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 SCHAFFERWe 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.
More Bob Schaffer Quotes
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Government is just spending too much money.
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Nowadays I’m not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.
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Good policy always trumps bad public relations and the best PR can’t trump bad policy.
BOB SCHAFFER -
The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays – beyond their meaning – a factor in our economy.
BOB SCHAFFER -
There are many hands touching ballots after a voter drops his ballot into the ballot box. There is no guarantee of ballot secrecy for anyone, which makes the whole system vulnerable to intimidation and bribery.
BOB SCHAFFER -
Well, you know, in any political campaign, you’re gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it’ll hurt the guy on the other side.
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.
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Mitt Romney is betting big on himself and left no doubt about it.
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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 SCHAFFER -
A great deal of our ratings on the morning news are people who died during the night with their TV on.
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.
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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 -
I used to be a print reporter.
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Though there is growing division among the Ukrainian military ranks as to loyalty in this revolution, the possibility of violence looms over the entire situation.
BOB SCHAFFER -
They’ve asked me to do this temporarily. I don’t know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.
BOB SCHAFFER