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Armed Protesters Occupying Federal Land; Will Conservative Media's Embrace of Trump Hurt GOP?; Al Jazeera Defends Controversial Reporting; Steve Jobs Highlighted in New CNN Film; Media Mogul Barry Diller Talks TV. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired January 03, 2016 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:06] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN HOST: Hey, good morning and happy New Year. I'm Brian Stelter and it's time for RELIABLE SOURCES, our weekly look of the story behind the story, of how news and pop culture get made.

And we have a lot planned this hour, but let's start with breaking news out of Oregon where an armed group, which some are calling a militia, have taken over the headquarters of a national wildlife refuge in rural eastern Oregon. This is federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So, this has a potential to become a big very, very combustible story.

On Twitter, it has been a top trending hashtag all night and all morning. The hashtag being used is #OregonUnderAttack, with some people labeling these men extremists and even terrorists. But they say they are patriots, protesting government overreach.

Now, there's three things you should know before we talk to our guests about this.

First, the occupation grew out of a rally earlier on Saturday in the nearby small town of Burns, Oregon. It was a rally supporting two local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, who have been convicted of arson on federal lands. They're expected to surrender tomorrow.

Now, second, during the takeover yesterday, no government employees were hurt. None were actually there at all because the refuge was closed for the holidays.

And, third, one of the men leading this occupation is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

He spoke to CNN's Victor Blackwell earlier this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMMON BUNDY, LEADING OCCUPATION (via telephone): We want the government to abide by the Constitution, abide by the authorities in which the people have given it, and to play by the rules. We have no intention on using force or being aggressive or going on the offense, but just as all people have the right to defend themselves, that's exactly what that meant -- means.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: There are big media questions here about the language we use to describe these men and about how they're getting their message out and, of course, about the difficulty of even getting to this story in the first place.

One of the reasons why there hasn't been more immediate coverage of this news is because it is so remote. One reporter in Oregon said to me overnight, this is a journalistic no man's land.

We are standing by for a call from a reporter who is actually driving to the site from "The Oregonian" newspaper. As soon as he's able to reach us, we'll beep him in but unfortunately, he has weak cell service.

So, let's bring in Art Roderick, CNN law enforcement analyst who is a former assistant director at the U.S. Marshal's Office.

Art, when you hear about this story overnight, what was your first thought?

ART RODERICK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I'll tell you, over my career in the Marshal Service, Brian, I probably have dealt with situations like that on at least three or four different occasions, specifically with these types of groups. And I know we're lumping them into calling them -- they're arguing whether we should call them a militia or not, but Mr. Bundy has gone out and made a call for supporters to show up at the Fish and Wildlife refuge.

STELTER: That's right.

RODERICK: And that they have got facilities for them to stay at.

What's going to happen is what happened in all these other situations. You're going to have militia groups show up, you're going to have right wing white supremists (ph) show up, and this could really turn into a bad situation.

Hopefully, the law enforcement side of the house will learn what the Marshal Service has learned since the early '80s, that if we just wait these people out, we can go in very peacefully and take this property back.

STELTER: What do you think the conversations are right now within the federal government and within the local law enforcement about what to do next? You know, we're looking at pictures from last night and from yesterday. We don't have anything new from there this morning. It's still early in the morning there.

But we know there are at least a dozen, maybe more, people on this property, presumably some law enforcement is either on the way or already there.

RODERICK: Yes. I think what's going to happen -- hopefully, we won't do what had happened at the Bundy ranch last year sometime or a couple years ago, is that we don't go out there with a large force because that's exactly what they're looking for. And, you know, we've got to negotiate this through and I think a key part is going to be tomorrow what happens at the federal courthouse.

And I know there was a quote that you guys had picked up from the U.S. attorney out there in Oregon, and hopefully calmer heads will prevail here. And the last thing we need is some type of large confrontation because that's when stuff goes bad.

And I think in this particular instance, if we just wait them out, see what they've got to say, that eventually they're all going to go home. I mean, people are just starting to show up now, and this group could get fairly large with supporters as this spreads -- as this news spreads out throughout the country. And hopefully, if we just sit back, wait them out, things will calm down and everybody will go home.

STELTER: You know what's going to happen next. You know the presidential candidates are going to get asked about this.

RODERICK: Right.

STELTER: You know President Obama is going to be asked about this. You know it's going to become politicized and we've already heard from activists online, many of them, I've been reading from them all morning to say if these were Black Lives Matter protesters or if these were peaceful Muslim-Americans, they'd be treated very differently by law enforcement.

[11:05:04] Do you think that's truth to this argument?

RODERICK: We're not talking about, I think you mentioned it in the opening, because this is a very rural area. It is out in the middle of nowhere. What are they actually doing? They're not destroying property. They're not ruining everything.

STELTER: Yes, no shots fired.

RODERICK: Right, exactly.

I mean, you know, there's a whole separate situation going on as to exactly why they're there and that will be worked out through the legal process, but I think now that they've taken over this location out at the Fish and Wildlife, this brings in the federal side. And I know the federal government has learned over the years how to deal with these types of incidences and hopefully Fish and Wildlife will call in their federal partners, which I know they will, and sit down and figure out how to resolve this as peacefully as possible.

STELTER: Art, thank you so much for being here this morning.

RODERICK: Thanks, Brian.

STELTER: Very much appreciate it.

Let's go to a media perspective, talking about the coverage of this story with Dan Abrams, former executive at MSNBC, the founder of Mediate, and an ABC News analyst.

Dan, you know what happens in cases like this. Instantly, as soon as there's a news alert online about something like this, there are cries about why the press is not covering it enough. I understand why that happens oftentimes, but at the same time, it's hard to get resources out there, it's hard to get live trucks out there, it's hard to get ahold of the people who are occupying.

Tell me what you think viewers and readers should know about the practical difficulties of covering a situation like this.

DAN ABRAMS, CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS ANALYST, ABC NEWS: Well, look, there's no question there are practical difficulties, but let me also take the flip side of that, which is I hope that the media doesn't give this too much coverage, right?

I mean, what we don't want to do is to sort of aggrandize these folks who are calling themselves militia members when really what they are is armed anti-government protesters. That's what they are. And the key is armed.

That's what makes it different from a lot of the other scenarios you were talking about.

STELTER: Yes.

ABRAMS: These people are armed there and talking about the fact that they are armed. They're not just happened to be having their arms with them. They are bringing them with them for a purpose to defend against possible federal action against a federal building. That's the media side --

(CROSSTALK)

STELTER: I'm just pulling up a picture I hope we can put on screen from a reporter who is there, one of the few reporters who is in the area, Jason Wilson. He posted a picture last night of a couple of the occupiers, of their vehicles, and he said he was encouraged, he was urged to leave by these men with weapons. He said he saw about a dozen people and he said he expects many more reporters to be arriving there today.

But that's an important point. They are armed, not just with handguns, in some cases, he says with automatic rifles. So, there's some heavy weaponry in this area.

ABRAMS: Yes, no question. And, look, so, the media is going to have a delicate balance here. You're right, as a practical matter, getting to an area like this is difficult, but the media can overcome that, particularly these days, it's become a lot easier than it used to be.

I think the more interesting and important question is, how much coverage do we give it? And I think that depending on the amount of coverage is also potentially going to impact what both they do and the federal government does and so the media has a huge obligation here to think long and hard about how big a deal to make this and to focus on the sorts of questions you were asking, which is what do we call these people? How do we refer to them?

And I think it's really important that we don't lionize these people who are literally just taking over a federal building because they don't agree with a federal judge, and they're armed.

STELTER: I think we remember how in 2014 when Cliven Bundy was in the news, he was treated sympathetically by news outlets like FOX News. We'll see if that happens again in this case.

Dan, standby if you can for me.

I want to go to Ian Kullgren, a reporter for "The Oregonian." I mean, he's driving to the area now. He's on the phone with us now.

Just give us a sense of how remote this occupied building is, Ian.

IAN KULLGREN, THE OREGONIAN (via telephone): Well, to give you an idea, Brian, driving out here right now it was very hard to get cell phone service. That's about how remote. So remote in fact that one of my editors suggested we fly to Boise, Idaho, perhaps, and drive there because that would be faster.

I think, you know, when most people think of Oregon, they think of Cartlandia, you know, Portland, urban living, mountains, streams, so forth.

STELTER: Right.

KULLGREN: Rural Oregon is very, very different. This is ranch country. This is high desert. These are people who have been hit very hard by the economic recession and the collapse of the timber industry, problems with the ranch industry, and it's a completely different world.

STELTER: Let me ask you, you were able to reach two of the occupiers last night. You were able to speak with them. Were they unwilling or were they wary of talking to you as a member of the media? How are they getting their message out and what did they tell you?

KULLGREN: Sure. Yes, they were definitely a little wary of talking to me. You know, they're worried.

[11:10:00] They ultimately expressed, you know, concern over talking to what they fear is the liberal media. They're really trying to get the message out by their own channels.

STELTER: Facebook, videos.

KULLGREN: They've got bloggers. They've got people who are more, you know, sympathetic to their cause who they have been talking to, who are echoing their message from inside there as well.

STELTER: And you were told by the occupiers last night, they are willing to stay there for years if need be, and they are willing to use violence if they feel they are attacked first. Am I getting that right? KULLGREN: Yes, yes, that's right, Brian. They said they have enough

supplies to stay there for years. They didn't really elaborate on what kind of supplies they have, if they have weapons. They said they're in a defensive position and they don't really want to talk about that right now.

You know, they did stress though they are not looking for violence. They say they are trying to, you know, get a movement going really and get more people to join them and occupy this place. It's almost like they want to start a rural version of Occupy Wall Street or something like that.

STELTER: We're using the word "occupy", that sure does come to mind, that movement many years ago. These, of course, are different kind of protesters.

And you've seen the Twitter hashtag Occupy -- sorry, #OregonUnderAttack. You have seen that trending for the last 12 hours.

Do you feel that's a rhetorical device, "under attack", because there has not been any violent action taken other them seizing this property with weapons without any government employees there?

KULLGREN: Yes, that's true --

STELTER: And I think right then, we're losing his cell reception as he drives out to remote Oregon.

Well, I'll leave it there. Ian, Dan Abrams, Art Roderick, thank you all for being here this morning.

Coming up on RELIABLE SOURCES, a lot more to get to this morning. Al Jazeera on the defensive after the new documentary, "The Dark Side", suggests a link between NFL legend Peyton Manning and the use of human growth hormone. We have an exclusive interview with the reporter behind the story. She has new information to share.

And Steve Jobs -- do you think you know all there is to know about the founder of Apple? Well, a new documentary shows there's actually a lot more to the man behind the machine. We'll share that.

And also, coming up next here, the 2016 presidential campaign is on. It's official. It's 2016 now. So, we'll talk about the man on top of the GOP polls right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:15:29] STELTER: Welcome back.

As the ball dropped on 2015, it also kicked off the 2016 presidential campaign, triggering the countdown to the nation's first primary, Iowa -- first caucus that is, voters caucus there in 29 days. So, the big question isn't who will win, it's whether Donald Trump will win? That is the tone of the media coverage. We all know, of course, the press has had an intense love/hate

relationship with Trump, but will that relationship end up souring the GOP? You know, Jeb Bush said something remarkable the other day. He said this to "The Wall Street Journal", talking about the media's focus on Trump.

He said, "The people following and covering the campaigns, they are obsessed with Trump. He's Pavlov and they're the dog basically. I've never seen anything quite like it."

What I want to explore in the next few minutes, whether all this coverage could come back to hurt the GOP ten months from now when it's time for a national election. Let me show what you I mean. We all remember Donald Trump's love/hate relationship with FOX News in 2015, his public feud with Megyn Kelly and a barrage of negative tweets aimed at the network, like this one.

It says, just to distill them all into ten words, "I am having a really hard time watching FOX News."

But it's a New Year now, it's a new start, and FOX embraced the entertainment value of Trump by making him a star of the New Year's Eve show. Take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, FOX NEWS/THURSDAY)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody has been waiting for this big moment in America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, joining us.

Mr. Trump --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With his beautiful family. Melania looking so gorgeous. I got to tell you, she would make an amazing first lady of America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're leading in all the polls, national polls across the board.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we call you in 2017 to come ring in new year's, are we calling the White House and can we get the call through? What is your resolution for 2016?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'll tell you what, my resolution is to make America great again, and that's what we're going to do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good choice, good choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: It is great entertainment, never mind the fact that if they call the White House on January 1st, 2017, President Obama would still answer. There is a name for what we just saw, though. David Frum and others

have called it the conservative entertainment complex and they've warned that it can hurt the Grand Old Party at election time.

Let's talk about this with McKay Coppins, a senior writer at "BuzzFeed" and the author of "The Wilderness", a great new book about the Republican Party, 2012 to now. And in Washington, Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at "The Federalist".

Thank you both for being here.

Mollie, do you believe in the notion of the conservative entertainment complex? Is that what we're seeing with a lot of coverage of Donald Trump?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST: Well, I -- there is an issue with the more populist forms of conservative media helping Donald Trump, but I'm not entirely sure this FOX News example is a great one. I think on New Year's Eve coverage, standards are just lowered if not completely annihilated.

And here at CNN, you had Kathy Griffin begin her coverage by asking an Anderson Cooper about how far he'd gotten sexually with Caitlyn Jenner. She later disrobed in Times Square.

I mean, you've just seen networks have fun. People are drinking. And things -- the standards get lowered.

And I think that's what you saw with this particular instance on FOX News where they had more political coverage. They did have different political candidates on from Carly Fiorina --

STELTER: Yes, they do.

HEMINGWAY: -- to Martin O'Malley and a more newsy political version of entertaining coverage on New Year's Eve.

STELTER: Yes, it was like FOX was having so much fun with Trump it almost missed the midnight countdown. I think we can speed up eight or nine minutes of tape and we'll show you what happened. It was kind of remarkable.

McKay, you were shaking your head as we were watching that highlight reel. Do you think this is something that will haunt the GOP ten months from now if you write another book about this election?

MCKAY COPPINS, AUTHOR, "THE WILDERNESS": I mean, I think there's no question. I think from the beginning there's been this idea in the media and in the Republican Party that you could just laugh Donald Trump off. If you laughed at him enough and kind of did enough segments on cable news, I have been one of these pundits where you kind of chuckle at the crazy things he says like he's a vaudeville act that eventually he would go away.

That's proving to not only be untrue but actually to help Trump. And I think that the more we do that, the more that we make Trump the face of the Republican Party, which, you know, it's not -- he is leading in the polls and has been for many months, but the more he shows up on TV as the Republican front-runner, the worse it is for the Republican Party because if he doesn't win the nomination, he will still be -- have spent half a year or more as the main -- the most famous Republican in America and voters are going to remember that come the general election.

STELTER: M.Z., do you agree?

HEMINGWAY: I think there's a question -- you're kind of begging the question when you say it's going to hurt the Republican Party to have so much coverage of Trump.

[11:20:05] But if we're saying that the conservative entertainment media types are hurting the Republican Party by covering Trump so much, what does that say about the rest of the media? I mean, CNN has covered Trump three times -- there was one survey that showed in the previous month, CNN covered Trump three times as much as all other candidates combined during a one-week period. Another study showed that CNN and MSNBC covered Trump three times as much as FOX News.

So, if FOX News is hurting the Republican Party by covering Trump, what is CNN doing? What is MSNBC doing?

To me, it's more challenging when these ostensibly mainstream media outlets are giving so much coverage to a candidate who's not even leading in Iowa, the first state --

(CROSSTALK)

STELTER: And we see that from nightly news as well, some of the data about how much Trump is covered than other Democrats, other Republican candidates, and also Democratic rivals.

McKay, in the minute I have left, do you have a New Year's resolution for the press with all of this in mind about the coverage we've seen thus far?

COPPINS: I mean, I guess my New Year's resolution for myself would be to take Trump more seriously. That doesn't mean to treat -- to be more respectful of him or whatever, but to treat him like a serious candidate and interrogate him like a serious candidate. I don't think we can laugh him off anymore.

I went just -- very quickly, I went to a campaign rally of his in Las Vegas --

STELTER: Yes.

COPPINS: -- that became very ugly when Black Lives Matter protesters kept interrupting and they were dragged out as people were shouting racial slurs at them. That was a moment for me where I realized that this isn't really a game and it's not a performance anymore and I think reporters including myself need to stop treating it that way.

STELTER: Mollie, do you think my resolution should be no more predictions?

(LAUGHTER)

STELTER: No guessing about what's going to happen because it's been so unpredictable for the last six months?

HEMINGWAY: Actually, in a way, I do think that. I've been very frustrated to see that the media has the same response to everything Trump says month after month after month, and it's clear he's figured out a good template for how to get media coverage. He says something outlandish, the media all freak out, he gets more media coverage, and only follows up with another outlandish to say.

Rather, I think it would be better for everyone to think about whether they've understood what this moment means, understood populist resentment not just with Trump but with Bernie Sanders who has the same amount of support in his primary as Donald Trump has. This is a real thing and I don't think we should mock it or treat it dismissively. I think we should, as reporters, try to understand it and do a better job of civilly litigating these conflicts.

STELTER: Love that note there. Mollie, McKay, both of you, thank you both for being here.

COPPINS: Thank you.

STELTER: Coming up next here, Al Jazeera America coming under legal fire for naming Peyton Manning in a documentary about illegal doping in sports. Now, when we come back, an exclusively interview with the reporter at the center of the controversy. She says she has new information about her story and will share it after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:26:23] STELTER: In the minds of some media critics, it's been a tough week for fledgling cable news channels. First, reports suggest that Disney is looking to sell a stake in the struggling Fusion Network. That's a joint venture with Univision. I think there'll be more news on that this coming week.

And then there's Al Jazeera. This time last week, it televised "The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers". The network found itself needing to defend itself. Why? Because of suggestions, insinuations perhaps that Peyton Manning, who by all estimation will be a future NFL Hall of Famer, is potentially linked to HGH, or human growth hormone, because of the repeated shipment of the drug to his wife, Ashley Manning.

Is this solid reporting or is this loose association a big black eye for Al Jazeera?

I'm joined now for an exclusive interview with Debra Davies, who is a reporter of the documentary and I know you probably disagree with the suggestion it was a black eye.

DEBORAH DAVIES, REPORTER, AL JAZEERA: Certainly do. STELTER: Tell me, first, what you actually did say in the documentary

about Manning.

DAVIES: OK. So we have a man called Charlie Sly who we interviewed for 27 hours under cover, not interviewed but filmed 27 hours of undercover. So what has happened in this modern prism of social media is that you put a program out, which is one clear piece of programming. It goes through the prism of social media and it comes out as multicolored confusion.

STELTER: So you're saying you said "A" but some people say you said "B."

DAVIES: Right --

STELTER: What did you actually say?

DAVIES: Well, they say you say "B" and when you say -- actually we didn't say "B." They are -- well, now, you're backtracking.

STELTER: And that is what Ari Fleischer is representing the Manning family says, that you all are backtracking from your story.

DAVIES: It's what he's being paid to say. What we said in the program is very clear. Charlie Sly worked at the Guyer Institute. He was not some low-level student. He's a very, very knowledgeable, well-connected individual who knows about drugs, has links to sportsmen, has a link -- a family link to the Guyer clinic.

And what he said was that when he worked there, shipments of HGH were being repeatedly sent to Ashley Manning. Now --

STELTER: Peyton Manning's wife. But he did backtrack from the claim. He said he suggested that actually, he did not mean what he said on these tapes.

DAVIES: Well, so, 27 hours of undercover where he doesn't know he's being filmed, no reason to lie, versus a 54-second retraction. What he cannot retract is that we got Charlie Sly through people in Vancouver who supplied us with drugs, who wanted to dope our undercover reporter up for the Olympics.

STELTER: But that's separate from Peyton Manning.

DAVIES: They -- no hang on a second. They recommended Charlie Sly. They said we're good at doping but here is the mastermind. Go to Charlie Sly.

We went to Charlie Sly and he then told us the people he works with, the drugs he supplied, and the fact that while he worked at the Guyer, shipments of HGH were going out to Ashley Manning.

Now, on top of that, what you didn't know until now, is that we had a second source. Absolutely, impeccably placed, knowledgeable, and credible who confirmed exactly what Charlie Sly said. Shipments of HGH were repeatedly, repeatedly sent to Ashley Manning in Florida and other places in the U.S.

STELTER: So, you're sharing that for the first time. Why did you not include that in the film?

DAVIES: Because, as you know, there are different kinds of sources. There are some you can name, there are some you can't. This is a source we cannot name. We could not name.

The value of that source was to add to the level of confidence we already had in what Charlie Sly was saying.

[11:30:01]

STELTER: And let me play what Peyton Manning said when this film aired last weekend.

Here is his comment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEYTON MANNING, DENVER BRONCOS QUARTERBACK: I'm not sure I understand how someone can make something up about somebody, admit that he has made it up, and yet it somehow gets published in a -- in a story.

It's completely fabricated, complete trash, garbage. There's more adjectives I would like to be able to use, but it really makes me sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: So, what does he have wrong then, in your calculations, here?

DAVIES: Well, it's what he's not saying. He wasn't asked and has never answered the question, was HGH shipped repeatedly to your wife in Florida and elsewhere? Neither he nor his spokesman or anyone else has answered that question.

If that wasn't true, do you not think they would have straight away come out and said, this has never happened, no HGH has ever been shipped? They have never said that.

STELTER: On "The Today Show" a few days ago, you said, we haven't accused Peyton Manning of anything, only Ashley Manning of receiving these shipments.

Is that right?

DAVIES: Well, what I was responding to were all these implications, insinuations added to the back end of the program.

STELTER: Well, that's my concern, because I want to play a portion of the beginning of the program. Now, this is a clip from the very beginning of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAVIES: And extraordinary claims that raise questions whether an American sporting hero, Peyton Manning, is linked to performance- enhancing drugs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: To me, that is a pretty clear insinuation. You're saying that Peyton Manning was linked, is linked to these shipments, even though there's no proof of that.

DAVIES: We're saying we have raised questions, and those questions haven't been answered.

If you look back at the scandals there have been over HGH in particular the last couple, Biogenesis, HGH shipped to a dozen or more baseball players from an anti-aging clinic, we got Charlie Sly through another scandal, a man called Galea in Canada shipping HGH, injecting players with HGH.

Through Galea, we came across Robertson. Through Robertson, we came across Sly. So, when Sly says an anti-aging clinic is shipping HGH to the wife of a player, that is part of a whole trail of evidence and it does raise questions.

STELTER: Are you trying to have it both ways, though, by saying you're not accusing him of anything, but you are insinuating there's questions being raised?

DAVIES: I'm not trying to have it both ways. I'm trying to put out the clear evidence that we have got through a long, rigorous journalistic process.

STELTER: What do people not understand about this investigative journalism process? Because you seem surprised by the amount of incoming that you have received the past week.

DAVIES: No, I'm not surprised. I have been in the business a long time.

I think what surprised us is that Peyton Manning is one small part of a program. You call this a Manning documentary. It's not a Manning documentary.

STELTER: But you knew, when you included these suggestions, that this was going to be covered this way, right?

DAVIES: Well, I have...

(CROSSTALK)

STELTER: And you knew that Al-Jazeera would be tarred. We have seen criticism of Al-Jazeera, attacking the messenger, you might say it is.

DAVIES: Of course.

Let's talk about that criticism. First of all, Al-Jazeera is probably one of the only networks that could have made this program, because we're not beholden to the big sporting authorities, because we don't show football or basketball or any of the other big sports.

STELTER: I respect that. But when you have seen this called poor journalism, when you have heard this called garbage...

DAVIES: I have seen it called poor journalism by people who have misreported what is in the program.

We absolutely stick -- we have an investigative unit that absolutely bucks the trend of what's going on in the industry, where people are making fast turnaround, cheap current affairs and documentaries. We have got an investigative unit that is part of the international Al- Jazeera network.

We're not part of Al-Jazeera America. We feed America. We feed Al- Jazeera Arabic in English. And our unit is absolutely dedicated to these long-running, in-depth investigations.

STELTER: And you will be doing more on this topic, I suspect.

DAVIES: For sure.

STELTER: Thank you for being here this morning and sharing the story with us. Appreciate it.

And let's talk more about this with Bob Kravitz, a sports reporter for WTHR in Indianapolis. And he's no stranger to Peyton Manning or controversial sports reports. He broke the Deflategate story wide open. Also, David Folkenflik, media correspondent from NPR.

And, David, let me start with you. You have seen these accusations of poor journalism, the story trying to go too far. What is your evaluation?

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, NPR: Well, and I have seen the documentary as well.

Let's give Deborah Davies a point. I mean, Al-Jazeera is devoting time and effort, 27 hours of undercover tapes. It's trying to look at this issue. I think it's kind of an incremental documentary that is trying to present itself as something a little bit more of a hammer blow.

I don't think this documentary would have the same resonance if Peyton Manning weren't part of it. And it seems to me that they got kind of halfway there. They seem to have with a person taped undercover shown that somebody is credibly alleging that Peyton Manning's wife had been sent HGH, a banned substance, certainly not something that athletes are allowed to use -- and it's a very highly controlled substance altogether -- and that it was sent to their place.

[11:35:04]

I think that's -- it does raise questions about Peyton Manning. It doesn't prove anything about his use of it. And I think that, you know, she has to have expected a certain kind of pushback from a player so prominent, with such a clean reputation, at least in the public's eye.

I think, if this had been about a linebacker who was a one- or two- time Pro Bowler that most of the nation had never heard of, I don't think it would have had anything like the same resonance.

This is -- nonetheless seems to me to suggest credibly that the use of illegal or banned drugs by athletes is still very much going on, despite the scandals of the late '90s and 2000s.

STELTER: Bob, I see you shaking your head yes, but, to play devil's advocate here, shouldn't journalists be in the business of raising questions, showing their work as they go along, and trying to get to the bottom of it?

BOB KRAVITZ, COLUMNIST, WTHR SPORTS: Actually I was shaking my head at the cameraman, not what he was saying.

STELTER: Oh, OK.

KRAVITZ: So let's make that clear.

Yes. No, it -- look, I think it was a fair story as far as it went, but I agree with the previous gentleman that we're still trying to connect the dots, still trying to -- it's going to be very difficult to advance this story, to spin it forward, unless you find -- if -- unless somebody illegally leaks the medical records, in which case a journalist would have some great legal and ethical issues to work through before they released that.

I think it's going to be very difficult to take that next step. I do think it raised some very legitimate questions. The only thing that I can add to all of this is that I -- as somebody who actually did go to the Guyer Institute for a period of time, I do know that he does prescribe HGH when he feels that it's medically efficacious.

So that's as much as I can add to it. But I do think it's going to be tough to make -- to take that next step, because, again, testing didn't start until 2014.

FOLKENFLIK: And, Brian, if I might add and build on something that you just mentioned, the question of showing your homework along the way, we're now presented with the reassurance Deborah Davies has a second source, which she would not characterize in any way, other than being a source.

Well, I think that's something that should have been acknowledged in the documentary, saying that they had greater faith in this perhaps unwitting accusation made in these undercover tapes because they had a second source. And I think they kind of had an obligation to give us some characterization of the source. How well-sourced is that place to understand such a thing?

Is there some way to convey some sense of authoritativeness to give us something more than a say-so? These are slippery characters, even as I think that, overall, the documentary seems to substantiate the general thrust that they're still coursing through the veins of professional and elite athletes, these illegal and banned substances.

STELTER: You know, I wasn't going to do this.

Because Deborah is still here, though, let me bring her back for one moment and ask about that second source.

Deborah, you were shaking your head about that question.

Why couldn't you characterize the source in any way? Why didn't you include it in the documentary in the first place?

DAVIES: Well, all I can say is that there are sources, and there are sources, and there are some you can name and some that you can't.

STELTER: But why not say in the film that there was another source you couldn't name?

DAVIES: I suppose because it would simply have led to another range of speculation, another set of fishing expedition questions.

The second source is credible, well-placed, knowledgeable, and cannot be named. And that's all that we can say for now.

STELTER: Deborah, I appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you for letting me bring you back for a moment to respond to that.

DAVIES: Thank you.

STELTER: Bob, I know you have a game to get to. So, let me let you go as well.

And, David, thank you for being here this morning as well.

FOLKENFLIK: You bet.

STELTER: Coming up here, my sit-down with media mogul Barry Diller, plus a look inside Apple. Steve Jobs changed how we all interact with media, but how did he actually treat journalists? The director of a new film says not too well at all.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:42:48]

STELTER: Welcome back to RELIABLE SOURCES.

Steve Jobs, there was no one quite like him. Love him or hate him, he was and still is the public face and driving force behind the stunning success of Apple. So indelible was the mark he left on the new media landscape that people all over the world mourned his death in 2011.

I will never forget where I was when his death was announced. But who was Jobs really? And what did he represent? That's what the new documentary "STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE" tries to answer. It's airing tonight here on CNN.

So I sat down with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney and asked him, what is it that we don't already know about Steve Jobs?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX GIBNEY, DIRECTOR, "STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE": What they don't know about Steve Jobs are the curious contradictions of his character and also how those contradictions actually migrated to the machines that he promoted and made.

STELTER: Give me an example of a contradiction.

GIBNEY: Well, we have got Apple products all around us, but particularly the iPhone.

On the one hand, it's an extension of ourselves, it connects us, but it also, in the words of Sherry Turkle, makes us alone together. Now we're -- our muscles and our necks are changing because we're spending so much time looking down at these devices.

STELTER: Is that true? Our muscles in our neck are changing?

GIBNEY: Well, that's the way it feels like.

STELTER: It does feel like that.

GIBNEY: Soon, evolutionarily, we may be like this in a few thousand years.

(LAUGHTER)

GIBNEY: So, I think that that's the interesting contradiction. It's a sense of connection. But with a guy who had difficulty with human connections, it's kind of baked into the machine in a funny way.

STELTER: You explore who the real Steve Jobs was. Here is a clip from the documentary about that part.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB BELLEVILLE, FORMER HEAD OF ENGINEERING, APPLE: It's easy to make chaos, and if you're comfortable with it, you can use it as a tool. And he used a vast number of really irritating tools to get other people involved in his schemes. He's seducing you. He's vilifying you. And he's ignoring you. You're in one of those three states.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: He sounds like a man who always believed the ends justified the means.

GIBNEY: I think that's fair to say.

And a lot of people, including the man who we just saw on the screen, would say that Steve Jobs pushed them to do extraordinary work, which I think is true. But in so doing, there was a tremendous cost.

[11:45:08] STELTER: What was the relationship like between journalists and Apple

when Steve Jobs was in charge? And this is something you also explored in the film.

GIBNEY: The relationship was terrible, unless, of course, you wanted to be utterly adulatory and do a commercial about him, which he would utterly control. Otherwise, contact was cut off completely.

STELTER: You have a comment actually from an editor about that in the documentary. Here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDY SERWER, FORMER MANAGING EDITOR, "FORTUNE": This is how it's going to work. You want to do a story about us, you call us up, pose it, you know, we will think about it. We will basically come up with the ideas with you or come up with the ideas. We will call you. We will figure out who the writer is going to be on your staff to do the story.

And I said, well, you know, Steve, that's not really how we do things. And he goes, that's how you do things with Apple.

So I said to myself, why don't we do a story about the stock options? Because no one has really figured it out. So I decided to put one of our top investigative reporters on the story, Peter Elkind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: That's Andy Serwer, the former editor of "Fortune," describing the stock option scandal that eventually became a big story.

GIBNEY: It was a big story.

STELTER: But in spite of Apple's help, basically. This was not an access story.

(CROSSTALK)

GIBNEY: No, definitely not. In fact, sometimes, when you don't get access, that's when you get a tough investigative journalist like Peter Elkind to find out the stuff that the fanboy journalists aren't getting.

STELTER: People are going to ask you if this is an anti-Steve Jobs documentary.

GIBNEY: It's not an anti-Steve Jobs documentary. It's a kind of meditation on Jobs and what he means to us.

And so there's a lot that's -- that I think I find very important and valuable about Steve Jobs. But I think there's a certain amount of course correcting that we need to do, because his values weren't the values of the plucky start-up, the kind of countercultural figure that he liked to imagine himself as. He started out taking on the man. By the end, he was the man.

STELTER: Alex, thanks for being here.

GIBNEY: Delighted. Thanks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STELTER: And you can watch the documentary "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine" tonight, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, right here on CNN.

Coming up, we're debuting a new series here on RELIABLE SOURCES, "Headliners." And there's a bold-faced name to begin with, media mogul Barry Diller. Hear what he calls stupid right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:50]

STELTER: Hey. Welcome back.

Barry Diller co-founded the FOX broadcast network. He ran Paramount. He launched QVC. So, he knows television. But, today, he says the very word television is obsolete. He says the language we use to talk about media is dated and that we need to come up with new words, all thanks to the radical transformation called the Internet.

These days, his new investments are in dating apps like Tinder and Web video services like Vimeo. But some old habits do die hard. Diller still starts every day with a good old-fashioned print newspaper.

I visited the media mogul at his IAC headquarters building for the start of a new occasional series with media movers and shakers. They are the "Headliners."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARRY DILLER, CHAIRMAN AND SENIOR EXECUTIVE, IAC: Well, television is also a stupid word, because we think about television.

We used to think, obviously, television was three channels. And then it expanded via cable to dozens, hundreds of channels, and then thousands and millions of channels via broadband. So, the idea of what you -- quote -- call "television," is television Netflix?

Well, people don't really think it is. They're trying to make these distinctions. It's video, you know? I mean, it's video.

STELTER: Are you bearish on cable as a whole industry, meaning on the bundle?

DILLER: No, no, no. You have to separate.

I actually think that cable, which is now no longer -- there's no longer like words. These words don't make sense anymore, because it really isn't cable as we know it. You can't really call them cable companies anymore.

I don't even think you can call broadcast companies broadcast companies anymore, because their over-the-air signals are now very little in use in terms of direct reception.

STELTER: Right.

DILLER: They're all being carried by data systems, which is a new word for cable.

STELTER: I love when you say these words don't make sense anymore.

DILLER: They don't. I mean, they really don't, because that -- this transformation we're going through, the radicalism which is the Internet, which, once it got the capacity to carry rich data, meaning moving pictures and movies, whatever you call it, rich data, once that happened, it was inevitable that it would bust things wide.

And the result, of course, is that you're seeing transformations in all of these businesses.

STELTER: What's the first thing you read every morning?

DILLER: The first things I read are print newspapers.

STELTER: Good old-fashioned print.

DILLER: Absolutely.

STELTER: I'm surprised.

DILLER: Yes. I love it.

STELTER: Why?

DILLER: It's something to do. It's like a lizard brain. I'm wired that way.

I like the tactileness of the pages. I like -- my eyes are trained to scan in that way. And it's more enjoyable to me.

STELTER: So, some things never change. Even in this period of creative disruption, create destruction, some things never change, like print newspapers.

DILLER: They don't change, but, of course, the people who won't change get older and are replaced by people who never were there in the first place.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STELTER: And we will share more of our interview on CNNMoney.com/media.

You know, Barry Diller is not the only one who still enjoys his print paper first thing in the morning. Find out what the staff of "The Boston Globe" did to make sure their stories made it to readers. It's an amazing tale -- right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:58:09]

STELTER: And finally this morning, my favorite journalism tale of the weekend.

And it stars Milton Valencia. He's a reporter at "The Boston Globe." Here is a tweet from his colleague Evan Allen. She wrote: "Milton wrote one of today's front-page stories. And here he is getting ready to drop it off on people's doorsteps."

Yes, dozens of reporters and editors showed up at "The Globe"'s printing press at midnight, volunteering to deliver the Sunday paper all across Beantown. Why? Because they're fed up with a week's worth of delivery problems.

"The Globe" hired a new delivery firm, and it's been pretty rough going so far. So, columnists and managing editors and cartoonists and Web producers all showed up, and they bagged the papers one by one. You can see them there. Then they loaded the stacks into the backs of their cars and headed out on their assigned routes.

Now, readers were grateful. I have been hearing from them all morning. One family even put out this thank you sign right there on the front lawn.

Now, it's a really interesting story, because it shows, for one thing, like Barry Diller was just saying, there's still an appetite for good old-fashioned print newspapers. Now, second, if it's not reliable, if it's not delivered every day, people are going to get frustrated.

In fact, the phone server at "The Boston Globe" crashed earlier this week from all of the customer complaints. And so that's when reporters started to rise up, started to say to the CEO, listen, we're willing to come in. We're willing to help deliver the paper.

You know, this sometimes does happen in smaller markets, with community papers, sometimes weekly papers. My college paper, I used to deliver it to campus. But to see staff of "The Boston Globe" all come together to do this, it is really remarkable.

Now, I know they're probably all asleep right now. But most of the deliveries are finished. And, hopefully, this delivery problem will get worked out pretty soon. It all happened when the movie "Spotlight" is in theaters, the possible Oscar-winning movie all about "The Boston Globe" investigators.

You can read more of my story about this on CNNMoney.com.

We're out of time here on TV, but our media coverage keeps going all the time, including through our new CNN media newsletter. You can sign up, again, CNNMoney.com/media.

I will see you next week.