Robert Scheer
Encyclopedia
Robert Scheer is an American journalist who writes a column for Truthdig
which is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate
in publications such as The Huffington Post
and The Nation
. He teaches communications as a professor at the University of Southern California
and co-hosts the weekly political radio program “Left, Right & Center” on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, Calif. Scheer is Editor in Chief for the Webby Award-winning online magazine
Truthdig
.
, New York City
. His mother Ida Kuran was a Russian Jew, and his father Frederick Scheer was a Protestant native of Germany; both worked in the garment industry
. Robert graduated from Morris High School
in the Bronx. After graduating from City College of New York
with a degree in economics
, he studied as a fellow at the Maxwell School
of Syracuse University
, and then did further economics graduate work at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley
. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale University
, and was a fellow in arms control
at Stanford, the same post once held by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice
.
In 1962 in Berkeley, California
, Scheer along with David Horowitz
, Maurice Zeitlin, Phil Roos, and Sol Stern
founded Root and Branch: A Radical Quarterly, one of the first campus New Left
journals.
While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book, Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the Vietnam
correspondent, managing editor
and editor-in-chief
of Ramparts magazine. He reported from Cambodia
, China, North Korea
, Russia, Latin America
and the Middle East (including the Six-Day War
), as well as on national security
matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro
, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of Che Guevara
— which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in Ramparts and by Bantam Books
.
During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-Vietnam War
candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of New Left Sixties radicalism.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War.
In July 1970, Scheer accompanied as a journalist a Black Panther Party
delegation, led by Eldridge Cleaver
, to North Korea
, China, and Vietnam. The delegation also contained people from the San Francisco Red Guard, the women's liberation movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military.
In the November 1970 California election, Scheer ran for the U.S. Senate as the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party against Republican Senator George Murphy
and Democratic Congressman John V. Tunney
. Scheer received 56,731 votes and lost the election to Mr. Tunney.
and Playboy
, Scheer joined the Los Angeles Times
in 1976 as a reporter. There he met Narda Zacchino, a reporter whom he later wed in the paper's news room. As a national correspondent for 17 years at the Times, he wrote articles and series on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union
during glasnost
, the Jews of Los Angeles, arms control, urban crises, national politics and the military, as well as covering several presidential elections. The Times entered Scheer's work for the Pulitzer Prize
11 times, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer national reporting award for a series on the television industry.
After Scheer left the Times in 1993, the paper granted him a weekly op-ed column which ran every Tuesday for the next 12 years until it was canceled in 2005. The column now appears in Truthdig
and is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate
. Scheer is also a contributing editor
for the Nation magazine.
Scheer can be heard weekly on the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program "Left, Right & Center
" produced at and syndicated by public radio station KCRW
in Santa Monica.
He has taught courses at Antioch College
, City College of New York
, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Berkeley, and is now a clinical professor at the University of Southern California
's Annenberg School for Communication, where he teaches two courses each semester on media and society.
Scheer has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon
through Bill Clinton
. He conducted the noted 1976 Playboy
interview with Jimmy Carter
, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to having "lusted" in his heart. In an interview with George H.W. Bush, the future president and then presidential candidate revealed that he believed nuclear war was "winnable." Scheer has profiled politicians from Californians Jerry Brown
and Willie Brown to Washington insiders like Henry Kissinger
and Zbigniew Brzezinski
, as well as entertainment figures like actor Tom Cruise
.
Scheer has written eight other books, including a collection entitled Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals. In 2004, Scheer published The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq and made it to the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. It was co-authored by his oldest son, Christopher Scheer
, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, senior editor at Alternet
.
In 2006 Scheer published Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton – and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush; in 2008 he published The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
Scheer and his son were creative script consultants on the Oliver Stone
film, Nixon
, which was nominated for an Academy Award
for best original screenplay. He has appeared in small speaking roles as a journalist in several feature films, including The Siege
and Bulworth
. In 2005, the Mill Valley Film Festival
premiered a documentary on the activist and philanthropist Stanley Sheinbaum
which Scheer co-produced.
" that the paper's owner, the Tribune Company
, currently owns a newspaper and a television station in the same market, which is illegal, and may have fired Scheer in an attempt to make it easier to obtain a waiver permitting the dual ownership from the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). He also commented during a November 14, 2005, appearance on Democracy Now!
that,
In a posting at the Huffington Post, Scheer wrote:
Scheer's firing incited a protest held outside the Times downtown office on November 15, and hundreds of readers wrote letters of complaint while some, including actress Barbra Streisand
, publicly announced the cancellation of their Times subscriptions. Within a few days of his column being retired by the Times, the San Francisco Chronicle offered itself as the new home paper of Scheer's syndicated column, which ran there for years . On November 29, 2005 Scheer co-launched, as Editor in Chief, the online news magazine Truthdig
, where his column is now based. Scheer's column is syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate
in publications such as The Huffington Post
and The Nation
.
, four-time recipient of the Webby Award for best political blog and winner of multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Los Angeles Press Club. Scheer received the 2010 Distinguished Work in New Media Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and in 2011 Ithaca College named Scheer the winner of the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.
Scheer was the 1998 honoree of the Shelter Partnership, an organization of Los Angeles downtown businesses, and the USC School of Social Work's Los Amigos award recipient. He won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing in the Los Angeles Times and The Nation about the case of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee
. He has also received awards and citations from Stanford University
, the Moscow Academy of Sciences, the University of California, San Diego
, and Yale University
.
and was on the editorial staff of Root and Branch. Robert Scheer married Anne Butterfield Weills in 1965; they later divorced. Robert's son Christopher Weills Scheer
was born September 8, 1968.
Robert Scheer is now married to Narda Catharine Zacchino. Zacchino worked at the Los Angeles Times for 31 years, at which she became the associate editor and a vice president. She was later deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Zacchino is the co-author of three books, and is a Senior Fellow at USC's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.
Truthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
which is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate is an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers. It was founded in 1987 by Richard S. Newcombe, and is based in Los Angeles. Creators was one of the first syndicates to allow its clients to maintain creative control of their material...
in publications such as The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
and The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
. He teaches communications as a professor at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
and co-hosts the weekly political radio program “Left, Right & Center” on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, Calif. Scheer is Editor in Chief for the Webby Award-winning online magazine
Online magazine
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
Truthdig
Truthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
.
Beginnings through Vietnam
Robert Scheer was born and raised in the BronxThe Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His mother Ida Kuran was a Russian Jew, and his father Frederick Scheer was a Protestant native of Germany; both worked in the garment industry
Textile manufacturing
Textile manufacturing is a major industry. It is based in the conversion of three types of fibre into yarn, then fabric, then textiles. These are then fabricated into clothes or other artifacts. Cotton remains the most important natural fibre, so is treated in depth...
. Robert graduated from Morris High School
Morris High School (Bronx, New York)
Morris High School was a high school in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. It was built in 1897. It was the first high school built in the Bronx...
in the Bronx. After graduating from City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
with a degree in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, he studied as a fellow at the Maxwell School
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs is the public policy school of Syracuse University...
of Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, and then did further economics graduate work at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, and was a fellow in arms control
Arms control
Arms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
at Stanford, the same post once held by Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
.
In 1962 in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, Scheer along with David Horowitz
David Horowitz
David Joel Horowitz is an American conservative writer and policy advocate. Horowitz was raised by parents who were both members of the American Communist Party. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting Marxism completely...
, Maurice Zeitlin, Phil Roos, and Sol Stern
Sol Stern
Sol Stern is a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to its quarterly magazine City Journal. He is the author of Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice , and has written extensively on education reform...
founded Root and Branch: A Radical Quarterly, one of the first campus New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
journals.
While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book, Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
correspondent, managing editor
Managing editor
A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...
and editor-in-chief
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
of Ramparts magazine. He reported from Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, China, North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
, Russia, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
and the Middle East (including the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
), as well as on national security
National security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
— which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in Ramparts and by Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
.
During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of New Left Sixties radicalism.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War.
In July 1970, Scheer accompanied as a journalist a Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
delegation, led by Eldridge Cleaver
Eldridge Cleaver
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party and a writer...
, to North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
, China, and Vietnam. The delegation also contained people from the San Francisco Red Guard, the women's liberation movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military.
In the November 1970 California election, Scheer ran for the U.S. Senate as the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party against Republican Senator George Murphy
George Murphy
George Lloyd Murphy was an American dancer, actor, and politician.-Life and career:He was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Irish Catholic extraction, the son of Michael Charles "Mike" Murphy, athletic trainer and coach, and Nora Long. He was educated at Peddie School, Trinity-Pawling School, and...
and Democratic Congressman John V. Tunney
John V. Tunney
John Varick Tunney , is a former Democratic Party United States Senator and Representative.-Biography:He is the son of the famous heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney and Connecticut socialite Polly Lauder Tunney....
. Scheer received 56,731 votes and lost the election to Mr. Tunney.
After Vietnam
After several years freelancing for magazines, including New TimesNew Times
New Times is the album released in 1994 by Violent Femmes. It was the first Femmes' record not to feature original drummer Victor DeLorenzo on drums, who had been replaced by Guy Hoffman. "Breakin' Up," a song lead singer Gordon Gano had written years before, was the lead single...
and Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, Scheer joined the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
in 1976 as a reporter. There he met Narda Zacchino, a reporter whom he later wed in the paper's news room. As a national correspondent for 17 years at the Times, he wrote articles and series on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
during glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
, the Jews of Los Angeles, arms control, urban crises, national politics and the military, as well as covering several presidential elections. The Times entered Scheer's work for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
11 times, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer national reporting award for a series on the television industry.
After Scheer left the Times in 1993, the paper granted him a weekly op-ed column which ran every Tuesday for the next 12 years until it was canceled in 2005. The column now appears in Truthdig
Truthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
and is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate is an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers. It was founded in 1987 by Richard S. Newcombe, and is based in Los Angeles. Creators was one of the first syndicates to allow its clients to maintain creative control of their material...
. Scheer is also a contributing editor
Contributing editor
A contributing editor is a magazine job title that varies in responsibilities. Most often, a contributing editor is a freelancer who has proven ability and readership draw. The contributing editor regularly contributes articles to the publication but does not actually edit articles, and the title...
for the Nation magazine.
Scheer can be heard weekly on the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program "Left, Right & Center
Left, Right & Center
Left, Right, & Center is a weekly half-hour public radio program that provides a "civilized yet provocative antidote to the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate"...
" produced at and syndicated by public radio station KCRW
KCRW
KCRW is a public radio station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, carrying a mix of National Public Radio news, talk radio and freeform music format. The general manager of KCRW is Jennifer Ferro...
in Santa Monica.
He has taught courses at Antioch College
Antioch College
Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was the founder and the flagship institution of the six-campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with politician and...
, City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Berkeley, and is now a clinical professor at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
's Annenberg School for Communication, where he teaches two courses each semester on media and society.
Scheer has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
through Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. He conducted the noted 1976 Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
interview with Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to having "lusted" in his heart. In an interview with George H.W. Bush, the future president and then presidential candidate revealed that he believed nuclear war was "winnable." Scheer has profiled politicians from Californians Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
and Willie Brown to Washington insiders like Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
and Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
, as well as entertainment figures like actor Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....
.
Books
Scheer's latest book, The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books), was released on September 7, 2010. Publishers Weekly wrote that the book "proves that, when it comes to the ruling sway of money power, Democrats and Republicans, Wall Street and Washington make very agreeable bedfellows.” The book made The Los Angeles Times bestseller list and on October 17, 2010 was reviewed in the Times by Jonathan Kirsch, who wrote: "Robert Scheer is a journalist in the gadfly tradition of Lincoln Steffens, I. F. Stone and Seymour Hersh. His latest book, 'The Great American Stickup,' blames the 'captains of finance' for causing the 2008 'meltdown' of the global economy in the first place and then profiting from the tax dollars that were thrown at the problem — 'a giant hustle that served the richest of the rich,' as he puts it, 'and left the rest of us holding the bag.'Scheer has written eight other books, including a collection entitled Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals. In 2004, Scheer published The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq and made it to the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. It was co-authored by his oldest son, Christopher Scheer
Christopher Scheer
Christopher Scheer is the co-author, with Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq published in 2003 in the U.S., England and Australia. The book appeared on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and was a part of the national debate in 2004 about the...
, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, senior editor at Alternet
AlterNet
AlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
.
In 2006 Scheer published Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton – and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush; in 2008 he published The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
Scheer and his son were creative script consultants on the Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
film, Nixon
Nixon (film)
Nixon is a 1995 American biographical film directed by Oliver Stone for Cinergi Pictures that tells the story of the political and personal life of former US President Richard Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins....
, which was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for best original screenplay. He has appeared in small speaking roles as a journalist in several feature films, including The Siege
The Siege
The Siege is a 1998 American thriller film directed by Edward Zwick. The film is about a fictional situation in which terrorist cells have made several attacks on New York City...
and Bulworth
Bulworth
Bulworth is a 1998 American film co-written, co-produced and directed by the film's star, Warren Beatty. It was loosely based on the life of Beatty's friend, Tennessee political figure John Jay Hooker. It co-stars Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Don Cheadle, Paul Sorvino, Jack Warden, and Isaiah...
. In 2005, the Mill Valley Film Festival
Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festival is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute. Known as a filmmakers’ festival, the annual Mill Valley Film Festival offers a non-competitive environment for exhibiting independent and world cinema.Founded in 1978 by MVFF...
premiered a documentary on the activist and philanthropist Stanley Sheinbaum
Stanley Sheinbaum
Stanley K. Sheinbaum is an American political peace and human rights activist.-Early life:Sheinbaum was born in 1920 in New York city. The family was at one point quite wealthy as a result of his father's leather goods business. But, they lost their fortune in the Great Depression...
which Scheer co-produced.
Iraq War
In an August 6, 2002, article, he wrote that "a consensus of experts" informed the Senate that the Iraqi weapons arsenal was “almost totally destroyed during eight years of inspections.” On June 3, 2003, Scheer concluded that White House justifications for the war were a "big lie." On November 4, 2003, he penned an article in favor of withdrawal from Iraq.World War II
In an April 7, 2010, article he wrote that Harry Truman perpetrated "the most atrocious act of terrorism in world history when he annihilated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Scheer repeated these allegations on the radio program "Left, Right and Center".Support of Republican Candidate for Kentucky Senate
In the October 1, 2010, episode of the radio show "Left, Right and Center", Scheer, a self-described Liberal, expressed support for Rand Paul, son of former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, in his bid for the 2011-2016 Kentucky Senate seat.End of Los Angeles Times relationship
Scheer has often expressed highly controversial thoughts. For example, on February 15, 2005, Scheer wrote an article entitled "What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us" for the LA Times. In it, he asked, "Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?" After running his column for more than 12 years and working as a reporter for the paper 17 years prior, the Los Angeles Times ended a nearly thirty year relationship with Scheer in November 2005, citing the need to cut costs while subsequently replacing him with two right-wing columnists. Scheer said in an interview with "Democracy Now!Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
" that the paper's owner, the Tribune Company
Tribune Company
The Tribune Company is a large American multimedia corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. It is the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, with ten daily newspapers and commuter tabloids including Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida...
, currently owns a newspaper and a television station in the same market, which is illegal, and may have fired Scheer in an attempt to make it easier to obtain a waiver permitting the dual ownership from the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC). He also commented during a November 14, 2005, appearance on Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
that,
"What happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh…. I was a punching bag for those guys. I'm still standing, and the people who run the paper collapsed."
In a posting at the Huffington Post, Scheer wrote:
- "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately 60 percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher."
Scheer's firing incited a protest held outside the Times downtown office on November 15, and hundreds of readers wrote letters of complaint while some, including actress Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, publicly announced the cancellation of their Times subscriptions. Within a few days of his column being retired by the Times, the San Francisco Chronicle offered itself as the new home paper of Scheer's syndicated column, which ran there for years . On November 29, 2005 Scheer co-launched, as Editor in Chief, the online news magazine Truthdig
Truthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
, where his column is now based. Scheer's column is syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate is an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers. It was founded in 1987 by Richard S. Newcombe, and is based in Los Angeles. Creators was one of the first syndicates to allow its clients to maintain creative control of their material...
in publications such as The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
and The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
.
Awards
Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of the news website TruthdigTruthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
, four-time recipient of the Webby Award for best political blog and winner of multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Los Angeles Press Club. Scheer received the 2010 Distinguished Work in New Media Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and in 2011 Ithaca College named Scheer the winner of the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.
Scheer was the 1998 honoree of the Shelter Partnership, an organization of Los Angeles downtown businesses, and the USC School of Social Work's Los Amigos award recipient. He won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing in the Los Angeles Times and The Nation about the case of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee
Wen Ho Lee
Dr. Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwan-born Taiwanese American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the US nuclear...
. He has also received awards and citations from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, the Moscow Academy of Sciences, the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
, and Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
.
Family
Scheer was formerly married to Serena Turan Scheer. Serena was from BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
and was on the editorial staff of Root and Branch. Robert Scheer married Anne Butterfield Weills in 1965; they later divorced. Robert's son Christopher Weills Scheer
Christopher Scheer
Christopher Scheer is the co-author, with Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq published in 2003 in the U.S., England and Australia. The book appeared on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and was a part of the national debate in 2004 about the...
was born September 8, 1968.
Robert Scheer is now married to Narda Catharine Zacchino. Zacchino worked at the Los Angeles Times for 31 years, at which she became the associate editor and a vice president. She was later deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Zacchino is the co-author of three books, and is a Senior Fellow at USC's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.
External links
- Truthdig, a progressive online magazine aka www.robertscheer.com
- Robert Scheer Features at Creators SyndicateCreators SyndicateCreators Syndicate is an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers. It was founded in 1987 by Richard S. Newcombe, and is based in Los Angeles. Creators was one of the first syndicates to allow its clients to maintain creative control of their material...
- Left, Right & Center
- Robert Scheer at AlterNetAlterNetAlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
- Citizen Stan documentary
- Robert Scheer: "Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?" – video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
- Democracy Now!: Amy Goodman interviews Robert Scheer about "The Great American Stickup"
- The Real News: Paul Jay asks Robert Scheer "Why Are House Republicans Reading the Constitution? - January 6, 2011 (video 10:25)
- Radio interview with Claudia Cragg KGNU on 'The Great American Stickup'