Folks, 12 years isnt enough. Look, we have come a lot way, but a lot more has to be done. Let me conclude by saying it comes down to one thing. Everybody deserves a fair shot. White, hispanic, black, asian are capable of doing extraordinary things if you give them a shot. Just give them the tools. The base foundation, equal access to the same education, a safe neighborhood, a job, transportation get to a job, health care. We just need a chance. You all know it. We just level the Playing Field a little bit. But folks, the president has sacrificed and struggled, it should not fall to those who are suffering and struggling. You quoted something for my book i have not heard in a long time, we all, we all, we offer our own safetys sake, well be sacrifice a little bit, all of us. We used to be one america, i really mean it, where we thought about things in terms of everybody has responsibility, which everybody talks about this responsibility in a community. But everybody has obligations. Everybody has obligations. And the sacrifice is not great, but the reward is enormous. So i am deeply honored to have this Lifetime Achievement award. But we are not done yet. And i will be right here with you, whether i am in office or out of office, and soon i will be out of office. I have never been gainfully employed in my life. [laughter] i dont know what the hell i have going to do. I never cashed a paycheck in my entire life. I will need your advice from some of you, but i want to stay involved. I will be right here pushing the next president to level the Playing Field. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. The neighborhood i come from, remember the last campaign i will not mention in particular, but i got offended when one of the candidates say i worked at mcdonalds, and i had dreams. I worked there and i didnt have dreams . I didnt have dreams in my neighborhood . I didnt have dreams . Why cant i play ball . My parents didnt have dreams for them. There is this thing that is a risen, not bad people, but they have this distorted notion that somehow, if you come from a means or of background, you are educated, somehow you dream differently than we do. I am serious, think about it. Not a joke. Think about it. Have you ever known a mother in a tough neighborhood that didnt dream for their kid to go to college and her heart even though she dropped out of school in fourth grade and may be struggling now . Have you ever known a family in a tough neighborhood or a barrio that has no dreams for their kids . So give people a chance. I am proud to be associated with you all. God bless you for what you have done, and may god protect our troops, and i apologize for getting so much into this. [applause] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Friday morning, chief policy editor for Morning Consult will be on to discuss the new Labor Department overtime rule issued on wednesday. And then the policy director for the Sunlight Foundation will talk about the deal between the rnc and the Donald Trump Campaign to jointly fund raise for the general election. He will also discuss sources that donald trump is aiming to raise more than 2 billion. The congressional reporter from military times will be with us to break down the National Defense authorization act. Cspanso watch washington journal beginning at 7 00 a. M. Live on friday morning. Join the discussion. A former u. S. Ambassador to nato and a foreign and a we will have live coverage from the Atlantic Council tomorrow at 11 30 a. M. Eastern here on c here on cspan. Journalist morley safer died today. He was 84. Up next, we will show an interview we did with him on q a. Born in toronto, he worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before being hired by cbs news in 1964. In 1970, he replaced harry reeser on 60 minutes. Here is our interview from 2012. Brian morley safer, how do you change your approach over the last 42 years on 60 minutes . Morley safer no dramatic difference in terms of reporting the news or doing interviews for the news or, really, even between doing what is construed as hard news versus more featury stuff. The same rules apply. You try to get to the core of the story, to the core of the individual. And i think really that is why we have an audience out there for the last 45 years on 60 minutes. It is, i think were slightly why i think it is precisely why people watch the broadcast. Have few axes to grind. We are fair. It is the fairness that is the attraction, unlike some much of what you see on cable, where fairness is the last thing people are being offered. And i guess to a certain audience, the last thing they want. Brian we have a video from your office. Took a camera there. I want you to talk us through what the environment is, how long you have been there. You can see it on the screen. Morley safer i have to put these on. Spectacles. That is the lobby. And then we have a huge clock, which no one really likes. That is the corridor of where the correspondents all live with their helpers. Brian the mayor. Is that a normal desk for morley safer right there . Morley safer i confess it is probably neater than normal. Brian why the big poster . Morley safer the big poster is, reflects a story i did 30 years ago. On the question of whether a major painting at the metropolitan museum was in fact a fake, and the it caused quite a controversy, and i had, i had friends at the met who refused to speak to me for 20 years, have since come around. The painting is called the pickpocket or the thief. I cant remember. Brian there is a picture right there of you with some of your old colleagues. Morley safer i really miss ed bradley. He was my nextdoor neighbor in the office. We both were early risers. We went there before anybody else in the morning. We had sort of a morning pitching session over coffee. That was an award i got out in california. Brian how much time did you spend there . Morley safer in the office . A lot more now. Three or four years ago, i decided it was not going to happen. I was not going to have time. I did not succeed. I spend much more time than i really need to, but it is the habit. I mean, when you get up i dont need to tell you this. When you have been getting up in the morning for 60 years, putting on a clean shirt and tie and going into an office, it is a very hard habit to break. Brian we saw you a minute ago puffing on a cigarette. I understand that is not a real cigarette. [laughter] morley safer it is not. Brian but you had it, how many morley safer i still have the Electronic Cigarette that, to all intents, looks like a real onand, to some extent, tastes like a real one. It is just pure nicotine, there is none of the junk or the tar that is in the regular cigarettes. And the smoke that you see is vapor. Brian does it work . Morley safer it certainly works in giving you a nicotine fix, absolutely does work, but there is still something about the other that is why it is called an addiction. Brian this question im sure is not a lot of fun to answer, but youd sat there and watched a whole bunch of your friends die. Morley safer certainly have. Just in the last year, we lost andy rooney. A few years ago we lost ed, lost mike, lost joe, a wonderful producer i worked with. John tiffin, another longstanding. These were the originals of 60 minutes. It has been a very, very rough year. Couple of years. But i must say, having lost some of these stalwarts of the broadcast, the broadcast itself has not been affected. Jeff sager took over from don hewitt, certainly the master of 60 minutes, died. And jeff has maintained all the values and pretty much all of the unwritten rules of putting this broadcast on the air. Brian when i started watching you 42 years ago, you were getting 30 Million People watching 60 minutes. And you are often the top show of the week. You are now getting 10 or 11 or 12 million, and you are still in the top. What does that say . Morley safer there has been an extraordinary revolution. The Internet Plus the whole cable community has obviously fractured the audience. I think, i hear the figure of 60 being bandied about, over 60 of over the air television, network television, has been lost. It is probably more than that. So you know, the competition is extraordinary, but on big days, important pieces there is a piece on, recently, as you know, about the operation to get osama bin laden. We got a huge audience for that. And i think people do turn to us in great numbers when in the historymaking moments, certainly. Brian may ask you a journalism question . Those who watched it saw a reference to the man who wrote the book, mark owen, but everybody else in the country knew his name was bissonette . Morley safer i think that probably we consciously stayed with the original rules. Engagement in terms of putting this piece on the air. I dont know the precise details. I think it is actually not that is a very seemly thing to do. Brian one thing i noticed the last four years i have never seen you do this in the history of 60 minutes. Will of 60 minutes. My last count, you had 12 interviews with the president , mr. Obama, since he got involved. I cannot remember you ever doing that many with a president. Why so many with this one . Morley safer well, i will tell you, quite honestly, because he says yes. There was no shortage of requests for george w. Bush. As i recall, i dont think we ever interviewed with him. Im wrong, he may have been interviewed once. There is always these kind of the rules of the game to have a request in for an interview with the president , whoever the president may be. The obama people and obama himself just like to get on the air. Brian that is the biggest audience in information. It has got a bigger audience than any other morley safer pretty much. You certainly get access to an engaged part of the population. Brian do you ever worry about being used . Morley safer of course. Of course you always worry about being used, but the presumption always is that at the same time, we are using them. A were not going to be patsies for any administration, and i do not think we ever have been. Brian let me ask you about you people. I want to run video of don hewitt. How many years did you know him . Morley safer i knew don from the very beginning of my life at cbs which was in 1964. Don was the executive producer as adon was the executive producer of the cbs evening news, the cronkite news, when i joined. Shortly after he was fired, and was in a kind of limbo or new siberia for a couple of years. And i had done, i did a a documentary for them in 1968. On communist china, as it was called. And don was the nominal executive producer of that broadcast. So i have known don for a long, long time. When i came up for this idea of 60 minutes, he became a kind of willy loman. He put together of reel of old cbs reports using 10 or 15 minute segments, taking the best of each of them and putting together a reel. He went shopping that around to every executive at cbs. A he went to the London Bureau chief, to show it to me, to show the guys in paris. A a trying to sell and get a support for his idea of this thing he called 60 minutes. He had harry reasoner, the original host in this, in this, call this a pilot if you like. And then he added mike, mike wallace, into the pilot. A it was his relentless pursuit. They said, ok, ok, ok, we will do it. We will try. We will put you on at 6 00 on a sunday. And so harry and mike went on. Are you a later, harry left to go to abc, and they brought me in to take the other guy on 60 minutes. The a and we were not a huge success at all. Role will partly because 6 00 on sunday, football season completely wiped us out. Sometimes they would wipe us out to do a kind of 10 minute broadcast, and then they is thought, have little news bulletins at the end, or at the beginning, all kinds of experiments. And then they tried us on a different night. We went against something called marcus welby, which was the most Popular Program on television. And finally we settled, because there is nothing else you could put at 7 00 on sunday. We took off like a skyrocket. I cant remember what year that was, probably 1972 or 1973. I can remember. Brian what have you found that does not work . Morley safer what does not work . Don hewitts first rule, and i think he was absolutely right, is we do not cover issues. We cover stories. A major difference. Brian did you feel that way yourself, or did you have to you will yourself, or did you have to learn that . Morley safer well, without making myself selfimportant, i had done i had executiveproduced a halfhour a weekly magazine that went out on sunday night at the cbc, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, called cbc newsmagazine. A it is not on the air anymore, but it was for a good, long time. I had produced, but was not on the air myself, i produced this is broadcast and wrote most of it. So i actually, i actually believed in dons theory before he articulated it. You for the simple reason he is would show somebody the script for an hour broadcast. That script for an hour broadcast is about two pages worth of information in the new york times, which you cannot do a lot on television. You have to know your limitations. They are enormous limitations. If you are going to cover issues, there is no way you can do an honest job of that. Even in an hour, never mind 12. 5 aeven in an hour, never mind 12. 5 minutes, which is roughly what each of these would run. Brian what is the longest interview you have ever done . I know you only use minutes of it in each piece, then all the stuff ended up on the cutting you stuff ended up on the cutting room floor. Do you remember . When you talked and talked and talked to get what you needed . I talked to get what you needed . Morley safer probably a story that never got on the air. Brian how often does that happen . Morley safer not often at all. If the interview goes on and on and on, generally it is, generally is because the subject is either totally inarticulate, and so you just keep going and going and going in order to get going going and going in order to get some sense, or the answers are so clearly just misinformation, and an interview can just become more fighting match, it ends up creating more heat than light. Will brian you were born or in canada. Where . Morley safer toronto. Brian what was the family like . Morley safer we were lower working class. My father was an upholsterer, an immigrant. I am first generation. Immigrant from austria. My mother came from a family from the east end of london, a cockney girl. My father immigrated, he had a been in the Austrian Army and immigrated, i think, 1912. Mothers family emigrated about 1910, and she was a seamstress. She came from a big family. They came over what is called the assisted passage, where the world entire family, they were is entire family, they were trained to encourage immigration. Anyone could immigrate to canada. A and my brother and sister, i was the youngest. My brother and sister are still alive. Brian how old are they . Morley safer my sister is 86. My brother is 84, about to be 85. Brian you were born in 1920 . Morley safer no, 1931. [laughter] in a brian making you older than you are. Let me ask you about age. I have a list of when people died, and they all worked to the are died, and they all worked to the end. Don hewitt was 86, andy rooney you are a was 92. Product ed bradley was another situation, 65. Walter cronkite went after the air when he was 85 and lived to be 92. It seems to me in the early days of broadcasting that never happened people were allowed to stay beyond 65. Morley safer no, indeed. I can remember, i dont member of precisely what the rules were. I think if you were a contract employee, staff people, executives, whatever, i think had to retire at 55. Will there was an internal memorandum about that. Contract people had no such as limits. Will a and look, all the guys will that you mentioned pretty much had their marbles to virtually the end. I mean ed. A don effectively left the broadcast probably when he was 84, Something Like that. 83 or 84. Mike when he was 89 or 90. And rooney right to the end. Brian two weeks later. Morley safer exactly. Brian i want to run that video of don hewitt. This is only 40 seconds, so people that may not remember him know what he looks like. [video clip] who invented the tick, tick, tick at the beginning of 60 minutes . I did, but it was not at the beginning. It was a closing thing, over the credits. The first show i said to myself, wait a minute, you have to be crazy to put that at the end. That is in lieu of a theme song. And Marvin Hamlisch always accuses me of devising the tick, tick to screw some poor songwriter out of a royalty. But it just worked. It was at the end, and i moved it up, and it worked. Brian what was his genius . Morley safer the kind of gut instinct that made him a great editor. Brian did you two ever quarrel . Morley safer i do not think we had a screening i am overstating this, but pretty a much most of the screenings, there was a lot of blood on the floor. A don believed in conflict. He had a real passionate belief in conflict. The more you were challenged, the more he challenged you, the more you responded to his or challenges, the better the her piece was. You are brian what impact did it have on you, that in your you face personality . Morley safer i could deal with it. I do not mind a conflict myself. Brian really . As morley safer yeah. Don and mike, it was the same with don and ed as well. A don was a tough editor, very, very tough, and some of his ideas were completely mad, i mean just bananas, crazy, wrong. A but you could talk him down. A and that was the great, don, for all his sometimes crazy and a garish behavior, you could talk him out of a really lousy a idea. And he had a lot of lousy ideas. You but he had some brilliant ones as well. Brian let me go back to your upbringing. Her how much schooling did you get in canada . Morley safer i was not a great student. I got through high school. There were five years. The fifth year, fifth form, was kind of like a first year of college. Thats like a baccalaureate you had to pass. I scraped through. I was a pretty good athlete. Recruited byt of the university of western ontario. What sport . And what position . Football at half back. It was not an athletic scholarship. Was thatcouraged during the football season you got full board. That was one way brian how long did use day . Stay . How did you get into the information business . Morley safer i know exactly what i wanted to do. I wanted to be a journalist. Era,a lot of all of my hemingway bit. I was always