Bob Schieffer
Encyclopedia
Bob Lloyd Schieffer (ˈʃiːfər; born February 25, 1937) is an American television journalist who has been with CBS
News since 1969, serving 23 years as anchor on the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News
from 1973 to 1996; chief Washington
correspondent since 1982, moderator of the Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation
since 1991, and, between March 2005 and August 31, 2006, interim weekday anchor of the CBS Evening News. As of 2011, along with Russ Mitchell, he is the primary substitute for Scott Pelley.
Schieffer is one of the few journalists to have covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House
, the Pentagon
, United States Department of State
, and United States Congress
. His career with CBS has almost exclusively dealt with national politics.
Schieffer is a survivor of grade III bladder cancer
; he was diagnosed in 2003 and as of 2004 is cancer-free.
On October 13, 2004, he was the moderator of the third presidential debate between President George W. Bush
and Senator
John Kerry
in Tempe, Arizona. On October 15, 2008, Schieffer moderated the third presidential debate between Senator Barack Obama
and Senator John McCain
.
He was a regular guest on the Don Imus
morning radio show until it was taken off the air.
and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas
. He is an alumnus of North Side High School
, and Texas Christian University (TCU)
, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta
fraternity. The journalism school at TCU was later named after him. After graduating from TCU, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a captain and information officer. He was honorably discharged and joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
as a reporter, with one of his key assignments a trip to Vietnam
to profile soldiers from the Fort Worth area. At the Star Telegram he received his first major journalistic recognition on November 22, 1963. Shortly after President Kennedy
was shot in Dallas, while in the Star-Telegram office, he received a telephone call from a woman in search of a ride to Dallas. The woman was Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald
's mother, whom he accompanied to the Dallas police station. He then spent the next several hours there pretending to be a detective, enabling him to have access to an office with a phone. In the company of Oswald's mother Marguerite and his wife, Marina, he was able to use the phone to call in dispatches from other Star-Telegram reporters in the building. This enabled the Star Telegram to create four "Extra" editions on the day of the assassination. Schieffer later joined WBAP-TV in Fort Worth before taking a job with CBS in 1969.
In the wake of Dan Rather
's controversial retirement, he was named interim anchor for the weekday CBS Evening News. He assumed that job on March 10, 2005, the day following Rather's last broadcast. Under Schieffer, the CBS Evening News gained about 200,000 viewers, to average 7.7 million viewers, reversing some of the decline in ratings that occurred during Rather's tenure; while "NBC Nightly News" was down by 700,000 viewers, and ABC's World News Tonight lost 900,000. Some of this was attributed to the Schieffer family's closeness with President George W. Bush
; Bush had previously refused to grant an interview to Rather. Schieffer closed the gap with ABC's World News Tonight
when co-anchor Bob Woodruff was injured in late January 2006. He made his last CBS Evening News broadcast on August 31, 2006, and was replaced in the anchor chair by Katie Couric
. On Couric's second broadcast, he returned to provide segments for the evening news as Chief Washington Correspondent.
s, two Sigma Delta Chi Award
s, was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2002 by the National Press Foundation, and was named to the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame.
He has also written a book about Ronald Reagan
called The Acting President, which was published in 1989.
, all of which appear on their CD, Road Kill Stew and Other News (with Special Guest Bob Schieffer). Schieffer sings "TV Anchorman" and wrote the lyrics for the others.
, a friend and former business partner of President George W. Bush, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Australia
2001-2005 by President Bush and also served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan
from April 2005 through January 2009. On March 2, 2009 Tom Schieffer announced he was forming an exploratory committee that will allow him to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas.
Schieffer is married to the former Patricia Penrose and has two daughters.
comic strip featured a joking fantasy scene in which Schieffer, his successor, haltingly comments on the transition: "It was the affiliates they just couldn't take him. I mean let's face it, Dan wasn't exactly MR. TACT!. I dunno.... Maybe it's just as well in the long run, I mean, you know? Anyway, this is Robert Schieffer at the White House...." (Schieffer notes that "The strip was right on except for one thing. My real name is Bob, not Robert").
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
News since 1969, serving 23 years as anchor on the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
from 1973 to 1996; chief Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
correspondent since 1982, moderator of the Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation
Face the Nation
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer is an American Sunday-morning political interview show which premiered on the CBS television network on November 7, 1954. It is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television...
since 1991, and, between March 2005 and August 31, 2006, interim weekday anchor of the CBS Evening News. As of 2011, along with Russ Mitchell, he is the primary substitute for Scott Pelley.
Schieffer is one of the few journalists to have covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
, United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, and United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. His career with CBS has almost exclusively dealt with national politics.
Schieffer is a survivor of grade III bladder cancer
Bladder cancer
Bladder cancer is any of several types of malignant growths of the urinary bladder. It is a disease in which abnormal cells multiply without control in the bladder. The bladder is a hollow, muscular organ that stores urine; it is located in the pelvis...
; he was diagnosed in 2003 and as of 2004 is cancer-free.
On October 13, 2004, he was the moderator of the third presidential debate between President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
in Tempe, Arizona. On October 15, 2008, Schieffer moderated the third presidential debate between Senator Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and Senator John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
.
He was a regular guest on the Don Imus
Don Imus
John Donald "Don" Imus, Jr. is an American radio host, humorist, philanthropist and writer. His nationally-syndicated talk show, Imus in the Morning, is broadcast throughout the United States by Citadel Media and relayed on television by the Fox Business Network.-Personal life:Imus was born in...
morning radio show until it was taken off the air.
Youth
Bob Lloyd Schieffer was born on February 25, 1937 in Austin, TexasAustin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
. He is an alumnus of North Side High School
North Side High School (Fort Worth, Texas)
North Side High School is a public secondary school located in Fort Worth, Texas.The school serves about 1,600 students in the Fort Worth Independent School District.- History :...
, and Texas Christian University (TCU)
Texas Christian University
Texas Christian University is a private, coeducational university located in Fort Worth, Texas, United States and founded in 1873. TCU is affiliated with, but not governed by, the Disciples of Christ...
, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta , also known as Phi Delt, is an international fraternity founded at Miami University in 1848 and headquartered in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, Beta Theta Pi, and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad. The fraternity has about 169 active chapters and colonies in over 43 U.S...
fraternity. The journalism school at TCU was later named after him. After graduating from TCU, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a captain and information officer. He was honorably discharged and joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a major U.S. daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. Its area of domination is checked by its main rival, The Dallas Morning News, which is published from the eastern half of the Metroplex. It is owned...
as a reporter, with one of his key assignments a trip to Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
to profile soldiers from the Fort Worth area. At the Star Telegram he received his first major journalistic recognition on November 22, 1963. Shortly after President Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
was shot in Dallas, while in the Star-Telegram office, he received a telephone call from a woman in search of a ride to Dallas. The woman was Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
's mother, whom he accompanied to the Dallas police station. He then spent the next several hours there pretending to be a detective, enabling him to have access to an office with a phone. In the company of Oswald's mother Marguerite and his wife, Marina, he was able to use the phone to call in dispatches from other Star-Telegram reporters in the building. This enabled the Star Telegram to create four "Extra" editions on the day of the assassination. Schieffer later joined WBAP-TV in Fort Worth before taking a job with CBS in 1969.
Broadcasting career
Schieffer was anchor of the Sunday evening news broadcast from 1973 to 1997 and of the Saturday evening news broadcast from 1977 until 1996. Between 1970 and 1974, he was assigned to the Pentagon, from 1974 to 1979 he was CBS's White House correspondent, and in 1982 he became Chief Washington Correspondent in addition to his anchor duties.In the wake of Dan Rather
Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...
's controversial retirement, he was named interim anchor for the weekday CBS Evening News. He assumed that job on March 10, 2005, the day following Rather's last broadcast. Under Schieffer, the CBS Evening News gained about 200,000 viewers, to average 7.7 million viewers, reversing some of the decline in ratings that occurred during Rather's tenure; while "NBC Nightly News" was down by 700,000 viewers, and ABC's World News Tonight lost 900,000. Some of this was attributed to the Schieffer family's closeness with President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
; Bush had previously refused to grant an interview to Rather. Schieffer closed the gap with ABC's World News Tonight
World News with Charles Gibson
ABC World News is the flagship daily evening program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company television network in the United States. Currently, the weekday editions are anchored by Diane Sawyer and the weekend editions are anchored by David Muir. The program has been...
when co-anchor Bob Woodruff was injured in late January 2006. He made his last CBS Evening News broadcast on August 31, 2006, and was replaced in the anchor chair by Katie Couric
Katie Couric
Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric is an American journalist and author. She serves as Special Correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials...
. On Couric's second broadcast, he returned to provide segments for the evening news as Chief Washington Correspondent.
Awards
Schieffer has won six Emmy AwardEmmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s, two Sigma Delta Chi Award
Sigma Delta Chi Award
The Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism.- History :The Awards, according to the SPJ, did not begin in 1932 when the society chose six individuals for their contributions to journalism. In 1939 the awards program began...
s, was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2002 by the National Press Foundation, and was named to the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame.
Books
Schieffer has written three books about his career in journalism: Face the Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-Winning News Broadcast, This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, and Bob Schieffer's America.He has also written a book about Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
called The Acting President, which was published in 1989.
Other interests
Since leaving the anchor desk at CBS Evening News in 2006, Schieffer has entertained his longstanding interest in songwriting by collaborating with musicians in New York and Washington, D.C. His latest efforts have resulted in four songs with the Washington area band Honky Tonk ConfidentialHonky Tonk Confidential
Honky Tonk Confidential is a retro/alt country band from the Washington, D.C. area. The band's latest CD is the result of a collaboration with CBS News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation anchor, Bob Schieffer...
, all of which appear on their CD, Road Kill Stew and Other News (with Special Guest Bob Schieffer). Schieffer sings "TV Anchorman" and wrote the lyrics for the others.
Family
Schieffer is the older brother of Tom SchiefferTom Schieffer
John Thomas Schieffer, known as Tom Schieffer , is an American diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 2005 to 2009 and as U.S. Ambassador to Australia from 2001 to 2005. Schieffer is a friend and former business partner of President George W. Bush. He is the younger brother of Bob...
, a friend and former business partner of President George W. Bush, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
2001-2005 by President Bush and also served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
from April 2005 through January 2009. On March 2, 2009 Tom Schieffer announced he was forming an exploratory committee that will allow him to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas.
Schieffer is married to the former Patricia Penrose and has two daughters.
Current status
In his most recent memoir, This Just In, Schieffer credits the fact he had been a beat reporter at CBS for his longevity at the network. He also noted a rare off-camera appearance in the Sunday comics. After fellow CBS newscaster and Texan Dan Rather was switched from the White House beat to hosting the documentary show CBS Reports in 1974, the Sunday October 13th edition of the DoonesburyDoonesbury
Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...
comic strip featured a joking fantasy scene in which Schieffer, his successor, haltingly comments on the transition: "It was the affiliates they just couldn't take him. I mean let's face it, Dan wasn't exactly MR. TACT!. I dunno.... Maybe it's just as well in the long run, I mean, you know? Anyway, this is Robert Schieffer at the White House...." (Schieffer notes that "The strip was right on except for one thing. My real name is Bob, not Robert").
Career timeline
- 1972–1974: CBS Sunday Night News anchor
- 1973–1996: 60 Minutes60 Minutes60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
contributor - 1973–2005: CBS Evening NewsCBS Evening NewsCBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
anchor (Summer and weekend editions) - 1982 – present: CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
Chief Washington correspondent - May 1991 – present: Face the NationFace the NationFace the Nation with Bob Schieffer is an American Sunday-morning political interview show which premiered on the CBS television network on November 7, 1954. It is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television...
moderator - March 10, 2005 – August 31, 2006: CBS Evening NewsCBS Evening NewsCBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
anchor
External links
- Bob Schieffer School of Journalism Texas Christian University
- Bob Schieffer And Bladder Cancer: A Survivor's Story RevolutionHealth.com, July 15, 2008
- InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: Bob Schieffer (TV Interview) Google Videos
- Stephen Colbert Interview Comedy Central, March 6, 2006
- Biography - Bob Schieffer CBS News
- Bob Schieffer Notable Names Database
- Booknotes interview with Schieffer and Gary Paul Gates on The Acting President, August 13, 1989