Journalists

Dean Murphy

Bill Thompson
Robert J. Fisch

The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were to this generation what Pearl Harbor was to our parents and grandparents.

And as the histories of those events are written, it is essential to have contemporary eyewitness accounts.

But in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attack a New York Times reporter wanted to go beyond just simple eyewitness accounts and assemble an entire oral history of that day.

So in the months that followed, Dean Murphy painstakingly assembled an oral history which was published one year after the attack. His book was called September 11: An Oral History.

Now, while the descriptions in this interview are not in and of themselves graphic, the overall subject matter may be disturbing to some.

So here now, from September 2002, Dean Murphy.

Dean Murphy is now Associate Managing Editor at The New York Times.

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Lisa Beamer
Richard Picciotto

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Jorge Ramos

Bill Thompson

For many years, Walter Cronkite was America’s favorite, and most trusted, television news anchor. Today, there’s a man known as the Walter Cronkite of Latino Americans

His name is Jorge Ramos, and he has been anchoring the news on Univision since 1987.

After his 50th birthday, when he realized that he had spent exactly half of his life in his native Mexico and half in the United States, Ramos became a US citizen..

But as he explained in his 2002 autobiography, No Borders, Ramos never felt completely at home in either country.

And that conversation that we had about his book more than 20 years ago seems as relevant today as it did then .

So here now, from 2002, Jorge Ramos.

Jorge Ramos is 65. He’s been Univision anchor since 1987. He lives in Miami.

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Jim Lehrer
Vicente Fox

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P.J. O’Rourke

Bill Thompson
Photo by Cato Institute.

Can you think of a subject that is drier and more boring than economics? After all, there is a reason that even it’s practitioners call it “the dismal science “.

But in the hands of satirist and journalist, P.J. O’Rourke, economics takes on a whole new brilliance.

And the title of his 1998 treatise on world economics, Eat The Rich, seems to have special resonance today.

Indeed, the ongoing debates over capitalism versus socialism is as powerful now as it was when I interviewed P.J. 25 years ago.

So here now, from 1998, P.J. O’Rourke.

P.J. O’Rourke died of cancer in 2022. He was 74.

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Dave Barry
John waters

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David Frost

Bill Thompson

David Frost had a successful, decades long career as a television talk show host and interviewer, in both the UK and the US.

He interviewed thousands of VIPs, celebrities, and movers and shakers of all kinds.

But he may be best remembered for his 1977 series of interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon, who just three years earlier had resigned the presidency in disgrace after the Watergate scandal.

Frost paid Nixon some $600,000 for those interviews. But they paid off, big time, as they became a part of American television history, and helped restore some of Nixon’s credibility.

I met David Frost 30 years later, when he wrote a book called Frost/Nixon, a behind the scenes account of how the interviews came about, and what happened when the cameras stopped ruling.

So here now, from 2007, David Frost.

David Frost died in 2013. He was 74.

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G. Gordon Liddy
Ben Bradlee

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Tim Russert

Bill Thompson

Father’s Day is this Sunday, and I wanted to bring you a familiar old voice to help us remember our dads.

Tim Russert suffered a fatal heart attack in June 2008 at age 58.

In 2004, the longtime host and moderator of NBC’s Meet The Press, Tim Russert, wrote a book called Big Russ And Me.

It was a son’s tribute to his dad, a World War II veteran who worked two jobs to support the family, never complaining, and always commenting “What a country!”

So here now, from 2004, Tim Russert.

Big Russ died the following year at age 85

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Chris & Bob Elliott
Chris Lemmon

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Laura Palmer

Bill Thompson

Memorial Day is the one day each year set aside to remember and commemorate and celebrate the sacrifices of thousands of men and women who have died in war over the years.

But of course, their deaths carry a long and wide ripple effect that can affect family members for years and generations to come.

Since opening more than 40 years ago, the Vietnam Veterans memorial in Washington DC has become an informal but significant collection point for memorabilia. Families of the fallen in Vietnam come to the wall to leave behind everything from letters and poems to medals and teddy bears.

In 1988, former Vietnam war correspondent Laura Palmer wrote a book about those items of memorabilia. She tracked down many of the families and interviewed them to get a broader sense of their loss. She ccalled her book Shrapnel in The Heart.

So here now, from 1988, my interview with Laura Palmer.

Andrew Morton

Bill Thompson
Photo by Open Media Ltd.

Tomorrow, May 6, is a big day for Britain’s King Charles III. It’s his coronation day.

Charles, of course, succeeded to the throne when his mother, Queen Elizabeth, passed away last year.

Now, at age 74, Charles is ready to officially become king.

Since 1981, British journalist and author Andrew Morton has been following the royal family. In 1991, he wrote a book called iIside Buckingham Palace, billed as an inside glimpse into the private lives of the royals.

Now keeping in mind that this interview took place 32 years ago, things may have changed, but this is a look at what Buckingham Palace was like in the early 1990s.

So here now, from 1991, journalist. Andrew Morton.

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Christine Craft

Bill Thompson

In 1981. Christine Craft was working as a television news anchor for a station in Kansas City, Missouri. Six months into her two-year contract, she was demoted from the anchor desk, because of the findings of a focus group.

The TV station had hired a team of outside researchers to find out what Kansas City viewers thought of. Christine Craft. And what they found was starling.

The focus group said that Christine was too old, not very attractive, and didn’t properly defer to men.

Well, she left the station, then filed a federal discrimination lawsuit. I’ll let her tell you, in a few minutes, what happened next.

I met her in 1988, after she wrote a book whose title was based on that focus group research. It was called Too Old, Too Ugly, and Not Deferential to Men

So here now, from 1988, Christine Craft.

Christine Craft is 79 now, and lives in Northern California, where she practices law and is a part-time radio talk show host.

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Helen Thomas
Joan Lunden

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Peter Arnett

Bill Thompson
Photo: John Mathew Smith

Today, a conversation with a man who has spent a lifetime plunging himself into war.

Peter Arnett became a major television personality during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, with his reporting from Iraq for CNN.

But that was by no means where his career started.

Arnett won the Pulitzer prize for his reporting from Vietnam for the associated press.

Over a career spanning several decades, if there was a war going on somewhere in the world, Peter Arnett founded. And covered it .

I I met him in 1994, when we talked about his book Live From the Battlefield.

So here now, from 1994, Peter Arnett.

Peter Arnett is 88 now.

In 2007 Arnett was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to journalism.

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Sam Donaldson
David Brinkley

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Ben Bradlee

Bill Thompson

Fifty years ago this week a group of burglars broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

They were sent there by – and paid by – operatives working to re-elect President Richard M. Nixon.

Those DNC offices were located in a Washington complex called The Watergate, where a security guard. found the burglars and caught them.

And the whole thing might have been successfully covered up, if not for the relentless pursuit of the story but two young Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

Backed by their editor Ben Bradlee, and the paper’s publisher, Katharine Graham, Woodward and Bernstein eventually unraveled the scandal now known simply as Watergate.

It was a time that changed American politics, and American journalism, permanently.

Each of the interviews will be featuring this week on Now. I’ve Heard Everything is centered on one figure from the Watergate scandal.

On Wednesday, my conversations with the former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who was a central figure in the conspiracy and cover-up.

And then on Friday, the man often called the mastermind of the DNC break-in, former FBI agent and Nixon operative G. Gordon Liddy.

But first, in today’s episode, the iconic and renowned Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. He took over at the Post in 1965, in the thick of Vietnam, the civil Rights movement and a changing journalism landscape.

And although Watergate may be the thing he is best remembered for now, it was not the only major story he was involved in.

I met Ben Bradlee in 1995, when he wrote his autobiography, a book called A Good Life.

So here now, from 1995, Ben Bradlee.

Ben Bradlee died in 2014. He was 93.

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Helen Thomas
Sam Donaldson

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