Bob Schieffer Journalist Quotations

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.

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.

With Vietman, we found ourselves involved there before we really understood what was going on.

People are more sophisticated in the way they go about dealing with the press.

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.

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.

I'd covered the campaign in 1988, and I'd managed to gain an even 20 pounds, which is one of the dangers you have covering those campaigns.

Prior to 9/11, everybody was talking about at least one of the evening news programs going away, that their future was very limited.

I also think it's not just good for the American people to have independent observers along, I think it's also good for the military.

We're far from perfect. It's a human enterprise.

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.

I want to try to talk like normal people talk, not just stand there and bark at the camera.

My job is to give everyone a chance to catch their breath and step back from all this and get back to work.

I sometimes tell people, when I was hired at CBS, it was because I was a good writer, not whether I was or not was beside the point.

The most challenging aspect of it is not interviewing the people, but getting the right people at the right time to be interviewed.