Bob Schieffer Quotes (60 Quotes)

Good evening. I'm Bob Schieffer. Big trouble for Tom DeLay. The House Republican Leader is indicted on conspiracy charges in a campaign finance scheme. He says he's the innocent victim of a rogue district attorney. We start there tonight, then we'll have these stories.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

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.

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.

I used to be a print reporter.

Wars are not fought on the training ground, nor can they be covered from the television studio. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of both these brave men.

Every news organization, if it's aggressive and doing what it ought to be doing, is going to get caught with a bad story from time to time.

It's certainly not forgotten, but we're moving past it. When you make a mistake like we made, you don't get your credibility back just by saying, 'I promise we're not going to do that again.' You have to make drastic changes, and then you have to work on getting your credibility back one day and one story at a time. That's what we're doing.

But I'm not too old to continue moderating Face the Nation . I'll continue that indefinitely after the anchor duties are concluded.

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.

I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.

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.

How important is it if the FBI discovers that there's -- for a lack of a better word -- the president's DNA on this dress

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.

I think we've come a tremendous distance here. We had been beaten about the heads and shoulders so badly for so long there that people were pretty quiet about the office. People are talking again. They're having more fun, and they're smiling more.

You cannot be objective about human suffering and people dying. Any person who was not outraged by that, I'm not sure they have business being a reporter.

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.

I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.

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

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.

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.

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.

We talked about a thousand things, but we really talked about our parents. She is very close to her mother, and I was very close to my mother.

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.

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

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

I will be delighted if she came. I think she'll be a great addition to a very good news team ... I've known Katie for years and I think the world of her.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I kind of think this might be something fun to do, but I want to make absolutely sure that this is what I want to do.

Mr. President, ... what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States

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.

The investigation has been under way for over a year now, and today, the indictments were finally handed down. The House Republican Leader, Tom DeLay, and two associates were indicted by a Texas grand jury in connection with what the prosecutor said was a

They've asked me to do this temporarily. I don't know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.

I couldn't be happier. She's going to be a terrific addition to CBS News.

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 can't remember a time in all the 38 years I've worked at CBS News when I've been prouder to be a part of this organization. I see our people in Baghdad risking their lives every day and now what our reporters in New Orleans are going through. I'm just in awe of their courage and their dedication and their professionalism.

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?

I take them at their word at the Pentagon, if they're going to let these reporters go along and give us a view of this war if it does come.