Bob Schieffer Caught Fibbing About His Reports On Biden's Gaffes

CBS News's Bob Schieffer falsely claimed Monday that he had reported one of the racial slurs Democrat vice presidential candidate Joe Biden made in 2007.

The record proves otherwise.

Speaking with WOR Radio's Steve Malzberg about the differing media coverage for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Biden, Schieffer made the case that the various gaffes and racially insensitive remarks uttered by the Delaware Senator aren't being discussed by mainstream media members now because they were already reported, including by him (eleven-minute audio available here, relevant section at 6:18): 

STEVE MALZBERG, WOR RADIO: Joe Biden has a series of racially insensitive comments that each one on its own would be bad enough, but when you put them all together: Barack Obama's the first clean, African-American to run for president; the education in Iowa's better than DC because you only have one percent African-Americans...

BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS NEWS: But Steve, Steve, my friend, all of that was reported.

MALZBERG: No, no, not in the mainstream media.

SCHIEFFER: Well, how did you find out about it?

MALZBERG: Because it's all over, it's on talk radio, it's on sites like NewsBusters and Drudge...

SCHIEFFER: Oh, come on, my friend...

MALZBERG: You guys don't do this kind of stuff.

SCHIEFFER: All of this stuff has been out there, all of it's been talked about?

MALZBERG: Have you done this story, sir, on making up that man was drunk?

SCHIEFFER: I don't know anything about that, but I...

MALZBERG: Well, you see, that's my point.

SCHIEFFER: Look, I have certainly reported about Joe Biden's remark, about how inappropriate it was, everybody knew about it. I think that's one of the reasons he had to drop out.

Well, with all due respect to Mr. Schieffer, according to LexisNexis, when Biden's remarks about Obama being "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean" were revealed on January 31, 2007, he did not report it. A LexisNexis search identified that through February 28 of that year, he made no mention of this slur even though it was reported by the "CBS Evening News" and "The Early Show."

As for Biden's late October 2007 comment, "There's less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American," a LexisNexis search through November 30 of that year identified no mention of this by Schieffer or anybody else at CBS.

And, while we're at it, Biden's June 2006 slur about Indians, 7-Elevens, and Dunkin Donuts also was ignored by Schieffer and his CBS colleagues through at least July 31 of that year.

As such, Schieffer's contention that such gaffes and slurs by Biden needn't be reported now because they were reported then seems rather preposterous.