when i was in the gridiron show this year which is a spoof we do, we had a gag song that we sing and it was george boy singing this song. he is talking about barack obama being in the white house and he said things are in such a mess, he is probably sitting at my desk wishing he was john mccain. he won the election but boy. [laughter] he won and now he has got to deal with all of this. it is a very interesting campaign to cover because amongst other things barack obama is the best speaker we have had, certainly since jack kennedy and maybe sense-- i don't know who i would list. in the beginning of this country the founders were all great speakers. they were all great idea people. they knew how to communicate and we are saying that again. people during the campaign said,

he is just an orator and i thought that was not something to be laughed off. i thought it was kind of in the spirit of tradition in this country, so it is very interesting and as a reporter, it is fun. >> hello, welcome to close-up at the newseum. >> my name is amman and i am from michigan. my question is oftentimes in the news media every election is portrayed as being the most important of our lives and i was wondering which in your career defined the most momentous to cover? >> they are all the most important, when you come down to it. i would just say i'm not sure i would agree that any of them are the most important. we will find out 100 years from now which ones were the most important but the ones i thought, i thought this one of all the campaigns i have covered was far and away the most interesting. i have covered-- i was the

reporter with george mcgovern in 1972, which was a landslide just because it was my first national campaign. that was the one that had a great impression on me but just from the standpoint of history, i mean you have the first african-american. do you have the first woman who was taken seriously as a presidential candidate. you had a true american he wrote in john mccain, a good man, a great american, and you saw all of those forces come to play. to me, that is what impressed me. let me tell you something. in 1962, my first big story-- i did not know it at the time when i was sent there but my first big story i was sent to the old miss, university of mississippi to see the enrollment of james meredith. their rights, 142 people were injured or wounded. two people were killed that night. it was a terrifying evening.

just in an effort to prevent one black kid from going to a state tax supported university, and to go back, last year, for the first presidential debate which was held at the university of mississippi, to me, and to see how everybody was working there to make it just perfect, to me that was a proud moment in history of this country. this was more than just an election. this was a historic moment in the history of this country, i think. >> to go on that campus and see that moment of james meredith going through that door commemorated in a statute right behind the lyceum-- not window dressing. this was in turn is. if you are just joining us you are watching close-up at the newseum. we are talking to bob schieffer about politics and the media. if you want more information about close-up foundation visit our web site at close-up.org,

also newseum.org. our student audience consists of students from the washington center and the close-up academy here in washington dc. bob you talk about that presidential debate campaign. my goodness, you had all these forces coming together including the technology, all these digital platforms. how did that change coverage? >> well, it is changed everything. there are no deadlines anymore as we all know but what has really changed things is the internet. id has changed not just journalism but it has changed politics, and in the sense of coming do you know of campaigns in the past, every campaign i have covered we had what we called street talk and whispering campaigns. i always tell the story, when i was a reporter in fort worth, about ten days out from every election i have ever covered it always turned out one of the candidates was accused of having a girlfriend that lived on the

east side. i don't know why it was but all the girlfriend's for living on the east side. it would always come out and we would have to go check it out and sometimes it would be true, about 90% of the times it was not true. was just one of the scurrilous rumors and it would never get in the paper, it would never get on television or anything. now, it's that kind of rumor crop supped it gets on somebody's blog. it gets on the internet and there it is. you have to deal with it. you have to figure out what to do about it. what we in the mainstream media do about it, we try to check it out but you know the internet is the first vehicle we have ever had to deliver news that has no editor. the words newspaper in america, the smallest radio station in america that has in his department has somebody on the staff who knows where this stuff came from. staff pops up on the internet. you don't know if it is true, you don't know if it is false.

a good example of this is the treatment that sarah palin got. now, the mainstream media took a lot of hits for the unfair coverage of sarah palin and all of that. the fact of the matter is, we did not broadcast one word about these rumors that were circulating that were all over the internet about sarah palin until the mccain campaign put out a written press statement that said you know, that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant and so on and so forth. obviously when a campaign makes a statement he put out something like it. but, it was all over the place. everybody knew about it. weech readed that information just like we would when somebody would call cbs and say here is a new step. we never did any of that. we never put any of that on the air but a lot of people took a big whack at the media for

saying, we put that on. we didn't but that is what we are all dealing with. politicians don't know how to deal with that. we are dealing with it as best we can but it has really changed the way campaigns are now. >> it is that collective word media, and people need to differentiate between the press, the news organizations and the raw information. >> but no one does. another example of this is on 9/11. we knew every airplane that had been grounded and yet these stories would keep popping up on the internet. there is another plane headed toward the world-- this year's trade tower in chicago. we had to stop what we were doing, check the same sources and just doublecheck. this is one of the ways the internet has changed journalism. traditionally in journalism if you make a mistake in his organization considers it, if we know it is a mistake, our

responsibility to corrected and we try to corrected as quickly as we can. what we used to do is when our competitors may mistake, we ignored it and let them corrected. we can do that anymore and that is what changed on 9/11. if we had ignored those reports and had not check them out, we ran the risk of setting off mass hysteria and panic in the streets. so, basically what it is coming down to, the mainstream media and the mean by that the major newspapers, the networks and so forth, our job is going to be to correct all of that kind of stuff and on 9/11 we spent most of the day doing just that. >> let's go to our next poll question now. the question is this. are the news media to critical of politicians or not critical enough? so, let's see who feels that the press is too critical, raise your hand. and feel the press gives them an easy ride, raise your hand. okay, now let's go with who

feels, at the microphone that the press is too critical of politicians? bead my name is brent foster and i'm from truman state university in missouri. i feel the press is a little bit too critical on politicians. one thing i know is that politicians are humans just like everyone else. i think sometimes they can get put, they gave little mistake and be put in a negative light and people will follow that. just like this last weekend with obama going to new york city. was it that big of a deal that he downplayed-- and i feel it was blown out of proportion and people really follow that, just because they saw the media. >> okay, and we have got the opposite opinion from one of your colleagues. >> i am sarah from nebraska. i don't believe they are critical and up. the news media plays an important role in the reporting the news in keeping our politicians in check. they can never be too critical

of those that make the most important decisions in our nation. >> i am not sure where i would come down. i think they are critical sometimes and not critical enough sometimes. i think it really theories and you have to decided on a case by case basis. i think what both of you said actually has merit on this. i was surprised when so many said-- i would have thought it would have been the opposite. >> a lot of this is perception too and bob want to take you back to the period we were talking about early. the 1960's and '70's, from the antiwar movement and then watergate, that the press was very critical of government. rosy glasses a little bit. help us out. >> eric sevareid used to always say bias is not just in the mouth of the speaker. it is sometimes in the year of the listener and i think, i think a lot of times it is the

way people perceive things, and my sense of it is, after 52 years of being a reporter is there are some people who believe that objectivity is that which agrees with their point of view and everything else is biased. and, i go through this every week. piano, because no, since the sotomayor nomination has come up, since i interviewed dick cheney and colin powell and all of this, i have got blogs and liberal blogs on the left to arsay i am parroting the republican line and i have got republican or conservative blood on the right that say i am a liberal and i am taking the liberal point of view and it is really kind of funny sometimes to take these. you can say the same thing and see how people on one side

perceive that in how people on the other side perceive it. you have to just kind of try to-- always learned. sometimes they are right. they might be right. i don't hold myself up by any means to be a perfect person but it is interesting how people sometimes the bias is not so much, i think, in what is being said as it is in the ear of the person that hears a. >> give the sale little lesson on civic responsibility, with all the choices out there. it also strikes me there are an awful lot of people that use a wide degree of choice is to gravitate to those sources that are going to say what they only believe and they are not going to spend any time just hearing about another point of view to find out if there is some truth to it. >> i think that is exactly right and i think that is what you have. i am not saying this is totally bad that you can now get the news delivered to you any way

you choose. if you like to hear from the liberal point of view, you can certainly hear that and if you want to hear from a conservative point of view, you can have that. if you want to hear from a vegetarian point of the, i am sure there is an allitt that would give it to you from that point if you, but that is what free press, that is what the free press and the first amendment is all about. but, it is not always journalism. journalism is a part of the free press. it is the free press is not journalism. the free press means he would have the right to stand up and say, i am from mars, and you may be from fort worth. but, journalism is getting to the truth and that is what reporters and that is what journalism is all about. politicians deliver a message. reporters are supposed to try to find the truth and get as close

to that as they possibly can. and that also is the greatest defense against an allegation of bias. if you have got the story right, there's not much that anybody on either side can say about it. >> hello, welcome to close-up of the newseum. >> hi, i am from ocean springs mississippi. i was wondering what is your view on convergence and how has it affected you as a reporter? >> by convergence, you have one organization that does it all. down at tcu where i went to journalism school and where i graduated we were totally overhauling our journalism department where you know longer will follow a newspaper track or a broadcast journalism track. everybody, and we are going to open the newsroom this fall. everybody is going to work out of the same newsroom. it would work this way. if you are sent a cover of a news conference that the chancellor may be held or if you

have done an interview with the chancellor, the first thing he will do when you come back to the newsroom, he will do a debris for the television station that will be shown that night or if it was taped, you will have some excerpts of that. then you will sit down and write a piece for the web. and then you will sit down and write your piece for the newspaper for the school newspaper that comes up the same day. i think this is where journalism is growing. as far as journalism training, basically what we are trying to do there is cross train, make sure that the people who want to be newspaper reporters have a good familiarity with broadcast journalism works and vice versa because i think eventually we are going to see everybody working for the same organization. i think, if there is a way to solve this newspaper problem that we have now, how to find a distance model, i think we are going to see the fcc-- the fcc will have to change the rules

that. right now it is against the law for the same honor to own a television station and a newspaper in the same town. i think you are going to see their rule change. i hope this change because i think these media companies are going to have to be companies that provide multiple platforms for their reporters, and their product. if we are to find the right kind of business model to keep these things afloat. >> in the meantime bob, i was that old miss during that first presidential debate in the and it thing i saw was the student journalists of the daily mississippi and using all these digital tools. let one point there was a young man, i am going to mention by name, jason fisher because he was actually employed by an on line service that cbs helped fund, youth blogged.com and he came into the newsroom. he said look, i façade jim axelrod walking across campus.

i got a picture and a "and we put it on the internet within two minutes of that encounter and that also is an aspect of journalism in the 21st century. >> it is. it is the technological strides are just breathtaking and if you want to know how far this has come, when my children were little they used ask me, these to see daddy, did you want to be a tv reporter when you grow up? i used to say they didn't have tv when i was a little boy. that is how far we have come. i had a woman who worked for me, who was my assistant. someone gave me a portable typewriter. you all would have the same reaction. for my birthday. it was the portable typewriter we used to carry on the campaigns. she asked me, what is that? i said well, it is a portable typewriter. she had never seen a typewriter and i bet a lot of you have never operated a typewriter. you know what a computer is in a

laptop. i used to have to type it out on those old typewriters. the other part is, when i worked at the fort worth star-telegram and young people would find this kind of unusual too. in this age of the cell phone if you did not have a phone in those days, if you did not know where the phones were you did not have the story because you could not get it into the paper. on the police beat we knew where the gas stations were that had payphones in various parts of the town and we would go to that part of town. we would know, if i go to sell and sell gas station there is a pay phone there and that was an important part of learning what the beat was and how to cover. >> welcome to close-up of the newseum. >> i am brought in nine from alexandria minnesota. earlier we talked about presidential legacies and i was wondering about your legacy. i want to know what accomplishment, wide world have you played that you would be

most proud of in all, when you are done? [laughter] not now. >> i am just proud that i am still here. that is the part that i like best of all. i have no idea. i think there's a great deal of difference in people who write about things and the people who do them. i have always tried to keep that in mind as a journalist. the important people are not the people writing about it but the people who are doing things. i think journalism is an open profession and it is a big part, as you have heard me say, about making democracy possible but i think it might be pretentious to think about a legacy. >> thank you. we are going to go to our next poll question. this is kind of and are you paying attention question because we have been talking about bias. do you believe there is liberal bias in the mainstream news media? raise your hand if you believe the media is biased toward the liberal side and raise your hand

now if you believe there is not a liberal bias in the media. and we are still split 50/50. that notion just hangs in there. which of you believe there is liberal bias in the media? introduce yourself and sound off. >> you are very representative of the demographic because it is generally male who think it is a liberal bias. females think it is conservative. >> i'm spencer from crofton nebraska and i feel there is an overall liberal bias in the media. even though you can get both views, say fox news, the ultra-conservative, but in the mainstream media book there is a liberal bias. you said that the press has a duty and an obligation to provide fair, bipartisan, just the facts press and the politicians themselves have to

sway the people. and, i think that we have deviated from that somewhat in the press is now swaying the people one way or the other. >> i got you. >> let's find out the other point of view and then we are going to have the stay close to the mic because after bob talks we may want to hear more from you. >> i don't feel there really is an overall liberal dominance i guess in the press. though i think there's a lot of liberal influence, think there's probably just as much conservative and moderate all together. >> i think, i think the fact is reporters generally speaking see themselves as representatives of the government, not the governors and i think that is where a lot of the feeling came from that somehow they were biased. i think part of journalism is challenging, you know and i think that again is where some

of that comes from. i personally-- i would say this. i think that journalism is sort of like a draft army. i think it is representative of a society that is drawn from. there are liberals, there are conservatives, there are people of all political persuasions in the mainstream media. by and large i do not believe that is what drives most reporters. i think 95% of the people i know and have known them through the years, what has driven them, what motivates them is just the ability or the desire to get a story, to get it right in to get it before their competitors do. i mean, and it is an arguable point and people will be arguing about it after you are dead, let alone me but that is just my feeling about it. >> let me ask you this. have you been able to find news presented in what you believe is

a fair and objective way, even if you have to look toward three times? have you had a problem on any issue that you can't find that straightforward, across the board reporting? >> in my view, every story you have i think the media gives it as, you can get it from-- staidly pac's tea party recently. in the stations like cbs, abc, nbc, they gave it towards more of a liberal point of view, saying this is like, everyone is just bashing barack obama and his tax policies. but, stations such as fox news or talk radio, they said how, how the american, how great this

was the people were standing up. >> if you think-- did you think the fox news coverage was objective? >> fox news is more conservative but if between the two you get a fairly level playing field on the coverage. >> i got you. how about you? do you think fox news is objective? >> id think it is tending to be more conservative but i think all news stations for the most part project the fact that you interpret it how you want to. >> very interesting, thank you. it is interesting, we have got a case that is going to be reported going forward. congress demanding a plan from president obama before they will back his closing of the basic guantanamo bay. how you think that is going to play out? >> i think in the end, i think in the end that congress will give him the money to close it down but i think congress-- quite frankly i think congress

was right in saying look, we need to know how you are going to do this because the debate we did not have to in the campaign is not should guantanamo be closed, because both the republican and democrat agree it should be closed, and because they agree nobody ask the hard question which i which i would invest. equal think about to be closed, how are you going to do that? missed readed or not, there are some pretty bad dudes there and nobody wants them running free in their neighborhood so this is a very complicated problem but, the united states government is pretty good at running a maximum security prisons and there is no reason that these people can't be held, and will not pose a threat to communities. but, the other part is, what do you do, are you going to bring them to trial? how are you going to do it?

from the beginning of the iraq war, there has been this disagreement that are these people prisoners of war, are the criminals? what are they exactly and those basic questions have never been asked and they still have to be sorted out. i think in the end, they will close the thing but where they put them, it is like nuclear waste. everybody thinks it ought to be put someplace that they don't want it in their state, so that is the political side of that that has to be resolved. >> welcome to close-up at the newseum. >> i am from newark, delaware. my question is, in your 40 years of doing the media, et doing news did you think it you would make this big of an impact in your career? >> i don't know. i never really thought about that. i don't know that i have quite frankly. i will give you a little testier. how many people can remember something-- i was on television last week. how many remember one specific

thing you heard me say last week? anybody here? she works for me. [laughter] how many of you can remember something your first grade teacher taught you? you see there? then people say, who were the opinion makers in our society? we get a much better press than we deserve in the media. the real opinion makers are the teachers. that is to the real opinion makers are and don't ever forget that. by the way if you are making a speech to teachers, always bring that up. they love it. >> that is what makes them one of our heroes. >> my name is allyson and i'm from crofton nebraska. i was wondering what had been some of your most memorable interviews on "face the nation"? >> i have to say i love to interview presidents and there is nothing more exciting than interviewing a sitting president because anything the president says makes news. when i interviewed barack obama this year, the "associated

press" wrote six different stories out of then interview. it was the same when i interviewed george bush when he was president. i had actually interviewed all of the men who were president, and all the people who ran against them since richard nixon. that is just a thrill. to get to do that. this office is sine. it is the most powerful office in the world. everything the press does makes news or impacts on somebody's life in some way, so those are the ones i have always gotten the biggest kick out of. bob schieffer, it has been a thrill for all of us to have the spend time with us, share your insight, share your stories and student audience give yourselves a round of applause for excellent questions and interaction in the studio today. [applause] of course we welcome feedback from our television audience so please both positive and negative mac. visit us at close-up.org and

newseum.org. next program is on june 12 with our guest claire shipman. we will be discussing their new book. we end close-up at the newseum each week with a dedication to a fallen journalist. this week we honor the one year commemoration of the loss of tim russert. tim was nbc news bureau chief and host of "meet the press." he passed away on june 13th after having a heart attack at nbc's washington year while he was recording voice overs. he was rushed to sibley memorial hospital in washington where he later died. he is survived by his wife and his son, luke. tama was 58 years old. we dedicate this moment to the memory of tim russert. thank you for watching close-up at the newseum. we hope you will join us again next week. so long. [applause]