CBS News president David Rhodes threw a party for Bob Schieffer last night in New York to celebrate the release of his new book Overload.
Other attendees included his wife Patricia, Norah O’Donnell, Anthony Mason, Steve Kroft, Diane Sawyer, Hannah Storm, Dan Hicks, Vlad Duthiers, Elaine Quijano, Mo Rocca, Rand Morrison, Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, Chris Isham, Ryan Kadro, Steve Capus, Mary Hager, Susan Zirinsky, Kaylee Hartung, Brian Stelter, John Avlon.
“I always wanted to be a reporter since I was a little boy,” Schieffer remarked during the soiree. “My kids when they were young used to ask me ‘Dad, did you want to be a TV reporter when you were a little boy?’ I said ‘Well they didn’t have TV until I was in the 8th grade!’ But I always wanted to be a reporter and not many people are able to do as an adult what they wanted to do as a kid. I was a lucky person who got to do that.”
On the current media landscape, which is what Overload focuses on, Schieffer told his friends and colleagues in attendance: “We are operating in a time like we haven’t seen before in all sincerity. We’re performing a service that’s as crucial to democracy as the right to vote. Our job is to provide independently gathered information that citizens can compare with the government’s version of events. When we do that, we’re performing a real service. But when people try to destroy our credibility, whether it’s someone in the highest office in the land or if it’s somebody in a dark corner of his mother’s basement, I take that very seriously because they’re attacking the very foundations of our democracy. But keep doing what you’re doing because it’s a very noble thing.”
