John Dickerson
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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One of the great things about growing up with parents who weren't around is that every day after school you could do uh all kinds of things. And um that was the one that's the the most legal. Um When you see what can be done with the same passages in the Bible that I read. We're not the same passages, but uh at least the same Bible, and you see how it can be so misused to do the exact opposite of what is plainly r not only written there, but in the in the behavior of Jesus, uh around whom this behavior is supposedly dr um built, it's just completely contrary to what he said and what he did.
I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard. The show where cards control the conversation.
How did John Dickerson’s childhood and family shape his view of journalism?
My guest this week is journalist John Dickerson. John Dickerson has a reputation in my business for being not just a good journalist, but a good human. So imagine how happy I was when I got to sit on stage with him this summer at the Aspen Ideas Festival to play wildcard in front of a live audience. John spent 16 years at CBS News as the anchor of Face the Nation, CBS This Morning, and the CBS Evening News. A job he resigned from last year. We talked about everything from his famous TV anchor mother to the state of journalism today. How do you feel?
А фел он на преcip'яв, а хуже мстай. Uh
First three, this is the memories round. One, two, or three.
I want two.
Two. You're feeling two. Okay. Hm, what's an experience from childhood when you realized your parents were human?
Well, my parents got divorced when I was thirteen, so uh I could uh i w we could be here till breakfast. I for experienced they were human. So that was the huge dose, right? That's a lot
of humanity.
That's a lot of humanity. Um The my mother was uh the first woman news correspondent for um CBS News, a woman named Nancy Dickerson.
Yes.
Um and she was very tough. She was extremely tough. She had to be. I think you undoubtedly ran into some of the vestiges of what she experienced trying to be a woman in a tough business uh where the men do not cover themselves in glory and the way that they behave. Um so you have to be really tough. So to see her uh cry was more than when you would normally recognize your own parents' uh vulnerabilities or that they cried like you did too, because you know, when you're a little kid you cry all the time. Um Especially when they're beating you. No, that's not true. But although we did have lots of we had rigorous uh spanking in my family. There was oh yeah. I was once spanked for not brushing my teeth. Yeah.
It was a it was that this was uh I
got the
belt.
Oh I know. This conversation just take away. Dark turn.
Yes.
Yeah.
Anyway, um, I don't remember the occasion of her um her crying, but it was such a shock because she was like she was very tough. And also because she was on television and because she was always in the public eye, you know, she would come to breakfast fully made up. There was no there was no like, you know, kick back and be different at home because she was kind of always on.
Yeah.
So um my mom and I had a really bad relationship until I graduated from uh college. And then somehow, despite every bone in my body and fiber in my being, I'm suddenly like becoming a journalist. Yeah. Which is which is the greatest joke. The fact that I ended up being the anchor of the CBS Evening News where she started out, I mean She's rolling around on the shag carpet of heaven just in peals of laughter because this was not the expected route. A because I had such antipathy towards her, and B because I wasn't that great at much of anything, except for sort of causing trouble. So Um, so the the fact that this all ended up the way it did is uh quite a surprise. We became friends when I started out in journalism, then we became close.
She had a stroke in nineteen ninety seven, so she didn't see any of my television career.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:56
2
How did John Dickerson’s childhood and family shape his view of journalism?
0:56–7:55
3
What lessons did John learn from his mother’s pioneering career at CBS?
7:55–22:13
4
Why did John leave CBS News and what does he do now?
22:13–45:25