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On the Story

Correspondents Discuss News Behind the News

Aired October 16, 2005 - 13:00   ET

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

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening. I'm Carol Lin. ON THE STORY is coming up in just a moment, but first a look at what's happening right now in the news.
(NEWSBREAK)

That's what's happening right now in the news. I'm Carol Lin. CNN's ON THE STORY begins right now.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR, ON THE STORY: This is CNN and we are ON THE STORY. From the campus of the George Washington University in the heart of the nation's capital, our correspondents have the stories behind the stories they're covering.

Christiane Amanpour is on the story in Baghdad. The voting in Iraq and a stop next door in Syria where President Al Assad blames the war for more terrorism.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is on the story of the bird flu, the risks and the preparations.

Suzanne Malveaux is on the story of why the Harriet Miers nomination still has conservatives boiling mad at President Bush.

Our Internet reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton are online on the story of what they're seeing on the Internet, what the bloggers are saying about the Miers story.

In New Orleans, Dan Simon talks about covering the beating. What's ahead for the cops and the city.

And Jamie McIntyre tunes into the Pentagon channel and the debate over what's news and what's propaganda.

Welcome. I'm Ali Velshi. With me are Suzanne Malveaux and Jamie McIntyre. Our correspondents will be taking questions from our studio audience, drawn from college students and people across Washington and across the country. Now straight to Iraq. Christiane Amanpour started her latest trip in the region to the country next door. An exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Here's Christiane's notebook.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We sat down for the first ever major television interview with President Bashar al Assad since he's taken office. It comes at a time of heightened tension here between Syria and frankly the whole rest of the world. He made a great effort to speak in English. He wants to really communicate he told us with the viewers. Do you have a message for the people of the United States?

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL ASSAD, SYRIA: We look at the United States as a great power, so we're looking for more constructive and objective role of the United States, not only politically in supporting the (INAUDIBLE) politicians (INAUDIBLE)

AMANPOUR: What do you mean?

AL ASSAD: I mean we should reevaluate what's going on in Iraq, what did we achieve?

AMANPOUR: Achieved the end of a dictator.

AL ASSAD: Yes, but what did you (INAUDIBLE) the hope of the people for stability, no better democracy, no better economy, no services, no stability in the region, more terrorism.

VELSHI: And Christiane Amanpour joins us now from Baghdad. Christiane, welcome and thank you for being with us.

AMANPOUR: Nice to see you.

VELSHI: Christiane, let's talk a little bit about this interview. It's a rare interview. It's not the typical sort of thing that Bashar al Assad does, but those were harsh words. He says the war in Iraq hasn't changed things on the ground for Iraqis and for the safety of the region. Tell me what he means by that.

AMANPOUR: Well, I think many people in this region are incredibly worried about the effect of the continuing insurgency and the hotbed of terrorism that Iraq has become since the war. So I think he was talking about that. You know, we also have to say that the United States is very concerned that it is Syria among other countries which is allowing the insurgency, the anti-Iraqi insurgents to come in via its border and they are putting a lot of pressure on Bashar Assad to try to stop that. So it's an incredibly difficult situation and the referendum the people are voting on and have voted on is designed, people hope, to bring a semblance of political stability to this country.

VELSHI: Christiane, we have a question from the audience. Your name, where you're from and your question please.

QUESTION: My name's (INAUDIBLE) and I'm from Seattle, Washington and I want to know if the new Iraq constitution does pass, will anyone realistically be able to enforce it and will it have any impact on the fighting?

AMANPOUR: Well, that's a very good question and the last part of your question, will it have an impact on the fighting is what everybody is concerned about. You know, at every turning point, whether it was the parliamentary elections last year, whether it's the drafting of the constitution, now the referendum on the constitution, the optimists have hoped against hope that each one of these milestones will kill the insurgency off and so far it hasn't done so. We have talked as I said to the commander of all U.S. forces here who said that he predicts violence will continue. The key question is whether this constitution is viewed as legitimate. What does that mean? Whether it is truly representative of all the different populations here, all the ethnic groups, most notably the Sunnis, the Shias and the Kurds. Now the Shias and the Kurds who form the majority do believe that this is a great constitution because it really empowers them and people are afraid that it also gives them too much power over the country's resources and too much political power. That's what the Sunnis fear.

The U.S. has tried to broker a last-minute deal to bring the Sunnis in, but so far only one Sunni political party has agreed to take part. And the key question is going to be whether that minority, the Sunnis are, but a significant minority, continue to feel disenfranchised after this referendum which will provide the sort of fodder for this continuing insurgency.

VELSHI: Christiane, we have another question from the audience from an extremely tall fellow. Your name, where you're from and your question.

QUESTION: Well, it's Matt. I'm from Los Angeles and I was curious if the upcoming referendum would bring the U.S. troops any closer to actually coming home.

AMANPOUR: Another extremely good question and it's the point of this whole operation. The exit strategies for the United States are two fold, one to create a solid political process, a solid path to political stability and they hope on the road to democracy. The great hope is that if this succeeds, it could be a revolutionary new possibility for the Arab world. But the weight of evidence over the last 2 1/2 years is causing many people to be pessimistic about that and they are saying that the best we can hope for is perhaps some kind of continued engagement at least in the political process. But the problem of course is that the U.S. strategy depends on A, this political process and B, getting the Iraqi security forces up and running and those are nowhere near being ready yet.

VELSHI: And those are the questions everyone's got on their mind. Christiane Amanpour, thank you. Christiane is in Baghdad. We'll be watching you on the story from Iraq.

We turn closer to home from Baghdad now, now concerns about bird flu. What are the risks and are we prepared? Senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is back on that story after this.

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VELSHI: CNN is on the story. New fears this week about bird flu, with new evidence that it may have arrived in Europe. A deadly strain of the flu has crossed from birds to humans in Asia. It's had deadly results. Here in North America, new questions over whether the government is prepared. Our senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been covering the story. Let's have a look inside his notebook. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now we're sort of hearing a lot about avian flu and mostly it's not good.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I know it, disaster waiting to happen.

Striking the balance between alarm and panic is particularly challenging with this story. On the one hand, you have the head of the Center for Disease Control saying this could be the biggest public health threat that our world has ever faced. On the other hand, it's only affected 120 people so far. So I think as journalists, we basically have to say what the facts are.

We're talking about something that kills half the people that it infects. The 1918 virus which killed 100 million people only killed five in 100 and it still killed 100 million people. When you say facts like that, it's not meant to scare people. It's not intended to panic people. Sometimes that's what happens.

Everybody wants to know, including myself, is this going to affect me? And right now the right answer is, we don't know. I was doing this interview with this woman and I said, OK, let's say the bird flu has happened and it's a year later and I'm sitting down and interviewing you. What's our talk going to be about? And she looked at me straight faced and she said, Sanjay that will never happen, because if the bird flu does come to the United States, one of us won't be here.

VELSHI: Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now. Sanjay welcome and you really do do a great job of not scaring people and yet getting those facts out there which we have to do. We have a question from the audience for you. Your name and where you're from please.

QUESTION: Hi, I'm Michael from Cleveland, Tennessee. I want to know, outside of infants and the elderly, who's really at risk for avian flu this season or for any flu season for that matter?

GUPTA: You know, it's actually interesting. When it comes to avian flu, the elderly and the young aren't necessarily at more risk than anybody else. It's sort of different from the regular flu. The people that are most at risk from a particularly bad flu like this are actually the young and the healthy and that's became what ends up killing somebody with something like this is your body's own immune response. So if you have a particularly strong immune response to the flu, to this avian flu virus, that's probably what's actually going to lead to your death. So in 1918 when that big flu pandemic hit, the hardest hit were people at the prime of their lives and that's what they're concerned about this time as well.

VELSHI: We have another question from the audience. Your name and where you're from please.

QUESTION: My name is David. I'm from San Diego, California. My question is, Doctor, have there been any other outbreaks where viruses have been transferred from animals to humans and then successfully transmitted between people themselves? GUPTA: Yeah, Dave, that's a really good question. You know, back in 1918 again, one of the worst flu pandemics, they predict between 50 and 100 million people died, almost came in the exact same way as what they're hoping this particular one won't turn into, that it was actually from birds to humans and then that particular virus became really good at transmitting itself between humans as well. In fact, there's lots of viruses. Some of the worst viruses throughout human history have come from animals, including HIV as well. You may remember that. And so this is not an uncommon thing.

VELSHI: We have another question from the audience. Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) from San Antonio, Texas and I was wondering, how do you balance covering such large stories like the avian flu outbreak and practicing medicine.

GUPTA: That's a good question. I have a pretty set schedule. I'm here all hours of the day at CNN, but I operate every Monday and every other Friday and I see patients in the office on Wednesday afternoons, so I've sort of tailored -- I have an academic neurosurgery practice and I practice essentially half time now and then when big stories happen, I obviously have to ratchet up my time at CNN as well.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sanjay, we know the truth. We know you work all the time.

GUPTA: My wife loves this job, I'll tell you.

MALVEAUX: I have a question. The -- I guess the case of the bird flu in Turkey, how concerned should people be? Is that an indication that this something that is already spreading throughout the world?

GUPTA: Yes it is. But it was very predictable. So it wasn't necessarily surprising to anybody who's been following the bird flu for some time. Look, this particular virus is going to transmit itself around the world in several different ways and as far as how it got to Turkey and Romania and countries in Europe, probably through migratory birds. This is how this particular virus travels. Now if it does transform itself into a way that becomes more easily transmissible between human and human, it could hitch a ride on a plane for example and end up just about anywhere because it will get into an airport, infect people and then end up all over the world. But for right now, it seems mainly migratory birds are carrying this around Suzanne.

JAMIE McINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So Sanjay, if this actually shows up, what are the chances, what's the treatment? Can you be treated effectively and what about the status of a vaccine? We keep hearing there's not a vaccine or not an effective vaccine or not a proven vaccine.

GUPTA: Yeah and this is -- Ali was saying you try and strike a balance between alarm and good information, I think that this is exactly, sort of highlights that. We don't have a vaccine that's approved by the FDA right now. The only medication that may be at all beneficial is a medication called Tamiflu, but it hasn't really been studied in humans. It's only been studied in the laboratory so far in mice. So we don't know how well it will work. Right now, we are sort of vulnerable to the bird flu if it ended up here in the United States or if it ended up becoming something that was easily transmissible between humans. And that's why I think a lot of people are starting to sort of raise their antennas about this.

President Bush met with six vaccine makers and said look, we got to get a vaccine. Senator Barack Obama saying well, if we're going to make a vaccine, we got to incentivize it somehow because vaccine makers don't want to do it. There's no money in making the flu vaccine. We got to make it more profitable for them. And then obviously, I myself am going to southeast Asia this weekend, going to be there for a couple of weeks, looking into the story. A lot of people from the Centers for Disease Control already over there to see what the real status of this virus is right now, because right now as it stands, we are somewhat vulnerable.

VELSHI: Now Sanjay, it's helpful to our viewers to know that you still practice medicine and you still do a lot of work for us. What they don't know about you, they probably just seen it this week is that we caught up with you on the NASCAR circuit.

GUPTA: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I'll tell you, (INAUDIBLE) I'm the son of a couple of automotive engineers Ali. I've been interested in race car driving for some time and stock cars in particular just because those are cars you can see out on the road and you see them out on the track as well. I think as a neurosurgeon, I became particularly interested just looking at the safety aspects of NASCAR. You got these guys whipping around the track at 180, 200 miles an hour. Dale Earnhardt, a lot of people knew Dale Earnhardt. He died in 2001 from a massive head injury. Since then, the safety devices in cars have become much better and a lot of those safety devices are applicable to our everyday cars as well. So we really -- we did an hour long special on this. It was a lot of fun, looking into all this, meeting these drivers, finding out if they're in fact athletes and it's called "NASCAR, Driven to Extremes."

VELSHI: Watch it on Sunday night on CNN. Sanjay, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. Dr. Sanjay Gupta we'll be following him on the story again soon. And we're back on the big political story of the week, why President Bush can't turn off the uproar over his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux is back on that story right after this.

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VELSHI: We are on the story. The heat is still on high on the Harriet Miers story and the president is getting burned by traditional friends and allies. CNN's White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux has been covering the story. Here's her reporter's notebook.

MALVEAUX: The big question this week was how was it that the president was able to loose his most loyal supporters day by day. The criticism was just growing, so Republican insiders say that first of all, the president underestimated, miserably underestimated how angry and frustrated they were over this nomination. HARRIET MIERS: I am very grateful for the confidence in me that you've shown by this nomination.

MALVEAUX: Secondly, the problem that the White House is having is that the people who are normally responding when it comes to crisis management are basically missing in action. Harriet Miers, who would normally go through the checklist and would vet this process is the one who's in the heart of the controversy. Secondly, Karl Rove they say is distracted by his CIA leak investigation and third, the one person in the press office who's kind of in charge of this rapid fire response is in Baghdad this week.

What Republicans, insiders were telling me was that the White House just didn't have a clear or a cohesive message when it came to their strategy. Who is Harriet Miers? One of the people who I talked to said, quite frankly, they really don't care if she's a Christian conservative, an evangelical. What they want to know and what they want to hear is the White House saying, how did she go from Democrat to Republican or liberal to conservative, that perhaps that is something of itself.

VELSHI: Suzanne Malveaux joins us now and we are going to start Suzanne with a question from the audience. Go ahead. Tell us where you're from and your name please.

QUESTION: Stephanie from Fort Worth, Texas. I would like to know, how do you think Harriet Miers will get past the criticism of not being a judge to be confirmed?

MALVEAUX: That's really interesting, because at this point, one of the people that I talked to, one of the inside Republicans simply said, look, this is not a dead nomination, despite the fact that there's a lot of criticism out there. But what he did say is that the bar is so low, that it's on the ground. All she had to do is walk over it and not embarrass the president. There's that school of thought.

There are other people who are saying look, there are a whole bunch of Republicans on the Hill, staffers who are so upset by this that they are preparing just to trip her up and if that's the case, then if she stumbles or fumbles in any way in this process, then essentially they're going to ask her to step aside. But as of now, there's no indication that the president is going to do that.

VELSHI: Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hello. Bethany from Herndon, Pennsylvania. How do you think Harriet Miers will compare to John Roberts when answering questions during the Senate nomination hearings?

MALVEAUX: I think it's going to be really difficult in the sense that what's happening already is that there are comparing her to John Roberts before she even steps out there. So they are expecting that she is going to have the same type of responses as his responses. Well a lot of people are saying for her, what she needs to do is simply take on these issues, tackle these issues and not answer the kinds of questions that John Roberts didn't answer. If she follows that pattern, that she should be OK. But again, the big challenge here is the fact that there are people invested in this process who actually want to see her fail. There's another whole group that's invested in seeing her succeed so we'll just see how it plays out but it's going to be very interesting and probably contentious.

VELSHI: It's interesting, because the bar, to answer that first question is low. The bar for that second question is a little higher, because even people who don't follow this nomination process closely and who watch John Roberts, it was widely perceived that he did well. He answered well. He was confident.

MALVEAUX: And the other difference here too of course is the fact that you have a paper trail with John Roberts. You really don't have documents to go by with her, with Harriet Miers and what you've seen in the papers that have been released so far have been letters and birthday cards, things like that that she sent to the president indicating a very strong friendship with the president which may be used against her. They're saying she's qualified, that they want to know, but they're really, there's no paper trail to speak of here. They don't know her opinions about these matters.

McINTYRE: I'm curious about just as reporter to reporter, to what -- clearly the White House is on the defensive about this. They can't be happy about some of the coverage they're getting. To what extent do you get pressure that you shouldn't even by asking some of these questions, that the questions themselves are illegitimate as opposed to just defending. Because it seems like sometimes I get that kind of pressure. Why are you making such a big deal about this? She's a good candidate.

MALVEAUX: We get that all the time. I mean this is almost day to day and hour to hour, every time you step out of the gaggle or a briefing, we too are under attack during this time as well for -- you know, why are you stirring up this? Why are you bringing up this controversy? Why are you creating this story? This story comes from a lot of critics. It comes from questions that people are asking, but ultimately, yes, you're on the firing line. So you get a lot of the heat.

VELSHI: This is a hot story. We're back on the Harriet Miers and President Bush story in a moment. We'll check in with our Internet correspondents about how this story is playing out on the web. CNN is on the story here in Washington, New Orleans, Atlanta and Baghdad this week, but also elsewhere from Afghanistan to Liberia. Take a look.

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ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the situation is far from stable. During Secretary Rice's brief visit to Kabul, all of her meetings will take place here, inside this secure compound at the presidential palace. Andrea Koppel, CNN, Kabul.

HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are about 4,500 people living in shelters like this one in the area around Santiago and they're living in very crowded conditions. Those conditions are a concern to health officials who fear possible outbreaks and epidemics. Harris Whitbeck, CNN, Santiago, Atitlan, Guatemala.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They waited and waited, finally voting. The vast majority of the country's adults have registered and with 3,000 poll stations open, it was clear the voters were determined to send their politicians a message through the ballot box. (INAUDIBLE) CNN, Monrovia.

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LIN: Good evening. I'm Carol Lin. More of ON THE STORY in just a moment, but first a look at what's happening right now in the news.

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I'm Carol Lin. Now back to ON THE STORY and more of CNN's reporters taking you inside the week's biggest stories.

VELSHI: We are ON THE STORY at George Washington University in the nation's capital. We've been talking about the fallout from the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination. That echoes through traditional media, newspapers and television, but also on the Internet and our Internet reporters Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner are online on the story. Abbi and Jacki, what are you hearing and is this story dying down at all?

JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, not at all Ali. This is a story since the nomination was announced. The conservative bloggers have hung onto. They are sticking with it. We are not seeing this die down, not one bit. We wanted to show you some of the stuff that we've been seeing during the week. For example, hard core conservative bloggers like Pat Orico (ph) saying this could be it. I could be done with the president after this one. We're seeing a lot of outrage, a lot of polling of each other. How do you feel? Where do you stand, things like this. Is this a bad or terrible decision? Forty nine percent of conservative bloggers turning around and saying this was lousy by President Bush.

Some of the things we wanted to show you too, like David From of the "National Review." He caught on (ph) this week, she is unqualified. These are vocal, vocal voices and then something that came up at the corner also from the "National Review" Ali was that people want to believe. They don't want to fight the president on this, but they don't have the strength to fight him. They don't have the strength to fight for Miers. They just want the administration to give them something, anything to hold onto and they're not getting it.

ABBI TATTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And this is one thing I keep coming back to in the last week is this from the (INAUDIBLE) was just mentioned by Jacki. I want to believe -- this is from Casey (ph) Lopez, one of the conservatives over there. They just want something to work with.

What we saw this week thought, a new development, was the establishment trying to embrace these conservative bloggers that are not towing the party line on this nomination. The Republican National Committee, the chairman here, Ken Mehlman, organized a conference call. This was the first ever blogger-specific conference call that the RNC has organized. They just joined together with Patrick Ruffini. He's their new e-campaign director for the RNC. He's a well-known conservative blogger as well and they invited conservative bloggers onto this call, not a moment too soon, was what some of them were saying.

There have been complaints that the Republican Party was ignoring the voice of the conservative bloggers and it was pretty well received. People were very pleased to be asked by the RNC to join this. But not everyone -- no one seemed to change their minds and we've actually got a couple of those bloggers that were on that conference call with us, just to hear what they thought about this. We've got Lorie Byrd. She's from polipundit.com. She's joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina and also Erick Erickson from redstate, who is joining us from Macon, Georgia. As you can see, they're both joining from their computers via web cam. Hi guys.

LORIE BYRD, POLIPUNDIT.COM: Hi.

ERICK WOODS-ERICKSON, REDSTATE.ORG: Hi.

SCHECHNER: Hi Eric. It's Jacki. Just wanted to ask you first, you said when you got off this call -- first of all, you've been very anti this nomination, very anti Miers. You got off this call. You said you were disappointed. Was there anything that you could have heard that would have changed your mind? What would you liked to have heard?

ERICSSON: I would have liked to have heard documentation of her paper trail. It seems that if, from the conference call, if they kept saying she has the judicial philosophy and character to be an unchanging conservative, over and over and over, we would believe that and I would like to believe that, but I have yet to see anything in a paper trail that would actually show that.

TATTON: Lorie, now you seem more inclined to give this nominee a chance. Would you describe yourself as pro-Miers? Are there conservative bloggers out there that are pro-Miers?

BYRD: I'm not. I consider myself undecided. I'm withholding judgment. I want to hear from Ms. Miers herself and there are some bloggers out there that are pro-Miers, but there are not very many.

TATTON: (INAUDIBLE) with Erick. You -- Lorie seems to say the hearings are the way to go. We want to hear -- you don't even want to hear what she has to say. You don't think she should even get to the hearing stage?

ERICKSON: We have to get that far. We'd certainly like to hear what she has to say, but remember, we haven't had a substantive hearing in the Senate for a Supreme Court nominee since Robert Bork in the '80s. Everyone after that we've known how they viewed life and how they viewed the judiciary when we went into the hearings. Even John Roberts, we've learned nothing new from the hearing.

SCHECHNER: I have one last big question for both of you real quickly. You know, we talk about this being the first nominee of the Internet age and we were gearing up at the beginning of the summer before Roberts was announced for a big huge fight. We thought it was going to be the liberal bloggers and the conservative bloggers duking it out. Abbi and I were prepared. Everyone was prepared. Roberts skated by, we didn't get that. Now with Miers we're seeing the liberals sit back and watch you guys fight amongst yourselves. Are you surprised that this is what's going on? Erick, you can start.

ERICKSON: Well, I kind of am surprised. I think I'm surprised that the White House didn't do as good a job as they could have done in both getting her and reassuring the base before it got to the announcement.

SCHECHNER: And Lori, how about you?

BYRD: Yes. I'm very surprised. I've never seen a reaction like this to any other story we've done, especially among conservatives, rather than being conservative versus liberal. I was surprised but I think the reason it was so unexpected is because this nominee was very unexpected. It was a choice that not many saw coming and I think that's why so many have been caught off guard and have been surprised by the reaction.

VELSHI: Erick and Lorie, our bloggers and Abbi and Jacki, our Internet reporters. I feel like we're in the 1400s here in the studio because we just have a regular people with question for you guys. We don't have -- we can't sort of message it to you, but if you don't mind, we'll ask our audience for the question. Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: I'm Anthony. I'm from New York, New York. I have a more general question about blogging. How do you think blogs have changed how people get their news and is it safe to promote doing so, considering that bloggers aren't held responsible for accountability?

SCHECHNER: A lot of times these are experts in their field and they want you to believe in them. So they will check themselves and they will check each other.

TATTON: I want to throw this to two bloggers out there. We're not bloggers. We're just reporting on what you guys are doing. Erick and Lorie, you're being accused of not being held accountable. How would you answer that?

ERICKSON: Well, Anthony, I think that bloggers actually are held accountable, that it's the ultimate free market system. If we are consistently wrong or consistently lie or consistently screw up, then no one's going to listen to us anymore. No one's going to read us any more and there will be no point. I think we hold each other accountable and one of the benefits that blogging has over the regular media is that we can link to the things that form our opinions, so that other people can go to exactly what we've seen and also see whether we're right or whether our opinion is based on something sound.

BYRD: That's right and one other point I would make is, with the blog, also whenever we do find out we've made a mistake, we can correct that immediately. We can update the story that we've posted and we can get those, either the corrected information or whenever new news breaks in a story, we can put that up immediately.

VELSHI: Lorie and Erick, thanks so much for being with us. Abbi and Jacki, thanks also for telling us not only about the story, but about the way that process works and how the blogs make sense to the rest of us. Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner, our Internet reporters.

The other story this week online, on screen, a violent struggle in New Orleans and accusations of police brutality. CNN's Dan Simon is back on that story after this.

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VELSHI: We are on the story. We'll be carrying images around with us for a while of hurricane Katrina and the aftermath and we have another view of the streets of New Orleans, a violent struggle between a 64-year old man and the police. CNN correspondent Dan Simon has been covering that story and he's got a look at his notebook now.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anyone who saw this tape from the very beginning knew that this was going to be an explosive story. Bottom line, if there's no tape, there's no story. Of course you want to show this tape and you want to capture the drama of the event, but you want to hear all sides of the story. You want to hear from the victim.

ROBERT DAVIS: I haven't drunk. I don't drink.

SIMON: You also want to hear from the police officers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even though this looks damaging, these officers and the other officers on the scene deserve due process. They deserve to be investigated.

SIMON: We heard from the lawyer. He says that stress did not play a role in what occurred. They're fighting that. Basically they followed proper police procedure. There are so many things that that tape doesn't show. It doesn't show you his interaction with the officers. So you're left with this sort of hazy picture. What happened before the tape (INAUDIBLE)?

The leadership of this community did a good job in sort of quelling fears or questions that people might have towards this police department. They came out right away and condemned what they saw on that tape. They suspended those officers.

VELSHI: Dan Simon in New Orleans. Dan, we have a question from the audience. Your name sir, where you're from.

QUESTION: I'm Tim from Alexandria, Virginia and I want to ask how hard is it for you as a reporter to cover this instance of police brutality in New Orleans and how long do you think it will be before the New Orleans police department to like, take over the responsibilities of law and order?

VELSHI: Excellent question. Dan.

SIMON: Yeah, I'll answer the second part of your question first. How long will it take before they restore law and order? I think the answer is, they already have and that's because so many officers from all over the country are here in New Orleans, assisting the New Orleans police department. And so they've really done a good job in terms of restoring order in the streets and as for what happened in terms of how hard it is to cover, a lot of people have asked me that. And I'll answer it this way.

The principles of covering a story don't change and that's if you're in New Orleans, New York or New Delhi. You want to get all sides of the story, but then you also want to realize that people are spinning you. I've heard the defense lawyer say that when you examine that tape, that the officers are not hitting him in the back of the head. Well, I think we've all seen that tape and it looks like the officers are hitting that man in the back of the head. So you want to call them on that.

At the same time, you hear the other side. You hear Mr. Davis' lawyer, the man who was beaten by those police officers saying that Mr. Davis wasn't putting up a fight and I think we've seen that tape of course and it appears to me that there is a struggle there. So you want to be aware of those things.

McINTYRE: So Dan, when you're covering a story like this, are you trying to figure out who's right or are you just trying to find as many facts as you can and let somebody else make that judgment?

SIMON: Well, I think what you want to do is you want to point out what's on that tape. You want to point out all the little nuances of what's said on the tape and then you want people to react to what they see on that tape and so ultimately it's going to go before a court of law and it will be up to a judge to determine who's telling the truth. So, of course, the role of any journalist is to uncover the truth, but in this particular instance, there are a couple of interesting dynamics occurring here and like I said, ultimately it will go to a judge.

MALVEAUX: Dan, the first segment when we first saw that tape and many people were surprised. They were shocked by what they saw and then there was a more extended version of it. We got to see a little bit fuller picture. What was the difference? Did you learn more from that extended version of the tape? Did it change your mind in any way, how you covered the story or how you viewed either side?

SIMON: It did insofar that at one point in the tape, you actually hear Mr. Davis, if you allow me to turn over, I will. And what that tells you is, he was ready to give up and the officers never game him that opportunity if you watch that tape. At one point, he's fully restrained. He's down on the ground and you actually see an officer sort of kick him, it looks like, in the head. So from that point of view, it doesn't look good for the officers, but once again, you got to be careful not to condemn them. They'll have their opportunity to do that in court.

VELSHI: Dan Simon, great job down there, thanks so much. We will continue to watch you on the story. From New Orleans, we're back in Washington and a debate over a Pentagon television channel, whether it's news or propaganda. CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre is back on that story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: We are on the story. An official Pentagon television channel is now going public, available to cable customers in the Washington suburbs and that's kicked off a debate, whether it's legal, whether it's news, whether it's peddling the administration line. CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre was on this story. Check out his notebook.

McINTYRE: The Pentagon channel started as an in house feed so people at the Pentagon could see briefings and maybe see some of the military news shows. I mean I can call it up here on my screen in the Pentagon, but now, it's being picked up by cable stations around the country. People are increasingly going to come across the Pentagon channel if they're just flipping through their cable line up. And the question is, do they really know what they're seeing?

Is there a real danger in the Pentagon channel providing an official version of information. We wanted to take a look at it and talk to some of the journalists about how they do their job.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No one ever tells me do not write this. Take this slant.

McINTYRE: The secretary of defense for instance stands up and says he thinks there's too many negative stories about what's going on in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: If you look at the front of any, almost any newspaper, any television story, the pattern tends to be that it's a negative story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

McINTYRE: Don't you think the reporters at the Pentagon channel pick up on that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We definitely try to put out the good news stories, because there are so many.

McINTYRE: The question is, as long as people know what the source is, is there really a problem?

VELSHI: Jamie McIntyre, our Pentagon correspondent. We have a potential subscriber to the new Pentagon television channel. What's your name and where are you from?

QUESTION: Hi, I'm Greg from Indianapolis, Indiana and my question is, how does the Pentagon channel help connect the American people to the U.S. defense system?

McINTYRE: Well, it's interesting because the Pentagon channel supposedly is just giving news and information to the U.S. military, members of the Department of Defense, but they give it away for free and it gets picked up on more and more stations and they have news programs. They have things like what's really going on in Guantanamo. And as long as you know that, it's coming from the U.S. government, it's U.S. government official view, maybe it's not that much different than what you see on a Web site or something. But increasingly, it looks like news and there's an old, a 1948 law that prohibits the U.S. government from propagandizing its own citizens. And the question is, this doesn't the letter of that law, but does it kind of violate the spirit? And that's what we're kind of looking at in this story.

VELSHI: What do you think? I mean this is kind of interesting, but you both work at places where you gather information from the government directly and then you have to somewhere make sense of that and pass it on.

McINTYRE: Well, one of the things that you might want to talk about, one of the things that the question is, you're seeing news on the Pentagon channel from U.S. military reporters in uniform. And if they are having to give the news that goes along with the Bush administration view of the world, that might be a question and the interesting thing is the person who's -- one of the person in charge in the Pentagon channel, Allison Barber (ph), thrust into the news, just two days after we did this story. She was seen giving some direction to some troops about how they would interact with the president.

MALVEAUX: And of course, I mean the thing about this story that was so explosive, it really wasn't new in the fact that a lot of the president's events are stage. We know that they are practiced. We know that in fact they're hand picked, the audiences. But you know, the White House says this is a spontaneous kind of question and answer, back and forth with the president. But we were actually able to see, they pulled back the curtain. We're able to see a satellite feed of this full blown dress rehearsal with Allison Barber, who was basically asking the questions they thought the president would ask. The responses, coaching them back and forth (INAUDIBLE) within the hour, you see the video conference happens with the president. There was a very awkward exchange. You could tell that there was something that was not right about it.

McINTYRE: And again, Allison Barber was involved in that. She also oversees the Pentagon channel and anybody who knows it before a broadcast, all our audience here (ph) before we did things, we told them what was going to happen, how things were going to go. But we're not getting the questions ahead of time and we're not -- and in this case, there were a lot of people in the Pentagon, a lot of military people who were incensed that they thought the military people who were in a position where they have to follow orders, might have been pressured, maybe not directly, but under some pressure to ask things in a certain way and that really, we sense a lot of outrage walking around the Pentagon from people about that.

VELSHI: OK, you got to look behind that curtain when we saw Allison Barber, but let's pull this curtain back a little bit. We know even in our industry, this is a spontaneous conversation, but we do know sometimes, if one of us is anchoring the show and the other one's appearing, there might be a little conversation about what do you want to talk about after you've finished your report. Where does that line exist? Where is it OK to know in advance what you're going to be asked and where does it compromise someone?

MALVEAUX: You bring up a really good point, because of course, everybody wants to look their best and the White House is preparing. They're preparing as well and one of the key things that the president and the White House are in charge of is essentially managing the news. They want to manage the news as best as possible and that's about managing events and sometimes that is about how you set up, how well you set it up, the fact that the satellite feed, I don't know who's going to pay for that, but you know, the fact that we all saw the rehearsal.

McINTYRE: And again, is putting a military person in a position where they have to give the news or give a version of events that fits with what the White House wants to hear and as long as people realize that when they're watching the Pentagon channel, that's what they're getting, then the consumer's informed.

VELSHI: They got more press than they counted on. This is playing very big on the Internet. Jacki Schechner is with us again, our Internet reporter. Jacki, this was something that the blogs kind of sunk their teeth into.

SCHECHNER: Oh, absolutely. Well, as much as bloggers are the voice of the people, that's exactly what we saw. We saw it from a lot of different angles. From the liberals we saw a lot of anti-Bush administration. How could they do this? This was staged. We'd like to actually see an honest exchange for once. Why can't we get some real questions, some real answers?

On the other side, we saw things like this. What do you mean by staged? And this is what Suzanne was talking about and you were talking about Ali, is about the pre-production that goes on behind the scenes with really any major media interview. The other thing that we're seeing and this speaks to the larger issue of credibility and that's what's coming out and Suzanne could probably speak to that, is that the press was told that this was going to be unscripted and that's really what it boils down to.

VELSHI: All right, Jacki, thank you so much. If you liked unscripted and unstaged, stick with ON THE STORY. We're coming back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Let's take a quick look ahead on the story. Suzanne, if you know, what are you working on next week?

MALVEAUX: I pretty much know. It's going to be Harriet Miers. Is she going to basically fall or is she going to survive and the CIA leak investigation. Karl Rove as well as Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of the vice president, are they going to be indicted?

VELSHI: What are you doing?

McINTYRE: OK. Iraqi referendum, huge, whether U.S. troops can come home, also Rumsfeld in China next week. And you?

VELSHI: I'm going back to New York and hoping that my apartment's dry after all the rain. I'll be covering whatever comes up on business news. Good to see you guys. Thank you all for being here. Thanks to my colleagues and our audience here in the George Washington University and thank you for watching ON THE STORY. We're back each week, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon.

Straight ahead, a check on what's making news right now.

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