MediaWatch: August 1995
Table of Contents:
Worrying About Rosty, Not Newt
A Tale of Two Schieffers
On February 7, 1993, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) appeared on CBS's Face the Nation. A very apologetic Bob Schieffer waited until the end of the interview to slip in a tepid question about an ongoing ethics investigation: "I'd be remiss if I did not ask you, your office has been investigated, you've been investigated by a U.S. Attorney now for I don't know how many months. Can you tell us if you've been given any indication if that is about to conclude and do you feel in any way if that's going to impede your authority to work on these economic problems?"
On the July 9, 1995 Face the Nation, Schieffer and U.S. News & World Report Senior Wri-ter Gloria Borger fired four questions at Speaker Newt Gingrich about his ethics.
This year Schieffer lacked the "when can we get on with business" tone. While he was concerned that a long investigation into Rostenkowski may have impeded his authority, with Gingrich it smelled of a cover-up: "Maybe this sounds as an odd question, but, you know, until the ethics committee announced on Friday that they were indeed going to call you and Rupert Murdoch, there had been charges, most of them from Democrats, that the whole thing was being, been dragged out. That the ethics committee had taken no testimony under oath, that they had subpoenaed no documents. Eric Engberg of CBS had reported that they hadn't even gotten a briefing from any relevant agencies. Do you think the ethics committee has been dragging its feet on this? And would you like to tell them to speed up to at least clear up all of this?"
