by Matt Thompson Published Jan. 28, 2004 3:47 pm Updated Mar. 2, 2011 3:57 pm

Every Sunday, Bob Schieffer gets to pose questions to the political heavyweights of America on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” I called him up to ask him a few. Selected wisdom from our interview follows. Here’s the full transcript.

On Interviewing

• The first thing to do before every interview: Know as much as you can about the story.


• The first thing to do once the interview begins: I always write down the name, at the top of my notebook, of the person I’m interviewing. Because one time at the 1976 Democratic Convention, I was standing on camera, and Walter Cronkite forgot my name. And I thought, If Walter Cronkite can have his mind go blank sometime like that, then mine certainly could … When you’re on television, you never know when your mind just sometimes goes blank.


• The single best follow-up question one can ask: “What do you mean by that?”


• The second-best follow-up question: “Well, give me some examples.”


• On searching for truth, not tricks: I’m not there to try to get somebody to say something they didn’t mean to say. What I want to get from them is exactly what they meant to say, and then I want to question them about that, to see if it stands up to the light of good tough scrutiny.


• What not to do in an interview: Long, complex, multi-part questions generally do not elicit very good information. I find that most of the news I’ve ever gotten in my career has been when I ask very short and specific questions that just come to the point. And when I’m talking to young reporters, that’s always my advice. Just ask the question. If you’re trying to get the right answer, you’re not going to be judged on how nice and intelligent you looked when you were posing the question. Ask the question. What the guy says is gonna be the news, and if you get him to make news, then you’ll become known as a good reporter.


• Murphy’s Law of Interviewing: There’s always a question you don’t get to.


• The thing you want to remember about doing an interview: Don’t overcomplicate it. Ask simple questions. Ask straightforward questions. Be as specific as you can in the questions.


• A common interviewing mistake: Reporters sometimes become somewhat verbose, especially when it’s on television, and will ask these complicated two- and three-part questions. That is a self-defeating exercise, because the person will then take out the easiest question that he wants to answer, and he’ll answer that, and he’ll slough off the other questions that you’ve posed. I mean, if you can only ask one question, ask about one thing. If you can ask about two questions, I mean if you have a chance, ask about two different things, or follow up on the first question you asked. But don’t ask multiple questions. You’ll never get a good answer to either one that way.

Click here to read more advice from four sports writers at the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise on interviewing.

On “Face the Nation”

• “Face the Nation’s” mission: I had an executive producer some years back, who for many years worked with me on the weekend news. Her name was Joan Richman. And Joan always said, “There’s nothing like a little news to pep up a newscast.” That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to break some news, but the kind of news that will give people a better understanding of the issue. So that’s our aim when we go into it. We don’t do a lot of bells and whistles on our show. This is a Sunday talk show, and we understand what it is. We understand who the people are that are watching it. So, basically, what we do is turn on the lights and ask questions. And after the interview, we go on to thinking about the next one.


• On what constitutes a successful show: News. We consider a good interview when the person that we’re interviewing makes some news, when he says something that he hasn’t said before. And the second part, and equally important, is when that person we feel has given a good explanation of what it is he stands for or why it is he has taken a certain position.


• On scrutinizing someone’s words: Tim Russert often takes the person’s words and puts them up on the screen. I don’t do that, but I do kind of a verbal version of that. I will say, “Now you have said recently,” or “I noticed that once you said this,” and then I ask some sort of a question such as, “Do you still believe that?” or “Is that the way you see it now?”


• The danger of scrutinizing someone’s words: You can run it in the ground, I think. And you don’t want to get into some kind of a hairsplitting “What is the meaning of ‘is’?” sort of thing.


• The value of the scrutiny: You’re saving time on one of these interviews. Instead of asking a question that’s going to — the first thing it’s going to produce is this stock reply, you kind of take that away from the interviewee, then you say, “Now I notice you’ve said,” and that way you don’t have to go through the interviewee laying out something that we’ve already heard. And that’s how you get to the news part.


• On the competition between the five Sunday talk shows: We’re all basically looking for the same guests, in terms of speaking. Or certainly Tim and I always are. Now ABC has gone off in its own sort of a different direction, and I’m not at all certain at this point what that is. And so you have to be very careful. I mean, you have to lay plans ahead of time and sort of sense that it’s getting toward the end of the Congress, there’s probably going to be something coming up about, you know, Medicare.


• On Sunday talk shows and guest politics: A great way to learn something about human nature is to book a Sunday talk show. Because the ego of some of these people is just beyond description. You’ll say, “We’d like to have you on,” and they’ll come back and say, “But I’ll only do it by myself.” Or “I’ll only do it if I can be the last one to speak.” Or “I’ll only do it if I’m the first one to speak.” … Most of the time, we say, “No, we don’t do that. We’d love to have you on the show, but if it’s a problem for you then maybe you’d better — we don’t say it this meanly, but — you better just find someplace else.”


• On guest politics and safeguarding independence: You have to be very careful about that … especially when you’re dealing with the White House, and especially when you’re trying to get an interview with the President or something. And they lay down so many conditions sometimes, or try to, that you’re saying to yourself, “Now, wait a minute. Am I giving away stuff that’s gonna cost me a good interview just to get the interview?” You have to always remember not to ever do anything that’s going to compromise your ability to ask the right and the tough questions. Sometimes you just have to say no.


• One secret of interview politicking: A lot of times people will ask for things just on the off chance that you’ll agree to it, but they know full well that you’re probably not going to agree to it. And it’s just, “Well, I’ll ask and see what happens,” they’ll say. You know, to themselves. Just because they ask for something doesn’t mean they’re going to expect you to give it, it’s just something they’re trying to get if they can.


• A big problem in Sunday shows today: The way it has generally been in the past is there was kind of an informal plan to sort of rotate public officials, ranking officials (among the different shows). Like if I had the Vice President, I probably wouldn’t get the Vice President again until he had been on at least one other show or possibly two, amongst the networks, it’s kind of almost a rotation. What this White House has figured out they can do is they can put these officials out on all the shows. And that sometimes stories are so big we have to agree to that. But I don’t like it, nor does Tim, and my sense is nor does ABC.


• How Schieffer deals with this White House tactic: You have to make a judgment. Is this story so big that we owe it to our viewers to put him on even though we have to share him with these other people? Or are they just flooding the zone, and is that fair journalistically, to let them get away with that?


• Schieffer’s philosophy of campaign coverage: I do not believe that it is my job to make a campaign. I believe that’s up to the candidates. I think our responsibility is to report what they’re saying, and then let their opponent take it apart, and report that. Now mind you, we have to be critical. We have to, when we spot somebody telling a lie, we need to point that out. But I don’t think that as journalists, we should be the opposition party, so to speak. I think the campaign is made by the candidates. We’re the people sitting a little above that, reporting what each side is saying about the other. And I don’t think it’s our responsibility to try to run against everybody that’s seeking public office. We’re reporters, we’re not candidates. And different people will say — will have different ideas about that … I’m probably a little bit in the minority as such. Because I just think it’s up to the candidate’s opponent. The main responsibility for picking apart what a candidate has to say, the main responsibility for that goes to his opponent, not to the people covering things.