in Africa.

In Africa, they used to sit around and wait for the BBC to come on at noon.

Right.

And in America, people would wait around for Cronkite at 6:30.

They're not waiting around anymore.

No.

They know it by then.

So that's changed.

Yup.

Avlon: Yeah, change is the only constant.

Convergence is occurring.

Uh, cord-cutting is absolutely real.

And there are all sorts of foreign factors and behavioral implications.

You know, we are majority mobile, so a majority of people, beginning last summer, read "The Daily Beast" on their phone or tablet.

That's not going back.

What does that mean to long-form articles and, you know, long paragraphs?

I think there's evidence people will still read long articles, but you got to cut down on the indulgent Joycean paragraphs.

Video is gonna be more of a factor in online-- uh, in online pieces.

So--so that's all-- that's all happening, and it's gonna happen, and as with everything, you got to make change your ally, not your enemy.

Otherwise you're looking at a real rough future.

Uh, Al, you're living in an online print world and so forth.

You publish in both.

Is there a different vernacular, different vocab-- is there a different-- Hunt: Sure there is, and I think it's important how people get news, and John's right that mobile and tablet are certainly beginning to dominate in a lot of areas, but I also hope that ultimately it's about content and what kind of content they're providing.

I, David, have this experience every year with a bunch of young students saying, "Should I go in journalism?"

And the answer is, "Absolutely, yes, "you should go in journalism.

"I don't know if it's gonna be a career for you.

"I don't know if 10 years from now, "you're gonna want to be in it or not, "but it's exciting now.

There are things that-- change is good."

Hunt: So there's gonna be a lot of exciting things, but if we don't have good content, it's not gonna matter in the long run how we get it.

Quality content matters.

That's absolutely true.

In an age where information is everywhere, the quality is the differential, whether it's speed in breaking the news or the incisiveness of the opinion and voice.

So that's the good news.

The business models have always been a little bit skewed, right?

I mean, "Citizen Kane," you know-- it's the silver mine that funds the newspaper, right?

And ultimately makes them bankrupt.

So we've had these debates before.

It's a wild west time.

Now let me pose this question.

Uh, we have a serious problem with polarization in this country.

The media is implicated in this.

In what ways is this something that is part of our condition today?

Is this something that's gonna get better?

Avlon: So--so let's pull back for a second.

How is media contributing to polarization?

I think the rise of partisan media has contributed enormously to the deep but, I believe, artificial polarization of the American people.

Um, I think it's actually helped move politicians to the edges of their party, which you can tell in congressional voting patterns.

We've moved from a bell curve to basically a trough between two sides.

It's a contributing factor, but it can reinforce those divisions.

Look.

Let's not be naive about it.

I mean, you go back to George Washington's administration.

You had, you know, the "Aurora" and the "National Gazette" representing two parties and going after each other in genuinely vicious ways.

So it's not that we've ever, you know, had a Pollyannaish, you know-- there's been an absence of partisanship from news.

Parties owned papers in the past.

But what's different now is that with the polariz-- with the fragmentation of media, you have, instead of the big 3 driving consensus, you have business models that go after narrow but intense niche audiences.

They use anger, fear, and resentment to keep readers addicted-- viewers addicted, and that there's an interplay, often, between websites, talk radio, and partisan TV.

And that becomes disproportionately powerful and cows politicians from actually doing what they know to be the right thing, which is principled compromise in making our government.

It becomes sort of a-- Hunt: Well, there's no premium for thoughtfulness.

You don't cover as much if you're thoughtful.

There's a premium more on the sound bite.

I think it's--i think it's a big problem.

I think it's a big problem, and I think it does--it does fuel polarization, and I just look at people who will say, "Look, I'm never gonna get on Fox "if I take a reasoned position, if I'm a conservative Republican."

And I don't--I think we're better off not having 3 networks dominate coverage.

I think the more competition, the more diversity, that's obviously good.

But I-- but I think there's also, to go back to Pat Moynihan, there has been, in elements of the media, we have defined deviancy down.

I mean, you know, we really have, and I think that-- that's a problem for a democratic society.

I said earlier I'm optimistic, but I think we're gonna go through some tough transitions.

Well, is there a corrective for that, al?

Yeah.

The corrective's got to be the marketplace at the end.

That's always the case.

I'm a centrist.

I'm an independent.

I actually believe those things are distinct.

You read books?

Right.

And as a site, "The Daily Beast" is pretty unique in that we are nonpartisan but not neutral, right?

We will hit both sides.

We will be merciless about it.

But I think the key and the trick is to carve out a sensible center ground that doesn't simply try to do mushy middle split the difference.

I wrote a book called "Wingnuts" a few years ago, and the idea behind it was, let's take the fight to the extremes.

Let's call them out.

Let's really dive deep and not look only what they're saying today, but the kind of ugly antecedent.

So when you hear Glenn Beck talk, it's really just the John Birch Society, you know, that we've heard these things before.

And I do believe in playing offense, and I do believe that you need to be unpredictable, and that means being willing to hit both sides.

How deep is the polarization that we have now?

Is it--is it, in fact, superficial?

Where does it look-- what's driven it?

So both parties, generally, over history have always gone to their center.

They've gone to their center and tried to find pragmatism and the american consensus.

I grew up during the Vietnam War, during the great Civil Rights Movement.

Those were bigger issues.

Those were more divisive issues.

And yet I think there is more bitterness today.

It's, again, poor Pat Moynihan is being cited left and right, who said one time back in academic politics, it's so bitter because so little is at stake.

Hunt: I'm not suggesting little is at stake today, but it is disproportionate... disproportionate.

To--the rancor is, and I think that goes to the media, that goes to money, that goes to the 24/7 news cycle, and I'm not optimistic, in 2017, no matter who wins, that it's gonna change much.

So in other words, people just have a vested interest... For now.

in having this go on, but superficial-- you are appealing to millennials, Gen "X."

Now, how would you distinguish them from other generations?

Um, well, certainly we're seeing that at "The Daily Beast."

I think that's a function of being the most diverse generation in American history and just the fact of globalization, the way barriers have broken down, and social media can do that in real time.

But, um, I think a lot of the deep debates are still the baby boomers.

You know, it's crew cuts versus the longhairs.

And that debate has echoed on and dominated our politics for a long time.

And if you look at-- Chris, we're boomers.

Do you agree with that?

I love the cliché here.

Ha!

It may be right.

Shirts and skins.

I don't know.

It's Bubba versus Newt.

I mean, you know, whatever--whatever version you want to do-- by the way, we go all the way back with that to Jack Sunday and democracy against the big-city elites.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Of course.

It is not really-- or the North against the South.

That's right.

Over trade, tariffs, slavery.

These are old debates.

They're old debates, but also they had geographical moorings-- except the parties then switched sides.

Right, and I think that can't be underestimated, right?

I mean, the geographic and ideological polarization of the parties is something new.

Even in the 1960s, where societal divisions were deeper, right, you had a World War II veteran generation running the government.

There were conservative Democrats, there were progressive Republicans, and so they were more practical, and they had political reasons for working together and making divided government work.

I do think there's reason to be hopeful.

I do think if you look at polls of the millennial generation, they take their diversity of opinion for granted.

There's a focus on problem-solving.

There's less of a retrenchment and an attachment, although one of the dynamics you're seeing, and I think Hillary Clinton can put a lid on it for this cycle, is that the far left is becoming much more activist, I think, in part empowered by social media, than they have been in a long time.

And at some point, the parties are gonna need to learn a lesson that, you know, Goldwater helped teach the Republicans for a short period of time, which is that you can't-- you know, go ideological pretty all you want, and you're gonna get your head handed to you.

And that corrective can be useful.

So that is the corrective, ultimately.

Yeah.

Matthews: You know what's great?

After all the arguments, we all recognize the same fine political behavior.

When John McCain was confronted by that woman who said that Barack Obama is an Arab, or something like that...

I can't trust Obama.

I have read about him, and he's not--he's not-- he's a--he's an Arab.

He is not-- No, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

No?

No, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

He's a--he's a-- he's a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on--on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about.

He's not.

Thank you.

And he stopped.

He stopped history in its tracks, and he said to her, "No, he's a good man.

We happen to disagree, but he's a good American."

We all admire that.

So what is it there, that fine courage under pressure where you could have taken the cheap shot like a lot of people do today and let the crazies talk?

He said, "No, I'm not gonna let you talk.

I'm standing here.

I'm responsible for this moment."

So I think we still know that fair play and honesty are pretty high standards that we try to meet if we're good at it in politics and demand it of our leaders.

Very good.

OK. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for being part of this discussion.

This is a very important issue facing the country today-- that is, politics.

Everybody's concerned about the polarization that could be superficial, as you say, and so the first thing that comes to mind is the very institution that enables us to communicate and to have a public sphere in politics, and that is media.

You all are very eminent figures in it, and we profoundly appreciate your insights into this very important question facing the american people today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Many millions of Americans, including the college students I teach, are up to their eyeballs in facts and information about a greater variety and number of subjects than any previous generation, and their ability to get this information in real time is literally unprecedented.

But more information does not necessarily mean more understanding, and it's increasingly possible, maybe even likely, for people to engage with many, many versions of the same opinion rather than truly listen to and engage with differing opinions.

All of us are experts about something, but democracy encompasses everything.

And so we need some among us, the media, to identify issues, to put them in proper context to bring them to market.

But again, in the final analysis, whether or not the realities of the new media landscape do more harm than good to American democracy is ultimately up to us.

What seems to me beyond argument--the whole truth-- is that the well-being of the American marketplace of ideas is a matter of what Americans ask and expect of it.

It is our responsibility to seek, demand, and find the whole truth.

I am David Eisenhower.

Thank you for watching.

Announcer: This episode of "The Whole Truth" was made possible by the Doran Family Foundation... AMETEK... and by... and by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you.

Thank you.