Award Recipients

CBS' Bob Schieffer 2003 Paul White Award Recipient

FACE OF THE NATION

CBS' powerhouse political reporter Bob Schieffer recalls a lifetime of rubbernecking the world's most important news events.

By Mark Millage for April 2003 Communicator

The shelves in Bob Schieffer's study are lined with proof of an accomplished journalist's career: induction into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, the National Press Foundation's Broadcaster of the Year Award, six Emmy statues and many other major awards. But the honor that Schieffer proudly declares his favorite is a simple, framed certificate from the government class at a Kutztown, PA, high school.

"My guess is not many reporters will be chosen 'Correspondent of the Millennium,'" Schieffer says with a smile.

Soon, an engraved silver bowl will take its well-earned place in that room. Schieffer is the 2003 recipient of RTNDA's highest honor, the Paul White Award. The chief Washington correspondent and anchor of Face the Nation for CBS News is humbled to hear his name now mentioned in the same sentence with many of his friends: past winners like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite.

"When I was a little boy, I really wanted to work at CBS. Walter Cronkite was my hero," Schieffer recalls. "Walter had such credibility that he gave television credibility. He dominated news media in the way that no one ever has before or since. He is without question the most curious person I have ever known. And being curious is the No. 1 thing a reporter needs to be."

Curiosity Killed the Cat Doctor
Had Schieffer not shared that same sense of curiosity, he may well have become a veterinarian in his boyhood town of Fort Worth, TX. "My mother was determined that I was going to be a doctor. But pre-med was not for me. Luckily, I switched to journalism after two years [at Texas Christian University] and never looked back," Schieffer chuckles. "People ask, 'What led you to journalism?' and I always say, 'Comparative Anatomy.'"

Just one week after making the switch, Schieffer landed his first reporting job at KXOL-AM, a 5,000-watt radio station in his hometown. That's where 20-year-old "Bob Shafer" (the station manager's wife couldn't pronounce Schieffer, thus Bob's first and only alias) began his love affair with crime reporting.

"I've always believed the police beat is the best training ground at any news organization, because no matter where a police reporter goes, no one wants him there," he says. "Generally, the police reporter is intruding in someone's life at the worst possible moment. I've always thought if you could conduct your business under those circumstances, then you could conduct it under most any circumstances." Working the night shift, Schieffer covered a steady barrage of what he calls "the three R's-wrecks, rapes and robberies," always arriving on-scene in one of the station's brightly painted mobile units. His on-the-scene reports via two-way radio were often preceded by the recorded sound of an ambulance siren.

"We had no idea what we were doing, but we learned by doing it over and over, which is the best way to learn reporting," Schieffer says. "If we were inexperienced, we weren't about to tell it. My second week on the job, I was covering a horrible auto accident. I described it as 'the worst accident I have seen in all my experience as a reporter,' which, I guess, was true."

Schieffer built upon those experiences until graduation from TCU. A three-year, stateside stint as an Air Force public information officer put his journalism career on hold. Four days after discharge in 1962, Schieffer went back to work at KXOL. Within weeks he was assigned to the front line in the Civil Rights movement, reporting on the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. "I had been in the Air Force, but I'd never heard a shot fired in anger," Schieffer says of the riots at Ole Miss. "When those snipers started shooting down into that crowd, we didn't know who they were shooting at. It was the most terrifying experience of my life." By year's end, Schieffer jumped at the chance to go to work at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Often on the night police beat I had taken confessions from criminals," Schieffer recalls. "I could type and the cops couldn't. So I could always say, 'told a Star-Telegram reporter,' which added a little spice to the story.

"We have a much higher ethical standard today than we used to have," he adds. "In those days, when somebody would call to complain, you'd just tell them to screw off and hang up the phone!"

The Kennedy Assassination
It was a phone call on November 22, 1963, that led to the biggest story that Schieffer almost got, but didn't. In the chaotic moments immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy in nearby Dallas, phones in the newsroom were ringing off the hook.

"A woman's voice asked if we could spare anyone to give her a ride to Dallas. I said, 'Lady, this is not the taxi, and besides, the President has been shot.' 'I know,' she said, 'They think my son is the one who shot him.' It was the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald."

Schieffer personally delivered Marguerite Oswald to the police station, and then he sat with her for hours-coming within minutes of a face-to-face meeting with her son. That is, until an FBI agent realized that the young man wearing a snap-brim hat and trench coat wasn't a detective. "It was at this point,

I believe, that I received my first official death threat," Schieffer concedes.

Schieffer quickly ascended the ranks at the Star-Telegram. Moving to the courthouse beat, he learned the first rule of covering politics. "The best stories about the sheriff come from the county commissioners, and vice versa. News comes out because it's in somebody's interest for it to be out. What a reporter has to determine is if it's also in the public interest for that news to be out."

Schieffer also realized that you have to go in search of a good story too. In 1965, after intensely lobbying his editor, Schieffer was assigned to Vietnam to tell the stories of Texans sent there to fight in the war. Readers sent him letters and, in all, he located 235 of their sons and daughters.

"That was the most rewarding thing I ever did," Schieffer says of his four-month duty in Vietnam. "I remember walking up to this Marine. I said, 'I'm Bob Schieffer from the Star-Telegram, and your mother just asked me to come see how you were getting along.' And this big, tough, battle-ready kid just burst into tears."

Schieffer's personal profiles made him something of a local celebrity back in Texas. When he returned home, Schieffer was surprised by the requests for interviews and offers to speak to civic groups. "I had no idea the impact it was having," he admits. "The war was just beginning to heat up. This was about people's kids, and nobody is more interested in anything than their kids."

Vietnam was fast becoming America's first televised war. Realizing this, WBAP-TV (now KXAS-TV), Fort Worth's NBC affiliate, turned to Schieffer to lead its coverage, and a television career was born.

"The odd thing about getting into television, coming from the newspaper, was I actually started out as the anchorman," Schieffer explains. "That's unheard of in this day and time. But people understood that I wasn't a polished television announcer, so I guess they kind of forgave me for that."

Schieffer's primary duty was to keep viewers updated nightly on the escalating war. The Texas News, as it was known, wasn't a typical newscast by today's standards, but a primitive newsreel.

"Title cards would flash, 'Two Killed in Freeway Wreck,' and the music-a funeral dirge-would come on," Schieffer says in a deep, somber tone. "I also did all the graphics. If we wanted a picture of somebody, I'd cut it out of a newsmagazine and paste it on a piece of red or blue cardboard."

The Right Place at the Right Time
Making the move from local anchor to network correspondent took some time, some patience and, eventually, some luck. Schieffer sent tapes to the networks for two solid years, with little to no response. In early 1969, he settled on a job at Metromedia's Washington bureau. But within weeks, the company dropped its plans to become a fourth network. Schieffer was willing to give his dream one last shot.

"I decided one morning on a lark to go to the CBS bureau," Schieffer remembers. "I said I was there to see Bill Small, who was the bureau chief. I was ushered upstairs and the first person I saw said, 'Oh, yes, Bob. Go right in.' I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then, as I was leaving, I saw this young guy (Bob Hager) whom I had seen on television around here. I wondered what he was doing there.

"When I was [writing my] book," Schieffer says, "I decided to give Bob Hager at NBC a call. He told me he went over to see Small that morning, but nothing came of it. We laughed. He was very gracious about it. Apparently, when I barged into Small's office, his secretary got her Bobs mixed up."

Within days, Schieffer received a call back from CBS. He was so excited that he tendered his resignation from Metromedia even before learning what he'd be doing or what he'd be paid at CBS.

"The moral of the story," he concludes, "is that you've just got to keep trying, and sometimes you get lucky. It pays to be in the right place at the right time, even if the people in the right place don't know who you are."

"I felt like a Little-Leaguer who suddenly found himself playing for the New York Yankees," Schieffer says of his first days in the bureau. "Here was this rare collection of people, long considered the best news team-print or broadcast-in the history of Washington reporting. It took me awhile to believe I was part of this team."

A mere decade since chasing news around Fort Worth in the rickety mobile unit, Schieffer now found himself working alongside Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Daniel Schorr and, towering above them all, Eric Sevareid.

"While the rest of us chased news stories, he sat in his office and thought great thoughts," Schieffer says of Sevareid, who would become his biggest booster. "He was a towering intellect. He agonized about human nature and man's inhumanity to man and other grand themes the rest of us didn't feel worthy to worry about. He was very bashful. He never got comfortable being on television. But, once the ice was broken, he couldn't be nicer."

Schieffer also hit it off with his boyhood idol, Walter Cronkite.

"Walter has enough curiosity for an entire newsroom," Schieffer observes. "He had a lot of direct contact with the reporters. Like all good editors, he could always think of the one question that you had forgotten to ask. I was so proud when he'd call me and I actually had the answer."

Fast Forward
It's the last weekend in January 2003, and Schieffer's much-talked-about memoir, "This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You On TV," was about to hit bookstores. He had just returned home from the first leg of his book tour in Texas, with New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Imus, Blitzer, King, Russert and dozens of satellite interviews on his upcoming schedule.

"These book tours are like running for political office. I don't see how they do it." Schieffer had gained an appreciation for the politicians he often covers. "To do for two years what I'm doing for five weeks here. I mean the fate of the Western world doesn't hang on whether I sell any books or not."

Through all that, there remained work to do. The State of the Union address was that week too, which meant taking time out for lunch with the President at the White House. A pretty heady agenda to most people, and Schieffer knows that. "As I wrote the book," Schieffer muses, "one of the things I came to realize even more is what a great life I've had. I've really had a lot of fun. I've gotten to see things and do things that most people just don't do. Believe me, I'm very thankful for that. "I just sometimes wonder how it all happened. I think about that every day. I'm kind of the world's biggest rubberneck, I guess. I've always liked to be around big events when they happen. I've always liked to be able to talk to the people who were in the news and ask them questions. I can't think of anything I'd rather have done."

And that was one of the primary reasons for the book. By documenting his life and his closely watched career at CBS, from his early report at the National Putt-Putt Golf Tournament to interviewing heads of state on Face the Nation, Schieffer wanted to show how journalism and politics have changed.

"That was kind of the underlying theme of it," he explains. "But, I also wanted to tell these stories. I didn't want it to be heavy lifting. I didn't want to write a preachy book. I wanted to use these stories to tell how it's changed."

"This Just In" debuted at No. 3 on The New York Times bestseller list. Schieffer hopes it strikes a chord with its funny-but-true stories behind the big stories, something that appeals to every reader but sends a clear message to students at a career crossroads like the one he faced nearly 50 years ago.

"I want young people who are thinking about going into journalism to know how much fun it is. I think that is very important when you're thinking about how you're going to spend your life. We have all these kids these days who are driven to be successful," he says, "which is just another word for getting rich.

"What I try to show through these stories," he says, "is that if you pick out something you like to do, and you learn to do it well, then you can be successful. That will follow. Don't just try to be successful. Find something you like to do. That ought to be a major factor when you decide how you want to spend your life."

-Mark Millage is past chairman of RTNDA and news director at KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, SD.