and if it's not fun, it should be fun. experience a whole new way to buy a car with truecar. your network or satellite provider. on buzz beater from on the buzz meter from new york, a series of bombshells in our business from real news to fake news. jon stewart is stepping down from the nightly grind at "the daily show." >> but this show doesn't deserve an even slightly restless host, and neither do you. it's been an absolute privilege. it's been the honor of my professional life. >> brian williams suspended by nbc for six months for telling a false war story. of his name taken off the newscast. >> from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is nbc nightly news. reporting tonight, lester holt. >> and the sunday death of bob simon, the courageous and

globe-trotting cbs correspondent. >> the we have some sad news tonight from within our cbs news family. our "60 minutes" colleague bob simon, was killed this evening. >> but it's jon stewart who may have had the greatest impact on the actual news business. this after 16 years of skewering politicians and pundits like, well, me. >> it's made the president some fierce adversaries, one in particular. >> if you've lost jon stewart you're in trouble. >> even jon stewart this week taking shots at obamacare. what impact does that have on the whole public dialogue? >> what impact does me have on the public dialogue? >> we'll look at all these stories with guests, including piers morgan and former abc news president david westin. president obama taking flak for saying the media are exaggerating the threat of terrorism.

>> you know, what's the famous saying about local newscasts right? if it bleeds, it leads, right? >> the president have a point or is he shifting the blame as he seeks new war powers from congress. plus why did msnbc ask eric holder to quack like a duck? i'm howard kurtz, and this is "media buzz." the television world was stunned when jon stewart suddenly announced that later this year he'll be stepping down from his comedy central franchise. >> 17 years is the longest i have ever in my life held a job by 16 years and five months. thank you. the upshot there being, i am a terrible employee. but in my heart i know it is time for someone else to have that opportunity.

>> the openly liberal comedian rarely criticizes president obama, but when he does such as after the paris rally for press freedom during those terror attacks, it stings. >> how could obama not be there? look how many world leaders he could have bowed down to and apologized? >> and when john mccain told me that stewart is unfair to republicans, i got the treatment. >> from immigration to rogue nations, this past sunday our nation's leading journalistic lights saw answers to the day's most pressing questions. >> you've been on "the daily show." is jon stewart fair to republicans? >> all this in contrast to stewart's friend and frequent guest brian williams out on suspension as nbc universal calls his conduct inexcusable. and the sadness of bob simon's death. joining us to examine all of this rich lowry, a fox news

contributor. marissa guthrie and joe klein, columnist for "time" magazine. marissa, john sturltn stewart became a cutting edge social and media political critic. how did he do that? >> he came along at the right time. he could -- and cable news had ramped up and was 24-hour talking headfest. so there were always going to be times when these people put their foots in their mouths and so he had these huge targets in which to expos hypocrisy which really epndeared him to his young audience which was already suspicious of media. >> stewart is upfront about leaning left and mostly skewers republicans and fox news and bill o'reilly but it's all cloaked in comedy. >> this is one of my big problems with him. he is constantly lecturing us about the tone of our politics, but he was a big-time political commentator himself.

what he added to the conversation -- >> oh, no, no no. he says i'm just the media. >> this is the game he would play. he would want to be taken seriously at some level. if you caught him in something being wrong about something or dishonest, it's just oh i'm a comedian. but what he added to our political discourse was largely sarcasm, insults and dishonest editing. look mockery has always been part of politics since time immoreim immemorial but please don't lecture us about how the tone needs to be elevated when that's what you do. >> i think he added more than sarcasm. what do you think? >> yeah. i think the way you judge comedy is not by whether it's honest or dishonest, it's whether he's funny or not. the guy was a genius the guy is a genius he's absolutely brilliant and he was very very smart. i was part of a panel with him up in new hampshire that was not on television that involved the president of msnbc. this was about ten years ago and bill kristol and several others.

stewart took us all apart. and he was dead serious. this is a very smart guy. this is a real loss you know just in terms of fun. >> yeah, i've interviewed him enough times to agree that he's not only smart, but he is very cutting -- i don't mean cutting in the sarcastic sense, but in his analysis of what's wrong with the media what's wrong with politicians. let me play the classic ten-second jon stewart clip. this one occurring a decade ago at cnn. >> here's what i wanted to tell you guys. >> yeah. >> stop. stop. stop hurting america. >> so he basically single-handedly got "crossfire" cancelled. news anchors and shows began copying "the daily show" technique by using videotape to call out hypocrisy and inconsistencies. >> well, i think he had a real

impact on the political class too, because he could use the same videotape to expose them. and they all still came on his show because his view was they were just -- politicians are just inherently narcissistic so they come on. but i think the media watched him and there was some pride. there was like a weird pride they took in being skewered by jon stewart. >> he seems prideful at the beginning of the segment. >> you hope that he goes after you. the same thing with stephen colbert. then you were so outraged and upset and you've got this feud going. megyn kelly said she thought he was kind of mean sometimes in the service of comedy. >> comedians usually are mean. i don't disagree with points about how smart he was but if you were a conservative and went on one of the reporter interview segments, they would talk to you for an hour and then chop it up to make you look like a crude idiot. these washington redskins fans

who agreed to go on to talk about defending the name and they asked are we going to confronted by native americans? no you're not, don't worry about it. sure enough, they're ambushed by native americaning. that's jerry springer-like ethics. this gets to the two sides of him. on one side he lectures about the tone of our politics. when you catch him, he says i'm just a comedian. >> that was a very big mistake but to their credit they apologized and didn't use the footage. we have the situation, joe klein, where every poll shows particularly young people obviously, that stewart is a trusted figure. they think he kind of cuts through the bs in a way that many people who practice what we think of as real journalism are not. >> well, that's a problem we have. especially for younger people who have all of these different sources of information and if it isn't enjoyable, they're not going to watch it. you know you had the president saying if it bleeds it leads. for younger people if it's not

entertaining, forget about it. >> so all this happening in a week when as i mentioned at the top you have a major anchor getting suspended you have the passing of bob simon, the death of david carr, which i'll talk about in a couple of moments. how does all this sort out? >> i think that this is a time when, as joe said, what was so also so powerful about jon's show is that these little bits could go viral. and it was tailored to how young people consume content. they're nauftot watching the 6:30 broadcast. >> wait a second, wait a second. about 20 million people watched the three network newscasts. we all say they're dinosaurs, they're going away and it's an older audience but that's why what happened at nbc was a big story. >> right. but i think young people, i think the demographic for the evening news is aimingging out. >> a polite way of saying dying. >> dying. >> look at the ads.

they're all for se nil tee drugs. >> i cannot remember the last time i sat down turned on the tv and watched "the daily show." i would pick it up on liberal logs. on bob simon, when everything is so much shorter and faster and there's a premium on long form generalism, he did these pieces that have stuck with me for years about the monks on mount athos, about this orchestra playing beethoven's ninth that were moving, soulful and almost restored your trust in what journalism can do. >> but you can't have a career, it's very unlikely to have a career like bob had and have that training and that seasoning. he came up through when the broadcast networks had tons of money and he could go somewhere and spend weeks there reporting a story. you can't do that anymore. >> hasn't the internet become almost like jon stewart on steroids, in t a sense that --

>> but not nearly as funny. >> not as funny and not as accurate either. when somebody gets into trouble, there is this cry and the person is absolutely demonized. you know what it's like to be on the feeding frenzy. talk about that a little bit. >> i think that we're living in an era where where the ferocity of the prosecution is much greater than the severity of most of these crimes. that's true not only for people like brian williams but also for most of the politicians we cover. >> why is it -- why is it not -- >> i really want to have a president who has messed around. i really want to have -- my idea of a great president -- >> we had one that messed around. >> we had -- there was another one who lied to the american people continually on matters of war and peace who messed around who drank a pitcher of martinis every night and my grandfather voted for him four times, franklin roosevelt. >> let's get back to the treatment of media people and

why you think it's unfair. >> it's all public people not just media people. >> media people depend on credibility. they have constantly getting clawed at pushed at -- >> and all of us make mistakes. >> you've been talking about a blood lust. >> and i see that, rich as saying before bob simon almost made you trust journalism again. i trust journalism by and large. when i'm out there in the middle east being -- having rpgs shot -- no. but i see people like dexter filkins and other war reporters who really do the lord's work. >> that's true. that's well said. but the thing that was so amazing about the brian williams' incident is if there's any time you can't be inconsistent or make anything up and you know you're going to get caught, it's this era with so much attention on the media and social media and all the rest of it. >> that's why i do believe the word conflation was appropriate. when the story first happened,

he reported it accurately. and i know that over time, the stories that you tell kind of tend to get exaggerated -- >> but you can't tell when there's a camera on you and will live forever online as the smoking gun of your guilt and that was what happened. >> it was a very bad mistake. he blew the apology. there are going to be consequences. >> let me take just a moment to talk about david carr, a media columnist at "the new york times." he clamsollapsed and died this week. he was a quirky sometimes prickly character. he and i tangled at times, especially when he wrote a memoir about having been a crack addict as a young man and then wrote the most generous column that's ever been published about me. so really a lot of journalists have just been outpouring -- the outpouring of tributes has been amazing. let me put up one thing carr wrote last week. we want our anchors to be everywhere, to be impossibly famous, globe trotting,

hilarious and trustworthy. it's a job description that no one can match. that is very true. david carr was 58. on our show from new york today, piers morgan on why the media and online mob try to bring down public figures. when we come back, barack obama's buzzfeed moment. we'll show you the viral video drawing flak from some even in the mainstream media. ♪

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president obama gave a serious interview this week to buzzfeed but then joined the quirky website for a video that was designed to go viral. >> the deadline for signing up for health insurance is

february -- >> not like any other wednesday. >> that's not right. >> mr. president? >> rich what do you make of this latest presidential video? >> not a great day for the dignity of the office but this is one of the things that he really excels at as a politician. the perform afternoonative aspect of it. other aspects of the presidency not so great. >> dignity of the office, that's money. at msnbc they were laughing about it and i heard a lot of people at fox thought it was awful. >> the dignity of the office began to take a serious hit when bill clinton played a saxophone on arsenio hall. >> you're still mad about that. >> but i think it's now become inevitable that you cannot -- what about george w. bush searching for the weapons of mass destruction under the tables in the oval office? that was a really dignified

moment for the presidency as well. this is part of an inevitable part of how you sell yourself. >> what's striking about this is that "the new york times" said it was a humiliation. "the washington post" said he was acting like a weirdo. these don't usually bash president obama. >> but they aren't the audience for those. the audience are young people. >> so i should probably explained at the top this was designed to get young people interested to sign up for obamacare by the deadline this week. >> right. and you have to speak to young people in their language and that's their language. the between two ferns funny or die, that's their language. >> so that's why the president talked to these wacky youtube stars like glozell green. the problem is as president you speak to all audiences at once. and some of the rest of us go what? >> you're right, every ad targeted young people for paum

obamacare has been ridiculous. >> in your opinion. >> but it doesn't mean the president has to participate. >> pajama boy and ads in oregon, they're all kind of silly because they're pitched to that audience. the president doesn't need to be part of that. >> you know what's really undignified that really bothered me, the constant fund-raising letters that are sent out in his name by the democratic campaign committees. i mean it's disgraceful to have a president begging for money in public on a daily basis. >> well, i just think this comes at a time when we're just being bombarded with images of terror and beheadings and people being burned to death and that maybe makes it seem a little offkey. thanks for joining us here. is president obama trying to shift the blame on isis by saying how the media covers it. up next, david westin on the era of celebrity anchors and whether you, the audience, are part of the problem. e... it's a full day for me, and i love

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after a week of media earthquakes, bob simon's death, brian williams' suspension, jon stewart's retirement, is the era of celebrity correspondents coming to an end. joining me now is david westin. you write in time that the audience is pretty power fully drawn to celebrity anchors and therefore the mistakes and flaws loom larger. you had a pretty famous anchor in diane sawyer. don't networks market people like this? how is it the audience's fault? >> well the era of select anchors is not a new one. walter cronkite was a pretty big celebrity. nothing is new with that. peter jennings was a big celebrity. >> but didn't put himself at the center of every story. >> i think the business has changed in ways that are not good. i think that there was a time when you were famous because you were good. not you were good because you were famous. and that is a subtle distinction

but i think it's a terribly important one. you need people like peter was who was a great correspondent, a great reporter, had covered a lot of wars had been around the world and knew what he was talking about and he became famous for that. when you sent him in, you sent him in not to be the story but to cover the story. peter, as i've said, was the first one to say that it's not about us david it's about the story. >> after his death you picked elizabeth vargas and bob woodruff to succeed him and bob woodruff nearly died from an explosive device in iraq. again, it was your job to brand them and any anchor that you have in the chair so i was a little surprised to see you say the audience kind of demands that. i guess it's a chicken and egg thing. but aren't networks in the business of making their front line people big stars? >> you don't want to hide under a bushel ever. that makes sense. but there is a fundamental difference. when we sent bob woodruff over he had covered various wars and very experienced. we sent him over to cover the state of the union address that

year because the subject was going to be iraq. and that's why he was there. but even after he was injured so gravely with his cameraman and we really feared for his life and he came back miraculously we did a special with him. and he and i agreed from the very beginning that that special had to be principally about the other men and women who were suffering similar aro even worse injuries in their families. >> not the journalists who spent a week or two. >> exactly. but we spent most of the hour on other people that had problems as bad or worse than bob. so are you the story or is what's going on around you the story? >> so is the downside of this celebrity which we have recently been reminded that when an anchor or famous correspondent gets into trouble, then at that point the audience -- everything is kind of magnified because of their very fame? >> well, i actually have said i'm somewhat sympathetic to brian. what he did is awful and he

admits that. the trust of your audience and your credibility is really all you have. so what he did was inexcusable and has hurt nbc news. to some extent it's hurt everybody else because the audience doesn't necessarily discriminate between networks. you know, they don't think oh, abc is different from bz innbc -- >> every big media mistakes hurts all of us who try to practice journalism. >> although at the same time i'm a bit sympathetic because i think as things become so much more competitive and these institutions are now fighting for their lives, that's not an exaggeration, the business plan is really challenged at this point, there's more and more of an emphasis on marketing and branding. if you don't watch out, it can be about marketing and branding and not actually covering the story. and i think the forces behind brian, without my being there would have been all encouraging him to be a bigger presence rather than checking him. >> i've got less than a minute but at cbs scott pelley succeed educate katie couric.

are we now maybe moving away from the $15 million a year superstar anchor to people who are very good at reporting and looking into the camera but are not transcend ent stars? >> i think this week when we lost bob simon and david carr is to remember that there are really fine journalists doing really great work out there even today. we have a tendency to point out the foibles when people are with us and focus on how wonderful they were after they left us. martha raddich is a terrific correspondent. what we can do as an audience is find those people seek them out and spend time with them to encourage people to come behind them and do the same thing. >> spoken like somebody for years who spent time finding talent on television. coming up president obama says the media are overdramatizing the threat of terrorism because violence equals ratings.

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the dodge brothers spirit lives on. with isis brutally murdering hostages and after the "charlie hebdo" killings, terrorism has been a front issue on tv, online and on the front pages. in f an interview with vox.com president obama was asked about the coverage. >> do you think that the media sometimes overstates the sort of level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos? >> i don't blame the media for that. you know, what's the famous saying about local newscasts, right? if it bleeds, it leads, right? you show crime stories and you show fires. because that's what folks watch. >> but are the media the problem? joining us now, amy holmes and

mark hannah ph.d. fellow who worked for barack obama's 2008 campaign. amy, is the president if not blaming the media is he at least faulting the media for terror coverage or kacknowledging reality? >> he's actually blaming the viewer in saying that we have some attraction to fires and mayhem and blood and gore. i was really shocked by the statement because the president gets his daily briefing of the terrorist threat assessment. if what he is reading is less concerning than what we're seeing on the television, he should tell us. >> conservative pupndits really jumped on the president over that one line. >> no kidding. they're not acknowledging the fact that he said i don't blame the media. but this saying, if it bleeds it leads this didn't come from the president, it comes from news executives themselves. in a commercial media environment, there's a competitive pressure to try to show things people actually care about. and people actually care about terrorism. they don't care about some

obscure issue they care about things of a general interest. we've experienced terrorism in this country communally so everybody has an interest in. >> basically the president -- what you're saying is that the president is understating the case. he is saying that there is an overemphasis on what is a real concern to most americans. >> no. i think the president says terrorism is something where there's clear good guys, clear bad guys. it fits the media narrative really well. it's designed to be spectacular. it's designed to be some vision of violence that people will fear. so what the media does is of course it's going to play things -- >> if it bleeds it leads is about local news. but when isis is beheading hostages and setting them on fire, how could that not get a lot of coverage? there's another point the president made what doesn't get a lot of coverage are incremental stories like climate change because they're not considered sexy. >> sure. >> is that fair? >> it's absolutely fair. people have a hard time making

sense of it. this isn't necessarily a bad thing when extremism, whether it's islamic extremism or extremely polarized or extremely partisan sound bites get covered. when anything extreme gets covered, this has a moderating influence. this has a moderating effect so that extreme acts of heroism extreme acts of valor are covered as well. >> you are saying something different from what the president said. what the president said is that the media is exaggerating these stories. >> he didn't say that. >> because of its visual impact and because viewers have this morbid obsession with violence. >> he didn't say morbid obsession. he did use the word ratings. let me move you to 2016 because scott walker was in london this week. question and answer got a lot of play here. let's roll it. >> do you -- are you comfortable with the idea of revolution? do you believe in it? do you accept it? >> for me i'm going to punt on that one as well. >> no, really? >> that's a question a

politician shouldn't be involved in. >> is that a big news that scott walker ducked the question on evolution? >> i don't think it's news. >> why are we talking about it then? >> we are talking about it but i would say because of media bias. it's getting close to the point that the media seems to be suggesting that if you have a biblical view of man being created in god's image that this should somehow be newsworthy when in fact lots of americans believe in that. my point is why is he being asked the question? >> he's being asked the question because i think the rest of the world seize american politicians, specifically those on the right as denying basic sort of scientific precepts like global warming climate change like evolution. they see it as this kind of embarrassing thing. the bbc interviewer -- >> why should a person be embarrassed to be a creationist. >> what the interviewer said after that is if we ask that question of politicians in england, they would laugh at that because -- >> another bit of scott walker news and i didn't mean to cut

you off. "the washington post" ran a long piece on his college years which tried to solve the mystery of why scott walker didn't get a college degree which is not a secret widely reported and he's talked about it in wisconsin. should we care? >> i think we see this vetting of all presidential candidates in terms of looking at their -- you know their college -- what courses they took, the grades that they're willing to release. president obama of course is not willing to release his transcript. i think that this is normal and certainly scott walker dropping out of college is newsworthy. people would be interested to know and interested as an up by the boot strap story as well. >> i think any profile would include that but professors are saying he didn't seem that interested in school, he was interested in school politics. i just wonder whether or not it was too adversarial. >> look, every presidential candidate that presents his credible candidacy is going to face these questions. >> you guys both take it as a fact of life. >> yeah. >> drugs and mitt romney was asked about being a bully. all these facts came up.

-- >> and then the boston globe said jeb bush was a bully. this is 40 years ago. hasn't the statute of limitations expired? >> no, because people have a curiosity. i have a lot of respect for the viewers and a lot of respect for news consumers to take these stories with a grain of salt. >> on that point -- >> you're not the same person you are as an adult that you were in high school or college. everybody makes mistakes that they don't want the viewer -- >> the viewer may be willing to be for giving but apparently the media is not. >> amy, mark thanks for joining us. with "60 minutes" in mourning former cbs correspondent john roberts helps us remember bob simon: l big sh s. ♪ ♪ the bold nissan rogue,

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if something goes wrong, you find a scapegoat. ...rick. it's what you do. ahhhhhhhh! what'd you say? uh-oh! kelly! if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to geico. it's what you do. rick. don't walk away from me. ahhhhhhhh! piers morgan may have left cnn but he's still got plenty of strong opinions writing in london's "daily mail" he takes on the toxic online culture that turns on one embattled public figure after another and insists off with his head. piers morgan joins me now from los angeles. let me start by writing your column. politicians, celebrities news anchors are all tossed on the to the furnace at the slightest suggestion they may not be as perfect as we'd like them to be. why is that? >> i think it really kind of a new medieval phase where social

media has empowered everyone to be as vicious as they want to be, and i'm not sure how helpful that is to the democratic process, whether you're a politician or you're in the media, whatever it may be. watch what happened to brian williams this week. yes, he made a big mistake. but the way that people went on, you would have thought he'd been a mass serial killer. i think there just has to be some kind of restraint sometimes where, yes you acknowledge the mistake, yes, you criticize yes, you can berate brian williams, but the kind of gleeful vilification of him as a human being, the mockery, the general consensus that you have to be smashed to pieces i found pretty identifying. >> have you felt at times that you've been on the receiving end of just that kind of fury? >> i have. i was fired from "the daily mirror" in london after ten years of editing a daily newspaper in pretty contentious circumstances. we published pictures which were

allegedly fake of british troops abusing iraqi civilians, and what it taught me was quite interesting because it was like a huge news story, a big scandal. i was fired. i've always been not too sure what those pictures really were and some of those soldiers were later jailed. so, you know it's kind of a moot point about the original argument. but what i did believe was that the whole process of what i went through, had i survived it i would have been a better journalist and a better editor. i don't think anyone can doubt that brian williams, if he's allowed to have a second chance, and i believe he should have that second chance, that he wouldn't be a better anchor for this experience that he wouldn't take even more care to be completely accurate, that he wouldn't perhaps put himself at the center of stories in the way that he has before so maybe he would dial down his celebrification aspect of that job. america is the land of second chances, right? >> you as you just said were a london tabloid editor.

you went after people with that paper. you went after people at cnn. you went after people who disagreed with your crusade for gun control. so aren't you part of this culture? aren't you part of the problem? >> yes, i am. >> you're pleading guilty? >> and i acknowledge -- i acknowledge that, yeah absolutely. i acknowledge that in my column. particularly when it comes to my sporting allegiances, whether it's the london cricket team or the arsenal football club. and by the way, i never missed an arsenal game to work. but i have intemp rat and emotional on social media. on the guns debate, you said a very interesting thing which i thought was pert negligent. jeff zucker sat me down at the sight of all that gun mayhem. everyone was screaming at each other, i was screaming at people and they were screaming at me. he said look piers, here's my view of this. i have no problem with you running this campaign, i understand you feel passionately about it. rather than call the gun people

on your show as idiots, why don't you phrase it as i find your position idiotic and it did strike me as an extremely sensible comment to make. it's the kind of personal abuse that gets wrapped around all this driven by social media which i think often takes away from the central argument and also makes it very difficult to reach any fair balance judgment or have any kind of consensus of opinion. >> i think we all need to watch our language especially in this incendiary environment in which we live. i've got about a minute left. we talked earlier in the program about the death of new york times media columnist david carr. you tweeted that it was an e-mail from david carr that led to your departure from cnn because he was going to write about you. explain. >> well, it was actually more the announcement as i was coming off my daily show because of david carr e-mailing me and saying i'm going to do a piece about your show. i don't think it has worked even though had been on the air three and a half years, i think it's struggling a bit and he invited me to talk to him.

what i liked about the e-mail was he didn't sugar coat this he gave me his opinion. i didn't necessarily agree with it all but he gave me his opinion and he said i want to talk to you about it so i could be fair and balanced. i decided to talk to him and he actually wrote a very fair and balanced column about me. now, he had written before very negative columns about me. he had also been extremely supportive of me actually over the phone hacking scandal when i gave evidence over that back in england. and so he was a guy that i always felt gave you a fair crack of the whip. but it's quite interesting. you talk about brian williams getting second chances. david carr's life is surely the absolutely perfect template to somebody if we judged him on the first half of his life, it was very negative. >> that's a great point but i've got to go. >> he got a second chance and we see what happened. >> all right piers morgan, thanks very much for joining us. i like that phrase fair and balanced. after the break, remembering bob simon, a correspondent who spent decades reporting from war zones with his former cbs colleague, john roberts.

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bob simon just finished a piece for "60 minutes" when he was killed in a car crash. there were plenty of tears at a staff meeting when they remembered the man who reported from vietnam to hate toy the middle east and once spent 40 days in an iraqi prison. >> as you can see, we've lost a little weight. we've aged a lit bit. we're fine. this is a story that could have ended another way but it's had a happy ending. >> there's a big war going on in vietnam and the people here know all about it. >> eight months ago, this might have been the happiest place in the world but a practicing

where people overthrew a dictator in 18 days. well, the people are back again, but the happiness is gone. >> so many decades of reporting. joining us now from atlanta former news anchor and fox news senior correspondent john roberts. john, what made bob special? >> good morning to you, howie. let me say first of all such a tragic loss, particularly the way he went after traveling the world and facing danger so many times the way he did. what made bob special was he was simply a master at his craft. you can heard in the way he reports, whether it's in an on-camera piece to camera whether it's in his writing. that straight matter of fact writing gets both sides of reporting. an innate curiosity. bob would take us along for a ride whether it was a short piece or a piece for "60

minutes" where he was discovering things along the way, and that sort of curiosity he had in his reporting i think, was so different from other people that we've seen come out of cbs and many other networks. he was simply a master at his craft. >> like so many people he talked about, he did not make the story about him. >> it was always about what he had discovered which is what i think made him such a great reporter. he never talked about himself, except when he came out of iraq ask that was only briefly. he talked about what he discovered when he talked to other people and that was another fine point about bob. >> i understand you went to haiti with him one time. what was it like to work alongside this guy? >> i didn't actually go with him. he was there when i got there. >> i was an anchor at wcbs, the new york cbs station. bob was obviously a correspondent for cbs news at that time. we both ended up in the same bureau in prince in haiti.

i thought, let me take a look at this guy and watch how he did it. he used to sit in the edit room for hours at a time. so many people would leave it to the editors to do it. bob would sit there literally going through every frame of videotape, and every once in a while i heard him ex claim, aha! i would look to see what he was doing, and he was looking for that little moment he could use as a start to his piece or that little interesting piece of video that would hook people. bob never used video wallpaper like so many people do. every picture that was in his story, he was writing to it specifically. and i had the opportunity -- what an amazing opportunity to learn from somebody like him simply through watching him. and it was an incredible opportunity. >> storytelling in that ration

is so important to television news, and so striking that bob simon was doing this up until the time of his death at 73 working on the ebola story. it's really nice to have a chance for you to remember this great hero bob simon. >> one more quick thing if i could, howie. not only the time he spent in iraq, but he said the time he was most frightened were in bosnia when he was stopped at a checkpoint. these were bad people. and for half an hour bob thought he was within a hair's breadth of being executed. he escaped that like he has so many others, but that was when he really feared for his life. was it quackery for an msnbc host to ask eric hager a really weird question?

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the rest are robots with stiffly starched shirts reading from a teleprompter. john said i'm certainly not a liberal, but because he's more real than other kmen tartscommentators, i would say yes. we put this question to eric holder. >> reporter: you know we call you the duck. >> the duck? >> we call you the duck. we say you have a very sort of placid way of presenting but you're working hard underneath. would you quack for us? >> i don't know if i'm going to do that, but i like the analogy. >> this is a smart lady. i know she was trying to end on a light note, but that made me cringe. this is the attorney general of the united states! i guess she just got that thrill. that's it for "media buzz" in new york city. i hope you like our facebook

page. we post a lot of original content there. we're going back to washington where it's just as cold as it is here in the city. join us tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 eastern with the latest buzz. i'm chris wallace. the latest on terror attacks in denmark as congress deadlocks over how to avoid shutting down the department of homeland security. we have an exclusive interview with speaker of the house john boehner. >> can you promise the american people that you're not going to allow funding for the department of homeland security to run out? >> we discuss the new republican majority in congress and that controversial invitation to prime minister netanyahu. >> haven't you taken one of the few bipartisan issues in this country, support for israel, and