Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander’s boss to get that changed.
BOB SCHAFFEROnce we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.
More Bob Schaffer Quotes
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The government’s view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn’t want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
BOB SCHAFFER -
The Russians have a lot at stake, and the power of Moscow pride should never be underestimated.
BOB SCHAFFER -
The first thing the federal government can do to help is get out of the way.
BOB SCHAFFER -
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They’ve heard it on the radio. They’ve seen it on the Internet. They’ve seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
BOB SCHAFFER -
Nowadays I’m not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.
BOB SCHAFFER -
It is unlikely Yanukovich won. If he did, his government made it impossible to determine.
BOB SCHAFFER -
A great deal of our ratings on the morning news are people who died during the night with their TV on.
BOB SCHAFFER -
The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.
BOB SCHAFFER -
But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.
BOB SCHAFFER -
Good policy always trumps bad public relations and the best PR can’t trump bad policy.
BOB SCHAFFER -
But here’s the deal: If I were smart, I could figure out curling. If I were even smarter, I could figure out why people would actually watch other people doing it. I have tried. I can’t. I can’t even figure out the object of the game. Is it like darts? I just don’t get it.
BOB SCHAFFER -
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn’t graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
BOB SCHAFFER -
It’s getting the right person that’s the challenge.
BOB SCHAFFER -
When Sam Snead was asked how to putt, he said, ‘Putt for one hundred dollars’.
BOB SCHAFFER -
And as a result, I guess I’m just kind of a rubberneck. I’m kind of a – someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don’t think journalists are as important as the people they cover.
BOB SCHAFFER