[John Avlon, Cnn:] It's time for RELIABLE SOURCES, our weekly look at the story behind the story. How the media really works and how the news gets made and how all of us can make it a bit better. I'm John Avlon, filling in for Brian Stelter. This hour, Jussie Smollett. Why it's the perfect storm of politics and pop culture, hate crimes and hoaxes. Also, one-on-one with Barry Diller, the media mogul talks Hollywood's identity crisis, Facebook regulation and his concern about Dems in 2020. And a new hire here at CNN spurs controversy and confusion. We'll try to clear it up for you. But, first, in an era where insane is the new normal, there's always a danger that nothing is shocking. Perspective is a thing we have least of in our politics. And that's why it's helpful to take a step back sometimes and do a data-driven reality check. A fascinating "New York Times" analysis this week showed that President Trump has attacked the Russia investigation more than 1,100 times. He uses signature moves of distraction, deflection and division. The larger goal, of course, is to discredit the investigation through reputation. It resonates with his base. But faced with a blizzard of lies and fact-free attacks, normalization starts to creep in. And we become numb to it as citizens and journalists. So when the president calls for someone to look into "Saturday Night Live" because he doesn't like their satire, it gets cursory coverage now. Over the past week, angry predawn tweets from the president calling journalists the enemy of the people received something close to a collective shrug. But what would be an extraordinary attack on the free press by almost any other president becomes just another day at the office. But every once in a while, we get a visceral reminder of the real cost of this talk. This week, it came in the form of a chilling indictment against a former marine who works at the Coast Guard headquarters in Washington. He's name is Lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson. He's avowed white nationalist who actively plotting domestic terror attacks targeting the president's political opponents and cable news journalists, including CNN's Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones, as well as MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes and Ari Melber. This comes four months after pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and journalists at CNN. Four months before that, the deadliest newsroom shooting in American history at the "Capital Gazette" in Annapolis. The point is not that there's culpability on the part of the president, but there is growing pattern of threats against the press, and that's nothing we can afford to ignore in a free society. Joining me now to talk about how to confront the numbing of the American mind and defend the free press, it's an all-star panel. "New York Times" columnist Charles Blow, CNN's SVP of news gathering, Mitra Kalita, and the former president of the Slate Group and founder of Pushkin Media, and, Yale profession of journalism, Jacob Weisberg. Thank you all for joining me. Mitra, let's start with you. There are choices we make in journalism every day, and one of the most difficult is how to cover the president's lies, mistruths, versus some of the other things happening in the world that are larger and bigger in some respects than holding him to account, Venezuela comes to mind. How do you make those judgments in the newsroom every day, between holding the president to account and telling people what's happening larger in the world?
[S. Mitra Kalita, Senior Vice President, Cnn Digital News & Programming:] So, thankfully, on Digital, this is not an either or proposition. It's very much both of those tracks are vital to our mission as journalists. Most of us got into this for both of the objectives you've mentioned. One, to inform a society, to be the underpinning of their information, and then what you're describing which is to hold power to account. And so when the president, you know, repeatedly says we're the enemy of the people, the question then becomes, how do we respond to that? One, response would be adversarially. The other would be to say, you know, this is what we do, we're here to serve the public. And to remind them of that not necessarily by only responding to the president's attack, but, you know, showing our importance during criminal investigations, during hurricanes, during
[Avlon:] It's a matter of
[Kalita:] the stuff that makes our news agenda, right
[Avlon:] It's a matter of walking and chewing gum and having a big enough newsroom to be able to do both. Charles, let me go to you because one of our former colleague and friend, David Frum, the smartest guy, had a tweet over the weekend, noting that in his local paper, the Coast Guard shooter in the indictment was in the local section. And he took that as a sign of kind of the normalization and numbing that we're confronting. Is this a case of us growing dangerously numb? Or is this a case of the difficulty covering the gun that didn't go off?
[Charles Blow, Op-ed Columnist, The New York Times:] I mean, I guess we are numb to some degree. But I think to put it in a larger context of what's happening is important. People consider the media the fourth estate, right? Basically a fourth branch of government. What you have now is if you take that context and that framing, one branch of the government attacking the other. And that is you know, it's a very difficult thing to defend against. And the media, unlike the other three branches, there's no election. There is no confirmation hearing. It is the media is enormous relative to the other branches. And as the definition of what the media is keeps expanding, you know, there become a lot of vulnerabilities both in terms of credibility but also physical personal vulnerabilities. There are no guards at my house like there are at the White House. There's no guards at my house like there are at the Supreme Court or Congress. And so, there are actual vulnerabilities to you as a journalist, but there are also credibility concepts around are we now lumping in everyone who blogs and does so seriously? And I think there's a lot of great journalism happening in that way, but also there's some journalism that I'd be more skeptical about happening that way. And so, the elasticity of the concept becomes a tricky thing.
[Avlon:] Jacob, you know, one of the real conversations is, is the president simply talking as he does, spouting off, and we shouldn't over-index the impact. But every once in a while, you start to see him change the terms of the conversation, and that seems striking this week when we saw an opinion from Judge Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court justice, picking up the mantel of the president's past claims that we should libel reforms, target the press, by saying that Sullivan v. New York, a landmark libel case, should be reexamined. What's your take on that?
[Jacob Weisberg, Former Editor-in-chief, Slate Group:] Well, I don't think it's plausible. Sullivan was a 9-0 decision. And I think conservatives have long realized that freedom of the press protects conservative views as well as liberal views. In that case, along with the Pentagon Papers case, which is at the time the United States, are the foundations of the modern interruption of the First Amendment. They're the pillars of what make the American press the freest in the world. That used to we an idea that the United States government had an interest in developing abroad, and in places like the Philippine where democracy was emerging, we were on the side of the free press. Now, we have a president who's giving a kind of permissioning to dictators who want to pull it back in the other direction, who are harassing the press, like Maria Ressa, this press freedom hero in the Philippines, and Duterte in the Philippines is an example of someone who does that, specifically citing fake news, enemy of the people. So, the concern is that what Trump does creates a kind of permissioning and creates a climate where these attacks violent attacks here are maybe not specifically attributable to Trump but are take place in the atmosphere that he's creating.
[Avlon:] It sets a broader tone. Mitra, I wonder if you put Sullivan v. "New York Times" in context because it happens during the civil rights movement
[Kalita:] Sure.
[Avlon:] where libel laws are being wielded for really specific chilling purposes.
[Kalita:] So, I think what's important to know about "New York Times" versus Sullivan is actually that the lawsuit was against an advertisement, right? When we see "New York Times", we'll just assume it was about the journalism, but that's this was actually an advertisement by a group of people trying to defend Martin Luther King and raise money for him. And I think what is borne out of this civil rights era decision is holding public figures such as the police, politicians you know, we see that redefined for celebrities and becoming more expansive. In the modern definition of media, "New York Times" versus Sullivan really is, speaking of how we cover and hold power to account, the underpinning of that belief in journalism.
[Avlon:] Jacob, just quickly, as one who's run an independent media outfit, I don't think folks appreciate how much the threat of lawsuits can have a chilling on speech.
[Weisberg:] Well, sure, and financially weaker news organizations, which almost all of them are now, are in a weaker position to stand up to wealthy bullies who may want to punish them because of something they don't like. What Times v. Sullivan protects is honest error. Error is part of journalism. Mistakes happen, and what that case says is that mistakes that aren't intentional, mistakes versus lies are protected by the First Amendment in most cases.
[Avlon:] We're going to have to live it there. But, Charles, stick around for the next weekend. Mitra, Jacob, thank you for joining us on
[Reliable Sources. Weisberg:] Thank you, John.
[Avlon:] Up next, Jussie Smollett. The story received wall to wall coverage and why both police are pointing fingers at the news media. But before we go to break, it's Oscar Sunday, so I thought it would be fun to have some fellow CNN anchors ask what their favorite movie is and here's John Berman.
[John Berman, Cnn Anchor:] My favorite journalism movie is easy. "All the President's Men" because that's why we all gotten in this business, and side note, it's the coolest thing ever I occasionally get to speak to Carl Bernstein sometimes. Number two, "Up Close and Personal" only because it's top Michelle Pfeiffer filmmaking and there are no actual real parallels with television news inside that movie, which segues to number three, which is "Broadcast News," which isn't fiction. It's like a documentary. It is actual footage of what it is like in the television business. And let me tell you everyone's career in this business is a struggle between being Albert Brooks and William Hurt, and the dirty truth is, the William Hurt always wins.