before we get to our first call let me ask you about your approach to sunday morning. when john mccain talk about the situation in iran , where do see that heading? @@@@ i'm -- guest: i'm afraid you'll hear me say this many times, on almost every story we don't know where we are on iran right now. we know people have got an taste of freedom in iran. we know they're communicating with one another. they're doing it through twitter, they're doing it through facebook, they're doing it through all these electronic means people have now. they're not satisfied with the government they have. there's this great dissatisfaction. they want changes. will they win this particular

battle? my guess is, no. but i think the battle has begun and i think they're bringing pressure on the government here and i don't think this can help but improve the situation there in some way. i think -- as we saw in china, the demonstrators in tiananmen square did not win the day but there is no question that the impact of that we see it even today in china. china is nowhere near what we would call a democracy, but it is much more open, a much more open society. people have more rights now than they have ever had in that particular government, we want them to have a lot more but there's no question that what happened in tiananmen set the stage for that. set the stage for that. host: the second oldest program on broadcast television. you have been doing it for how many years? guest: since 1991. i came after lesley who came

after george. there have only been four or five moderators since 1954. frank stanton in the head of cbs said they have a program over on nbc called "meet the press," for the talk to the top news maker of the week. we need something like that. so that was the inspiration for "face the nation," and our first guest was joe mccarthy in 1954. that broadcast pretty much spelled the end of joe mccarthy. earlier that year you had had the documentary that ed had it done. you have the army in germany or the meetings and in the final part of it -- he died within two years. he was dead.

oddly enough, when faced the nation had its anniversary, one of the letters of congratulations came from joe mccarthy. he said he always watched the show and always enjoyed it. host: one of the photographs. you took this -- let's listen to this caller. caller: i'm doing fine, probably close to your age and them a small businessman. i watch your show religiously. i am a little dismayed. the last couple of years the press has kind of gone leaning with what ever it ideology is in effect. i notice there has been little coverage of the stimulus package which will either make or break this recession.

bring it to term limits a lot faster. -- a lot faster if it had been done progressively. there is little press for the small businessmen. everyone says 70% of the jobs out there are from the small business sector. we find out that with 9.4 unemployment the last seven or eight months especially in my business we have seen a 20% to 30% downturn, a lack of spending because consumers don't have the money. no one seems to be addressing this problem. not on your show or any others. guest: i take your point, chuck. i think you are actually right. i would say this in our defense. we're doing the best we can. there is absolutely so much news going on right now that you

cannot get all of it into a half-hour news program every sunday or even a half hour news program that comes on five nights per week. we are doing our best, but there is so much going on that every issue is going to get short shrift from time to time. as a news editor you try to one of the things you think are most important that affect most of the people. you are absolutely right when you talk about the stimulus package. what could have more impact? we will try to keep at it. we will try to get it on. but if it is a tough thing with so many things going on to cover all these things in debt every single time. host: bob began his career for "before worth star-telegram" and this is your 40th year?

guest: yes, 40 years last month. host: hello, jim. caller: yes, i feel honored to have you on the phone. i put you in with the people like walter cronkite and even then brothers and people from that era. we do not get the news like we used to. i'm a vietnam veteran and i appreciate we see people who come right out with the news without added slant to one side or the other. it gives me a good feeling and brings back the old america like we used to. guest: you are my kind to say that. when you put me in the same paragraph as those you just mentioned there's nothing i could feel better about. we make a lot of mistakes but we are doing the best we can and i hope we keep going straight down the line.

host: here is a message from twitter. guest: he is 92 years old and some days are better than others. otherwise, i have no information on how walters doing. but he is still on the right side of the grass. we love him. alter, kite -- walter cronkite is a wanted to be. i had not been to cbs news long that walter off camera is the exact same way as on camera. i have to say that is not always the case. he is a wonderful guy, a great mentor, a great booster of mind when he did not have to be. he was when it was really important. i just love him and there is no

one in journalism i admire more than walter cronkite. host: what do you think that the cbs news, abc news, the other networks will look like 10 years from now? guest: we are in a technological revolution and just try to keep up with the technology. we put a story on television shot on one of these little cameras, and it is only this big. it is about that thick, only the size of your cellular telephone. you can record on that on hd for 60 minutes. just the fact that you can do that, think about and the old days when you saw the national conventions and the cameraman would have this thing that weighed 80 pounds on his back. the sound man to hold the sound equipment. now you can do all that with

this equipment. it has already made television less obtrusive than it used to be. that is good. the fact that this technology is happening like this and so fast, no one can say for anything will be. not in 10 years. are there still going to be newspapers? will we still print news on pieces of paper? will we get it all on the ipod? no one knows the answers to these questions. having said that, the core of journalism is still not the technology. it is the reporter, the individual reporter who goes to the scene and gathers facts independently of what the government is trying to tell him to do or what the government line is and then finds a way to get that into print or into broadcast in some way. i do not know what the evening news programs will look like and 10 years in anyone who tells you

that they do know i would challenge that. i don't think there's a way we can possibly know. what i do know is that you cannot have a democracy unless you have independently gathered information that is available to every citizen. the difference in a totalitarian society and a democracy -- in a totalitarian society you have one source of news which is the government. in a democracy where you have are two sources of information, one comes from the free press. you cannot have a democracy unless you have that. so as imperfect as we are, as much criticism as we get, and a lot of it is justified, you still cannot have a democracy without what we provide. that is why i think it is honorable and fun to be a reporter and i'm glad i'm part of that. host: our guest bob schieffer is the former editor in chief washington correspondent for cbs news and the moderator of the

"face the nation." caller: good morning, steve, and mr. bob schieffer. i am also honored to speak with you. i would like to ask you a real big favor. i think you are person the country would listen to. as we know our tax system has become a menagerie. the parties are using it to divide the american people know. senator john mccain said this morning he would have a $5,000 tax credit, president obama has these plans that would give tax credits for this and a bad -- any system that creates a system that creates $14 trillion offshore due to the tax code hurt our country. with a thing like "face the nation" -- an older gentleman in taxes paid out of his pocket a study with economists, that

studied the cost of our system. it resulted in hr-25 which is honored by it the congressman from georgia and a corresponding bill in the senate to change our system. what bothers me is this division. a lot of people who call in on these issues do not realize it has corrupted our parties. will rogers in the early 1930's before he died said eventually the way our tax code is in our country will eventually turn our country into a nation of lawyers and cheats. guest: i think you make a lot of good points there and i thank you for your call. host: the next is richard from north carolina. caller: good morning, i would like to ask -- we have seen a lot of coverage from iran about

their protests and it is unfair and they are so patriotic and all of that. yet when those kind of events happen in america against the world bank or anti-war you never see that on the three networks, never. you do not have any stories about the protests in america. but we see all this stuff about iran. our guys show up in full gear, armor and hold hundreds of people away. host: where does that take place? caller: i have personally been in protests in washington, d.c., seattle, host: georgia and if you do not see coverage of that? caller: yes, for three seconds. poof, and that is it. you never hear about that stuff

on the networks. guest: you seem to have a lot of information about that. a lot of detail about what you say goes on in these protests. you must have picked that up from someplace. a suspect maybe there has been more coverage of it on television and in the papers then maybe you want to admit or is reflected in your question. i would disagree. i think we give a lot of coverage to significant demonstrations. host: a lot of programs, including a lot of cable programs, and the sunday shes, "meet the press," "face the nation," continue to drive the news cycle. why? >> because we're based on the news. sunday morning on television is much different than any other time period on commercial television because we are information-driven. we are trying to make news. we are trying to find out what

people on both sides of the issue have to say about things. tim russert used to say, you know, there are no bells and whistles on what we do. we just sit them down at the table, turn on the lights and ask them questions. and that is what we do. it's not about gotcha questions or tricks or anchors who show off. we simply ask people question ques about what the news of the day. is there still seems to be a need for that and a market for that. "face the nation," "meet the press," "this week," the program on fox, these are places where washington talks to other people in washington, but also where the ideas first get floated out and laid out for people to think about. then washington can choose from what's said on sunday what to do the rest of the week.

i think we serve a real purpose in what we do. i don't want to be too noble sounding about it, but that's basically what we do it used to be that the ideas got floated out by the super columnists in the newspapers, the james restons, joe crabb, walter libman, now people go on the sunday shows and lay out the ideas. host: what was the toughest interview you ever conducted? guest: i do not know, they all present their own challenges. some people come on the show determined not to say anything. i am not sure why they come on. one of the people i most admired of the years is a guest, sam nunn, longtime chairman of the senate armed services committee. sometimes i would call him and asking if he wanted to be on. he would say he did not think so and he had nothing to it said. i thought it was good for the

show and good for the senator because politicians make a real mistake if they come on these sunday shows but are not coming on to say something. just coming on to get your face on tv i think hurts you. a lot of the public relations people tell their clients you get a message you want to get across, give the answer no matter what the question -- i don't think that helps the person. they come off as evasive. people know when you're not answering a question or when you are just jazzing around. it is a waste of time for everybody. people often ask me how i feel when someone does not want to answer the question. i say i would like to just slap them, but obviously you cannot just do that. but people know, our viewers are smart and know when people are avoiding the question. my advice to people is if you do not want to answer the question then do not come on "face the

nation" because you will not help yourself. host: our guest is bob schieffer of cbs news. caller: good morning. it is a little bit early. hello, bob, how are you? guest: it is a little later than it is for you, but i'm still looking up, too. caller: i watch you every week. it is one of my favorite shows. guest: that is one of my caller: favorites i know that it is and you watch it every week, too. i want to mention something about the prescription cost, the high cost for senior citizens and for everyone else out there. make a note to maybe talk to representative moran from virginia, do you know him? guest: i do indeed.

caller: he has a bill that seems to be stuck in committee about cutting back on some of these commercials on in prime time when people can watch, such as ford e.d. do you know that we are the only country in the world that allows prescription drugs to be advertised on television? guest: i did not know that. that is an interesting fact. caller: that is a correct facts. we are the only country in the world that allows that. i think you should get senators moran and a couple of these other people on there and we should have a talk about these high prescription costs. if they would cut out the advertising on tv and radio and in the magazine's -- all this miscellaneous garbage

advertising we keep seeing seeing host: i will take your point. you brought up the issue of prescription drugs. the president announced an agreement with senator baucus to save $80 billion over the next 10 years. when you're talking about the cost of health care reform, how does that fit into the equation? guest: i think had we known at the beginning when medicare and medicaid first can a bailout, had we known the future role that drugs were going to play as the therapy for almost every illness we have now, i don't think there's any question that drugs would have been part of the program at that time. but as science has advanced we have come to seek the drugs play a larger role.

this is the one of the most controversial issues. we are just at the very beginning of health care reform. i don't think anyone right now could say where this will go. it is as if we have entered a vast forest and we are about two steps into it. we have hearings that will go on all summer. we have all of these interest groups coming in. i don't think we can say what will happen on drugs and bring down those costs. it will be a month or so before we can even see the shape of this. host: let me go back to sunday morning. do you tweet? guest: yes, we have a little tweet thing we put out on the show and we put a headline or

two there. guest: well, fred it sort of moves slowly. that is no criticism. i sort of talk slowly. he talks even more slowly than i do. host: john from michigan says -- guest: i would hope so, but the answer to that right now is not in the immediate future. i have never understood why. i think it should be one hour, but it is just working its out on the schedule and in our ranks with affiliate's. so far we have not been able to get that done. it would make an amazing difference if we could be on for one hour. host: how has the passing of tim russert changed your approach?

guest: it has not changed our approach at all. we will not change will we have always done. we will not try to fix something we do not believe at this point is broken. but i missed him a great deal and we were great friends personally. we had been close friends for many years. our seats were together out at the nationals ball park. we talked a lot of politics whil the team was playing baseball out there. for me, the passing of tim was a real personal loss. he really had a tremendous impact on the sunday morning programs. simply because he did it right. he played the game right. nothing fancy, but he just did his homework and asked the right questions. he was very persistent. tim russert was how you can be

aggressive in questioning, but not necessarily antagonistic. we get a lot, and i am sure many other shows do too, because of these opinion shows many people do their version of objectivity -- from their point of view. it is not objective unless you agree with their particular perception. when i have a republican on i get criticized by the left for being too easy. when i have a democrat on, vice versa. it is the same, you will never please everybody. host: the next call is from california. caller: hello, my question has

to deal with the news coverage of a lot -- a lot of the corruption going on in politics. some of the stories aren't covered enough, others go on and on. you only hear it is an ongoing investigation of the charlie rangel thing, for example. who's not been fair on his taxes. i don't know who the government official was, but he plainly stated that by the end of last year we would know everything we are to know about that and here we are six months into the year -- and not just picking on him, but you have the others like blagojevich of illinois, you

have a correction in the new mexico governor because of alleged wrongdoing. i could go on and on. quite frankly, there's probably corruption on both sides of the auto, although it seems to be the hierarchy of the democratic party. yes, i am biased because i am republican. i think that the republicans are the lesser of two evils. guest: sam, i share your frustration, but in this case at the ticket has much to do with the media as much as with our legal system. lawyers have got and sophisticated in good a dragging things out. these things can go on for years. that is what this is all about.

this is not something i think we in the media can do much about. we can keep pushing. we can do our own investigations, but it is the legal system and it the length of trials that i think is causing the frustration you are talking about. host: by the numbers here is a statistic since 1985 that the number of u.s. newspapers with reporters, down 72%. guest: this is one of the great concerns now. it really worries me. will newspapers survived this technological revolution? frankly, the outlook is not good. we must have an independent press.

we must have independently- gathered information. it is more expensive to produce his papers. not just the price of print, but finding revenue to support these expensive enterprises. with the coming of the internet newspapers have lost most of their want ad business. the question will be, can newspapers find the revenue to support these very expensive enterprises? nobody has yet figured out a way to raise enough money to sell enough display ads on the internet to support will recall a newspaper. it makes no difference if eventually they will be printed on paper or read online. a newspaper is an enterprise

large enough to have reporters who cover city hall every day. who covers the county courthouse as a beat. who cover the police department and are there every day. the costs a lot of money, a lot to have a washington bureau cover capitol hill every day. so far and newspapers have not really figured out how they can do that or raise the money. i am very worried about this. i cannot imagine a democracy that does not have independently-gathered information. host: mike is on the phone from green bay, michigan. caller: good morning. bob, i appreciate your career so much.