Tag: cogito ergo sum

Margaret Brennan, a 2002 University graduate and moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation, spoke to a crowd of more than 170 students, faculty and community members in Garrett Hall Wednesday evening as a part of the Batten School and the Center for Politics’ “Democracy in Perilous Times” series. Brennan talked about her career as a journalist and her experiences prominently covering the White House and hosting a broadcast news program during the Trump administration. After studying foreign affairs, Middle Eastern studies, and Arabic while at the University, Brennan began working for CNBC covering Wall Street, later moving to Bloomberg Television to continue her financial reporting as an anchor. “And Wall Street is shorthand for how the world functions often … so I brought that and I brought my background covering national security policy, and those are things that are often on my front burner and headlines that catch my attention.” In her talk, Brennan noted the fast-paced nature of a television newsroom and explained the process of booking political figures for the Face the Nation broadcast, which airs Sunday mornings. “We try to make Face the Nation look like the nation,” Brennan said. “We try to incorporate more diversity of thought and perspective … People ask you these big picture questions of what things have changed, and I think that the storytellers have also changed. I think perspectives need to be more informed as well. You can’t just have the same point of view reflected and repeated all the time.” When an audience member asked what a news organization’s responsibility is in response to claims of fake news, Brennan described the dual responsibility of news outlets to provide accurate, comprehensive coverage and of media consumers to carefully choose which sources to watch, listen to and read. Read the paper and watch the news. And then I was looking at this idea of how to explain to people the roots of why things happen, the context for why things happen.

CM: Do you have examples of things that people get really worked up over that they can’t actually control? Who are these people? CM: Don’t we have those things right now? Matt: I think a lot of it has to do with scale and how different things work better for small or big places. I really like the way they do things there. CM: So you’re sort of arguing that the only time our form of democracy worked was back in the 1700s when the country was actually that small. Matt: I don’t know that I’d go that far. CM: How would you describe yourself politically? People tell me, “Oh, you should vote anyway, it’s your duty.” I don’t agree with that. CM: How would you respond to someone saying, “Listen, Matt, you’re a white guy, your demographic was never disenfranchised in the United States, so you don’t have the same emotional attachment to voting that we do.” Matt: It’s true and I can’t blame them for wanting to exercise that as much as possible given, say, a person of color’s history.

You might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think it was okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that, when it was discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay that the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think it’s okay if the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. I don’t think it’s okay that during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune. I don’t think it’s okay that he concealed it from the public. There is a different word for that than collusion and it's called compromised.