News. Has George Stephanopoulos recovered from his selfinflicted wound . That is his donation to the Clinton Foundation. This week he resumed his usual coverage of the clintons on good morning america. Here he is interviewing abcs Hillary Campaign reporter on wednesday, but tabloid newspapers and commentators continue to skewer him for the 75,000 he donated in 2012 2013 2014. Yes, he apologized repeatedly and abc says it supports him 100 but there are other rumors that other abc anchors like david muir will be more involved in election coverage as a result and an entier pricing artist sought to keep people talking about stephanopoulos by hanging these posters outside abc headquarters. Pay pal they say, linking george and Hillary Clinton. Now, they were taken down in a matter of hours, but not before the blogs noticed. So what are stephanopoulos rifles saying about the donations . Check out with cbs Bob Schieffer told me. He moderates face the nation. Did you read about the stephanopoulos donations and just smack your head and think what was he thinking . It seemed like so many people in the News Business reacted that way. You know again, i just never comment on my competitors and what they do. That requires no comment from me. People will make up their minds what they think about that. I think it requires comment from you because people wonder is everybody doing it . Are you making donations . No. People dont give to campaigns but giving to a charity is different. Number one, i have never made a political donation to anybody. Ive always felt one of the great things about being a reporter is you can say, hey i dont do that and the other part ill let people make up their minds. I spent some time with schieffer as he gets ready to retire from face the nation qwest and more of my interview is coming up. First, the story you havent heard about stephanopoulos. No one would have found out about the donations at all if a startup conservative news website called the Washington Free beacon had not broke the news. In an age of opining, this website is doing actual reporting and joining me now is the cofounder and editor in chief, matthew continetti. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Do you believe stephanopoulos is permanently tainted by these donations and the controversy around him . I think it does taint him for the simple reason that he had an opportunity to disclose his donations when he interviewed the author of this very Controversial Book clinton cash and really grilled the officer, peter schweitzer. He could have taken that moment to say, i was a Clinton Foundation donor. He didnt and i think thats the reason that the Washington Free beacon pursued the story and the reason why the story has legs in other media. Lets talk more about that in a minute but take me to the moment where you all found out about this. How exactly did you all find out this donation even happened . Sure. Well its simple investigative reporting. One of my reporters had composed a spreadsheet of all the foundations donors and another reporter was spending his off hours going through it. He just happened to see that George Stephanopoulos was in the list so he contacts me and says i found this out, what do i do . My first thought was, well has he disclosed it . We did the research it turned out george had not. My Second Thought was well, were going to write it up as a straight news piece but first go to abc news for comment. Lets pick up there in a minute. But are you surprised that nobody had seen his name on a list before . Not really. I found since in the three years weve been doing the free beacon that there are a lot of stories out there that for whatever reason media just doesnt cover. So whether its Archival Research weve done pertaining to Hillary Clinton, whether its the staff of senator rand paul or whether its George Stephanopoulos donations, theres plenty of material for an upstart conservative site like the free beacon to cover. There definitely is. The foundation has been under such scrutiny it seems surprising people havent gone to through the list and spotted stephanopoulos name. Its surprising to me. Of course his donation 75,000 wasnt quite as big as soment of the millions of dollars that the clintons have received from for countries, for example, which is where i think most peoples attention is right now. And to be clear and to be fair it was a charitable donation. Not a donation to a campaign. What i was say and what a lot of others have said is its a oneofakind charity. Its not your average charity and its a controversial organization. Tell me about what happened when you reached out to abc and asked for comment. Well we reached out to abc news because like any news site we wanted fair comment from the subject of our stories, and abc said they would get back to us. Well friday morning we were about to run the story, i asked if we had received anything. My reporter said no abc hadnt gotten back to him, and just as we were about to publish our story, another story on politico with the headline George Stephanopoulos discloses Clinton Foundation donations appears at that very moment. I knew right away that what had happened was abc news had gone to politico with our scoop in order to control the narrative. How did you feel when you saw it happen . I felt very angry brian. I would have too, i guess. And its lucky in this new media age that an angryeth for has outlets like twitter to express himself. So i went on twitter and expressed my rage and gratifyingly and got a lot of attention. And got a lot of attention. The free beacon was still able to own the story. By leaking it to politico they made it worse for themselves. It bake an inside baseball story that picked up and then you saw George Stephanopoulos the old campaign operative, taking information from one source, the reporter is asking questions, and handing it another source in order to shape the narrative. We talked in the opening about you being a conservative site. You use the same word. What do you say to people who might think youre just going after a guy you think is liberal . This is all ideological for an editor like you or a reporter like yours . You might be i had lol in the way you approach the news the subjects you start to cover, even the way you go about your investigations but what you cannot do is be ideological in the way you report the news and one thing weve always tried to do at the free beacon is make copy that could appear in the New York Times or the Washington Post except the names of the people we cover is different, the types of stories we cover is different, our selection of expert quotes for example, are different. What if you had found bret bair what if you found his name in the list do you think it would have been a story . It would have been a story but i probably wouldnt have found it because there are plenty of liberal reporters looking for exactly that kind of information. Were looking for the stories that most of the media arent paying attention to just because of their prior beliefs and experiences. You guys acknowledge you come from the conservative point of view but are doing real reporting. Right. I think thats our value added to this fractured media landscape were all in. When we set up the free beacon we made a rule there would be one Opinion Column on the site and that would be mine and thats the editors prerogative. Otherwise every writer i hire is there to do reporting and theyve done a pretty good job so far i think. Have you heard much from abc in recent days and have they apologized for this apparent handing off of your scoop to politico. No apology. Im still waiting by its phone, abc. I think youre being a little sarcastic. No apology. They responded to one of our inquiries about a separate story which was thrilling, but i have to say it does make me pause as an editor if a reporter comes up with another George Stephanopoulos story and says should i go to him for comment . Im going to think twice. Thanks for being here. Great talking with you. Thank you, brian. Were just Getting Started this morning. Coming up you will see more of my interview with face the nations Bob Schieffer. Its the eve of his retirement and we talked about the lessons from his 46 years in the television News Business. Dont go away. Its more than a network and the cloud. Its reliable uptime. And multilayered security. Its how you stay connected to each other and to your customers. With centurylink you get advanced Technology Solutions, including an industry leading Broadband Network, and cloud and hosting services my interview with face the with centurylink as your trusted Technology Partner youre free to focus on growing your business. Centurylink. Your link to whats next. Big day . Ah, the usual. Moved some new cars. Hauled a bunch of steel. Kept the supermarket shelves stocked. Made sure everyone got their latest gadgets. Whats up for the next shift . Ah, nothing much. Just keeping the lights on. laugh nice. Doing the big things that move an economy. See you tomorrow, mac. See you tomorrow, sam. Just another day at norfolk southern. Ive got a todo list and five acres of fresh air. Top three tools hammer, screwdriver, front loader. Happiness is a driveover mower deck. A john deere dealer can teach tractors to anybody. In the right hands, an imatch quickhitch could probably cure most of the worlds problems. Thats how we run, and nothing runs like a deere. See your john deere dealer for great green tag savings on the one family subcompact tractors. There was a lot of hull ba lieu about the departure of letterman from late night. But my next cbs guest, Bob Schieffer, has letterman beat by more than a decade actually. The legendary newsman has been with cbs for 46 years and has hosted the sunday morning Political Program face the nation qwest for 24 of those years. He is retiring after next sundays broadcast. Schieffers journalism career began in brint with the ft. Worth star telegram. He said hes still a newspaperman at heart. Hes done it all including covering the pentagon to the white house and the evening news. Hes moderated debates written four books and he really has done it all. I was lucky to state down with him to learn about his storied career. Were sitting here on your set. You will be signing offer here in a few days. What does it feel like to be leaving the show . Well im not quite sure its really sunk in yet. I wanted to leave while i thought i could still do the job. I mean i have seen too many people in washington that have to be sort of led by the hand off the stage as it were and i didnt want to be one of those guys. I feel like i can still do it. Cbs is doing very well these days, requestsface the nation is doing well. Jon stewart is suggesting one of the reasons hes stepping is down is hes just over it hes tired of it. Is that true for you . No. I will never get tired of it. I have wanted to be a reporter since the eighth grade and i got to be one which a lot of people dont get the chance to do when they grow up what they wanted to do when they were a little boy, and ive always found it interesting. Every job i have ever had in journalism and thats the only thing i have ever done i always thought it was the best job in the world and i always felt that way. I just love the news. Let me show you a couple photos we saw from your storied career. I thought this was so remarkable. Its an advertisement in the newspaper for you heading to vietnam as a rorner for the ft. Worth star telegram. Yes. I cant imagine a newspaper doing that nowadays but they were trying to promote the fact you would be over there checking in with the troops from the local community who were over there. That was a fullage ad. They ran a fullpage ad and the idea was i would go to vietnam. I was the first reporter from the star telegram to go overseas since world war ii. I was the first reporter from a texas newspaper to go to vietnam, and so the idea was i would go and find boys from ft. Worth and write stories about them. Which i did. And i wound up writing about kids from all over texas, but that was what it was all about, and i got more than 700 letters while i was in vietnam, and i would just line them up and then i would just go out by myself and im bum rides on helicopters and so forth and find these kids. It was the single most rewarding thing i have ever done in journalism because when these kids and i mean theyre 19 you know i was 26 years old. Sometimes seven or eight years older than they were, when a guy from their hometown showed up and said, you know your mama asked me to come and check on you and i never forgot it. Wow. They loved it. This image of you questioning jimmy carter at a president ial press conference when you see these press conferences now, how much has changed and how much has stayed the same with relationships between the press and the presidency. For one thing theyre more orderly. In those days president s didnt have a list of reporters i think the list is kind of it sort of makes it less interesting. And we would have to hold our hands up and say, mr. President , mr. President , and sometimes they would respond to you and sometimes they didnt. Then theres a lot less access to the administration or is there more access more transparency . People always ask me whats the most manipulative and the most secret administration you have covered . I always say the current one. This one is always more restrik of it than the guys who came before and they had the screws turned down more tightly than the people who came before. They all learned from the Previous Administration and i guess it will be ever thus. So what do we do . What do we do in the industry to combat that . We have to understand there are two things here the politicians mission is to deliver a message. Our mission is to try to find out if its true and to try to get to whatever the truth is. Uhhuh. And thats not saying theres, you know, anything wrong with what the politicians do but whats happened brian, is that Information Management has become so much more sophisticated, not just in politics but in business in sports. Think about this when i came to washington in 1969 most members of Congress Still didnt have press secretaries. Most of them, you know handle their own press relations. People hear so much negativity about our profession. You know weve got to have journalists. The need for Accurate Information is more important than ever and unless i mean in our system of government having access to independently gathered Accurate Information is as important to our process as the right to vote. You have to have that in a democracy like we have. I dont know where reporters are going to work in the future but whatever their platform we have to have that information, and getting Accurate Information, brian, is harder now than its ever been. You think so even though the internet has made it more accessible . Yes, because most of the information is wrong. I mean you know were just overwhelmed by news. Theres so much news that we cant get to the news and, you know thats what our job is as mainstream journalists is try to cut tlau this great maw of information and tell them what they need to know. Do you think the Brian Williams exaggeration controversy hurt the whole industry made all journalists look bad . You know i dont know. I dont think it did us any good thats for sure but brian is a friend of mine. I havent talked to him in a long long time and ive kind of made a practice brian, of not commenting on my competitors, and i always had the feeling that it requires no comment from me. Things like that people come to their own conclusions about it, and i just kind of let it go at that. Do you see him returning to nbc . I have no idea. You know i have juno you you know how cbs works though. You know how Network Politics work. I will say this i have never offered advice to my competitors because i was afraid they might use it, might use it to their advantage. Nbc will make up its mind about what to do about that. To me still a newbie to Television One of the lessons of television is stability and time are so key. You know you have been on face the nation nation for so many years and you are seeing your baitest ratings. I won you know i have seen so many wheels invented, reinvented in the time that i have been in television. Im not sure you can reinvent this wheel. I think you have to get back to basics. What people want when they turn on a news program of any kind is news. They want to know what it is that they need to know about thats going to impact their lives, and thats what weve tried to do and i think thats what the success in recent years of face the nation qwest has been. Is there any job in journalist you wish you had that you wanted to have that you didnt have . Well i tried when i came back from vietnam, i tried very hard to get a job at the New York Times and the Washington Post and i never got an appointment. And so i finally wound up working for a local television station. I guess it worked out pretty well here huh, tv . So far its worked out just fine. Bob, thanks so much. Thank you, brian. I appreciate it. Okay. Schieffer signs off one week from today and it will truly be an end of an era moment for television news. John dickerson will be taking his place in june. Coming up on reliable sources, attacking Hillary Clinton, we could call it a c