"But if you're going to go out on a military unit, you've got to allow yourself to be under the control of the commander because you really could put the troops in danger." -- Bob Schieffer
Bob Lloyd Schieffer (; born February 25, 1937) is an American television journalist who has been with CBS News since 1969, serving 23 years as anchor on the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News from 1973 to 1996; chief Washington correspondent since 1982, moderator of the Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation since 1991, and, between March 2005 and August 31, 2006, interim weekday anchor of the CBS Evening News.
Schieffer is one of the few journalists to have covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House, the Pentagon, United States Department of State, and United States Congress. His career with CBS has almost exclusively dealt with national politics.
Schieffer is a survivor of grade III bladder cancer; he was diagnosed in 2003 and is currently cancer-free.
On October 13, 2004, he was the moderator of the third presidential debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry in Tempe, Arizona. On October 15, 2008, Schieffer moderated the third presidential debate between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain.
"American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.""And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.""And as a result, I guess I'm just kind of a rubberneck. I'm kind of a - someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don't think journalists are as important as the people they cover.""And I came away from that experience, and it was a very difficult experience - I came to understand that you have to practice at being a good father and practice at being a good husband, just as you have to practice at being a good journalist.""At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.""But here's the deal: If I were smart, I could figure out curling. If I were even smarter, I could figure out why people would actually watch other people doing it. I have tried. I can't. I can't even figure out the object of the game. Is it like darts? I just don't get it.""But if you don't enjoy doing something, you'll be miserable no matter how much money you make.""But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate.""But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.""For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what's important.""Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.""I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.""I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.""I had - all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a newspaper reporter because we didn't have much television in those days.""I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.""I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.""I used to be a print reporter.""I want to try to talk like normal people talk, not just stand there and bark at the camera.""I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.""In so many of the other beats these days, there are these layers of public relations people that you have to go through to get to the newsmakers themselves.""It's getting the right person that's the challenge.""It's no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.""My job is to give everyone a chance to catch their breath and step back from all this and get back to work.""Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.""Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.""Once we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.""One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something I enjoy?""People are more sophisticated in the way they go about dealing with the press.""The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.""The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.""There's fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.""They've asked me to do this temporarily. I don't know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.""We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.""We're far from perfect. It's a human enterprise.""Well, you know, in any political campaign, you're gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it'll hurt the guy on the other side.""With Vietman, we found ourselves involved there before we really understood what was going on."
Bob Lloyd Schieffer was born on February 25, 1937 in Austin, Texas and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He is an alumnus of North Side High School, and Texas Christian University , where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. The journalism school at TCU was later named after him. After graduating from TCU, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a captain and information officer. He was honorably discharged and joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a reporter, with one of his key assignments a trip to Vietnam to profile soldiers from the Fort Worth area. At the Star Telegram he received his first major journalistic recognition on November 22, 1963. Shortly after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, while in the Star-Telegram office, he received a telephone call from a woman in search of a ride to Dallas. The woman was Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, whom he accompanied to the Dallas police station. He then spent the next several hours there pretending to be a detective, enabling him to have access to an office with a phone. In the company of Oswald's mother Marguerite and his wife, Marina, he was able to use the phone to call in dispatches from other Star-Telegram reporters in the building. This enabled the Star Telegram to create four "Extra" editions on the day of the assassination. Schieffer later joined WBAP-TV in Fort Worth before taking a job with CBS in 1969.
Schieffer was anchor of the Sunday evening news broadcast from 1973 to 1997 and of the Saturday evening news broadcast from 1977 until 1996. Between 1970 and 1974, he was assigned to the Pentagon, from 1974 to 1979 he was CBS's White House correspondent, and in 1982 he became Chief Washington Correspondent in addition to his anchor duties.
In the wake of Dan Rather's controversial retirement, he was named interim anchor for the weekday CBS Evening News. He assumed that job on March 10, 2005, the day following Rather's last broadcast. Under Schieffer, the CBS Evening News gained about 200,000 viewers, to average 7.7 million viewers, reversing some of the decline in ratings that occurred during Rather's tenure; while "NBC Nightly News" was down by 700,000 viewers, and ABC's World News Tonight lost 900,000. Some of this was attributed to the Schieffer family's closeness with President George W. Bush; Bush had previously refused to grant an interview to Rather. Schieffer closed the gap with ABC's World News Tonight when co-anchor Bob Woodruff was injured in late January 2006. He made his last CBS Evening News broadcast on August 31, 2006, and was replaced in the anchor chair by Katie Couric. On Couric's second broadcast, he returned to provide segments for the evening news as Chief Washington Correspondent.
Schieffer has won six Emmy Awards, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2002 by the National Press Foundation, and was named to the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame.
Schieffer has written three books about his career in journalism: Face the Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-Winning News Broadcast, This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, and Bob Schieffer's America. He was a regular guest on the Don Imus morning radio show, until it was taken off the air.
Since leaving the anchor desk at CBS Evening News in 2006, Schieffer has entertained his longstanding interest in songwriting by collaborating with musicians in New York and Washington, D.C. His latest efforts have resulted in four songs with the Washington area band Honky Tonk Confidential, all of which appear on their latest CD, Road Kill Stew and Other News . Schieffer sings "TV Anchorman" and wrote the lyrics for the others.
Schieffer is the older brother of Tom Schieffer, a friend and former business partner of President George W. Bush, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Australia 2001-2005 by President Bush and also served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan from April 2005 through January 2009. On March 2, 2009 Tom Schieffer announced he was forming an exploratory committee that will allow him to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas.
Schieffer is married to the former Patricia Penrose and has two daughters.
In his most recent memoir, This Just In, Schieffer credits the fact he had been a beat reporter at CBS for his longevity at the network. He also noted a rare off-camera appearance in the Sunday comics. After fellow CBS newscaster and Texan Dan Rather was switched from the White House beat to hosting the documentary show CBS Reports in 1974, the Doonesbury comic strip featured a joking fantasy scene in which Schieffer, his successor, haltingly comments on the transition: "It was the affiliates they just couldn't take him. I mean let's face it, Dan wasn't exactly MR. TACT!. I dunno.... Maybe it's just as well in the long run, I mean, you know? Anyway, this is Robert Schieffer at the White House...." (Schieffer notes that "The strip was right on except for one thing. My real name is Bob, not Robert").
On July 18, 2010, Schieffer interviewed US Attorney General Eric Holder on Face the Nation. In the 30-minute interview, he did not ask Holder about the recent allegations that the Department of Justice was making decisions based on race. A whistleblower, former DOJ Attorney J. Christian Adams, alleged that the DOJ refused to pursue cases where there were minority perpetrators and white victims. Schieffer appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz to defend himself; he claimed he was unaware of the New Black Panther Party controversy in Philadelphia because he was "on vacation" and that "it just slipped by me."
