UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Correspondent Robert Trout, nicknamed "the iron man of radio," discusses covering the 1936 political conventions for radio, making special mention of the innovations and novelties that CBS employed in order to one-up NBC’s election coverage:

“[T]here was a still camera…a big camera on a tripod and he fixed the microphone just under the camera so our technician could carry the tripod down through the aisle and put a delegate on the air and take his photograph at the same time and then mail it to him later…if you want to know about the beginning of the television and conventions, it wasn’t exactly television, they were still pictures, but that’s really how it began, in a way."

Watch Robert Trout’s full interview, which spans his career from introducing FDR’s fireside chats to covering the turbulent events of the 1960’s

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Producer/director Alan Neuman says this of directing NBC's coverage of election night, 1948:

“I got an assignment from Warren Wade for the presidential elections…I complained to him, ‘But I’ve got a show to do the next day!’ And he said to me famously, ‘Truman will concede by eight p.m. You’ll be home in time for dinner and don’t worry about it.’… And at nine o’clock the following morning I walked across the way and I said to him, ‘Eight o’clock or nine o’clock, huh?’ I met him in the hallway because I hadn’t gone to bed yet.”

Watch Alan Neuman's full interview, which details his career from NBC page to director and producer of many programs of television’s golden age.

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Meet the Press producer Betty Cole Dukert tells of two significant appearances on the show in the lead up to the 1952 presidential election: Adlai Stevenson and Thomas E. Dewey.

"[Adlai Stevenson’s] campaign manager said afterwards he didn’t think he would ever have gotten the nomination had it not been for that interview."

Watch Betty Cole Dukert's full interview, where she discusses her five-decade tenure at Meet the Press.

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Executive William Clotworthy tells the story of his time at the advertising agency BBDO, and the agency’s work on Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential campaign, including a lifelong regret:

“The worst part of all of that is that that campaign also was the first time that we invented the 30-second political commercial. And if there’s anything in my life I regret, it's the 30-second political commercial.”

Watch William Clotworthy's full interview where he tells of his rise from NBC page to NBC’s Director of Broadcast Standards.

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News executive Sig Mickelson tells of television news coverage of the 1952 political conventions, which had expanded greatly from 1948, and which began to effect the way the conventions were run.

“There were only 400,000 television receivers during the conventions in 1948. The television networks reached the enormous distance from Boston and Washington and west to Pittsburgh… And by 1952, we had gotten to the point where we were anticipating at least 16 million television homes, and coverage from coast to coast.”

Watch Sig Mickelson’s full interview, which details his long career as an executive with CBS News.

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Anchor/reporter Walter Cronkite gives details on how the coverage of the political conventions of 1952 unfolded, and compares those early days with his later work covering the 1980 conventions.

“It turned out that the anchor person…is the only person who really knows what’s going on at a convention.”

Watch Walter Cronkite's full interview to hear him tell the stories behind his legendary career.

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On the challenges of covering the 1956 political conventions in the relatively early days of television news coverage, anchor/correspondent David Brinkley says this:

"There was only one video cable to the West Coast...and so we had to share it, all the networks had to use one cable. We had our own audio line, but the video line was the one cable. So the only picture we could send to the West Coast was the pool picture."

Watch David Brinkley's full interview, which spans the entirety of his career from his early days in radio to The Huntley-Brinkley Report and beyond.

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Former FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow tells the story of Adlai Stevenson receiving advice from Lyndon Johnson before the 1956 election, as well as an experience with the FCC that made Minow interested in the agency.

“Adlai said to me…'If I want to run for president in ’56, I’ll have to run in the primaries…I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to run like sheriff and shaking hands at the shopping center.' Of course, he ended up doing exactly that, running around in shopping centers, shaking hands.”

Watch Newton N. Minow's full interview to hear stories from his work on Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaigns and his time as FCC Chairman.

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Bill Moyers, news correspondent and appointee of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, tells the story of Lyndon B. Johnson’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, as well as how JFK offered Moyers a job in his administration.

“During the convention of 1960, I slept in Johnson's suite. I slept in the big bathroom off the foyer. And it was I who opened the door to let John F. Kennedy in when he came early that morning to offer the vice-presidency to LBJ.”

Watch Bill Moyers’ full interview where he details his political career and his move into journalism and beyond.

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Anchor/reporter Walter Cronkite recounts the story of an interview he conducted with John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign where he asked the candidate about his religion.

“In the course of the interview, I said, ‘Senator [Kennedy], we have some figures here from sample precincts, which we have polled particularly taking a look at the Catholic issue.’… And as I started this question, I didn’t really quite get that far, he’s pulling himself up and glowering at me, and he said, ‘That’s not a thing that we need to discuss.’”

Watch Walter Cronkite's full interview to hear him tell the stories behind his legendary career.

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According to NBC News executive/producer Reuven Frank, CBS News had set the standard for election night coverage in 1958. In 1960, he vowed to make NBC News competitive, and so he set about creating new rules for coverage, though he could have had no idea that the election reporting would stretch on well into the next day.

“Well, we stayed up all night, but not only that, then [Robert] Kintner started to worry about losing ‘Today’… So at seven-thirty, we were instructed to declare a winner. And luckily we declared Kennedy."

Watch Reuven Frank's full interview, where he talks about shows and documentaries he produced, as well as his years as President of NBC News.

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Executive Julian Goodman tells the story of how the Kennedy-Nixon debates came to be, and gives details on the negotiations and challenges that went on behind-the-scenes. He also reflects on the significance of the debates:

“They certainly were historic and they certainly were influential in the outcome of the election…they may have changed the course of history. Because they were on television. Because people got a chance to see the candidates and a chance to choose for themselves which man they wanted to lead them.”

Watch Julian Goodman's full interview, which chronicles his rise to President of NBC and his role producing news coverage of the pivotal events of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

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Director Arthur Penn acted as a consultant for John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, offering camera-ready advice starting with the mandate to film Kennedy in close ups.

“What we were doing was what everybody now is doing. They all have these advisors, I mean, it’s more about performance than it is about substance...And there we were doing exactly that. We were imposing the medium onto the substance and the medium beat the substance.”

Watch Arthur Penn’s full interview, which delves into his experiences directing in the early days of television.

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Lighting designer Imero Fiorentino tells the story of lighting the Kennedy-Nixon debates, though not all of them:

“The first debate where Nixon looked so terrible - I did not light that. I lit everything after that, all the other debates. I could do no wrong, 'cause they said, ‘My God, we gotta fix Nixon!’ So I got hired to do that.”

Watch Imero Fiorentino’s full interview, where he discusses his career as a lighting designer, including in the early years of television.

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Executive Thomas W. Moore tells the story of how John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon prepared for the fourth of their infamous debates during the 1960 presidential election:

“On that morning, John F. Kennedy came to the studio and for the entire day he worked out with Salinger [and] his brother...They experimented with faces, lighting, make-up... Nixon showed up from a Navy dedication down on the East River, fifteen minutes before the debate. And I always felt that that was where the President of the United States in 1960 was elected. Because there was no question in my mind Nixon got trounced in that fourth debate.”

Watch Thomas W. Moore’s full interview, which details his rise to President of ABC, among other accomplishments.

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Producer Don Hewitt discusses his ambivalence about the power of televised presidential debates, which started with the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960.

"When that debate was over, I realized that we didn't have to wait for an election day, we just elected a president. It all happened on television...I'm not sure that's good. I'm not sure that's not bad. I don't think you oughta pick your presidents by who's the best television performer. There's something wrong with that. That's always worried me. Great television performers don't necessarily make good presidents, and yet that's how we pick them now. We have these televised debates, which I started."

Watch Don Hewitt’s full interview where he details his many career accomplishments, including the creation of 60 Minutes.

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Bill Moyers, news correspondent and appointee of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, discusses the "Daisy" political ad, a controversial commercial that linked Lyndon B. Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater, to the threat of nuclear war. Though Moyers was not responsible for the ad, he says:

“Right up until the end of [Barry Goldwater’s] life, a reporter would go out and interview him and he would spend a long time, you know, excoriating Bill Moyers for that scurrilous ad campaign.”


Watch Bill Moyers’ full interview where he details his political career and his move into journalism and beyond.

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On the Sunday before the election of 1968, Richard Nixon finally agreed to appear on Meet the Press, after having declined to appear on interview shows of that kind throughout the campaign season. Producer Betty Cole Dukert describes the appearance and the effect it may have had on the outcome of the election.

“One of the reporters who was on the panel out there was Haynes Johnson, a Nobel Prize winning writer who was with ‘The Washington Post’… he said he heard many favorable comments about how Nixon had done on that program and that he really thought it was conceivable that could have made the difference.”

Watch Betty Cole Dukert's full interview, where she discusses her five-decade tenure at Meet the Press.

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Producer George Schlatter tells the story behind Richard Nixon’s infamous appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In during the 1968 presidential campaign.

“They did six takes of him saying, 'Sock it to me' and finally got a good one.”

Watch George Schlatter's full interview, where he discusses producing programs from The Judy Garland Show to George W. Bush’s Inauguration Special in 2001.

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Journalist Roger Mudd, who covered Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and who was present at his assassination on June 6, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, says this of Kennedy:

"He was a different kind of candidate...He brought a passion to presidential politics that hadn't been there before...Robert Kennedy was quite different and fun to be with, and made fun of himself, which was an endearing quality."

Watch Roger Mudd's full interview where he talks about covering the major stories of the 1960’s and 1970’s at CBS News and NBC News.

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NBC News executive/producer Reuven Frank discusses television news coverage of the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention – and the chaos that ensued.

“When you go back over the records, only a little bit of the violence got on tape. It was much worse, the stuff that was out of the range of the camera. And when that investigator…coined the term ‘police riot,’ he used an exact term. That's really what it was. They went nuts.”

Watch Reuven Frank's full interview, where he talks about shows and documentaries he produced, as well as his years as President of NBC News.

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News anchor/reporter Dan Rather describes covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and how he found himself the target of violence in the midst of the chaotic event.

“At one point much later, the Secret Service did look into it…they pointed a man out to me and said, ‘We basically think this is the guy who hit you…do you want to bring charges on him?’… I said, ‘Look, it was last night, it’s beyond us, there’s enough chaos.’ I mean, the whole city, not the whole city, but large sections of the city were exploding with difficulty. The convention itself was careening near out of control. And yes, the whole world was watching.”

Watch Dan Rather's full interview where he details his storied career at CBS News.

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News producer Sanford Socolow discusses the difficult circumstances surrounding an interview Walter Cronkite conducted with Chicago’s Mayor Daley during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

“Cronkite himself describes [it] as the most embarrassing professional moment of his life, interviewing Mayor Daley in a very abject, apologetic way.”

Watch Sanford Socolow’s full interview, where he discusses his many years at CBS News.

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News correspondent Daniel Schorr tells the story of Richard Nixon's paranoia surrounding the 1972 presidential election, and the moment when Schorr discovered that he himself appeared on Nixon's "enemies list."

“Where Americans would generally talk about rivals, adversaries and so on, [Nixon] had this word 'enemies,' which meant something far beyond somebody just running against you for office.”

Watch Daniel Schorr's full interview, which covers his early days in radio, his transition to television, and his move back to radio, providing commentaries for NPR.

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Anchor/correspondent Ed Bradley discusses his coverage of the 1976 presidential campaign for CBS News, which included following various primary contenders before being assigned to the Jimmy Carter campaign. He also gives his opinion about why Carter prevailed over Ford:

“I think the country was ready for a Democrat, the right Democrat, and Jimmy Carter was the right Democrat at the right time.”

Watch Ed Bradley's full interview, which spans his storied career at CBS News and 60 Minutes.

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Executive Dick Ebersol discusses the role that Saturday Night Live played in the 1976 Presidential election, including Chevy Chase's depiction of a bumbling Gerald Ford and White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen's appearance on the show. He also touches on SNL's role in the 2008 election.

“[Gerald Ford] was probably the most physically fit man who ever was President of the United States. He was an all American football player and all that stuff, but he just was a klutz when it came to stuff like that. And Chevy turned that into a whole thing…his Gerald Ford was always falling over.”

Watch Dick Ebersol's full interview, which covers the entirety of his career, including his work in sports programming and co-creating Saturday Night Live.

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Journalist/news anchor Howard K. Smith discusses moderating the Carter-Reagan debate in 1980, and also touches on moderating the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

“I was surprised that Carter was so rigid and so tense and that Reagan was so easy going. Reagan simply walked away with that debate simply by being an actor - a good, clever actor.”


Watch Howard K. Smith’s full interview where he discusses the many important interviews he conducted and significant events he covered as a radio and television journalist and news anchor.

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News correspondent & anchor Sam Donaldson discusses his opinion on the outcome of the 1980 election, and tells the story of Jimmy Carter learning the news that he was going to lose the election:

“I’ll never forget, Jimmy Carter was sitting on the plane flying back to Georgia past midnight. Said, ‘I feel good,’ said, ‘I’m gonna win this.’…[Jody] Powell got us out of there as quickly as he could, and then he had to tell him, ‘Mr. President, you’re gonna lose by at least ten points.’”

Watch Sam Donaldson’s full interview to hear him tell the stories behind his legendary career.

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Journalist Gwen Ifill talks about covering Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign during the 1988 election and the unique perspective she brought to her reporting:

“I discovered [Jesse Jackson’s] crowds were not so different from the crowds of [Pat Robertson]...there was a lot of overlap that I think a lot of people missed that I got because I was a preacher’s kid and I recognized who these people were.”

Watch Gwen Ifill's full interview where she talks about her journey from The Baltimore Evening Sun to PBS NewsHour.

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In 1992, Ross Perot appeared on Larry King Live, an appearance which Larry King asserts led to Perot deciding to run for president that year

“A friend of mine…called and said, 'You know, I ran into Ross Perot the other day and I think he’s thinking about running…Bush’s presidency is weak and Clinton ain’t the world’s best candidate…He might. Ask him.' So it's the first thing I asked him.”

Watch Larry King's full interview where he tells the stories behind his legendary career.

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During his 1992 60 Minutes interview with Bill and Hillary Clinton, journalist Steve Kroft probed the couple on many different topics, including Bill’s rumored infidelities. Kroft discusses the impact he believes the interview had on the election:

“The only way [Bill Clinton] was gonna get elected was if he took a little bit of a beating. If he had somebody that was asking him the tough questions and he was responding to these questions...And I think people, many of whom had never seen him before, were sort of impressed by the performance and particularly by his wife. And I think it helped him in the end get elected.”

Watch Steve Kroft’s full interview, where he discusses his career from his early days in local news to his 60 Minutes interviews with world leaders.

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Executive Tom Freston discusses MTV’s role in the 1992 presidential election and the fact that Bill Clinton was much more easily able to connect with young people, while George H. W. Bush was reluctant to reach out to younger voters.

“The idea in George H. W. Bush’s mind that he would ever have to appear on MTV was such an anathema to him. But in the end he was sort of forced to do it.”

Watch Tom Freston’s full interview, which spans his career from his early days in advertising to his years at MTV and Viacom.

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Actress turned politician Sheila Kuehl tells the story of speaking at both the 1996 and 2000 Democratic National Conventions.

“When you speak at a convention it’s not like you’re on when the television cameras are on. You’re on at like 2:13 to 2:14 in the afternoon where they’re just filling things for people at the convention. But boy, you can get some great pictures.”

Watch Sheila Kuehl’s full interview where she discusses her career on television and her move into the law and politics.

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News executive/moderator Tim Russert discusses the unusual circumstances surrounding the 2000 election, as well as the wonder of seeing American democracy in action.

“As a journalist, you have to constantly remember that you're also an American citizen, and those kinds of historical moments are very, very important to treasure...Fight these battles at the ballot box, sometimes in the courtroom, but never on the streets.”

Watch Tim Russert's full interview where he details his time at Meet the Press and more.

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Journalist Gwen Ifill discusses moderating the vice-presidential debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney in 2004.

“Especially in a vice-presidential debate you’re talking about domestic and foreign policy issues and you’re speaking to the unspoken, which is these guys are only important…if the first guy dies. So, you can’t say that, but this is really the heartbeat away from the President kind of debate.”

Watch Gwen Ifill's full interview where she talks about her journey from The Baltimore Evening Sun to PBS NewsHour.

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Producer/director Don Mischer discusses Barack Obama’s speech and its impact at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, an event that Mischer produced.

“That auditorium got quiet. And we were spellbound. And I remember saying right at that point, that guy can do it. I know he can do it. You know, he could make it all the way.”

Watch Don Mischer’s full interview where he tells stories from his career producing events from the Emmys Awards to Superbowl Halftime shows.

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Journalist Gwen Ifill discusses moderating the Palin-Biden debate in 2008 and the many challenging circumstances surrounding the event.

“Sarah Palin said, ‘I don’t have to answer the moderator’s questions.’ Well, when she said that I had this moment where I thought, I could say, ‘Really? I thought that’s what you agreed to.’ Well, if I had done that, especially in that environment, it would have become a question about me challenging her. It would have also been, I guarantee you, depicted as a cat fight because it was two women on the stage.”

Watch Gwen Ifill's full interview where she talks about her journey from The Baltimore Evening Sun to PBS NewsHour.

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Journalist Steve Kroft details the interviews he conducted with Barack Obama during the 2008 election.

“I did the first interview with Obama…the week before he declared his candidacy and I spent a lot of time with him at a time when you could still do that. You didn’t have any Secret Service…So you could ride around in a car with him or go around Chicago, you know, talking and shooting the bull.“

Watch Steve Kroft’s full interview, where he discusses his career from his early days in local news to his 60 Minutes interviews with world leaders.

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Journalist Jorge Ramos discusses pushing President Obama during his 2012 re-election campaign to fulfill a promise he made about immigration reform during the 2008 election.

“Right in the middle of the forum, I switched from Spanish in the translation to English and talked directly to him and told him, ‘You didn’t keep your promise.’ I told him that he had promised something and that many Latinos were frustrated and upset with him.”

Watch Jorge Ramos’ full interview where he discusses how his career progressed from reporting for Televisa radio to anchoring the news at Univision.

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Journalists Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas discuss the role of Spanish-language news in the recent presidential elections.

“When the Commission on Presidential Debates decided not to include us...or any other Hispanic journalist, for that matter, as a moderator, we felt that we needed to speak up and it ended up being much better because instead of being part of the debates we created our own debates.”

Watch Jorge Ramos’ full interview where he discusses how his career progressed from reporting for Televisa radio to anchoring the news at Univision.

Watch Maria Elena Salinas’ full interview where she discusses her career as a journalist and her role as an anchor at Univision.

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