For a man who made a name for himself in longform print journalism, CBS News’s John Dickerson is getting an education in the frenetic pace of breaking TV news. Dickerson was hosting Face this Nation this morning when news broke of the ambush shooting of six Baton Rouge police officers, three of whom died.
While Meet the Press, This Week and Fox News Sunday had already finished production from inside Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, site of the Republican National Convention, Dickerson was midway through Face the Nation when the news came in. (Meet the Press updated its show since it did not air until 2 p.m. ET, following NBC’s telecast of The Open.)
During a commercial break, executive Producer Mary Hager edited a breaking news story, which Dickerson read, promising more information as it became available. In an interview after the show, Dickerson gave all the credit to the producers, techs and crew who do this every day: “I know they can can handle whatever’s happening,” he said. “That’s a pop up set. They put that up in the morning, but everything worked, not just to put on a static show but to put a show where there’s breaking news.”
Dickerson, who has been hosting Face the Nation for a year, also had to flip the script when breaking news shifted the focus of the two primary debates he moderated: the Paris attacks happened the day before a Democratic debate in November, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on the day of a GOP debate in February.
“I have this amazing backstop of all these people and that’s where you see it,” he says.
Dickerson got high marks for moderating the two debates, which makes him a candidate to moderate one of the three presidential and one vice presidential debates coming up in the fall. “I would be honored,” Dickerson said. “It’s something I’ve done my entire life, asking presidents and presidential candidates about the job they do.”
And we wanted to know: what’s it like hosting a TV show on the spot where LeBron James and the NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers play. “For me, this is going to sound dorky, my mom was the first woman to report from the floor of a convention, so that’s what was more on my mind than LeBron. No dissing, LeBron!” Nancy Dickerson, a pioneer in TV news, covered the 1960 conventions for CBS News, making her the first woman to do so.
After Face the Nation, Dickerson got another surprise: Stephen Colbert, in his Hungry for Power Games get-up. Colbert and his ep Chris Licht are here taping segments for next week’s Late Show, which will air live:
