The news moves faster than its ever moved before.

Which means misinformation, and lies also move faster than theyve ever moved before.

PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz shares her perspective on journalism, democracy, and the challenges of reporting in a changing world.

Luckily, we have you at a time where theres not much going on in the country.

Its pretty quiet, Bit of a down time.

Yeah, so a night away from the show is like no big deal.

What did I miss?

Vermont Public's Mitch Wertlieb hosts a candid conversation at the Lebanon Opera House.

I honestly think that at the end of the day Truth wins the day.

It always does.

Sometimes it takes a little longer than you want.

This is happening.

Yeah, I think it's official.

I think it's totally official.

Now we have microphones.

I want to thank everybody, first of all, so much for coming out tonight.

I have never been to the Lebanon Opera House before.

This place is beautiful, and and you folks are making it extra beautiful just by being here, that's me pandering to the crowd.

Amna, I want to start by embarrassing you a littl bit with your accomplishments.

Can I just do that?

Just read a bunch of things.

What if I say no?

You don't really have a choice.

Again, here we are.

I have to ask these questions for those who I think most of you know this already.

But you know, Amna Nawas began her journalism career as just a 21-year-old, as I understand it, at ABC News Nightline.

Yes.

Ted Koppel, some of the legends of the industry.

2003 you were with Dateline NBC.

An Emmy-nominated mortgage crisis investigation was one of the things you did.

Yes.

2010, a news documentary Emmy award for the NBC News special inside the Obama White House.

There's more.

2018, you joined the PBS NewsHour contributing as a correspondent on the series "The Plastic Problem," that went on to win a Peabody Award.

I mean, that's all great.

Did you know that I once won the New Yorker Caption Cartoon Contest?

I I don't want to upstage you.

I have never won that.

Okay.

See, I'm saying just so you know that there's someone professional asking you these questions.

1,000%.

All right.

I'm glad.

Honestly, your accomplishments Amna are just they're extraordinary.

No, it's reall amazing.

And you know, I watch you on the PBS NewsHour with Jeff, and I just think that the two of you bring such gravitas, but also relatability to the program, and it's wonderful.

And this is the way people should be getting their news.

And we're going to get into a lot of stuff here.

I think our crowd believes that too.

Thank you for saying that.

Thank you for your support.

Luckily, we have you at a tim when there's not much going on in the country.

It's pretty quiet.

Yeah.

So a night away from the show is like no big deal.

What did I miss?

Not too much.

Yeah I really struggled with how to begin this conversation.

But on the way down here, I had a companion with me, our Vermont edition producer Daniela Fierro, and I said, Daniela, well, how should I start this conversation?

She said, you know, just ask her how she is.

Amna Nawas, how are you?

Can I can I just take a momen too and say first of all, I get to talk to Mitch.

Like thi is, can we please?

I thought I was coming to do a sports podcast.

We can talk about that later too.

Yes, we can.

It is it is such an honor to be here.

I'm so so delighted to see so many of you, and have had a chance to meet som of you tonight too.

Like this, it means so much to me every chance I get to leave Washington and go out into the communities, the communities that actually make public media work.

Like you are the reason that we are here, and we never forget that.

So let me just say thank you on behalf of my entire team for everything you do, so that we can do the work that we love to do.

Now, gotten that out of the way, how am I?

I'm not great.

I'll be honest.

I've been I've been better.

What's wrong?

Truly, I am among the luckiest people on the planet.

I truly believe that every day.

I have a job I love to do.

I can't believe that this is work every day.

I get to ask questions.

I get to meet interesting people.

I get to learn something new.

Dig into the biggest problems of our time.

Hopefully, leave things a little bit better than I found them each day.

But I think it's also fair to say that it's a very difficult time to be a journalist In America, on the merits, on the statistics, the numbers speak for themselves.

When you look at things like press freedom rankings, America has ticked down over the last 10 or so years.

And I'm speaking as someone who built a career.

I cut my teeth as a correspondent overseas.

I was mostly covering war zones.

I was mostly covering conflict zones, disasters, the kind of breaking news you parachute into witness the worst things you've ever seen, and then go away and try to forget what you saw.

And some of the things that I saw in other countries, in terms of leadership and political tactics and oppression of the press, they are happening here, and it is worrying.

It is deeply, deeply worrying fo all of those reasons, and that is the difficulty of this work right now.

It is different conditions.

It's a different technological environment we're operating in.

The news moves faster than it's ever moved before, which means misinformation and lies.

Also move faster than they've ever moved before.

Sometimes disinformation too.

Absolutely, and so that's what we're up against every day.

That's what.

That's it.

The opportunity we have in front of us tonight, I think, is that we can ask you about.

Well, I'm going to ask you about some behind the scenes things that happen at the PBS NewsHour, and I want to as about the things you were just mentioning, when you're in the editorial meetings with the staff, the producers, and you're talking about things like how are we going to cove the midterms?

What are some of the conversations you have about what you're worried about as journalists and what you may have to do should things go a little sideways?

Yeah, it's a great question because I think each election cycle we've covered in th last, I would say, 10 or year, 10 years or so, there's been a new set of challenges that we're addressing.

I was at a different network in 2016.

I was anchoring coverage for ABC, and we'd been on the air for about eight and a half straight hours.

And I remember, at you know, close to 3:30 in the morning or something, saying to our millions of viewers, "America has now, for the first time, elected someone who's never held political office, never been a military official, was formerly known as a rea estate tycoon and a reality TV star.

Donald Trump is the next president of America, and I think from that moment on, every election cycle, we've had something new because America's going through some stuff right now.

We're in a time I think when everyone's struggling to redefine what i means to be a cohesive nation, what we want our democracy to look like, what that means in terms of how all of u participate in that process or not, and we faced a lot of things that we've never faced before.

So I was outside o the Capitol grounds on January 6, and I saw scenes that day that I had absolutely seen in my career in other countries that I never thought I would see unfolding here in the country I call home, and I know these days our midterm coverage is raising a lot of anxiety for folks.

I think people are worried about how far some political actors may go, about how far some of the arms of our federal government could extend.

I'll also say I have a lot of conversations with the local and state officials who are responsible for carrying out those elections, and they are doin everything they can, like they do every single cycle, to make sure that our elections run smoothly and to make sure tha every vote counts.

And I think one of the things you mentioned our coverage and what we're talking about.

One of the things I know we want to highlight this year, in addition to planning for things that could go wrong because things always go wrong in some way, is highlighting the fact that you will see people lined up for hours at a time in their local polling stations.

You will see people who stay in line long after the sun goes down, because they want to make sure that they get a chance to cast their ballot, even if the votes already been, even if the race has already been called, you will see peopl who will go through incredible challenges and climb over hig hurdles just to make sure that they get to vote.

And I personally find great hope in that.

That is how our democracy works.

It's people who are determined to show up and make sure that they get a chance to vote.

I'm so glad to hear you say that because I feel like all the angst that we're al feeling right now, for all the reasons you mentioned, understandably.

If there's a silver lining to any of this at all, it seems to me to be that people seem very investe in midterm elections right now in a way that I've never see before in my lifetime.

I mean, look, I know there's stil hundreds of 100 million people maybe don't vote in this country for every four years.

That's disturbing, but I think some of the early voting numbers we're seeing now.

Are you encouraged by the fact that people seem to be paying attention at the very least.

I'm encouraged that people are paying attention.

There's a lot of records being set on early voting.

Local and state officials tell us they're fielding a lot of questions about people who want to mak sure that they're doing it the right way.

Like, can I drop off my mail ballot?

Should I do this?

There's there's people who are seeking out information because they want to make sure that their vote counts.

All of that gives me great, great hope.

That's not to say that there aren't potential concerns.

I mean, I think we live in a time when the highest office holders in this country, from th president on down, have worked to see doubt in some of our election systems, and that doubt, in and of itself whether it actually translates to something practical happening or not.

That doubt is corrosive for a democracy, and that worries me.

Not just for this midterm election, but for the next one and the next one.

You know, you mentioned january 6, and you're reporting on what happened that day.

I saw an interview.

Well, it was more of a vide that you and Jane.

Beckett put together.

I think questions were being asked, and you know, you mentioned january 6, and I am so grateful for what you said at the end of your answer.

You said, "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," and the reason I appreciated that so much, Amna, is that as journalists, I feel like at any level, you know, whether you're national like you or someone more local like myself, we are always told that you know journalism is objective.

You have to be as objective as possible.

You don't want people don't want to hear your opinions.

They want the facts.

At the same time, we're human beings, and I remember watching on television what was happening on january 6.

I couldn't believe it either.

What bothers me though is I can't believe what's happened after that, and what I'm getting at here is things like, I think it was the senator in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, who was asked about what happened at the Capitol that day, an he said, "Well, you know, from what I can tell, it didn't look any different to me than a normal tour of the Capitol would be."

What disturbed me so much about that, you know, and and yes, it is funny on one level.

But what disturb me so much is that that's like you're telling me, no, we all saw what happened there.

That's like putting a rock o a table and telling me, that's an apple.

Take a bite.

How ca we operate in this environment if the very reality that we're talking about is being disputed.

I mean, becaus people talk about left, right, woke, etc.

This isn't about that.

This is about you're telling me that the reality, the thing I'm seeing, isn't happening.

How do you deal with that as a journalist?

I I rely heavily often on the guidance of a woman named Maria Ressa.

Do you know who she is?

Nobel Prize winner, founder of the Rappler, which is a news organization in the Philippines.

She herself came under targeted attacks, legal several arrests.

They tried to shut down her news organization under Presiden Duterte for telling the truth, for doing their job an reporting.

And she thinks very deeply and writes very often and and broadly about what it takes for a democracy to die, how close it can come.

It's not the kind of thing tha topples overnight and you wake up the next day and suddenl it's not there.

It is death by 1000 cuts, and one of the hallmarks is when a country and a nation can no longer have a shared set of facts, and I think what we've seen in the last few years is a very concerted and very intentional effort to tell people that you're not actually seeing what you're seeing.

The narrative around january alone, I will say, has sharply divided this nation.

Polls today even show that that the number of people, the further away we move from that day's events, the number of people who don't believe that it was a violent act or it was intended to overthrow a legitimate election, that number of people has grown.

There's a huge partisan divide in that as well.

More people who tend to lean Republican and conservative tend to believe that, but that's because that's a narrative that is often repeated in those circles and in those media outlets, and that's dangerous because anyone will go back and watch the tape, and you see what you see, and you know what happened, and yet history is being rewritten.

And I think that's why, for us as journalists, you know, we say that we lik we are responsible for writing the first draft of history.

We're responsible for writing the second, and the third, an the fourth too.

And I think we work very hard to imbue in our reporting just repeating the facts.

You know, you have t say this is the person who won the 2020 election.

You have to say the violent insurrection that was intended to overthrow a legitimate election.

You have to repeat the facts over and over again because there are people out there repeating the lies.

It's such a difficult thing, though, because then you get to the other issue I wanted to talk about, which is the problem of the echo chamber.

Yeah.

I'm so glad you're here.

All the people in this room are glad you're here.

I'm glad to be here.

I would suspect that we are to some extent preaching to the choir.

And again, not putting anyone down for being here.

Thank you so much for being here.

I want to make that really clear to get that message through that you're talking about, repeating the facts to th people who have been told that January 6 was no big deal, that it was the election had been stolen from Trump, and they really believe that.

How do you get?

How do you reach those people if they're not tuning in to the PBS NewsHour because they already believe?

Oh, that's a liberal left woke.

You know what I mean.

It's a difficult thing to overcome, and I just wonder.

You you have to reach thos people because they can be the difference between keeping someone in power who has the the wrong motivation at hand.

Let's put it politely.

One thing I like to share that not many.

People know about the News Hour is that when yo look at our audience breakdown and the demographics, a third of our audience self-identifies as liberal, a third self-identifies as independent, and a third self-identifies as conservative.

Hey, that's fantastic news!

I don't think any other national broadcast can say that, and I like to share that with lawmakers and other officials that we're inviting onto the show because I think it's important that they know who they're talking to, which is the rest of the country, and that's you know people self-identifying, which can vary over time as well, but it's also a very basic fac about human nature that no one likes to be wrong, and I don' think that it's my job to tell people that they're wrong.

I don't think it's my job to argue with people, or even to try to convince them of something that they don't hold in their heart, or they don't want to be true.

I think it i my job, in a very basic sense, to just continue to repeat the truth as I know it to be true over and over and over again.

And I am maybe naively so an inherent believer in the goodness of people.

And I believe that there are more good people, good people who want the same things out o their lives as their neighbors or anyone else in this countr or on this planet.

Good people who want to know what's true.

Good people who want to know that what they are being told is something that they can hang on to is coming from someone that they trust.

And I'll come back full circle to what you mentioned earlier, which is my very first job was under Ted Koppel, and my very first year in that job wa 2001, and I watched Ted Koppel anchor coverage of the 9/11 attacks when no one had any idea what was going on, and he tried to share with people what he knew to be true in th moment so they could find some sense of calm and clarity to get them from one minute to the next, and it feels not on the same level, but in a very full circle kind of way, a similar time of uncertainty, of turmoil.

That I feel like it is our job to provide that calm and to provide that clarity, and I honestly think that at the end of the day, truth wins the day.

It always does.

Sometimes it takes a little longer than you want.

That's the arc of history.

You tending towards justice to believe.

You have to believe because otherwise, why would you show up and do this work every day?

Truly.

That's a good question too.

I want to follow this up with we got a question that was sent in by email, and I think it's a little bit to what you're talking about here.

It asks you to please describ the role that Sarah Just plays in the operation of PBS NewsHour and how she protects the independence and impartiality of NewsHour.

So Sarah Just is our senior executive producer of the broadcast.

She's also a vice president at WETA, which is our presenting station.

Fo anyone unfamiliar with the PBS station, all the national broadcasts and productions have a presenting station.

Ours is the Washington D.C.-based WETA.

So Sarah is, you know, she oversees the broadcast on a day-to-day basis in terms of decision making for what goes on the show.

It's sort of a informal conglomerate of Sarah, Jeff, and myself.

We everyone pitches show show ideas an segment ideas at the beginning of the day.

We all kind o sort through it and figure out what we think our priorities are.

I will tell you that meeting is at 9 a.m.

By 6o'clock that night, it is usually a completely differen show.

But Sarah is at the core of everything we do.

You know, strategy-wise, she's been responsible.

I think for some of our largest digital transformations.

I don't know how many folks out there are on TikTok, but PBS NewsHour is on TikTok, which is important for us because as many of you, and we're grateful for you tuning into the hour-long linear broadcast every day.

There are so many millions of more people out there who are primarily getting their news from social media.

Sarah's made sure that we have the resources and the team in place to make sure that we are everywhere that our potential news consumers are.

So we're showing up wherever people are.

Can people get the sam information, the same level of information that you're talking about watching TikTok videos as they can from watching the News Hour.

You can get informed.

Here's why I answer the way that I do.

I don't.

Would I love for everyone in America to watch an hour long broadcast every day?

Absolutely.

Would I encourage that 100%.

I'm sure many of you know folks too who do not have time to watch an hour long broadcast every day, who are just trying to get their kids to soccer practice and get dinner on the table, and then go check in on their parents and maybe watch a Netflix show to chill out a little.

A bit before they go to bed, I totally get that.

I also think it's part of our responsibility to prioritize the news in a way that most people can't in their everyday lives.

When you have information flying at you at the speed that it does right now, it's really hard to sift through and to understand why does this matter to me and why should I care.

And I think part of our job as journalists is sometimes to do an hour-long documentary on the global plastic pollution problem.

Yes, but also to tr to explain to you as best as I can in 90 seconds why you should care that the Starlink system for Ukraine went dow for a day.

That's also my job, and so we have to do both.

And because the technology is changing so quickly, we have to adjust to it.

We have to, as news people, that's something we have to do.

And it's a reminder, you know, for someone like me too.

Because I'm, you know, embracing this technology as it comes along.

My daughter helps me out with, you know, what is Instagram, Dad?

She explains what a reel is.

You know, I don't know this stuff, but I'm learning as we go along too.

I just think it's important that the technology does not overtake the information, in the sense that you know we all have concerns about AI now.

That's going to be another thing we have to worry about.

You know, who who can you trust if the AI looks so close to you, for example?

How do we educate our audience to to discern these things.

So related to AI, I should share something I haven't actually shared publicly, but we discovered several weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, and only because it was flagged to us informally, there was actually a YouTube channel with an AI version of me.

Oh my gosh!

I was just kidding.

Nope.

Basically, producing a semi-regular news show, completely spouting fake information.

And I will tell you, I saw this bot, and i looked like me, and it sounded like me, and I was like, I actually look pretty good.

Like we should maybe leave this out.

The only difference was at the beginning of eac of the videos, the bot had not yet been trained to pronounce my name correctly, and she would come on the air and say "Hi, I'm Amna Nawaz," and that was the tell.

Otherwise, almost completely indiscernible, and it was mostly regional, sort of Middle East focused news.

An we flagged it to YouTube.

They took it down.

We have no way of knowing how many other channels like that are out there.

But it showed me.

You say we may have to worry about it.

We have to worry about it now.

We are worrying about it now because there is so much AI slop out there.

There is so much of it's so easy and it's so frictionless now the process from A to B that it's very easy to throw this kind of stuff up there.

What I ask of news consumers is, as much as you rely on us and you trust us and we love you fo that, to stop before you share something, to be skeptical o what comes in front of you, to look for a second source on a piece of information that maybe makes you think: Is that real?

Could that be right?

That doesn't sound right.

An I think the arc of our sort of technological adaptation has brought us brought us to a point now where people are starting to do that a little more.

Where I find hope in this is actually in the next generation of news consumers, because they have never known a world in which they could just trust everything that's put in front of them.

And the story I like to tell is my 10-year-old daughter saw a picture that I showed her on Instagram of a friend's wedding, and it was a real wedding photo.

These are two people who got married, and this is a photo of them.

An my 10-year-old daughter looked at that, and the very first thing she said was, "That's not real.

That's AI."

How did she know?

It wasn't AI, but it looked too good to her.

Oh.

so she knows enough t know that, like, wait, this is too perfect.

Her first reaction was skepticism, and I, as a mother, was very proud.

And as a journalist, I was like, "Good for you Lily.

Let's take a second look at this."

I said, "Actually, this is real.

We know these people, but you should never just trust what you see online.

And I think because they're so familiar with AI and they know that this is so easy to do, there's a little bit of a built-in skepticism that my generation didn't have, and that the generation before me didn't.

One of the one of the things I hear people express concern about is that the next generation of news consumers aren't interested in the news, or they don't want to get the news.

I actually think the opposite.

They have access to more information from more outlets than ever before in the history of humanity, and the sorting of it, and the curating of it, and the culling of it that is the tough part.

And I think there's a lot of things we could talk about with social media regulation and you know responsibility and accountability for AI and misinformation.

But I also think our challenge as journalists is to break through that noise to try to figure out how to reach people where they are.

How have you been dealing at PBS NewsHour with the loss of corporation public broadcasting Funding.

We, I like to say, are surviving.

I would not say it's behind us.

It's public, and many of you may know we did have to make some structural changes.

We did have a few layoffs.

We had t end our weekend show, which is a big hit for any new organization to not be able to be a 24/7 news show to not be able to provide people with the latest news on Saturday and Sunday at least in a broadcast and video form.

It's not good, right?

It's a loss for journalism as a whole.

That said, we have really worked to reallocate some of the resources, reorganize our already stretched thin staff, and we've filled those holes with two other news programs.

So on Saturday and Sunday, we now have a show called Compass Points that Nick Schifrin hosts, and Horizons that William Brangham hosts that are focused solely on foreig policy with Nick's show and on science and health and on William's show.

And so I look at that as as you kno lemonade out of lemons, right?

We we were handed a bad deal We pivoted and we said, how do we still make sure good information and news can get to people in these time slots?

And we did that.

Fundraising is still a challenge, right?

We're so grateful to all of you who've stepped up in the many ways that you have, both locally as you give and nationally directly to NewsHour, but we have to kee it up.

It is, I think, it's an uncertain future is the headline.

To that point, after the news broke, the CPB funding was gone.

In our first fundraiser after that, the response was phenomenal.

I mean, we we love all of you.

Look, everyone that contributes to Vermont Public, it's always we're always grateful.

But the response then was it was a little overwhelming.

We wer blown away.

But like you said, it has to be sustained over time because we don't know if this is ever going to come back.

Do you see a world in which something like the CPB could come back?

Well, can I also just say, isn't it great though to have seen that response?

mean, you do this work and you do this work and you wonder like, do people really care?

Do they really value it?

And then something like that happens, and we saw the sam surge.

And I just have to say, it made everyone feel so good.

Yeah, it really did.

To know that it mattered, because most of the time you do this work and you send it out int a black hole, and you're like, "Did it make a difference?

Did anyone see it?

Does anyone care?"

And I think it was a moment for people to step up and show how much that kind of news and information is valued.

So thank you.

I don't know if the CPB comes back.

Structurally, so many parts of this federal government have been dismantled or undermined, and I think there's a lot of agencies that are facing that same question: What will happen with USAID?

What will happen with the US Institute of Peace?

There are a lot o pieces of the puzzle that just got pulled out over the last few years, CPB among them.

So I'm not really sure what the future infrastructure looks like.

To be honest, I think what we're trying to do, and what I know has happened, is that we at the News Hour are working to support member stations as much as we can.

I know PBS as a whole is working to do that.

I know member stations are talking amongst themselves to figure out strategies for the best way forward, and that's also been nice to see, which is just the PBS family coming together to get through this.

Yeah, and we're going to have to all get through this together.

There's no questio about it.

What role does local independent journalism?

I'm thinking small newspapers in places.

What what role does that play?

How critical is that at this juncture?

Critical for democracy, absolutely.

Worrying on a whole new level, also absolutely.

Absolutely, because local journalism, as you know, local newspapers have just withered on the vine across the country for the last decade or so.

We're seeing some signs of hope.

I always like to turn to the signs of hope.

Have you noticed that we're seeing some signs of hope where you you see consortiums popping up, non public rather nonprofit newsrooms popping up in a regional form.

In some cases, you've seen the sort of like benevolent benefactor model popping up in some places too.

I think the Pittsburgh paper has been a good example of that.

It's not enough.

It's not what it once was, and I think with the consolidation of local television stations in particular, it's another layer of concern because you have people getting national news in a way that they don't need at the local level.

That they need local stories coming to them, so it's another area of a concern.

But there's also so many people working to try to solve it, and I think it speaks to who we are as a country, which is I haven't seen efforts like this anywhere else I've ever been.

Which is every part of the country you go to.

There' someone, someone who's working to solve it, and I put my hope in them.

I'm glad, and I love that you always try to turn us towards hope.

You got to get through it somehow.

I really do appreciate that very much.

You know, I do wonder about the message of public media writ large because it always seemed to me like we have this amazing produc which does not have a paywall, and it's you know it is meant to be accessible literally to everyone, and and that's what I was getting at before with the whole echo chamber thing.

Like, how can we better get that message out that we are not just speaking to liberal elites; we are speaking to you if you have a means of listening to us in any way a radio, a television, your tablet, whatever.

We're there for you.

How do we get that message across to people?

I honestly think the single most powerful message when people ask, you know, how do we know to trust you?

How do we know that you're not politically or agenda-driven in some way, is just watch us.

Just watch us.

Give us five minutes.

Give us 10 minutes.

I have literally never me anyone, and we I meet a lot of people who come to us with a preconceived notion of who we are.

I've heard something about us and want to ask why we do things the way we do And the next question I always ask is, have you ever watched the show?

And the answer is usually no.

And I will gladl take feedback and criticism on people who have question about individual segments.

Not everyone is happy with the way I do every interview.

That is fine.

I know what job I signed up for.

But when people haven't watched it an criticize it, I do ask them to take five minutes and watch, and oftentimes I will hear from that person the next day.

You know, I might actually give you guys a try now, because I genuinely think in the landscape of news, what we put out every day is as close as you're going to come to a straightforward, down the middle, balanced broadcast that starts with the top headlines of the day, and hopefully takes you on a journey and shows you something you wouldn't see anywhere else by the end.

genuinely think that's what we try to do every single day, and in the wave, in these waves of disinformation and misinformation, just bad information that is flooding the zone right now.

The thing I tell my team every day is the only answer to that is more good information.

You can't shoot down everything you see that's out there.

You can't answer all the bad stuff.

We have to put our heads down and do the work.

How has it been for you?

You've been a reporter for so many years.

You've done s much great work.

Now you're in in the anchor position, what are the main differences of that?

What do you find challenging?

Do you miss things about reporting?

Do you like this?

What do you like about this job better, worse, etc.?

I wouldn't say worse.

I'd sa it's different.

It's I've I've never held a role like this at an institution like this.

I mean, this is a place where Jeff and I get to sit in the same chairs that Judy Woodruf and Gwen Eiffel and Jim Lehrer and Robin McNeil sat.

It is i is humbling every time to walk into that studio and sit down.

It's an incredible responsibility, and Jeff and I see ourselves as stewards of this institution that was here long before we were born, and we were going to make sure is here long after we are gone.

That is our goal.

But I am at my core a reporter.

I like to report.

I, you know, I'm I'm a journalist.

I like to go out and see things.

I like to talk to people where they are, and I think we do a pretty good job of allowing me to do that every now and again.

I've been down to the southern border a bunch of times.

I've been out to a number of states across the country to do firsthand reporting.

I went to Israel after october 7 and anchored the show from there.

I was in Ukraine to interview President Zelensky and anchor the show from.

There, the bar for getting me out of the studio as an anchor is maybe a little higher, but I still seize every chance that I ge because it's important, right?

And what we do as journalists is show up.

That's the core, central part of what we do and it's still important to me to do that.

What has been?

What are some of the more memorable things that you've seen in reporting, whether it's international or national?

We talked about january 6, but it could be a smaller story, something that that that moved you in a way that surprised you, perhaps.

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know that it surprised me that it moved me, but I think the story that probably shifted something in me that could not quite be shifted back was the Uvalde mass shooting at Rob Elementary School.

And you mentioned earlier, you know, our job as journalists is to show up and try to explain to people what's going on, but there are times where whatever you're covering just doesn't make any sense, and it's no supposed to make sense, right?

And I think what I stuck to in my work there, both in the coverage of the shooting an we return back a year later to continue to follow up with the families, was really just conveying that was we're going to tell you what we know, and a lot of this is going to be very hard to hear, and a lot of it's going to be very disturbing, but we're not going to make sense of it because what happened here doesn't make any sense, and it shouldn't make any sense, and we can all just agree on that and leave that where it is, but I'm still in touch with those families today.

Every year on the anniversary, I still message a lot of them.

Every time there's another school shooting, I will message them because I know what's going through their heads on that day.

And yeah, that one stayed with me.

Sorry, that one's knocking m over a little bit.

You keep in touch with these families.

Yo you had that connection.

These people are sharing th greatest grief of their lives.

Javier Cazares lost hi daughter Jackie.

She was nine, and she- The thing I think one of the reasons I should explain that it stuck with me so much was my older daughter was the same age as those kid in the classroom that day, and I had run out of my home to go cover the story when news broke, and my nine-year-old daughter had come into the room as I was packing.

And my girls know enough to know that, as we explained it to them, you know, sometimes bad things happen, and mommy has to leave, and mommy has to leave because she has to go talk to people to try to figure out what happened, an so that other people know what happened.

That's the core of the job, and so she understands that that happens.

Even at nine, she knew, and she came in as I was packing, and she said, "Mommy, did something bad happen?"

And said, "Yes, baby, it did."

And she said, "Is everyone okay?

And I said, "No, baby, they're not.

And she said, "Well, ar are they gonna be okay?"

And I remember in that moment as a parent, like sometimes I really try not to lie to my children, but sometimes I think a lie is okay.

And I said, "Yes, I promise you, it's gonna be okay."

And I went to go cover that story with that as the backdrop.

And so talking to these parents and talking to Javier, who showed me pictures of Jackie, who wore the same kind o sneakers that my girls like to wear, and who had the same graphic T-shirts that they liked to wear, and was learning the same things in school that they were learning.

That was hard.

I think it was really hard, an I think we've come to a moment in this country where these things have become so normal and so frequent, and one o the biggest challenges I think I know I have as a journalist, I know my colleagues feel as well, is how to make sure it doesn't feel normal.

Like how to remind people that communities are forever changed and families are forever broken, and this is something that is a uniquel American problem.

How we don't lose sight of that is one of my biggest challenges today.

I mean, you covered that story knowing you have two little girls.

How how were you abl to separate your emotions from the journalism you had to do?

Not very well.

Judy Woodruff was still anchoring the show then, and I remember I did a live report for her.

We relayed the facts as we came to understand them, and you recall in the story, you know the authorities were very slow in rolling out the details and came out with bad information first that they later had t correct, and as the truth came out, every new thing we learned made it worse and worse and worse as we learned what these kids had gone through.

And I remember reporting for Judy Live from Texas, and immediately after they said we were clear, I just broke down and I just had to walk away.

And I just had to take five or 10 minutes to kind of try and process.

And my team, who was with me, was just wonderful.

This is, you know, I work with some of the most amazing people you will ever come into contact with in your life, and we got through it together because that' just what you do.

And you also know, as a journalist, lik what you are experiencing does not come close to what that community went through that day, and what they will continue to go through every single year.

So I have my moments.

I'm a human being.

I don't try to hide that.

But if we don't tell people what's going on, if we let th emotions take over, then we're not we're not doing our jobs.

You know/ You do yours extraordinarily well.

What?

That's yes, it is true.

How do your kids view what their mom does?

I mean, now they're 13 and 10, so with great disinterest.

Good, I'm not the only parent who's giving.

They could not care.

I mean, I and I think that's healthy.

I think that's the way it shoul be.

Like, I don't want them to see me as anything other than mom.

Right?

Mom goes to work and mom comes home, and they only really care about the times that mom's at home.

So, mom does her best to show up and be on the sidelines fo basketball games.

Mom does her best to help you study for that science test.

Like mom will help you make your you know your lunch in the morning, and mom will do all the things that mom can do as a mom.

And this is actually a great opportunity for me to shout out my husband, who is the center of our family and the primary parent for m girls, who left his job at the New York Times to take on that role when I took the job at PBS.

Shout out, absolutely.

You ca even say his name if you want.

That is my husband, Paul.

He is very offline, so you can't even like send him a note o social media to say thank you.

He's very healthy.

He needs no validation from anyone else.

So, And you're getting to spend a little time in Vermont.

I understand, which is kind of nice too.

We are.

Yes, they're coming up to meet me tomorrow, and we're going to spend the weekend.

So thank you for having us.

But I will say about my girls.

This is funny now because they're at the age where, as they should be, they're growing more independent.

They have thei own lives.

They have their own circles of friends.

But I wil occasionally get approached by people who recognize me, and people will want a picture.

The look of like it's not even they're not annoyed, but like the eye rolls are audible.

It's like here we go, like another News Hour fan.

Like okay, and they just want to get on with their day, you know, which which they absolutely should.

But it's funny now to see them because they're like they see i coming, and then they're like, Mom, I think there's a News Hour fan.

She wants your picture.

Go ahead.

I love that.

Again, I'm not the only one.

We are going to get to some questions here very quickly, though.

I just want to mention to folks that you know you and I were talking a lot backstage.

It' been such a joy to get to know you in in these few minutes we've had.

And I don't know how many of you know, but Amna is a big sports fan, and I've been known to like a sport or two myself.

Okay, Red Sox or Yankees?

I know you're not fan of either one, but there's only one answer to this question, and I hope you get it right.

Red Sox or Yankees?

I think I'm supposed to say Red Sox.

Yes, Amna Nawaz, you have won our prize.

Yes, very good.

I cannot thank you enough fo sharing your insights and just who you are as a person, as journalist, as a professional, you're a treasure, and it has been such a joy.

I was so nervous before coming to do this with you, but you just you put me right at ease, and just thank you for everything you're doing.

Just keep doing it.

Such a pleasure.

Thank you so so much.

It's been a real treat.

Thank you.

Thank you all of you as well.

All right.

So I believ it's your turn.

If anyone does have a question, they can come up.

If you don't, that's okay too.

But here's Amna Nawas to answer your questions.

Hi there.

Hi.

I'm a fan.

I watch you try to watch every night.

Thank you.

Every weeknight, no weekend anymore.

It's sad.

And I think you're the best news show on television.

So this may sound like a criticism what I'm about to say, but it's not of you specifically.

I thin Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss.".

Events, weak minds discuss people.

As I think of the news media in general, there's a lot o people and events, not so much ideas.

We've got some big ideas that we need to be discussing.

How do we fix health care?

What do we do about housing?

Is the federa deficit really a problem?

Am I wrong?

Should news media be tackling ideas more?

Thank you.

It's a great thank you.

And I didn't get your name.

Sorry.

It's David Allen.

I live i White River Junction, Vermont, and I'm a sustaining member with my wife.

Shout out to White River.

It's a great, it's a great question, and I think this is something I will tell you honestly to give you some insight into our internal conversations that we struggle with every single day because there's a balance, and I'll just talk about a daily news show, which is how we kind of organize our priorities and our coverage.

Like, where are we going to put our resources today?

For an hour news show, you have to have some part of that show that just tells people what happened today, right?

Call that the headlines, the lead stories, and then you have some part of the show where you say we're going to dig a little more deeply into one or two ideas, whatever we have time for, an then you have some part of the show where you say we're going to take people someplace that they wouldn't otherwise go.

It's a music piece.

It's an arts piece.

It's a it's a more feature profile.

You know, something to round out the show.

And we don't often get to those.

We are more ofte bumping that at the end of the show because of the first tw priorities.

And so I will say, and I hope this doesn't com across defensively, but I will say, given the landscape of national news broadcasts, I don't think any other show does better at at least attempting to tackle some of the big issues than NewsHour does.

Now we have the advantage of time.

We have an hour commercial-free every single day, and what those conversations and big idea explorations demand is time.

You need something more than a three or four minutes segment to really unpack what could different healthcare system in America look like?

What doe it look like to end the war in Ukraine?

How should our education system be reoriented?

All of these things demand time.

We've tried to do them serially Like right now, we're airing a series called Higher Education, where every episode, every segment, and I think it's over three or four nights, is looking at highe education and different trends and different challenges being faced by higher education right now.

And those storie will be 789 minutes at length, which is kind of an eternity for national news these days.

After the Cornell Seven stor broke, in addition to covering the news and trying to tell people what's happening with the headlines, we had a debate featuring the head of one of the national fraternity organizations and someone who's written a book an deeply reported and researched what he considers to be a culture problem in America's fraternities.

And we devoted eight minutes to that of just letting them talk about the ideas around this story.

I am like you, and I wish we could do it more.

I think we we should do it more.

I think other outlets should do it more, but I think we're doing the best we can given the resources, given the time constraints.

Thank you.

Mike from Lebanon, New Hampshire.

I have a process question.

Tell us about some of the challenges to deliver coverage from Iran and Lebanon.

Iran, in particular, I wil say, we have Reza Sayah on the ground, who lives there and works there?

His family is there, and has you know good contact in the sense that you can have good contact with the regime.

So we're able to get an on-the-ground perspective that a lot of other news organizations are not.

But covering Iran is a lot like covering a lot of places where either journalists are not welcome or it's just out o the question, unsafe for us to go.

When I was in Israel afte october 7, I could not go into Gaza, and I couldn't even go to the West Bank at the time because the military operations were sort of ramping up, and there were they were locking things down in an unpredictable way that meant I couldn't get back to do the show in time if I wer to go.

And so your movement is limited.

So any time we can't go someplace and see it for ourselves, the journalism is harmed.

Right?

Like we can't see it for ourselves.

We have to make sure that we're relying on people we trust o the ground.

In Iran, at least, there are there's such a strong diaspora network of journalists who are either i exile themselves or people who have strong connections on the ground, that we kind of construct an on-the-groun reporting mechanism.

There are people who lived there fo years, born and raised, worked as journalists, and ended up leaving, who still keep up contacts, and we have to rely on them to get people on the ground to trust them, to sen videos, to send interviews.

Is where we have to blur thei faces, to send voice memos, to document what's happening in their lives, and that that gives us the chance to document it too.

We've used this on the ground in Gaza as well.

I've used it on the ground in Afghanistan in places that it was too difficult to get to, or wher it was dangerous for people to reveal their identities and talk to us.

So we can get pretty creative, and I think the technology allows us to get even more creative.

But at the heart of all that work is still the same journalistic challenge of like getting people to trust you.

That is the biggest hurdle because people literally put their lives on the line to tell you what's happening outside their front door sometime.

So it's it's it's still an enormou challenge.

You know, thank you for the question, though.

Hi, I'm Anne Wustro from Ne London, New Hampshire, a proud supporter of Vermont and New Hampshire public television.

Thank you.

No reason you can't support both.

My question for you: My family knows not to disturb me between six and seven because I have to watch News Hour, particularly on Friday.

I love watching David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, and to see Two journalists with not necessarily compatible ideas go at each other with great respect and with great reasoning.

And so, I'd like you to discuss some of the culture that goes behind bringing people with different ideas together in such a way that they can be respectful.

I will pass along your all of your love and admiration for David and Jonathan.

They ar two of my favorite people, and just two incredible journalists.

Right, and they do exactly as you say.

The show up and they show up armed with facts and their own perspective that they're very clear about and transparent about to debate civilly.

What I love about that segment is that I think it's a model for so many people that you do not have to sit next to someone you agree with to have conversation, and that you can respectfully disagree and bot walk away at the end of it and say we agree to disagree.

I don't think there's enough of that in terms of the culture behind it.

I mean, honestly, that's we try to host debate on a wide variety of topics as often as we can, specifically for that reason, which is we don't see enough of it.

I think people have become very comfortable only hearing from people who confirm to them what they want to be true or what they already believe to be true, and that's a ver natural human instinct, right?

Like it's very uncomfortable when someone tells you something you believe is no true.

It's very uncomfortable.

I get that, but I think hosting these debates is a good way to get around that.

I'll tell you, one of the biggest things we run up against is finding two people who are willing to do that, especially in this news environment.

You will find people who know they don't need to come on and sit acros from someone who may undermine something they say or may undercut one of their talking points.

They can just go on another channel or post their own video on Instagram, saying whatever it is they want to say, and probably get a lot more views and a lot more likes.

And that's probably very good for their career.

It's very difficult to find two people who we consider to be credible sources of information on either side of an issue to sit down together and do that.

And so, I want you to know, and I want everyone out there to know, when we're not hosting those debates, it's not because we don't want to.

It's ofte because we just can't find two people who are willing to do it?

Well, keep up the good work.

Thank you.

All right.

Hi, I'm Molly from Middlebury, Vermont, and I'm nervous because I'm such a fan.

So I wrote my question down.

I don't remember whethe it was you who was speaking or Jeff Bennett at the time, bu I still remember being stopped in my tracks in in my kitchen, listening to the News Hour, and the first time where think it was explicitly stated that Trump lied, like actually using that kind of language, that you know times before his comments had been called out as untrue or perhaps misleading, but actually saying something about lies or baseless, you know, baseless claims or those that sort of language, it really struck me as something like had shifted or something was new, and I was kind of just wondering was that a big conversation to actually come out and sort of ascribe intent as opposed to simply that that was not true, was there a lot of conversations that went into thinking about how do we use language to actually to talk about this?

And follow up is has something fundamentally shifted that will outlast Trump in how we talk about it?

It's it's a great question.

There, there wasn't some big conference or conversation around it.

We we do sometimes have conversations around the language we use because we want to be specific and we want to be accurate.

The word lie, you've probably heard both of us use it because quite frankly, I've been using it for many years now.

We use it carefully, though.

I will say because it does carry quite a lot with it, especially when you're talkin about a sitting president, and my bar for that word in previous conversations where we've tried to tal about should we use it, should we not, has been: is it reasonable based on our reporting and based on histor and what we know to be true to assume that this person should know that this is not true, and if that is the case, then to repeat it again and again is a lie.

And I think the 2020 election results is the perfect example of that, where by this point in time, if the sitting president does not know who won the election, that's just unbelievable to me, and so the only way to accurately and fairly describ that as a journalist is to say that he's lying about the results of the 2020 election.

And our reporting bears that out.

I mean, that's not.

It's not an opinion.

It's not an assumption.

We have reported on several stories in which we know what the president has been told about those results, and so I think we use it sparingly because I don't want people to grow numb to it and assume that it's just blanket word that we use for a number of different scenarios.

But in the times that it is accurate and it is specific that's our job.

That's our job just to say what is the truth, and in this vein, I subscribe to the Christiane Amanpou school of thought, which is it is not our job to be neutral; it is our job to be truthful.

And sometimes to say tha someone lied, that is the truth.

That's gonna have to do it.

S we're gonna sit and talk about the Red Sox and Yankees fo another hour.

If you guys want to stick around, honestly, I cannot thank you folks enough for coming out with such wonderful questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You were absolutely brilliant.

I feel like democracy is in good hands, as long as there are folks like you who are helping us out.

Amna Nawaz, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.