as an example, senator mccain's uncommon friendship with mo udall comes to mind. congressman udall was a liberal icon, yet he reached out to a young republican from his state as a friend and a mentor. the two men developed a close friendship that lasted until udall's death from parkinson's disease. although udall had once been among the most powerful leaders in washington, almost none of his former colleagues came calling as he's laying ill at a veterans hospital not far from the capital. but it was senator mccain who visited them quite often. senator, you would arrive at the hospital with newspaper clips and you would sit at your friend's bedside, even when he was no longer conscious, and you would read to him. just as he reached out to you in the beginning, you reached out to him in the end with empathy and true compassion. hearing this story, it is once again so clear of the unique and unusual man we are speaking about, and what a dear friend he was to mo udall. but we must also see a man with a desire to embrace people's humanity, regardless of their politics.

. >> udall took him under his wing. was one of the most well-known members of congress. >> he came to john and said, let's work together. >> we are an important check on the power of the executive. just implore his colleagues to come together. he defended the constitutional role of congress, as envisioned by the founding fathers. john mccain: whether or not we are a member of the same party, we are not subordinates, we are the president's equal. >> he challenges us to move fast partisanship and try to do right by the people web higher dust -- have higher dust -- the people who have hired us. >> he sure is the belief that we have to get back to the basics of leadership and the basics in the constitution because it is that respect for the country that will allow us to heal the wounds of vietnam, civil rights, recent times. mitch mcconnell: he approaches every issue i asking, what is the best outcome that can be achieved. there is no one who is more honorable and deserving than john mccain. announcer: ladies and gentlemen,

jennifer now works for senator tom udall of new mexico. i'd also like to acknowledge our capacity crowd here because it is also full of noteworthys. as i mentioned we have representatives of press organizations here, including the committee to protect journthatnalists -- journalists reporters without borders, reporters committee for freedom of the press and irex. we have people that work on capitol hill and number of many basis. there are two classes of journalism student. one from american university, here in washington, and another led by former national press club president rick dunham, from beijing. your presence here says something important too. how we treat each other in washington matters far outside of washington. so i'm going to start with billy house. billy was elected by the many, many print reporters who cover capitol hill to head the standing committee of correspondents. billy probably a lot of people don't know that reporters have a standing committee on capitol hill. the press is embedded into the institution in a way that

udall: the reason i am here, senator udall got involved in this. in march, starting in march, after hearing the number, we put together a list of incidents could combine with constant fake news attacks and culminating in the media as the enemy of the people. sat down with us and said, look, if i don't stand up and speak out on behalf of the media to do its job, i won't feel good about myself as somebody who values public access, and and as a -- and as a public servant, i am not going to go through the entire list, i did it with you, -- bring it with me, it included incidents where reporters were physically manhandled, thrown out of meetings they had normally been allowed access to, that is a really concerning thing. i looked at don to tell us if it is a new thing, it is a more hostile environment. >> there have certainly been. periods of hostility, only two occasions, and the source of the leaks. they leaked treaties that had not been realeased yet. and in neither case did the reporters admit -- in fact, their newspapers doubled their salaries for

certainly your frustration that we feel in trying to explain what my senator udall is doing on hill, but was going on and how that affects our state, which is different from every other state, and every state is in the same circumstance. maybe billy can talk about the numbers, but as i started as a journalist on the hill, which was a while ago now, there were probably two newspapers her major media market, and i was covering arizona, colorado, new mexico, utah. twoe were two for denver, for albuquerque, two for phoenix. another aspect is i wanted to make sure that got brought into the conversation is the fact that we have gotten away from the regular order of doing business, which used to be you write a well, you have a hearing, you pass the bill through the committee, it goes to the floor. we used to pass appropriation bills in regular order, and each of these steps along the regular order was an opportunity to ask questions and learn information and share that information with the public. a good bit of that has gone by the wayside. we have not passed appropriations by regular order