Standards which has drawn people to her to temper her enthusiasm for change. She has transcended it all and i appreciate the chance to talk to you. Thank you for having me. [applause] please join us for the book signing outside of the auditorium. Thank you for coming tonight. [inaudible] book tv has covered many books about education including ones by david osborne. Education activists and jonathan coastal, a former assistant secretary of education under george w. Bush. If this interests you go to our website on booktv. Org. In the search bar type and education book. Youll find an archive of materials. They are all available to watch online. Cspan, or history unfolds stately. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. Its brought to today by your cable or satellite provider. Next on book tvs afterwards, pop schieffer, former host of face the nation examines the impact of changing technology on journalism. Hes in conversation with Susan Glasser of political. I have to say, i am delighted and honored to be here with the legendary journalist, pop schieffer. Bob has shown that there is no such thing as retirement in the media. After being host to face the nation for many years his comeback and helps us make sense of this trump era and author of a new book, overload. Finding the truth in todays day luge of nice. It is an honor to be with you. Im a little humbled to be given the task to interview such a legendary interviewer. Thank you for being here. Guest thank you. Im honored to be interviewed by you. You are well known person in journalism and its good to be with you. Host well trying to make sense of the overwhelming where overload of facts now. We may as well just go ahead and start with the are president ial tweeter in chief. We have a lot of strong views about the media and a recent days once again theyre fairly consistent. The president tweeted its not freedom of the press for newspaper and others are lattes and write whatever they want even if it is completely false. Those in august. A few days ago he followed up and said it was frankly discussing the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write. So the First Amendment seems to allow us to write whatever we want. How do we make sense of the president who doesnt buy into the First Amendment. Guest i wish i wouldve thought of this first, when the president said its disgusting they can write anything they want to write and we ought to look into this, jake trapper said, i did look into this. He said heres the u. S. Constitution. Thats the interesting part to me. The Trump Administration has tried to picture us as the opposition party, as people who somehow seem to want to run the government campaigns, thats not what we do. Remember first of all politicians deliver a message. Thats what theyre supposed to do. Our job is to check out the message and find out if its true or false and what the impact will be. Thats the assignment the founders gave us. Its also a crucial part of democracy. You cannot have our form of government unless citizens had access to independently govern information that they king compared to the government. Then they decide what to do about it. If we do that we performed a crucial role. Im not sure you can have democracy as we know about that. I think its just as important as the right to vote. Host and yet the president doesnt agree with you. How much of a threat is it if the president doesnt accept the basic over it. On this namecalling, ive been called every kind a name that one can be called all the way back to the nixon administration. Recently during the last campaign i was referred to as a female hygiene product, i get it all. But i dont pay much attention to that part of this thats going on. But i do Pay Attention to and i am concerned about his own people try to destroy the credibility of the free press theyre going right at the foundation of our democracy. I dont think thats a good thing, whether thats the president or anyone else. Most president s dont like the press. And you can understand why. Because theyre under this microscope. This is what were supposed to be doing. To somehow suggest that we shouldnt, do you think only a government where the only information comes from the government i bet even donald trump doesnt want that. But in the meantime we have what we have. Look, there are authoritarians around the world who start out by attacking the press. Rhetorically theres not that much difference between trumps tweets about the press and the words weve heard from turkeys leader vladimir putin. The differences in the actions with the legal system. So far we havent seen action that follow through. So overload is the title of the book. How much is it a threat to that democracy before doing our independent reporting but it doesnt make a difference, people cannot tell whats the fact. I think it does make a difference and i think people do understand i think we have to keep the first thing we have to keep doing is doing what were doing. Thats trying to sort out the true from the false. Thats overwhelming job. The bigger responsibility weve ever had. We now have access to more information than any people in the history of the world. But were running short on curators. Were getting so much information that we really cant process it. Its harder and harder to separate the stuff out. My boss at cbs said we used to hire these people to go out and find the news, now we need to put people sorting through the information we have defined which is true and not true. Its an overwhelming overload of information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I would argue and talk about in the book that i think the coming up the web is having a profound impact that the Printing Press had on the people of europe in the day. Well talk about what a great thing the Printing Press was. Literacy was increased, was on the counter referee trend reformation. But there is also 30 years of religious wars. I dont think were quite there yet. Were about the first trimester of this revolution that we are saying and technology. Sure doesnt feel like equilibrium. He started out with this amazing career in the 1950s. How different do you believe the political atmosphere was. Also very centralized media world but as a reporter how different was it . Nothing is as it was. I got my first job at 20 years old. My sophomore year at tcu. I went to work for a little radio station. They had a technological breakthrough. We had panel trucks loaded up with Police Radios and whenever we had the wreck, rape, robbery we would race to the scene with a twoway radio and get on the scene reports. We did not have a recording device in those days. We cannot play back a tape from the same but we would interview people live on the scene. And then later i went to work at the four startelegram. And the reason i did that is because the night reporter was promoted in he knew me and recommended me to take his place and i became the night police reporter. The orderly way that we gathered the news in those days the way it was reported, most towns had three television stations and a good newspaper. And whether or not you agreed with the editorial policy, generally when something was on the front page are broadcast on the network news you assumed it was true, that they had gone to some effort to check it out. So, we based our opinions on the data were getting from those three television stations. What has changed no and turned everything around, now you have 700 channels on television, even more than that on the web. Were not necessarily all getting the same facts. If you listen to something over here and someone listens to it over here you get different packs so people are basing their opinion on different data. That is the number one change. And only now we come to realize how profound that is. Used to be youre entitled to your own opinion but not your own set of facts. Tell us about the politics, you started reporting in the 1960s during mccarthyism. Weve all seen president ial campaigns in which the media were pointed at, how is this different from the point of view the politicians and Political Press . Guest theres really nothing new here. Its the lightning speed that news travels now. In my early days in fort worth covering the politics down there about ten days out from an election there is always a Whisper Campaign that a candidate have a girlfriend on the east side, all the girlfriends seem to live on the side. We would check these out a most the time they didnt amount to anything. Most always. If they did, we reported it. Both the coming of the web theres no such thing as a Whisper Campaign the politics. Someone finds out they put it on the blog and suddenly its out there. Set more of an impact on politics and us as journalists. The person running for office or she has to decide come into ignore this and hope it goes away, do i comment on and give it wider distribution. And even now people deny things they still hang on. Theres still a percentage of people in this country who think barack obama is not an american citizen. How much Fact Checking will it take . There is the pizza place operated by Hillary Clinton in the basement. A person fired a weapon in there and was looking to shoot the doorknob off so he could go in the basement rescue these children. First thing he found out there was no basement. He was arrested and taken away and is in the court system. But there still people who believe that. The man who owns it still us have private security can see still getting death threats. Thats whats change, the speed to which this stuff happens. Ally can go around the world while the truth is still putting its pants on. Thats more true today than ever. One thing you pointed out about Fact Checking looking at the 2016 campaign. As i reflect on just what went on, was in the journalist i think they did a good job of very aggressive and assertive reporting about the future President Trump including Fact Checking of his public statement. The facts that were on the record were very alarming. To me thats what was challenging. This might be a moment where we had more transparency and information about public figures and less accountability. It didnt seem to matter. Guest theres people who studied psychological studies about fake news and the impact of conspiracy theories on why do some people believe them and why so difficult to take them down . One of the things that happens that you counter this like we did during the birth certificate thing. Heres the newspaper article that appeared in the paper weight they he was born. Theres a certain number of people they see it backfire effect. They say no, thats not true, once its there and they believe these things, like america never went to the moon, and saw made up you can always convince people with facts thats the part thats hard for us. Think in most cases will never be able to completely take down some of the stories that are made up. Host the golden age of conspiracy theories. Style back for a second. This is an interesting project that gave price to the book. When you decided to step away from face the nation you became a podcast or which is a great story. Im a podcast or no to. I wasnt listening to a milling podcast five years ago. So you have this podcast series and is given nice to the transformation of the media. Tell me how that came about. Guest i knew so little about podcast that i thought there were called ipods and someone said no thats different. Andrew swarts is the chief of communication which is a washington think tank, were having coffee one day when john hamm who runs the csi and talked about bloomberg and he said you know, i think its reached the point that is a National Security issue. Thank part of our National Security depends on people having a credible press that they can believe what they read. So we kicked around and started doing this podcast called about the news. He basically tried to talk to everybody in journalism that we could find. I think we talked with ben smith. I buzz feed. Guest yes, buzz feed ben. So one thing led to another. Someone then said maybe we should put out a study like think take stew. And i said to do that i just assume write a book. I dont want to be just the cliff notes version that you publish in the first chapter of a study which are quite valuable. So came from that. We must have interviewed 45 people in journalism. Some of which ive never heard of. Turns out theyre very influential. The good news about podcast and the internet is that the internet makes all of these kinds of things possible. The bad news is that the nuts cannot find each other now. In the old days when i came into journalism and people used to talk about maybe we should license journalist. Host President Trump said that the other night. Guest we said no our licenses the First Amendment and anybody was a barrel of bank and a Printing Press is the publisher. You dont need the anchor Printing Press because anybody with the phone is no publisher. But the point i try to make in the book is that everything you see on the internet has not been vetted and the way that places that you and i work for is not. Thats not the case in many of the things that show up on the web now. Especially now were into social media and its a different deal. But people are still getting that information. How do you find podcasting interviews to be different than face the nation. Will the time. Guest we tried to time them to about the time most people work out, about 40 minutes. But, we dont have a ten, nine, eight youre off. Theyre much more formal. I really like them because you can do like youre doing today. We talk about Different Things and some details. On face the nation the interviews would be eight minutes long and thats pretty long on the evening news. If its really important about what someone said. I think its just the time that you have there a little more informal which i think is good. Im an advocate of how would you tell your mom about this journalist. I dont im not into these parentheticals phrases. So pack cast fit into my way of interviewing and recording. Host do you think that will prompt a crisis and to be journalism . We talk about the crisis in newspapers but it strikes me that podcasting and the ability to pursue your interest is a direct challenge. Guest im not sure i would call it a challenge, think its a great new it innovation. In other words, if i dont get a chance to read the newspaper in the morning before i go to work i read it when i get to the office. I always read it at home. Host do you still read the print newspaper . Guest i read three, the times, the post, the wall street journal. Its what weve always done. My daughter still read the print newspaper because that is what they were raised up for people were interested in news. My granddaughter stole. But they read the news apps on their app, on their phone. I think thats eventually were no speakers will succeed. I think tv will be around. The basically a 24 hour news channel, you get it on your phone or computer. It is a streaming service. We want everybody to watch it but it is aimed at a younger audience. I think the cbs, i think the morning shows are going to be around for a long time. The two were time is really the only time left in the day where you can tell someone something they did not know. We assume the evening is by the time people get to the, they already know what the news is. So we try to try that out be more analytical. Theres still some people, i want to turn on the television and see what cbs that was the most important thing that day. Maybe thats just me as a journalist. Think 60 minutes will be around forever. Shows like sunday morning, the sunday morning shows like face the nation, meet the press, i think they have a long life. We might see the evening news cast go the way of afternoon newspapers. But they still have 5 7000000 people. Host and thats more than the cable show. Yes, and there on all day. Get five or 6 Million People to turn on the tv at night going to provide a service for them. That may change and may be generational. The median ages for the network news programs their older folks, that is all this me, but those audiences are getting older. But when i think youll see this most of the Spot News Coverage to streaming service like 60 minutes and face the nation. I think theyll be there for a long time. Host things that add value to the new cycle rather than restate or repeat. Guest and theyre expensive to produce. Sixty minutes spends a lot of money because they investigate for months when theyre doing these programs. It takes a large workforce. But the difference in that in the cbs assignment desk in new york, we have to maintain of reporting staff to be ready to cover the unexpected. Those programs can do economically is i dont have to be parent to cover the unexpected. When something happens then cover it. They can pick and choose. So, i think thats basically the economics of it. Television will be around for a while. Host was surprised you in this experiment and podcasting. Guest it was fun to start with. I found out a lot of things. Theyre not all young. The guy in the book i call him the bridge between old journalism and new. Hes a fascinating character, as are most reporters. I like to be around reporters. I think theyre funny and interesting. David eisenhower said theyre not nearly as interesting as they think they are but theyre probably as interesting as David Eisenhower on the left to talk about their work. Also a good way to figure out where theyre getting their news and who their sources are. We talked to enough reporters covering the white house. Host which is where your podcast morphed into. Guest we decided the interesting story right now is donald trump and how he is being cover. Just talking to people home in the white house team. Its fun because they are the tale to tell. Whats interesting and what makes it a great story, very concerned about where this is going the from the standpoint of journalism, this is a white house like no other. The floors asked me what is your favorite be because ive covered them all. And they say guess is the white house, right. I say will its exciting but theyll work for the same guy. My favorite beat in washington is capitol hill. They are all independent contractors and thats you get news. And it was hard to crack inside the until woodward and bernstein figure it out how to do it. Theyll talk to reporters, they all talk about each other, a lot of them dont like others in the white house, it is most unusual. You are under a lot of pressure. You will also turn in some news. Host how does it compare to ratings . A lot of people say reagan came to washington determined to blow of orthodoxy . Guest he did. It was very different, he was quite genial but he put together a great team led by jim baker. Who do you think is the best politician, he was the best by a lot. Host not the best person for the best politician. Guest that is what i am saying. Nixons secretary of defense, he had been on a hill, a master of understanding, like johnson. And the third one was jim baker, and had this innate ability to understand how to make things work and understood perfectly how the press operated and didnt see the press as an enemy. He saw the press as something he could use. Those of us in the press would like to admit. He knew part of it was communicating for the press. And the communications, he would have a one hour kind of he would prepare for that. He came on and said it in a way people could understand, had enormous influence and really good at trump has so much trouble they brought john kelly as chief of staff and all of that, baker was a master of that, had the thing organized, and niece who was reagans close friend thought he was going to be chief of staff and next thing you know reagan picked jim baker as chief of staff which was out of left field. of his. Exactly. He had that thing organized to decide what is the story of the day and focused on that. A way to present reagan at his best, reagan was not dumb and i never thought that. What Ronald Reagan knew was what he stood for in general terms. He knew who he was and when things werent going right he sensed that, a huge role in that. Kind of the best of all hollywood wives and what he didnt have time to. Baker was a terrific politician. In the best sense of the word, good politicians, he was the best. Host is trump missing a jim baker or Something Else you perceive as trump related to the previous president s . Guest without talking which im happy to do, without talking about reagans position, a striking unfamiliarity how the process of government works, it is good every once in a while to change folks, shouldnt be career physicians in that. And david sang her, what they did with donald from during the campaign. Underlines how little he really knew about American Foreign policy and the relationship with japan and allies. He needed people around him who knew how the process of government worked. Tillerson is the kind of person in private life that somebody like people of that nature, and what they learned, but these people wont let him do anything, wont let him the state department is halfempty. Nobody to help him. When he does Say Something trump doesnt hesitate to cut his legs off underneath him. Who with the chief of staff be, jim baker, not sure that is possible. It is a mom and pop Grocery Store run by the family. Not like the Corner Grocery but running that way. And what somebody did, what he told them to do. The presidency is a much bigger and more complicated job than that. Not sure donald trump understood how complicated being president is. Host what about the journalists covering him, your covering this each week. Who do you think had a good response to figuring out this new Trump Presidency but the overload factor . How do you breakthrough, who has a good model for it . Guest the washington post, number one. The wall street journal is doing a good job. Basically we dont realize politico has been there for a wild. And the things politico can take most pride in, where reporters are gone from politico, the same from the washington post. What the post figured out early on, the current model was not working. When jeff bezos thought that, he said i want to make this the best newspaper in america, it may or may not be, the times has something to say about that. Millions of people now, the paper paper is 400,000, or 70 million. We were 30 million, that. Guest not long ago, reached a lot more people in the washington post, and what newspapers had done, for media companies, putting the product out to six or seven platforms which i wrote an oped page, what that should be, it shows up on their website and it went down, no, no. You got a nice place reserved on the oped page on sunday paper. The idea that the post, cbs news, put something on the website, the more it appeared in the newspaper. Somebody from the post video department, television video, a few excerpts, how about you come down and play them and a package on that. My oped story went four platforms and that is how to make it work. The post has the most important thing, what every other newspaper wishes they had, turns out they have a good one. Newspapers survive, the most responsible for that. They are doing the same thing, a great oldfashioned newspaper, and the readers benefit, and both of those organizations with politico, and what the times have done, 7 lighthouse correspondence and may be six. And the bureau chief at the time, going through all the changes, with white house correspondence, i always say have you noticed, morning paper, coming in midmorning before noon, beat reporters cover their beats and the big dogs have lunch with important sources and down the office, and the 7 00 deadline for the first edition. They have 5 or 6 stories today and putting out newsletters and analysis and running commentary and elizabeth has two people on the white house staff at 6 00 in the morning. Host by husband, or week to beyond. If donald trump is tweeting at 6 20 in the morning he has artie written one or two stories by the time we are getting our son off to go to school. He might write five or six stories and finishing up, thing on tv at 11 00 at night. Writing a story at 6 00, there are multiplatforms and a complete merger and a morning newspaper reporter and tv commentator all wrapped up into one. Guest the good think about that is when you have this enormous staff, talking about peter and the times, the largest staff in journalism. Any one of them think they have a piece of a trump story. But that is the good thing. They also have an editor they have a trump patrol and they are working all day. The publicist is doing the same thing, what i love, i dont know who started this. There are a number of sources to the post, and 17 sources, why do they do that . Guest a good question. White house has been talking, so many factions, washington reporting, if you want somebody to call back, tell a story about them and not their boss, they call you back but i want to get back to what you have learned in the course of reporting, talk about the good news, committed owner like jeff bezos. With National Reporting because of trump. What keeps you up at night . What did you not worry about until then . Local newspapers, where the real crisis is taking place. There are pretty startling statistics, 126 newspapers in the last 12 years, with smaller communities. In 2004, one reporter and we lived in washington, new york and los angeles. We are down to one in five. In rust belt areas, they are not overwhelmed out there, they are not getting any news. They are more and more digital, that is what they have to do. A Digital Product is better than the product people are getting in the paper but that is doable, and that is where they survive, those communities, everybody has a phone. A newsgathering appliance, if you are a minimum wage worker, they dont afford the apps or washington post. It was a cost that is optional, they dont get to do that. You dont get cable anymore because fees for that are so high because of the cord cutters. You might not even have a television set, many times, your coming into contact by accident, your files pick it up or on facebook. When i started writing this, 62 getting our news on facebook and social media, that is up to 67. Enormous people are, which is fine which is great, it is a wonderful thing but what you are getting has not been vetted in the way you expect, local newspapers go away, and we will have corruption at levels we have never experienced. Some entity has to step in to figure out how to fill that void. Host facebook and social media, we are not quite a year out from the 2016 election and still learning a lot about what the efforts whereby russia to influence the election. A fairly Sophisticated Campaign of targeting american through facebook, twitter, might not be visible with specific demographics or where you are. How does that affect your views of the social media platforms, is that something to worry about when it comes to democracy . Guest absolutely. No question this is what russians are doing and what they discovered and what they are doing all across, they dont have to drive their tanks crossed the border anymore. They have cyber bribing local officials, put stuff, fake news to try to destroy the credibility of the countrys media and make sweetheart deals to the oligarchs to build apartments and things like that. They are in total control, the country may go by its old name but it is under the control of russia right now. Heather connolly who is a scholar did a wonderful the kremlin playbook, she studied five countries there. And each one of them. Host the playbook is not radically different. Guest when you see and understand that, they have nothing to do with the election, all of our intelligence agencies, when you add to what they are doing, joan i, being in the government various times over the years, they are trying to disrupt and destabilize the institutions, but whether or not they are colluding with russia, put that aside for a minute. That is why we have to keep up with the mueller investigation. And donald trump seems to be someone, whatever his reasons, leaves the impression he has something to hide. This is going to go on for a while but it will be significant. Host you were here and covered washington during watergate. Are there echoes of that period in terms of the divisiveness in our national life, the possibility Congress Might have to decide what to do about the president . Guest perhaps. Not trying to dodge the question, i dont know what is going to happen but no question we are seeing echoes of that sort of thing. People talk about the 25th amendment, we are a long way from that right now. You could remove the president through some sort of medical issue. That is not the way you resolve a political problem, quite frankly. A lot of it will depend on what mueller comes up with. We are not through this, it is we have to keep doing what we do, we keep asking questions. Host glad you brought that up. We should bring this full circle, almost a year, 50 election in 2016 amazingly enough, still examining what went on. And in 2016, you are still an optimist about reporting facts and wife a matter, how do you be an optimist when it comes to the fact there were so many facts out there in the record, it didnt seem to matter. And accountability, we only saw a company and transparency the journalism was . To be an optimist. Guest you can lead a horse to water but cant make him drink, we have to put it out there, people come to a conclusion, sometimes it takes a long time for people to come to the right conclusion. Sometimes they get it wrong, we went back and read hamilton. In this book, the founders didnt promise a perfect government but selfgovernment. That is where we are right now. Our job, we cannot be intimidated and deterred because we are playing an important role. What makes this interesting, in the middle of this technological revolution, the change is the impact on our culture. We have without doubt the most unusual president ial campaign of my lifetime. I can never remember anything like it. I said so many times on television but became a drinking game with younger reporters. I have never seen anything, here we go. And no entries came within that. I think this has something to do with the change in how we get the news and our politics, i think our political system, the way we select our candidates is in worse shape than our roads and bridges. I talk about that in some detail in the book. 300 Million People, how did it come down to those, and the reality tv star. On the other side, i like Hillary Clinton. She is eminently qualified to be president , i covered her in the senate and she was very good senator for the state of new york but how is it the Democratic Party which is our Oldest Political Party has only one person with enough of a natural following via candidates for their nomination and the main challenges from someone who is not even a democrat who announced he was not a capitalist, how did that happen . This is totally subjective, what happened is we made running for office so odious and so awful that the best and brightest want nothing to do with it, they turn away. People like Olympia Snowe has the most powerful country inco giving some thought, did she really want to run for reelection, not that she would get a primary one. And the same thing on the other side. And something happening with both parties on the republican side, lives spread, the war within and it is not much better on the democratic side. I ran across something, there were fewer people, democrats or republicans with either party. I would be surprised if we dont have that next time. What im seeing is the Republican Party is more to the right, the Democratic Party is moving more to the left. The chasm is deeper and wider and want to interview these days. Guest this pope would be an interesting interview, does he have anything to do with this . In a broad kind of way, never interviewed pope. And i find this the most fascinating of the popes. Im not a religious person in any particular way. Im a believer but not as far as that goes but ive always been interested in religion. I would like to talk to him. Of donald trump, and said i would like to talk to you i would do it. I always tell people, would you really like to interview . Whoever the president is because the president always makes news which i interviewed trump over the years. My first interview with him was when they couldnt get the ice to freeze over in the central park skating rink and spent a bunch of money and he said i will get it done and in three months he had people skating out there, private enterprise talks over, bumbling bureaucracy and all kinds of things, a really good story. I interviewed him from time to time over the years. Sometimes he likes me and sometimes he doesnt. Host donald trump and the vatican, take notice, Bob Schieffer would like to talk to you. Thank you for this incredible conversation, it makes me feel better about journalism in these troubled times and it is wonderful to spend time with you and