♪♪ [ Clock ticking ] -Ow.

[ Clock ticking ] -Tonight on "Retro Report," understanding the present by revealing the past.

First... -You are fake news.

-...President Trump's war with the press may seem unique... -We're gonna find the leakers.

They're gonna pay a big price for leaking.

-...but his legal strategy is surprisingly familiar.

-The public has no right to know secret documents.

♪♪ -A new public-health risk.

-The measles now surging to its highest level in 25 years.

-It can be traced back to a fraudulent medical study that stoked parents' fears.

-We vaccinated our baby, and something happened.

-Then, the man who started free agency.

-This is Curt Flood, baseball's Bolshevik.

-There were death threats.

-And the standoff over wild horses in the West.

-This whole thing is a train wreck.

-Plus, Andy Borowitz, humorist for The New Yorker magazine.

-The great American tradition of public apologies.

-Mistakes were made here.

-Mistakes were made.

-Mistakes were made.

-I'm Celeste Headlee.

-And I'm Masud Olufani.

This is "Retro Report" on PBS.

-They'll stun the world... -...Not unusual... -More secrets exposed... -President Donald Trump has made attacking the press a hallmark of his presidency, railing against what he considers fake news and calling journalists the enemy of the people.

-These public attacks may be unprecedented, but when it comes to the press, he shares at least one thing in common with his predecessors -- the struggle to keep government secrets from leaking.

The modern battle against leaks can be traced back to a high-stakes attempt to stop them by President Richard Nixon more than four decades ago.

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing a trove of secret documents called the Pentagon Papers, exposing how president after president had misled the American people about their country's role in escalating the Vietnam War.

-The lawyers that represented The Times had already given dire warning that publication could subject them to prosecution under the Espionage Act, that they could lose their television licenses, that the publisher could go to jail, all said with a very high level of intensity.

-But The Times refused to stop publication, saying the American people had the right to know the hidden calculations behind the war.

Nixon turned to the courts to stop them.

-It was very unusual for the government to go to court to try to stop publication of anything, but the idea of the government going to court with respect to an ongoing news story was all but unknown.

-For Nixon, the case was about more than stopping a leak.

He wanted to undercut the press.

There's more at stake in this debate than one newspaper series or even one major breach of security.

Sooner or later, we can expect this issue to come before the Supreme Court, and the question there will be the role of the press in a democracy.

-The answer came quickly in a 6-3 ruling that affirmed The Times' right to publish the classified reports.

Citing the need for checks on government power, the justices said that the Nixon administration had failed to prove that the release would cause any imminent harm.

-It was very embarrassing for President Nixon to have gone to court and lost and have the Supreme Court write an opinion vindicating the press that he hated so much.

-But Nixon wasn't finished.

Using a World War I statute meant to punish spies, Nixon's Justice Department indicted Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers to The Times.

-I was tried for a violation of what is commonly described as the Espionage Act because it's usually used for espionage, but I was tried under it for a non-espionage offense.

-Unlike a spy, Ellsberg's intention was not to help a foreign government.

He wanted to reveal the truth about the Vietnam War to the American people.

-Daniel Ellsberg says he leaked the Pentagon Papers because the government lied and concealed facts about the Vietnam War.

-We won't stop the killing, but this trial will inform the American public in ways that it's never heard before of how we've been governed in the past quarter-century and what censorship and deception do to a democracy.

I'm not for espionage.

I don't know anyone who is.

And I'm not against criminalizing that.

The question is, should it be criminal to inform your fellow citizens of things that, on the face, they ought to know?

-That question was left unanswered, as the Watergate scandal enveloped the Nixon administration.

-The President said that in 1971, he formed an investigative unit inside the White House to fight what he called national-security leaks.

One of the first things the people in that unit did was to burglarize the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

-With Watergate breaking out and with the revelation of the crimes they'd taken against me, by an almost miraculous set of events, my charges were dismissed.

-No, not you.

Not you.

Your organization's terrible.

Your organization's terrible.

Let's go.

Go ahead.

[ Indistinct shouting ] Quiet.

Quiet.

Go ahead.

She's -- She's asking a question.

Don't be rude.

[ Indistinct shouting ] Don't be rude.

Don't be rude.

No, I'm not gonna give you a qu-- I am not gonna give you a question.

You are fake news.

-Almost five decades after the Pentagon Papers, the Trump administration is waging its own battle... -I think the media is the opposition party.

-...with the press.

-The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people.

-While his public attacks might be unprecedented, another part of his strategy is not -- going after those who leak to reporters.

-We're gonna find the leakers.

They're gonna pay a big price for leaking.

-But Trump didn't have to look all the way back to Nixon for a road map.

-Go ahead.

-His predecessor provided it.

-If we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences.

-Over a span of four years, the Obama administration charged eight people with violating the Espionage Act for sharing government secrets with the press -- more than all previous administrations combined.

Matthew Miller was a senior official in the Obama Justice Department.

-If you look the other way, then you only encourage other people to leak national-security secrets.

You do have to show that there are consequences for leaking information that could harm national security, and the only way to do that is to prosecute some of the individuals responsible for the most egregious leaks.

There are secrets that need to remain secret.

-Miller says that keeping secrets secret became more challenging in the digital age.

Massive leaks of classified information by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks showed how vulnerable secrets had become.

-We begin tonight with that mountain of secret wartime information exposed in the press today -- more documents than the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam.

-But in trying to control leaks, Obama moved into territory that other presidents had largely avoided.

-I'm sitting at my desk, and I get an e-mail that looks like it's from the Department of Justice.

I'm not sure what it is, and I look at Matt, and I said, "Matt, what is this?

Is this spam?"

-And I said, "It's not spam.

The government just took our phone records."

-In May of 2013, former Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman learned that the government had seized their phone records during an investigation into who leaked details of a CIA operation in Yemen.

The dragnet scooped up records from phones used by more than 100 reporters and editors.

-One thing we heard again and again from prosecutors was, "Well, of course we took the phone records for your editors and your colleagues and your bureaus and swept everybody up, 'cause that's exactly how we would investigate a gang."

Well, we're not a gang.

You know, we're a newsroom, and, you know, the right to deal drugs isn't in the Constitution, so there should be a recognition that what happens in the news-gathering process is a little different.

It felt like it was just an investigation intended to send the message "don't talk to reporters."

-Yeah.

-It had the desired effect.

-In the case of a classified leak to Fox News, the Obama Justice Department went so far as to imply that correspondent James Rosen, because of his reporting, could be charged with a crime.

-In court papers, an FBI agent said Rosen "asked, solicited, and encouraged" a source to give him sensitive information about North Korea and that he was a possible "co-conspirator" for violations of the Espionage Act.

-Not till that moment had the United States government ever characterized the behavior of a journalist as being that of a co-conspirator to a crime for asking questions about government policy.

-That the Obama/Holder Justice Department... -Rosen was never charged, and, following a media outcry, the Obama administration reined in some of the more aggressive tactics used to obtain journalists' records.

-We must enforce consequences for those who break the law.

But a free press is also essential for our democracy.

That's who we are.

And I'm troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

-While there's a necessity to protect national security, there is also an enormous need for an informed public, and so, while, you know, one can justify certain prosecutions of leakers, the risk of them is that it does provide a road map for a hostile administration to really try to bring the press down.

-Since taking office, the Trump administration has increased the number of leak investigations and aggressively prosecuted leakers.

At least five people have been indicted under the Espionage Act, including Julian Assange.

-The U.S. leveling more than a dozen new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

-But this is only one way the current president has worked to change the public narrative of his administration.

-Fake, fake, disgusting news.

[ Crowd chanting "CNN Sucks" ] And just remember -- what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening, and I'll tell you... -I think, in this day and age, the value of the unofficial story, the story that has not been sanctioned by the government -- that value is greater than it's ever been.

-Having lived through the Nixon administration, Daniel Ellsberg says it's critical that no president is given the power to dictate the truth.

-Can you really have democracy in a real sense with the government having the final voice and the total voice as to what citizens shall know about what they're doing and whether they're telling the truth and whether they're obeying the law?

I would say no.

If they have the last word, and if citizens can only know what the government tells them, it's a mockery of a democracy.

♪♪ -Every year, vaccines prevent the deaths of millions of children around the world.

In fact, the measles vaccine alone is estimated to have saved 21 million lives since the year 2000.

But despite their success, some parents are so afraid vaccines could be harmful that they are refusing to get their children immunized.

The World Health Organization has called the refusal to vaccinate a top threat to global health.

-Much of the anxiety about vaccine safety stems from misinformation.

Fear over the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, for example, can be traced to a single study -- a study so flawed, it was later retracted.

So how did we get to a place where fears can jeopardize decades of progress in public health?

-Measles, the most contagious disease in the world, spreading in hot spots around the country.

-In 2019, the United States hit an alarming new record.

-Measles surges to a 25-year high.

-It's the latest in a series of outbreaks that are drawing attention to a growing problem.

-Some people are deciding they're afraid of vaccines.

-The return of measles isn't just a danger to those who refuse to vaccinate.

Newborns who can't get inoculated and other vulnerable people depend on something called herd immunity to protect them.

Take whooping cough.

It requires one of the highest percentages of the population to be immunized to prevent the disease from spreading.

If not, the consequences can be dire.

-[ Coughing ] -The risk of whooping cough may sound like something from the past, but it's still very real.

Today, California reported more than 4,200 cases.

Nine people have died, all of them infants.

-Whoo!

-For San Francisco mother Mariah Bianchi, those numbers are more than just statistics.

When her son was born in August 2005, as a nurse, she realized something was wrong.

-It was just like he was so lethargic, and I knew that there was just something.

I'm like, "I can't keep him awake."

We went to the doctor, and she said, "I want you to go to the hospital."

As soon as he got there, he went into cardiac arrest.

-What she didn't realize was that the immunity from her own whooping cough vaccine had worn off, and her newborn was too young to be inoculated.

-And they started CPR right away for probably about 45 minutes or so.

As a nurse, I'm thinking, "I know what that means."

Your brain is not getting oxygen.

Your body is failing.

And, um, the surgeon came out, and he said his chance of survival is very low.

We made the most compassionate decision you could, but we just said, "No, don't -- Don't do it.

Just stop."

-Dylan Bianchi died 17 days after he was born.

So, how does society get to the point where some populations are left vulnerable?

Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements in public health.

-Dr. Jonas Salk discovers the vaccine that promises to wipe out childhood crippling and killing enemy polio.

-Polio, smallpox, diphtheria -- no longer a threat in the U.S. because of vaccines.

And, in 2000, another watershed moment.

-The CDC reports the measles practically wiped out tonight in the United States.

-But that report proved overly optimistic.

-The measles vaccine has been so effective, it doesn't seem like something we need to protect our children from.

You have this sort of fundamental paradox of vaccines that they become a victim of their own success.

-Science writer Seth Mnookin examines the fear about the measles vaccine in his book "The Panic Virus."

He says it can be traced to a moment in the late 1990s.

-The current vaccine scares and controversies that we're still dealing with today stem from a 1998 paper that appeared in The Lancet, a very respected medical journal published out of the U.K. -The paper, written by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, claimed there might be a connection between the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and autism.

-In his press conference, Andrew Wakefield stood up and said, "Parents should not give their children the MMR vaccine, period, until we are able to get to the bottom of this."

-The MMR vaccination in combination -- that I think that it should be suspended in favor of the single vaccines.

-And what the media in the U.K. did was they ran with that.

-Doctors at the Royal Free Hospital believe they may have discovered a link between the combination vaccine and a bowel disease that can progress to autism.

-The notion that you would take a 12-person case study and make claims about a population as a whole is ridiculous.

This paper was historically bad.

-It was later revealed that Wakefield also had a financial stake in trying to establish a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Wakefield denies the allegations, but records show he was paid more than £435,000.

-Andrew Wakefield was receiving money from a lawyer who was working with parents intent on suing vaccine manufacturers.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that he faked some of the data.

He's lost his medical license.

The Lancet paper has been retracted.

But he had very effectively positioned himself as a martyr, and, in some odd way, every piece of evidence that comes out against Wakefield sort of solidifies his standing in the community that still pays attention to him.

-Follow-up studies of hundreds of thousands of children did not find any evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism, but, early on, fears about vaccine safety took hold because complicated science proved difficult for public-health institutions to communicate.

Case in point, their response when concerns were raised over a vaccine preservative called thimerosal, which contains ethyl mercury.

-Children are getting mercury injected into their bodies with vaccines.

-That's right -- mercury, a known neurotoxin.

-But ethyl mercury in thimerosal is not the same as the toxic methyl mercury, which is found in fish and accumulates in the body.

Nevertheless, the Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended thimerosal be removed, and their messaging backfired.

-In 1999, health officials denied a link between vaccines and the autism epidemic yet urged vaccine makers to take out the mercury just to be safe.

-What the American Academy of Pediatrics said is, "We are recommending this step so we can make safe vaccines even safer."

As a parent, if you tell me something's safe, I don't think that's on a sliding scale.

I assume that if you say it's safe, it is safe for my child.

It's not safe, safer, safest.

There are almost two languages here.

There's the language of science, and then there's English, and in the language of science, you have these signifiers like "to the best of our knowledge," "as far as we know"... -Based on the available scientific evidence... -Because you can't say anything with 100% -- You can't prove a negative.

And so when scientists speak in their language and the rest of us translate that into English, it sounds like they're saying something very different than they're saying.

-Based on what we know right now, we don't think that there is an association.

-But that's not saying with 100% certainty there isn't one.

-That is saying that based on the evidence that we have right now, we don't think that there is one.

-Either because the reporter doesn't understand what's actually going on or because they're looking to generate a story, they then take that and make it seem as if the scientist is saying, "I think there's a possibility that vaccines do cause autism," when, in fact, that's not it at all.

-News organizations should exercise judgment about what goes out over their air.

-Brendan Nyhan is a professor at the University of Michigan who studies how misinformation spreads and the role of the media.

-What's particularly important is to think about the overall scientific consensus -- where is the weight of the evidence, and is our reporting reflecting that or not?

That's what's often gone astray in the vaccine debate.

-It's time for everyone to redirect the questions toward finding the cause of autism.

It is not, however, vaccinations.

-Controversial subject.

-Not controversial subject.

-Well, but controversial for parents who still believe.

-It is not controversial, Matt.

It's time for kids to get their vaccines.

-If it weren't controversial... -Everyday people can't be fact checkers for every story about vaccines, and when journalists don't give people the weight of the scientific evidence, they're letting them down.

-She got her vaccinations, she ran a low-grade fever, she had a little rash, and then she stopped talking.

-A false sense of balance was also created when scientific evidence was equated with people's personal experiences.

-Reporting fell into this "on the one hand, on the other hand" fallacy, this notion that if you have two sides that are disagreeing, that means that you should present both of them with equal weight.

-We vaccinated our baby, and something happened.

That's it.

-Jenny McCarthy has had more to do with popularizing the notion that vaccines are dangerous than any other single person in the United States.

-We begin, of course, with Jenny McCarthy, the actress and entertainment personality.

Her son, Evan, has autism.

-She's very smart.

She's telegenic.

-Lookit!

It's plain and simple!

It's [bleep]!

-No, it's -- -Yes, it is!

-When I look at clips of her, it's a completely unfair fight.

-My science is named Evan, and he's at home.

That's my science.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Jenny McCarthy has said many times, and oftentimes very loudly, that, you know, her child is her scientific fact.

Any scientist or any science reporter who's familiar with how science works would say that, no, any one person is an anecdote, and the plural of anecdote is not data.

You know, it's just a story.

-But stories are powerful.

While vaccination rates are high nationwide, there are some religious enclaves and communities of well-educated upper-middle-class people where vaccine hesitancy runs strong.

-I was interviewing an epidemiologist, and he said, "Oh, yeah, we completely know we're gonna have communities that have issues with vaccine uptake.

We take a map and stick a pin wherever there's a Whole Foods and draw a circle around it, and that's where we're gonna have problems."

He was obviously being facetious.

-Exasperated health officials are trying to come up with new ways to communicate with the public.

Brendan Nyhan conducted a study and watched how hesitant parents reacted when they were shown information from the CDC website, stating there's no evidence the MMR vaccine causes autism.

-The good news was it did cause parents to be less likely to believe in the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

The bad news is, however, that it made them less likely to say they would vaccinate a child, which is precisely the opposite of what we would hope to see.

What we found is that telling people the correct information wasn't actually effective.

-That highlights how susceptible people can be to misleading information.

A recent investigation found that Internet trolls from Russia targeted Americans and used the topic of vaccines to create division.

Some states are weighing in and taking action.

-California now has one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country.

-There will no longer be religious exemptions.

There will no longer be personal-belief exemptions.

After an outbreak linked to Disneyland in 2014, California enacted one of the toughest vaccine laws in the country.

Still, some parents are trying to circumvent the law.

For Mariah Bianchi, the notion of leaving some people vulnerable is hard to understand.

-What does it take?

How many times do you have to tell people or talk about it?

We all have a role in helping each other to protect each other.

A vaccine-preventable disease should not have killed my son.

♪♪ -For a lot of pro-sports fans, free agency has become nearly as big an obsession as the games themselves, with so much focus today on players switching teams during the off-season.

-LeBron James has been a free agent three times.

He went from Cleveland to Miami, back to Cleveland, and then to Los Angeles.

He's been free to play where he wants, and he's become a symbol of an age where players are taking control of their careers.

-But it wasn't always this way.

Today's pro athletes owe a debt to one player who took a chance and paid a steep price.

His name was Curt Flood.

-He changed the way they do business in the world of sports.

-Curt Flood's legacy is that he gave his life for a lot of baseball players who don't even know who he is.

♪♪ -It's October 8, 1969.

Curt gets a call in the morning from not the general manager, not the owner, Gussie Busch.

But some middle manager in the front office calls him and in sort of a monotone voice says, "Curt, you and Tim McCarver have been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies."

-It was no small trade.

Few ballplayers ever become as successful and popular as Curt Flood, who is known to fans as a prolific hitter and defensive wizard, streaking across the outfield to snare fly ball after fly ball.

By 1969, he had helped lead the St. Louis Cardinals to three World Series in the previous six years.

-The Cardinals win.

There's a new world champion.

-Curt's the longest-standing member on the team.

He's a three-time All-Star.

He's a huge fan favorite.

-Despite his stardom on and off the field, the Cardinals had begun to sour on Flood.

-Fly ball!

Flood!

Oh, he misjudges it!

Over his head!

-He demanded a raise months after slipping on a key play in Game 7 of the 1968 World Series.

From then on, his days in St. Louis appeared to be numbered.

-He liked St. Louis.

He liked playing for the Cardinals.

And he just didn't think it was right that he had no say in where he would play.

-Since the early days of professional baseball, a short clause inserted into every major-league contract had given owners complete control over their players.

Even when the player's yearly contract was up, the owner could unilaterally renew his contract, essentially binding him to the same franchise for life, allowing him to be paid whatever the owner felt he was worth or traded on a whim.

-So, it wasn't anger.

It was more, "This is not right.

This just is not my America."

Curt was very much aware of what was going on in the world, and he was very much aware of the fact that he did not have his civil rights.

-Me, as a black man, I'm probably a lot more sensitive to the rights of other people because I have been denied these rights.

-Though Flood had grown up on the West Coast, distanced from the civil-rights issues roiling the American South, that had all changed when he was sent to the Southern minor leagues at the beginning of his professional career.

-He saw these two water fountains.

One said "colored."

One said "white."

He said, "For some strange reason, I thought maybe club soda and cola?"

[ Laughs ] And he said he soon realized, "No, this is not club soda.

I'm in the South."

-After one of the first games, the players threw their uniforms in a pile.

A clubhouse man came over, and he took a broomstick, and he picked up Curt's uniform.

These things have an effect on people.

-What I really want out of this thing is to give every ballplayer the chance to be a human being and to take advantage of the fact that we live in a free and democratic society.

-For the right to determine his own future as a ballplayer, Flood would have to sue Major League Baseball and cut to the core of how America's Pastime operated.

As the country's first professional team sport, the courts had chosen to view baseball as a game instead of a business.

Decades of rulings had exempted it from antitrust laws, giving it a special legal status that protected it from competition.

-The line from the owners when Curt sued was, "Curt Flood is trying to destroy Major League Baseball."

And a lot of sportswriters were buying the line.

They couldn't relate to a guy making $90,000 a year who is rejecting a trade from one team to another.

-Curt would say, "We have been subsidizing the owners.

We just can't even go out and find out, what am I really valued at?

What do I need to be paid if I'm getting seven consecutive Gold Gloves?

What is my value?"

-This is Curt Flood, baseball's Bolshevik.

-Men before Flood had fought baseball's reserve clause, but no modern athlete framed the issue as starkly.

-The master and slave relationship.

-You're a man who makes $90,000 a year, which isn't exactly slave wages.

What's your retort to that?

-Well, Howard, a well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.

-And there were death threats.

I mean, vicious.

"Nigger this" and "nigger that" and "how dare you" and "biting the hand that feeds you."

-The players were so afraid of the fallout of a public endorsement of Curt and his lawsuit.

-Even Curt's teammates, when they were in town playing the Mets, didn't show up to the trial.

-The Supreme Court today rejected a suit by ex-outfielder Curt Flood.

-In the end, Flood fared no better than those who had gone before him.

With the unprecedented backing of the newly formed players union, his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but he could not beat the owners of the game.

-At that point, it was devastating because he had given up everything.

-Had the Players Association known how vulnerable Curt was financially and how vulnerable Curt was with alcohol, they would've had some second thoughts.

He was far from the ideal plaintiff.

-Well, I did what I thought was right.

I took it to court.

-To demonstrate the unfairness of the existing system, Flood had sat out the 1970 season, forfeiting his income for the year.

By the time he joined the Washington Senators in 1971, he was no longer the same player... on the field or in the eyes of the public.

-Somehow or other, someone got into the clubhouse with a huge black funeral wreath with his name on it in front of his locker.

That was scary.

You now are walking around, "How do I play center field with my back to people?"

-Flood played only 13 games for Washington before abruptly sending the team's owner a telegram form New York's JFK Airport, announcing he was quitting.

He would never play major-league baseball again.

Though it ultimately failed, Flood's case laid the legal groundwork for players to settle the issue at the negotiating table.

-We lost the case, but it was nevertheless very important because people got to know what was going on and why Curt Flood was doing this.

-Three years later, pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally won an arbitration case that found owners could no longer renew players' contracts in perpetuity, opening free agency to all veteran major leaguers.

-Big-league baseball owners have maintained a grip on their players so strong that it has amounted to almost total control of their careers.

Now that absolute power may be ending.

-The league also adopted what some called the Curt Flood Rule, allowing players to veto any trade once they've spent ten years in the major leagues, including five with their current team.

But it was too late for Flood himself.

Beset by financial and drinking problems, he exiled himself to the island of Majorca.

-He spiraled down into alcoholism, worked in a bar -- which is maybe the worst thing an alcoholic can do -- and ran out of money, and came back to Oakland, California, in 1976 really a broken man.

-What amazes me about Curt Flood's case is that some of the other great baseball players sat silently on the sidelines and said nothing.

That's hard to imagine.

It's hard to imagine.

In basketball, we knew what Curt Flood was trying to achieve, and we felt he was right.

-Three months after Flood had filed his lawsuit in 1970, Oscar Roberston and 13 other professional basketball players sued to abolish the reserve clause in the NBA, following an earlier failed attempt by star Rick Barry.

Six years later, they reached a settlement to bring free agency to their sport.

-The awakening was happening, but you can only tell after the fact.

Free agency has been a wonderful sun coming up over the mountains, warming up the whole valley.

-On March 1st, free agency came to the National Football League.

-Wayne Gretzky has signed a contract with New York's hockey team.

-Though in many cases real power remains with the owners, free agency soon began to shift the balance across American professional sport.

-Meet the new king of L.A. LeBron James says, "Goodbye, Cleveland, hello, Hollywood."

-In the summer of 2018, free agent NBA star LeBron James set the sports world on fire when he chose to take his talents to the storied Los Angeles Lakers franchise.

-This is a seismic shift in the league, that the best player in the NBA going from the East to the West.

-It wasn't the first time James made a splash in free agency.

-And this fall, I'm gonna take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.

-His previous stop in Miami and his return to his home town in Cleveland... -It's over!

Cleveland is a city of champions once again!

-...have made his career arc a shining example of the ability of today's players to craft their own narrative.

-This is such a bigger play for him than just basketball and winning.

His entertainment company.

Going to Hollywood.

In a lot of ways, it is the logical next step... -Free agency is a crazy game now.

It's a wild, wild story.

-Breaking news on "The Jump: Free Agency Special"!

Oh, yes!

Nobody is waiting till 6:00 Eastern!

Kevin Durant is, in fact, headed to Brooklyn to join Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan.

-What James pioneered is now the norm, with star players changing teams more and more.

-Kemba Walker to the Boston Celtics, Jimmy Butler to the Miami Heat, and Al Horford to the 76ers.

-And the question of where the superstars will choose to play once they become free agents now consumes and excites sports fans year-round.

-Ladies and gentlemen, the deal apparently is done.

Kawhi Leonard has made his decision, and he's heading to L.A. -They have a means to have a voice now more so than they've ever had in the history of sports.

-Not only was Kawhi Leonard able to facilitate his arrival in L.A., but he did so by ensuring that Paul George arrived with him.

Unbelievable move on Kawhi Leonard.

Unbelievable power play.

-I think they, in a lot of ways, will control and decide what kind of voice they have when they make decisions.

-The players run the show.

-Yes.

-They control where they want to go and who they want to be with.

And if they're not happy in a situation, they can get out.

-It's just a coming-of-age of spots.

All the fights that we undertook and also Curt Flood, it's the reason that they can do this today.

The question I ask is, "What happened to Curt Flood if this is all going on now?"

-A few years before his death, Flood was finally given his seventh Gold Glove trophy, the one he earned in the 1969 season but was never awarded.

By then, he had gotten his life together.

-In years to follow, he saw what happened, he understood the game had changed, and he knew he was the reason why.

-Can a man work in America wherever he decides to, that he wants to work?

Forget that it's baseball.

And the easy answer is, of course he can.

♪♪ -Wild horses running free.

They're a romantic symbol of the American West.

But the reality is that today, there are far too many of them, and they're caught in a battle between the government, environmentalists, and ranchers.

-So, how did this ecosystem get so out of balance?

In part, it's because of a law passed nearly 50 years ago that was inspired by a young boy's dream to see these untamed creatures roam free.

Today, in parts of the country where herds of wild horses still roam, there is a curious yearly ritual.

Anywhere the Bureau of Land Management decides wild horses are overpopulating public lands, it sends in the helicopters.

Like flying sheep dogs, the aircraft chase bands of horses out of the hills, herding them, coaxing them, scaring them into a funnel-shaped corral.

Whether the roundups happen in the heat or in the snow, they follow the same pattern, and they end when cowboys on the ground release what's called a Judas horse -- a domestic animal trained to lead its wild disciples into captivity.

Watching the drama from the sidelines are contenders in a high-plains standoff.

-If it was just a little bit warmer... -Wild-horse advocates like filmmaker Ginger Kathrens are against the culling of the herds.

-It doesn't happen very often, but on occasion, a horse might come in and might slip on the ice... -Sometimes, she confronts the BLM directly.

-We want to go on record as saying that we don't think that this roundup ought to start today.

We think it's too dangerous, too cold, and too risky.

Helicopter roundups are incredibly stressful on the animals.

Foals will sometimes literally have their hooves fall off their feet.

-On the other side, ranchers paying to graze sheep and cows on public lands.

They say unchecked mustangs are damaging the range, eating grass that ought to be feeding domestic stock.

-I have a place in my heart for the wild horse, but there would be a lot of us out of business if we didn't have public lands to graze on.

[ Helicopter blades whirring ] -So, how did this situation get so tense that the federal government is sending in herders in helicopters to mediate this standoff?

It's a classic tale of unintended consequences.

In 1970, the wild-horse population had fallen from approximately a million at the turn of the century to less than 18,000 -- victim of a pet-food industry hungry for cheap meat.

-Get that horse!

/ -Hyah!

-The 1961 movie "The Misfits" dramatized the brutality of capturing wild horses, a practice which enraged a growing number of animal lovers.

-Shut up!

Murderers!

-The mustang, maybe more than any other animal in America, is a symbol.

It means freedom.

It means defiance.

It means scrappy but noble.

In a sense, it means us, right?

It is the American.

And to have something that we hold in such esteem at the same time not only abused but turned into dog food was just something that people could not deal with in their minds.

-Knowing that animals were being hunted down, slaughtered, butchered, and sold as pet food just really burned me up.

-Greg Gude was a young boy when he discovered the plight of the mustang in the pages of an illustrated children's book.

It's main character was a tenacious Nevada activist with a catchy nickname.

-Velma Johnston has fought for the protection of these animals all her life, and she is known as "Wild Horse Annie."

-Wild Horse Annie enlisted schoolchildren in a national letter-writing campaign.

By some accounts, they flooded Congress that year with a volume of letters second only to mail received about the Vietnam War.

But Greg Gude didn't need to write letters.

His father, Gilbert Gude, held one of Maryland's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

-I lived with my congressman.

I could lobby at the dinner table.

I think it probably took a hunger strike.

-An 11-year-old boy persuaded his father, a congressman, to introduce a bill to protect wild horses and burros on the Western plains.

Then the boy, Greg Gude of Maryland, appeared today to testify.

-And so, a few months later in December of 1971, the wild horses were saved.

-Today, President Nixon signed a bill to make killing them a federal crime.

-This largely halted the commercial capture and slaughter of wild horses roaming the West, but it wasn't long before mustangs were making news again.

-It may surprise you to hear there's a surplus of wild horses in what was once the Wild West.

-Soon as the law passed, there were essentially more horses than the government knew what to do with.

There's only a certain amount of grass out there, especially in the West, and most of it's already spoken for.

-Ranchers who rely on public lands for their livestock say what's at stake is their claim on the American West.

-I roped my first wild horse when I was 11.

That was in 1952.

There are people that think the wild horse is a symbol of the American West.

I think every rancher will tell you that we're riding the horses that built the American West.

-Garrett says activists have brow-beaten the BLM into culling too few mustangs.

Of course, activists like Ginger Kathrens see it differently.

-If you're wondering why our public lands are overgrazed or degraded, you need to look at the millions of head of livestock -- cattle and sheep -- that are permitted to graze out here.

-If you talk to advocates, spend some time at a roundup with them, eventually they'll talk about how the BLM is in the pocket of big ranchers.

And if you talk to the ranchers and you spend any time at their ranches, they will talk to you about how the BLM's in the pocket of the advocates.

-The BLM removes approximately 4,000 horses a year, hoping to find them permanent homes.

But periodic exposés over the years reveal that the animals sometimes met a different fate.

-NBC News has been told by just about everyone we talked with a large number of BLM horses likely end up slaughtered.

-The BLM sort of binges and purges when it comes to horses.

They'll ignore the problem of overpopulation until it gets really bad, and then they'll do something they regret.

So, in the '80s, they sold a bunch of horses to people that then slaughtered them.

And in the '90s, they started doing the same thing again.

You know, they would sort of do a "don't ask, don't tell" type of thing where, "We're gonna sell you the horses.

Don't slaughter them.

We're just never gonna check."

-The BLM insists it does not knowingly sell horses to so-called "kill buyers."

And today, the growing number of horses and fewer people willing to adopt them have given rise to what may be the biggest unintended consequence of the 1971 law.

-The Bureau of Land Management is probably the largest horse owner in the continental United States, maybe the world.

-There are more than 46,000 formerly wild horses and burros living in corrals and long-term holding pastures in the midwest, eating grass on the government dole.

The BLM spends almost $50 million a year to board these captured animals.

The Government Accountability Office has warned the ballooning holding costs will overwhelm the program.

-I mean, we're talking 40%, 50%, 60% of our budget is going to just holding and caring of animals.

We're full up.

There's nowhere to go.

There's nowhere to go with them.

I really don't know what to say other than it's not sustainable.

-The BLM estimates the number of wild horses on federal range lands could soon exceed 100,000.

Drastic measures like euthanasia provoke a strong public outcry, so the agency treats some horses with birth control and recently added a new program offering up to $1,000 to anyone who adopts a wild horse.

-It's unclear what's gonna happen when they no longer have the money to expand the system.

Do they leave horses on the range and get sued?

Do they sell horses to the market and have them slaughtered?

Do they euthanize them in some massive, crazy process and just bury them in a big pit?

Seriously, when they run out of money, what happens?

-It's a problem, and not an easy one to solve.

-They've really made a mess of it.

Are they wild horses when they are in captivity?

-It's awful.

We have to manage wild horses on the range.

-I don't think anybody likes it, but nobody can find a way out of it.

The law really did save the wild horse.

The question is, "What do we do with the horses we saved?"

♪♪ -Sometimes when politicians issue an apology, they make things much worse.

-New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz explains.

-Mass destruction.

-Sexual relations.

-Potato.

-Beer.

-Byah!

-Hello.

-Aw...damn it.

-None of it makes sense.

-Maybe you guys should, uh, get a sense of humor.

-[ Laughs ] -I knew this was gonna wind up in a crazy place.

-Today, I'd like to celebrate the three most beautiful words in the English language.

-I am really sorry.

-The great American tradition of public apologies, where you can artfully sa y you're sorry whether or not you feel any remorse.

#SorryNotSorry.

-I am here today to again apologize.

-I personally apologize for appearing insensitive, criticizing NBC's broadcast of "Schindler's List."

-I certainly apologize.

I would not enjoy any type of capital punishment.

-Let me apologize.

I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport.

-I am sorry that I extended confusion about tribal citizenship.

-My deep, sincere apologies.

I confronted it in confession and marriage counseling.

I believe I received forgiveness from God.

-[Echoing] I am the Lord thy God.

-[Echoing] Senator David Vitter, we cool.

-True repentance requires honesty, but that's a big sacrifice for a politician.

So a masterful public figure must make clear -- they are not the problem.

They say, "If you were offended, then I'm sorry you're so freaking sensitive, but I am not to blame."

-If anything I've said this morning has been misconstrued in an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstru-- misconstruction.

-Those analogies to the Nazis and Soviets and others were poorly chosen.

I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings.

-I apologize to those who feel that I've disrespected them, 'cause I don't do that kind of stuff.

-Smart politicians like this know the mantra.

-It's not your fault, alright?

It's not your fault.

-Someone may have screwed up, but surely you're not to blame.

-Mistakes were made here.

-Mistakes were made.

-Mistakes were made.

-Clearly, mistakes were made.

-Yes.

Remember -- you have nothing to be sorry about.

If someone alleges you did something wrong, maintain your doubts.

-I couldn't even believe I engaged in this kind of conduct.

I couldn't believe that I would treat women this way.

I am apologizing for the conduct that was alleged that I did.

-Did I do that?

-Excellent disassociation, Senator Urkel.

-Did I do that?

-But why are public figures who may not even intend to change their behavior wasting time on apologies anymore?

When all the way back in 1952... -♪ Bom bee-doo-bee-doo-bee ♪ -...a brave leader came up with a far better option.

Accused of accepting improper campaign gifts, Richard M. Nixon faced being dumped as V.P.

from the Republican ticket, but he did not apologize.

-You will find that not one cent went into my personal pocket.

-Instead, Nixon valiantly changed the subject.

-We did get something, a gift, after the election.

You know what it was?

It was a little Cocker Spaniel dog.

The kids, like all kids, love the dog.

And I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep him.

-Who's a good boy?

Richard Nixon, that's who.

It didn't matter that Nixon didn't know a minor detail like his beloved dog's gender.

Nixon had cracked the code, and any doubts about his ethics were forgotten, never to be questioned again.

Today's politicians could learn something.

If you'd rather challenge an accusation when you don't believe an apology is owed, fear not -- there's a solution.

-The entire thing has been a witch hunt.

[ Kitten meowing ] And there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign.

-I have not provided alcohol beverages... [ Chittering ] ...alcoholic beverages, beer or anything else, to a minor.

-In ninth grade in 1980, I started keeping calendars of my own.

[ Puppies panting ] For me, also, it's both a calendar and a diary.

-We're finally in a post-apology era that lets leaders be honest about who they are without ever pretending that they want to change.

But if that thought offends you, then I'm deeply sorry.

♪♪ -History is full of surprises, if you know where to look.

-"Retro Report" on PBS.

Thanks for watching.

-Next time, the battle over Baby M. -To just give her away for $10,000, I couldn't do it.

-Nobody seems to be concerned about fathers' rights.

Fathers have dreams, too.

-The landmark case that still shapes surrogacy today.

-The bottom line is, people want kids.

-And could a Cold War nightmare offer a solution to global warming?

-It is known as nuclear winter.

-Plus, humorist Andy Borowitz takes a look at flaming water then and now... -Wow!

-...next time on "Retro Report."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This program is available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪♪