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CNN Saturday Morning News
Novak Zone: Interview with Tom Brokaw
Aired November 22, 2003 - 09:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT NOVAK, HOST: Welcome to The Novak Zone.
We're at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C., with the recipient of the club's 30th annual Fourth Estate Award for lifetime journalistic achievement, Tom Brokaw, anchor of "NBC Nightly News," and managing editor.
Tom Brokaw, I got this award a couple of years ago. I'm a great deal older than you are, but I thought I was at a sort of a premature funeral, where everybody was making eulogies.
TOM BROKAW, "NBC NIGHTLY NEWS": I feel the same way.
NOVAK: Did you get the feeling...
BROKAW: I feel the same way. I was thinking about it tonight, you know, and it's -- I think that we get frozen in our mind, in our careers and our lives. And I remember the first time I came to Washington to see David Brinkley do the news. And I was in the studio, and suddenly I thought, Well, now I'm doing the news, and I'm getting a lifetime achievement award, where has all this gone?
NOVAK: You were a White House correspondent for NBC...
BROKAW: I was.
NOVAK: ... in some exciting time. What kind of memories do you have of that period?
BROKAW: Well, what I remember about it is that we worked 24/7, and the other thing that I remember about it, most vividly, I think, is that there was a great mix in Washington in those days, Bob, that you'll remember, of print and electronic journalists. It was about evenly balanced. And I think that that was a healthy time for our profession.
NOVAK: Tom, after you had covered Nixon and Ford, you went up to New York to do the "Today" show. That originally was an entertainment show. Was it tough being with Willard Scott and show business people for a hard news guy, as you were?
BROKAW: Well, it was. I, you know, I would try to kind of level all that out by going off to Egypt to cover the Sadat assassination, Rome for the pope. I worked morning, noon, and night, as you'll remember, at the conventions. I was a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) correspondent. And I got up in the morning and tried to break some stories on that. Went to all the primary states.
But eventually, it's what got me out of there. I just -- you know, I knew I had to get back to what I loved the best.
NOVAK: You were, as a longtime anchor of the NBC "Nightly News," you like to get off and do cover stories. How do you think the media, American news media, covered this last war in Iraq?
BROKAW: I think, by and large, Bob, that they did very well. I think that the embed process worked, for the most part. I think the coverage from the studio point of view has been pretty good. A lot of people have been critical of the run-up to the war. Was there enough known about it?
You know, we did -- we dealt with the facts as best as we could obtain them at the time. So I think that the American -- both newspaper readership and television audiences had a broad spectrum from which to choose.
I remember watching you. You were a critic of the war, and the idea of going to war. That was unusual, coming from you. There were lots of voices out there about that on the commentary side. There were lots of other points of view that were reflected in the news site.
One of the -- I think one of the real changes in our business is that this spectrum has really widened. So you can go and find out what lots of different voices are saying, and I think that's healthy.
SAVIDGE: Tom Brokaw, you've interviewed about everybody. Is there somebody you haven't interviewed you would like to?
BROKAW: Osama bin Laden.
NOVAK: Just interview him, huh?
BROKAW: If he wants me to invite me to the cave, I'm ready. No, he's somebody that I would like to interview. I'm -- at the moment, I can't think of anybody else in the world. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Saddam Hussein falls into that category as well, if he's still around, as we assume that he is.
But, you know, I have had great good fortune in interviewing the big newsmakers.
NOVAK: You have had great success with your writing about the greatest generation in World War II. Do you think you have opened up the veterans of that war who have had hard time telling their story by putting some of their stories in print?
BROKAW: Well, in a way I didn't anticipate, I think I have had that effect. And the way I describe my role in writing about what I called the greatest generation is that I say I'm really a doorman. I opened a door, and I said, This way, please. There are some stories that you should hear here.
And what it did was encourage veterans to start talking to their families, and in part because their families then expressed curiosity to them. Well, what did you do, Dad? Or, in the cases of some instances, wives who had never heard the stories from their husbands.
And it's been the most gratifying part of this whole experience for me, is how it's brought families together, it's reignited the oral tradition of history in families. And it has given a new generation a sense of how much we owe that generation for all that they did.
SAVIDGE: You have another best-seller, it's in paperback here, "A Long Way From Home," a memoir of your growing up in South Dakota. It takes you up to the time you arrived in Omaha. Do you think coming from that part of the country has had an influence on the kind of newsman and the kind of reporter you turned out to be?
BROKAW: I think so. I grew up in working-class families where you had to earn your keep every day and the people around you all did that. And they had -- they were very well grounded in their values. Plus the fact, growing up in the Great Plains, you know, there was not a lot going on right around us. It's a sparsely populated part of the world.
So I had an enormous curiosity about what was going on over the horizon, in Washington and New York and foreign areas. And the education in those Midwestern farm states is really first rate. You've got very good people who were your teachers. They encouraged you to go out and do well, and the whole community backed you.
So I think it did help me.
NOVAK: And Now the big question for Tom Brokaw, "Nightly News" anchor, managing editor.
Tom Brokaw, you know, all the stories you have covered, what's the biggest story, the most favorite story, that you've covered as a reporter?
BROKAW: Well, I think the biggest one was the fall of communism. I think that when we look back on this period, the collapse of that ideology and of the Soviet empire will be the one that will be the most overwhelming and have the greatest impact on the world in historic terms.
Domestically, I suppose it would be Watergate, and a combination of Watergate and the reaction to Vietnam, those two episodes, I think, are...
But, you know, when you live through these events the way that we all have, sometimes it's a little hard to see the forest for the trees. But the collapse of communism was a big deal.
NOVAK: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the biggest we've been through.
Tom Brokaw, thank you very much. Congratulations... BROKAW: Thank you, Bob, thank you.
NOVAK: ... on your award.
BROKAW: Thank you very much.
NOVAK: And thank you for being in The Novak Zone.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 22, 2003 - 09:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT NOVAK, HOST: Welcome to The Novak Zone.
We're at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C., with the recipient of the club's 30th annual Fourth Estate Award for lifetime journalistic achievement, Tom Brokaw, anchor of "NBC Nightly News," and managing editor.
Tom Brokaw, I got this award a couple of years ago. I'm a great deal older than you are, but I thought I was at a sort of a premature funeral, where everybody was making eulogies.
TOM BROKAW, "NBC NIGHTLY NEWS": I feel the same way.
NOVAK: Did you get the feeling...
BROKAW: I feel the same way. I was thinking about it tonight, you know, and it's -- I think that we get frozen in our mind, in our careers and our lives. And I remember the first time I came to Washington to see David Brinkley do the news. And I was in the studio, and suddenly I thought, Well, now I'm doing the news, and I'm getting a lifetime achievement award, where has all this gone?
NOVAK: You were a White House correspondent for NBC...
BROKAW: I was.
NOVAK: ... in some exciting time. What kind of memories do you have of that period?
BROKAW: Well, what I remember about it is that we worked 24/7, and the other thing that I remember about it, most vividly, I think, is that there was a great mix in Washington in those days, Bob, that you'll remember, of print and electronic journalists. It was about evenly balanced. And I think that that was a healthy time for our profession.
NOVAK: Tom, after you had covered Nixon and Ford, you went up to New York to do the "Today" show. That originally was an entertainment show. Was it tough being with Willard Scott and show business people for a hard news guy, as you were?
BROKAW: Well, it was. I, you know, I would try to kind of level all that out by going off to Egypt to cover the Sadat assassination, Rome for the pope. I worked morning, noon, and night, as you'll remember, at the conventions. I was a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) correspondent. And I got up in the morning and tried to break some stories on that. Went to all the primary states.
But eventually, it's what got me out of there. I just -- you know, I knew I had to get back to what I loved the best.
NOVAK: You were, as a longtime anchor of the NBC "Nightly News," you like to get off and do cover stories. How do you think the media, American news media, covered this last war in Iraq?
BROKAW: I think, by and large, Bob, that they did very well. I think that the embed process worked, for the most part. I think the coverage from the studio point of view has been pretty good. A lot of people have been critical of the run-up to the war. Was there enough known about it?
You know, we did -- we dealt with the facts as best as we could obtain them at the time. So I think that the American -- both newspaper readership and television audiences had a broad spectrum from which to choose.
I remember watching you. You were a critic of the war, and the idea of going to war. That was unusual, coming from you. There were lots of voices out there about that on the commentary side. There were lots of other points of view that were reflected in the news site.
One of the -- I think one of the real changes in our business is that this spectrum has really widened. So you can go and find out what lots of different voices are saying, and I think that's healthy.
SAVIDGE: Tom Brokaw, you've interviewed about everybody. Is there somebody you haven't interviewed you would like to?
BROKAW: Osama bin Laden.
NOVAK: Just interview him, huh?
BROKAW: If he wants me to invite me to the cave, I'm ready. No, he's somebody that I would like to interview. I'm -- at the moment, I can't think of anybody else in the world. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Saddam Hussein falls into that category as well, if he's still around, as we assume that he is.
But, you know, I have had great good fortune in interviewing the big newsmakers.
NOVAK: You have had great success with your writing about the greatest generation in World War II. Do you think you have opened up the veterans of that war who have had hard time telling their story by putting some of their stories in print?
BROKAW: Well, in a way I didn't anticipate, I think I have had that effect. And the way I describe my role in writing about what I called the greatest generation is that I say I'm really a doorman. I opened a door, and I said, This way, please. There are some stories that you should hear here.
And what it did was encourage veterans to start talking to their families, and in part because their families then expressed curiosity to them. Well, what did you do, Dad? Or, in the cases of some instances, wives who had never heard the stories from their husbands.
And it's been the most gratifying part of this whole experience for me, is how it's brought families together, it's reignited the oral tradition of history in families. And it has given a new generation a sense of how much we owe that generation for all that they did.
SAVIDGE: You have another best-seller, it's in paperback here, "A Long Way From Home," a memoir of your growing up in South Dakota. It takes you up to the time you arrived in Omaha. Do you think coming from that part of the country has had an influence on the kind of newsman and the kind of reporter you turned out to be?
BROKAW: I think so. I grew up in working-class families where you had to earn your keep every day and the people around you all did that. And they had -- they were very well grounded in their values. Plus the fact, growing up in the Great Plains, you know, there was not a lot going on right around us. It's a sparsely populated part of the world.
So I had an enormous curiosity about what was going on over the horizon, in Washington and New York and foreign areas. And the education in those Midwestern farm states is really first rate. You've got very good people who were your teachers. They encouraged you to go out and do well, and the whole community backed you.
So I think it did help me.
NOVAK: And Now the big question for Tom Brokaw, "Nightly News" anchor, managing editor.
Tom Brokaw, you know, all the stories you have covered, what's the biggest story, the most favorite story, that you've covered as a reporter?
BROKAW: Well, I think the biggest one was the fall of communism. I think that when we look back on this period, the collapse of that ideology and of the Soviet empire will be the one that will be the most overwhelming and have the greatest impact on the world in historic terms.
Domestically, I suppose it would be Watergate, and a combination of Watergate and the reaction to Vietnam, those two episodes, I think, are...
But, you know, when you live through these events the way that we all have, sometimes it's a little hard to see the forest for the trees. But the collapse of communism was a big deal.
NOVAK: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the biggest we've been through.
Tom Brokaw, thank you very much. Congratulations... BROKAW: Thank you, Bob, thank you.
NOVAK: ... on your award.
BROKAW: Thank you very much.
NOVAK: And thank you for being in The Novak Zone.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
