Norman Pearlstine Editor-in-Chief, Time Inc. (United States) Alain Genestar Editor-in-Chief, Paris Match (France) Claudio Gurmindo Deputy Editor, Noticias (Argentina)

Andreas Petzold Editor-in-Chief, Stern (Germany) Mark Whitaker Editor, Newsweek (United States)

World Magazine Congress of the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP)
May 23, 2005
New York, NY

(excerpted transcript)

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Good morning to all of you. The idea that Don Logan could get away without any questions from this group astounds me, but, nonetheless, we're happy to get started with our panel.

The question that we were asked to talk about was keeping magazines relevant in a 24/7 age, but, as a group of editors, we elected to change the topic a bit to try to make it more relevant to what many of us have been living through over the last few weeks and months.

And, so we're going to begin our discussion by speaking a bit about the relationship between the pressure and the government, particularly in the area of confidential sources. It's a subject that I've been quite obsessed with over the last several months with regard to a special prosecutor and grand jury's efforts to get one of our reporters, Mark Cooper, to name the White House source that was responsible for the Robert Novak story and our own story on Valerie Plume and the CIA. My colleague and friend Mark Whitaker at Newsweek has been dealing with a different sourcing issue over the last couple weeks and I'm sure he will want to speak a bit about that and have some questions as well.

But, as it turns out, when we talk among ourselves, that -- all of us really have had different issues with the relationship between magazines and government, between the press and the need to keep sources confidential and the pressures on the press from various sources. And so I would like to ask that Alain Genestar, the editor of Paris Match begin with a brief statement about what's going on in France right now and then we can pick up from there. Alain?

ALAIN GENESTAR: Excuse me if I read my text, but I speak English not very fluent, so it's better for me to read and I think for you.

I think it's a fair game for any political and corporate institution to try to exert pressure on the medium. Control is in the nature of this institution. But every media must categorically refute to surrender to pressure. Freedom is in our nature.

Once it has been said we are left with hundred of scenario. Where you're from, the pressure is subtle and indirect.

As far as Paris Match is concerned, the political powers know that they cannot have any direct influence on us. Our (garbled) is the information. Actually, the only person we feel accountable for is the reader. The important is to make it widely and clearly known.

But power doesn't give up. It tries to catch us in order to weaken us. That is why we must be 100% reliable and accurate when dealing with political stories.

I will take this opportunity to say a word on Newsweek, who just had a rough week. I know that Newsweek is an exemplary news organization by its professional rigor. I wanted to give Mark Whitaker our support and our solidarity.

In order to exercise pressure on Paris Match, since it's not working with me or with the journalists, sometimes the politician attempted go over our heads. In France, every time a new administration comes to power, inevitably, it tries to interfere in a friendly but twisted way on our owner. First of every month, we always seeing in terms of ... using its leverage on the shoulder is full of promises. Well, it doesn't work either.

Paris Match belongs to the Hachette Filipacchi Group. Our president, Gerard Marc Morel (unsure spelling) is the keeper of independence. Wherever places are called to a president, it can be the chief of state or an influential cabinet member, Gerard will answer firmly and elegantly that his magazines are free and that he never interferes with their editorial content.

Hachette Filipacchi belongs to Lagardère Group, a large conglomerate that works on several industrial projects with the French government and relies partly on state subsidies in order for (garbled) and (garbled). The chairman of Lagardère group, Arnaud Lagardère, as his father, Jean-Luc, did before him, gives the same answer as Gerard Marc Morel or me, "Our magazine are free."

So, regularly, the president of the Republic and the government are mad at us. But we make up each time the power needs us to communicate and to campaign. So, if we believe in the principle that politicians need magazine more than magazine need politician, we don't have any problem.

What protect us from any government interference are, of course, our freedoms. It's also our professional rigor and, in the end, it is our clout. I think one shall never forget that what make us strong in front of any power are our readers who also happen to be workers. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Thank you very much. I wonder if I might pick up on your statement about the principle that politicians need magazines more than magazines need politicians and ask Mark if that has been his experience over the last week. Maybe talking a little bit about what it's like to, if you will, deal directly with the White House on a day-to-day basis and, more specifically, whether it ever crossed the mind of you and your -- the minds of you and your top editors that one response might be to actually name the source who provided the information to your reporters.

MARK WHITAKER: Well, first of all, I want to thank Alain for the words of support. It has been one of those weeks that we don't necessarily want to repeat any time or ever again.

But I think we have learned some important lessons, mostly about the influence that a magazine like Newsweek can have around the world. I mean, the idea that just a few words in a ten-sentence item could have had, first of all, the kind of impact it had in the region and then could have created the kind of controversy it did here in the United States, I think, has been a sobering reminder to us of the responsibility that we have and the responsibility, most of all, as Alain said, to our readers to get things right, as we have now pledged to do and strengthening some of our standards on sourcing. But also the responsibility going forward to continue to report on all the important issues that we've always tried to do.

At this point, I'm not sure I necessarily want to go back over all the details of this story. But the fact is that our source for the original story that we ran was inside the government. And, in fact, if you look at the original item, it was about what we thought was an attempt by the military to take the charges of abuses that had surfaced in an FBI investigation at Guantanamo seriously and to do its own investigation.

And we thought that -- we had a high-level source within the government that we had dealt with before who we believed to be credible, who we believed to be in a position to have seen the documents that he was describing to us. And we also, in the process of our reporting, went back, once we had this information, and ran it by, first of all, a spokesman for the Southern Command which was conducting the investigation and also another Pentagon official in Washington. And, in the second case, we actually -- and this is not something we routinely do, but we actually sent the entire item to that official.

So, obviously, we understand that -- so, I guess the point that I'm making is that this was not an outside investigation. This was -- all our information on the original item was coming from within the government, both the story and then the check on the story or what we thought was the check on the story, in terms of running it by a Pentagon official.

So we understand that, even though our role, as Alain said, is to report for our readers to be independent, we also realize that we have to deal with the government and we were trying to do that in a responsible way.

I think that, if we take the need for confidential sources seriously and I think we do and Rick Smith, who's our chairman at Newsweek, has a letter to our readers in the magazine this week in which he talks about the strength and standards that we're going to implement in the wake of this, but also the fact that, occasionally, you do need anonymous, confidential sources. And I know, Norm, you are defending Matt Cooper on this front.

We have to take the pledge of confidentiality seriously. So even in you're in a crisis and people are coming after you and attacking you, it doesn't mean that, all of a sudden -- and even if you think that, perhaps your source got something wrong, that that gives you license to then expose the identity of the source. We are protecting the identity at this point not only of the original source who may have gotten something wrong and caused some of our problems in the last week, but we're protecting other sources as well. The Pentagon officials who commented on the story or at least who we showed the story, we're not saying who they are either, because we deal with them on a confidential basis.

So I think that the idea that, because a story turns out to be wrong or you get into hot water as a result of it, all of a sudden, you shouldn't take the pledge of confidentiality seriously. I just don't think -- I just don't think we -- you can be in that position.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Thank you, Mark. Claudio Gurmindo is the deputy editor of Noticias from Buenos Aires. Is confidentiality of sources an issue for you and what kind of government pressures do you feel these days in Argentina?

CLAUDIO GURMINDO: The relationship between Noticias and present government has never been an easy one. No president wants his work to be criticized or controlled by anybody. Nowadays, Noticias is the only printed stuff which always has another eyes [?] because Noticias does not depend on government advertising.

The national government has never and does not keep any kind of censorship as we traditionally know it, but keeps the right to punish or reward the medium, retaining or giving official advertising. As Noticias has always been critical, cannot have government advertising, what is good advantage over the competitors, because readers now that we never hide any piece of information in order not to lose the official sponsorship.

As an effect of the 2001 crisis in Argentina, most of the media was just about to collapse and, even today, their situation is difficult. And the government takes advantage of this and puts pressure on the media and control the information supplying money through official advertising. That's the way that the government in Argentina pressure our magazine, for example.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Andreas Petzold is editor-in-chief of Stern from Germany and I wonder if, particularly in the wake of some of the recent developments in German politics, whether you feel any special pressures or whether you find issues of sourcing important for you to deal with every day.

ANDREAS PETZOLD: Norm, before I come to this, please let me address briefly some remarks to this Newsweek issue also.

I think it's kind of ridiculous that -- for it to say that the misleading foreign policy in the U.S. is -- the consequences of the foreign policies in the U.S. is blaming all on the shoulders of Newsweek. When I flew in the day before yesterday, I read the statement of Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. He pushes Newsweek to repair the "lasting damage," quote. His suggestion to Newsweek was to point out the policies and the practices of the United States military. I think that's, to a great extent, arrogant.

I think -- I mean, it's ridiculous. It's like as if Newsweek turns out to become the corporate magazine of the Pentagon. I bet, in Germany, a quote like this would have led to the downfall of the government spokesman; I'm sure about that, you know. And, from my perspective, it's another try, an embarrassing, an (garbled) attempt to muzzle the press.

And, yes, it is a tragedy and it is horrific that so many people died or have been injured in the wake of this article, this news item. But, firstly, this was exploited by opposition groups in the Middle East in order to start this continuous riot. And, after all, it was the occasion but not the reason.

I don't want to go further on that, because I'm a guest in the country and I don't want to be sued by libel here. [APPLAUSE]

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: So one thing that I thought, perhaps, you will find is a recurring theme throughout this two-day conference is the role of the internet and its implications for magazines. And, perhaps, Mark, if I could come back to you. One of the things that seemed to me different about what you've had to go through the last couple weeks with, say, issues we had to deal with, say, with Tailwind back in '98 or I've had to deal with in prior lives is the role of the bloggers and of the net in terms of influencing opinion, spreading stories quickly and how you, as an editor, have had to react to it and deal with it.

MARK WHITAKER: Well, first of all, I just want to briefly respond to what Andreas said. Obviously, we have no intention of becoming the spokespeople for the government or for Scott McClellan. Our obligation is to readers, our obligation to be accurate, but also to be independent. And we do know, from our own reporting, that there's a feeling within the administration that McClellan went a little bit too far there and it didn't take us to have to stand up and say that he was out of line. As Terry Moran, the reporter from ABC News in the press briefing, when he said it, challenging him and said, "Who made you the editor of Newsweek?" So I think that's been pointed out and been recognized that they went a little bit too far there.

We found -- the interesting thing about this experience was that we were caught up in a number of force fields here. The first one, obviously, was what's going on out in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the way, as Andreas said, that our reporting was used by radical forces there to kind of stir up unrest.

But, then, once the controversy became about the accuracy of our reporting, we were caught in two force fields here in America. One is the ideological force field, the war of culture, if you will. The forces on the one side who basically think that the press shouldn't be reporting in a time of war anything that makes American -- the American military look bad or that might cause any harm to them. On the other side, on the left, the forces that want to believe anything, any negative charge. I think David Brooks in The New York Times had a good op-Ed piece about that.

The third force field, just to go to your question, Norm, was the force field -- the sort of war between mainstream media or what some people would consider old media and new media and particularly in the form of the blogs. And I think that there is a real interest among the bloggers in jumping on anything that makes -- in any way calls into question not only the accuracy but the relevance and the future of mainstream media.

On the other hand, the interesting thing about the blogs is that they feed on the mainstream media. I mean, if we didn't exist, the blogs would have nothing or virtually nothing to write about.

The other thing about the blogs -- and I think that -- you know, I'm all in favor of them. My feeling is the more the merrier in terms of information. Is that, at least so far, they're not doing the kind of reporting that Newsweek does, that Time magazine does, that really only about a dozen or so major national news organizations do in America. Yes, occasionally, they unearth some documents, but mostly they're just offering opinion and the kind of reporting that involves dealing with confidential sources and really explosive information is something that the bloggers really, for the most part, haven't been able to do yet.

The other thing I'll say about the blogs is that, just in terms -- you know, there's a theory out there among the bloggers in terms of accuracy that they don't really have an obligation to be all that accurate because they just put things out there very quickly and, if they're wrong, another blogger will come along and correct it. Well, I think that is dangerous, because I think one of the things that we've learned here is that (just to change the old saying a little bit) a mistake can make its way halfway around the world before your correction gets its boots on, so I worry a little bit about this idea.

I mean, I think that, in the mainstream media, we're taking a hard look (not just at Newsweek, but at a lot of organizations) at our standards for accuracy. In the blogosphere, I don't think there are real standards for accuracy right now.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: With that in mind, it seems as though all of us on the panel have agreed or accepted the notion that the ability to protect confidential sources is a part of what we need to do our jobs. But, if you will, with the ability of the internet to make anyone a reporter, anyone an editor, does that ability to protect confidential sources extend to everyone who writes on the internet as well or do you think that there's some defining standard that, if you will, defines a difference between mainstream media and what we're seeing on the net at this point? Would you extend the ability to keep sources confidential to anyone who chooses to post on the net?

MARK WHITAKER: Do you want me to keep going or do you want somebody else to have a shot at it?

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: I'd be happy to ask anyone here who'd like to pick that up.

ANDREAS PETZOLD: I mean, we have to define who's a journalist and who's not, if we talk about internet and if we talk about journalism and magazines. I think, as long as you do research, as long as you write, as long as it does not only drag and drop some news agencies into the internet, then you are, of course, a journalist. And it’s not only about protecting a confidential source.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: We in the United States have shield laws in many of our states. There are some thirty states where laws have been adopted that provide protection for journalists who want to keep their sources confidential and, in nineteen more states, there is a common-law protection that has been well established.

Interestingly, in the State of Alabama and I don't blame Don Logan for this, although, sometimes I actually do. In the State of Alabama, newspapers and television are protected by shield law but magazines are not. I leave it to you to try to divine, as we have, why the Alabama legislature has made that distinction.

But it does seem that, increasingly, a question will be -- will arise as to whether the protections that we seek for established print publications won't really extend to anyone. And I guess, if you go back at least to the beginnings of this country, the idea of the First Amendment was really to protect myriad voices not just those of powerful publications. And so by that -- that, sort of in my mind, makes me think that really, in fact, bloggers as well should be afforded the same Constitutional protection when it comes to confidential sources. But I'd be curious how you might feel about that, Alain.

ALAIN GENESTAR: I think now the problem is to check out the authenticity of the news and of the photo. The question we're facing today is not to determine who will be the faster but who will be the first to guarantee the accuracy of the news and of the photo.

We will not win the speed race, because we are journalists, which means professional that don't publish just any news but check out the veracity of the news in the first place. The verification in Paris Match of the news, the rigor, the veracity is in our genes. When we publish a story in our print edition or when we put it online, it takes time to write good and comprehensive article. The time is our best ally.

The works ... peer journalists today are the blogs, but these blogs are capable of the best and the worst. They help in converse ... reveals error and, at the same time, they also carry rumors. It is an environment where the reporting and the verification of the facts tend to occur afterwards in the response of fellow bloggers. Yet the mass public demands who wants to know everything. This is our task to answer the public's demands by our own professional demand and ethics and I think, in this domain, we are doing our best to lead the pack.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Thank you, Alain. Claudio, can you talk a little bit about the role of the internet in Argentina? Is it becoming ubiquitous enough that it is a factor in journalism, in communication, and, if so, does the magazine industry consider the internet a friend to be embraced and to become part of your offerings or do you see it as a competitive factor that you have to respond to?

CLAUDIO GURMINDO: Internet in Argentina is not to -- is not a problem for the journalism, because -- yet, maybe in the future, we'll -- we are thinking about that, in the future, will be -- have a problem. But now, the internet has no advertising and the notice by internet has no compete with the magazines, because the work in -- of the journalism -- journalists, excuse me, in magazines is totally different.

We work in (garbled) in journalism and just the stuff which has the most interest of the reader are respecting. Electronic media get to satisfy the urgent needs only. But I think we've got to help the reader think and that's -- the readers have -- can't find that on the internet. And while all that is going on, we must help them to make the point of view, but we can influence the point of view.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Andreas, I wonder if you could speak from the German experience. When Don Logan was up here, he was talking about, if you will, the -- one of the things that made magazines relevant was its portability and, by implication also, the attractiveness of covers as a way of distinguishing magazines from other products and so forth. You have a quite lively internet in Germany. A number of publications such as Bild, for example, have made it an important part of -- an extension, if you will, of its newspaper.

How do you see the net operating and do you see it as something to be embraced or do you work to try to continue to distinguish yourself from it?

ANDREAS PETZOLD: Well, the strategy must be to embrace the internet not be crushed by it, you know? So I think it's very important that your brand carries the same prestige in the internet as in the print version. So in order to be a reliable source, a magazine brand as well as the brand on the internet has to be sort of a lighthouse in the media landscape. Because, of course, people are dipping in various sources of information nowadays, but it makes it different if you log into Stern magazine or Time or Newsweek, rather than in any sources which don't have famous names, no famous brands, you know?

So I would take advantage of the internet. I mean, reporters are coming across with a story which has to be published quickly because otherwise it would be spoiled after the deadline. We can bring it out immediately. And we can easily publish the whole bunch of material which you cannot -- which you are not able to print in your magazine. So, for us, it's a perfect way of supplying -- adding and relating material to what we are printing.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Mark, Newsweek has a quite active internet program with MSNBC. Could you talk a bit about how you decide what you put on the net when? Whether you see any model where revenues might be derived from anything besides advertising? Is there ever a way where magazine content is created that a customer might actually be willing to pay for?

MARK WHITAKER: Well, you know, I -- we're very excited about the internet in two areas. One, obviously, is journalism. We have a lot of really terrific reporters who are constantly finding out new things and reaching the standards of publication in midweek days before we publish. And it has given us a way, over the last five years or so, to get stories out there that, in the past, if we had to wait 'til the end of the week until we publish, either might have broken elsewhere or might not be as timely. It also gives you a way to occasionally correct things as well, as newspapers have always done, as quickly as possible.

The other area, I think, that is very exciting, is just what -- how the internet allows us to interact with our readers and with our audience. I call it the fourth dimension. At Newsweek, we've always tried to be, at least in the news magazine world, in the forefront of identifying our writers, putting their bylines on stories, allowing them to have an identity within the magazine. Well, this takes that to a whole new level, where our readers and others can come and actually interact and talk to our writers. And I think that that, in an age where I think that people are looking for a more personal connection -- I mean, that's always been one of the great things about magazines, is the personal connection that people feel with it. And I think it allows all of us to enhance that.

You know, as to the business model, I think that that is -- I think what we've learned over the last ten years is that is not for us to determine. We kind of thought, going into this, that somehow you wouldn't be able to make a lot of money in advertising, but you could charge for content on the web. Now what -- at least, right now, what people are discovering is that it's hard to charge for content on the web, but, all of a sudden, advertisers are getting a lot more excited.

I think, ultimately, the customer is king and the customer is going to decide what they're willing to pay for or not and I think, as an industry, we have to be agile and we have to be responding to that and looking for opportunities to respond to that. But I don't think we can stand here and say, "This is what consumers are willing to pay for this and this isn't," because we don't know and I think we just have to keep responding to their needs and their desires, as I think we always have tried to do.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: I guess my own feeling is that, in many ways, newspapers are far more vulnerable to the net than magazines are, but that both of us have to pay an awful lot of attention to it. Newspapers, certainly for most of their history, have been perceived as timely publications of record and classified advertising has been a very important part of their business model, in ways that it has not been for magazines. We, on the other hand, have not been so timely, but have relied heavily on synthesis and analysis.

What we have in common is that, basically, these are supply-driven businesses where we have, as editors, if you will, decided what we think is relevant, important content and then served it up to an audience that has been willing to buy it. And what the internet is really about is a demand-driven business where the customers are telling us what they are interested in.

And I don't think that we can necessarily be, in any way, publications of record, but I think it does argue for more personality in our magazines, perhaps for more points of view, certainly for columnists that draw the attention of readers and look forward to it, to seeing publications.

I think an interesting question for us is, if we are putting the full text of our magazines online and not charging for it, whether we don't, at some level, cannibalize the magazine itself and take away from some of its relevance. If I'm correct, you were able to talk, in a story in the Wall Street Journal this morning, about what was already online in Time magazine before the magazine actually got to its readers and that cuts both ways. It's probably a good thing for us on one hand. On the other hand, if it's already -- if you're already able to read it elsewhere, does that take away from the magazine itself.

We've got about ten minutes left for questions from the audience and I'm hoping that, with a panel as diverse as this one and with some of the points that we've raised, we could get some questions from you. Yes, sir, and could you please identify yourself and your organization?

Q: ... [OFF-MIKE] Yeah, from Dragon Source of China. And my question is for the Newsweek editor, Mark. The press, the magazine and the government is real -- a very sensitive issue also in China. And I'm actually very surprised to see that -- the American government reaction to the Newsweek report. And here it's -- it's very hard to draw the line of the freedom of expression and also the -- like freedom of speech and there's social responsibility and also the accuracy of your reports.

And how -- like is this -- how do you draw this line between the -- you mentioned about responsibility, this social responsibility and the professional responsibility. By social responsibility, I mean, the -- your reports may be factors, influence the society, the different groups. By professional responsibility, I mean the accuracy of your information. Thank you.

MARK WHITAKER: Yeah, that's a very good question. I want to say, parenthetically, that one of the things I regret in all of this is that this little story that we did that created this huge furor was in an issue on China and China's future that we actually were very proud of and I still think holds up very well.

A lot of people have been asking that and I think some of our critics in the last week have been making the argument that this is not the kind of thing that any major news organization should be reporting at all because of the potential impact that it might have.

First of all, let me say that I will admit that we didn't anticipate the impact it would have. The fact is that other news organizations had reported allegation of Koran abuse and riots had not broken out, major publications, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. And the Pentagon had a chance to see our story and, not only before publication but after publication, they didn't come back and say, "You know, this is going to be highly inflammatory. So I don't think anybody really saw the effect it would have.

It got picked up by these antigovernment forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, used for their purposes. We were, in some senses, sort of the wrong place at the wrong time in terms of the effect that it had.

I think it is something -- I think the impact of your reporting in terms of social responsibility and not just accuracy, I think is something that editors need to be mindful of, but I don't think that it is our job (in fact, I would argue it's the opposite of our job) to suppress information just because it could have a negative effect. I mean, the fact is we often, by exposing some things that are uncomfortable for people in the government and people in power, we lead then -- press exposure then leads to reforms and changes that are positive for those institutions.

So I think that something socially beneficial often comes out of reporting that, at least, initially looks embarrassing for those institutions. So that shouldn't necessarily be a crusade that we're on; our job should be just to do good journalism. But I think that we should be aware that, sometimes, there's a social good that comes out of the tough, independent reporting that we do.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Yes? Other questions?

Q: My name is (garbled); I'm a publisher from Brazil. I would like to talk about the other side of internet versus magazines. That is, I have a question for you folks. Is it still possible for the publisher, for an editor to write an article without relying on the internet? More specifically, Google. Would like to know what's the importance of the research for the magazines through internet?

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Andreas, would you like to take that?

ANDREAS PETZOLD: Well, of course -- does it work? Yeah. Of course, the internet, especially Google, websites like that, are gaining importance in terms of the research, but they do not replace it, yeah? If you rely only on the internet research, you're going to be lost for sure. So you need your own staff, you need your own researchers who do their own researches; otherwise, we can shut down our business, I'm sure.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Would other of our other panelists like to respond to the question of the internet for research purposes?

Well, why you're debating whether either one of you would -- I'd like to make a couple quick responses of my own. I think it's obviously a tool that is important and that can be very beneficial, but I think, not unlike spell checks, it can be very dangerous. In fact, I often myself thinking that, if I would cancel out my spell check, it would probably make for much more readable notes, because, quite often, I let words get by that are words, but, nonetheless, not what I intended.

Somewhat similarly, I was trying the other day to remember whether "Neiman," as in Neiman Marcus and "Nieman," as in Nieman Foundation, were spelled the same way. And when I put Neiman Marcus into Google, I got 15,000 examples that were N-e-i about 5000 examples that were N-i-e. So, either way, I would have spelled it and I had a 50-50 chance of being right.

So I would say, certainly, these are valuable tools. It's amazing the things you can find out very quickly online, extraordinary. But I don't think that, if you will, lessens the need for care on the part of writers and editors when doing their jobs.

Anything anyone would like to add on that?

Alain?

ALAIN GENESTAR: Just repeat the question.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: The question is ways in which the internet can be used as a tool for research or an aid to preparing articles. How important is it? Are there any dangers associated with it?

ALAIN GENESTAR: [OFF-MIKE] ... but I speak French and there is person translate for me. [FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: In Paris Match, we actually look a lot at what's going on the web and we do research and all that. And, of course, these are informations that can be provided to us. They are information that can be provided to us through the internet and, of course, we're going to take some of them, but we also -- there's definitely a need to verify. I mean, Google is, obviously, a very interesting tool, but it can lie -- it can bring us to some mistakes and all that.

So we urgently need to verify that information throughout other sources and that's what we always do. We never take only information coming from the internet.

ALAIN GENESTAR: [FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: And I'd like to take, as an example, the story of the tsunami in Southern-Eastern Asia a few months ago.

ALAIN GENESTAR: [FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: During the tsunami, when the tsunami just broke, happened -- it was on a Sunday and actually Paris Match was putting out -- was putting his magazine to bed on the Tuesday, so we got information coming only from the internet at the time. We got a number of pictures that were taken by people. We get number of witness. And so there was -- I mean, at this time, there was a speed of information that was coming from them.

So -- and this is a very unique example of how the internet was used, as how the internet can be used in a very positive way, because it brings information, it brings emotion, it's very compelling...