[WASHINGTON.CBSLOCAL] The legendary Bob Schieffer is calling it a career Sunday as he hosts his last "Face the Nation."G'bye, Bob.
Schieffer joined CBS News in 1969 and in that span he covered the White House, State Department, Pentagon, Capitol Hill, anchored the "CBS Evening News," and hosted "Face the Nation" the past 24 years.
Did everything but mow the grass and take out the garbage, by Gum.
Washington has changed dramatically when he began covering the nation's capital.
I think there should be a "since" instead of a "when" in there.
Schieffer told "CBS This Morning" on Friday that the "revolution in communications" has turned D.C. "upside-down."
Do tell?
"We now don't know where people get their news,
Depends on which people. Some get it from the Comedy Channel, which builds about the level of comprehension you'd expect.
but what we do know is they're bombarded with information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Some watch Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, where "news" is all politix, all the time.
Most of the information is wrong and some of it is wrong on purpose," Schieffer said.
Some people read the Drudge Report or Lucianne or the Huffington Post, each of which mixes politix with crime reporting and a bit of WoT.
"It is our job, I think, in mainstream journalism to try to cut through this mall of information and tell people what we think is relevant in what they need to know.
Here at the Burg we scour foreign news sources as well as we can. Sometimes the raw data is wrong, sometimes it's outright lies. We've discovered that lies or outright wrong data tends to be self correcting. If Abu Adam al-Ameriki was killed last week that means he didn't eat dirt when we heard he was dead last year.
That is the job of the journalist and I have to say it's harder and harder."
I've modeled the Burg on the (classified) intel reports I used to prepare back in the Upper Paleolithic. The content is unclassified and most of it's raw data, not in-depth analysis.
Schieffer also touched on the influx of money changing the way the government and campaigns are run.
We don't "cut through this mall of information and tell people what we think is relevant in what they need to know." We dumpt the news raw and often bloody and sometimes covered with flies and stinking to high heaven.
"I mean our campaigns have become, 'I have more billionaires than you do so I'm a viable candidate.' I don't think that's what the founders had in mind when they started this country," he told "CBS This Morning."
He's working from the assumption that all news is politix or vice versa.
"I don't know where this goes, but I think something is going to have to change on that front because what we have now is people have to sign up with so many special interests before they get to Washington, that once they're here they can't compromise. And when you have a government and a legislative body that can't compromise, you have what we have -- a legislative body that's in constant and total gridlock."
That's life in an opaque bubble. There are evil people populating some parts of the rest of the world. They kill people and they torture them. Their occasional statements make the ravings of The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu seem well thought out and devoted to the good of mankind. But what used to be the news ignores them as inconsequential twaddle next to the question of whether John Podesta's cross-dressing in a red Hillary pantsuit has any significance outside of poor taste.
Schieffer echoed similar comments during an interview with The News Agency that Dare Not be Named earlier this week, saying he's disturbed by the changes he's seen in Washington. It's a meaner place, he said, partially fueled by Internet anonymity but also by a lack of collegiality. Lawmakers of all stripes and their families used to know each other better but now spend more time in their districts and less time in the capital. Some families never move.
Meaning the supply of free liquor's dried up?
It has led to an inability to get things done that Schieffer says is a greater danger to the country's future than terrorism.
Ummm... No, it's not. If you live in an opaque bubble then terrorism is "over there," someplace beyond the limits of the bubble. But if you exist outside of the bubble you can see the people who want to kill your sons and sell your daughters in some sort of Oriental slave market.
"It has changed the people who run for office now," he said. "I don't mean they're bad people, but they're different. They have to raise so much money, they have to sign off with so many interest groups to get here that once they're here they can't compromise their positions. Their positions are set in stone."
If you live outside the bubble you will eventually come to realize that the people there are individual human beings, not faceless members of "the masses." Some people are remarkably stoopid. If you watch C*O*P*S you'll see them in action. But other people (sometimes even the ones you see on C*O*P*S, just on a different day) are remarkably kind, remarkably productive, even sometimes remarkably noble. They don't go to Washington dinner parties, but they have lives that are worth living, too. They're human beings, and The News™ has an effect on their lives.