Scott Pelley Talks Conventions, Elections and How Much He Misses Pancakes

It’s hard to imagine Scott Pelley, 58, has any down time. He’s been the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News since 2011—in fact, June 6 marks his fifth anniversary in that role. He’s also been a full-time correspondent for 60 Minutes since 2004. A former war reporter and White House correspondent, he’s won a slew of awards for his reporting from around the world, from Iraq to Antarctica. Life has slowed down a little now that he and wife Jane are empty nesters (son Reece, 24, works in Washington, D.C., and daughter Blair, 21, is a college senior), which is why he has time on Sundays to sail near his home in Connecticut. One thing he doesn’t do on Sundays (or any other day)? Eat pancakes, his favorite food. “I gave up pancakes years ago and I still regret it. I carefully follow a diet that is probably outlawed by the Geneva Convention. But it’s been very, very good for me.”

With both the Democratic and Republican conventions fast approaching in July, (Pelley will be covering both), the CBS Evening News anchor took the time to talk to Parade about what it’s like in the trenches and the truth about elections, among other things.

What do you think will be the big stories at the upcoming conventions?

If Bernie Sanders wins the California primary, he still won’t have enough delegates going into the convention, but he will have a lot of clout. How does Hillary Clinton co-opt Bernie Sanders’s support, which she so desperately needs? This is a divided Democratic party. The Republicans are getting themselves organized for the fall; the Democrats haven’t done that yet. Hillary has to have Bernie’s people. They are the bedrock of the Democratic Party—young people, women, Independents. She has to have those voters, so she has to navigate a course that will bring Bernie on board.

You led the coverage for the conventions in 2012. What was most challenging?

Hearing! It is a tectonic roar inside these convention halls; you cannot hear a thing. I had to have CBS’s audio engineers construct a set of headphones for me just so I could hear myself on the broadcast and hear myself think. The other challenge is to see how these undercurrents are changing the politics in the room at the time. The last two conventions were very standard set pieces. The Democrats re-nominated President Obama and the Republicans had Mitt Romney, Mr. Steady. There was no drama; no hint of controversy going into either convention. This year is going to be very different. It’s going to be something few living reporters have seen before.

In my office I have a picture of Mike Wallace being arrested at the 1968 convention. Ever since then, the conventions have been very predictable—the networks have debated covering them because there’s not going to be any news. This time, there’s the political undercurrent involving Hillary and Bernie—What price will he extract from her in return for his support? And I haven’t seen anything about Donald Trump that anyone, including myself, has predicted correctly. I have no idea what will happen at that convention.

Will there be any breakout stars at the conventions?

I want to see what role Paul Ryan will have. He is a rising star within the party. The question is, will Trump outshine all the rising stars and make this a convention just about him? As for the Democrats, you might see a starring role for one or both of the Castro brothers [Joaquin represents Texas’s 20^th congressional district in the U.S. Congress; identical twin Julian is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development] and maybe at the end of the convention I’ll finally be able to tell them apart.

With all the news events you’ve covered, what has touched you most personally?

I was at the World Trade Center [on 9/11] when the north tower collapsed. That is without a doubt the most painful and wrenching moment of my life, and certainly my career. I remember looking up at the television mast on the north tower and it looked like it was teetering, and I decided it was because of the heat torturing the air. What I didn’t know was that the mast was bolted directly to the steel core of the building and the steel core was becoming plastic because of the heat. A couple minutes later it came roaring down. I fell to my knees and prayed before I realized what I was doing, and then my very next memory is that I am sprinting in the opposite direction with a lot of other people as this hurricane of whitish—not quite white not quite gray—powder came shooting thru the canyons of Manhattan. When I think of it I feel it as if it’s happening again right now.

We’re in the middle of this election cycle where people seem to feel the media is not telling the truth. How do people know what news to trust?

This is a very self-serving answer but I absolutely believe it’s true; viewers and readers can turn to brand names they’ve learned to trust over a long period of time. That could be CBS; it could be the LA Times. As opposed to a blog or some news organization that was created yesterday, those organizations are employing professional journalists who have been trained and who are supervised by professional editors who may have decades on the job. Much of what’s on the Internet is gossip. Journalism was invented as the antidote to gossip. And that’s why journalism has never been more important to humankind than it is right now. We are being flooded with bad information, with information from dubious sources, with information that is being spun mightily by people with a point of view. Journalism is about the truth.

Recently you were on the board of the International Rescue Committee. How has your work with refugees affected your thinking on the refugee crisis in Europe?

One very influential thing in my early life was reading The Grapes of Wrath. It’s about my people, the Okies in the Dust Bowl moving to California, but it’s really a parable for all times about the dispossessed. You can replace the Joad family name with Sarif, and you’re in Syria. In our country, which is inhabited not quite but almost exclusively by refugees of one kind or another, I think we need to keep those doors open. We need to have safety, of course; it’s a new age since 9/11. But how can your heart not break? America is the most generous country in the world. I believe very strongly in having a humanitarian heart when it comes to refugees.

How has being an empty nester changed your life?

Two things have really changed the dynamic of our home life: that, and my starting to anchor the Evening News. When I was doing 60 Minutes I was on the road all the time. Now I’m home every day, pretty much. My wife was a single mom for years. When I would go to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arctic, the Antarctic, everywhere on earth, I would be gone for a long time. So this has been a wonderful opportunity for us to be in love and share the world. Now she comes with me on my 60 Minutes assignments overseas. We’ve been married for 35 years, which is a really good start and says a lot about her patience. I recommend it.

You travel a lot with your family, especially when your kids were younger. Was there a best family trip?

We have been so blessed. Among the best family trips are Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and a trip we took up the Nile in Egypt. Jane has made a job of making sure our kids go everywhere and see everything. We have a large wall map with flags stuck in every place that the kids have been. It’s in the hallway that leads from the mudroom to the kitchen. They’ve been to every continent including Antarctica, Africa, Asia. My daughter hasn’t been to Antarctica and my son hasn’t been to Australia. So they each have something to look forward to.

It’s a big change to go from the kind of reporting you did before to The Evening News. What are some of the biggest differences?

At 60 Minutes we rewrite the scripts until they’re perfect. At the Evening News we rewrite the scripts until 6:30 p.m. There’s an enormous difference between a weekly deadline and a daily deadline. The other skill I’ve had a chance to exercise in this job is being on the air covering a breaking news event, describing events as they’re unfolding. The day the Boston Marathon bombers tried to escape, we were on the air for six or seven hours straight. When the ISIS attack in Paris happened, we were on the air for hours. It’s like trying to conduct an orchestra. You have all these correspondents and sources of information and sources of video and you’re on the air live and you’re trying to stitch together a narrative off the top of your head. That is frankly the most fun I have.

Some people would find that terrifying. Is it scary?

No. I find it absolutely exhilarating. It must be something like what a skydiver feels when he jumps out of a plane, which is one thing I’ve never done because that strikes me as scary.

Fun Facts You Didn’t Know About Scott Pelley

SUNDAY ROUTINE: I really enjoy sailing. I work in a very high-pressure, high technology world and sailing allows me to step off into a 12th-century world with ancient technology. You cannot hurry, because if you do you’ll get yourself into a lot of trouble. I’m not a very patient person; sailing forces me to be patient and it turns down all the noise in the world. All you hear is the sound of the wind in the canvas (or these days the carbon fiber), and the sea rushing by the hull. It’s a wonderful thing. My wife is a great sailor so we often spend Sundays (weather permitting) out on our lovely little sailboat.

READING: Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See, because a friend said it was a great book. I’ve just cracked it. I spend a lot of time reading pretty dry stuff like the 9/11 Commission Report and intelligence analyses of various places in the world. I consume a lot of newspapers every day—The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Washington Post, some of the western papers. That’s how I start my day every day, with the papers.

FAVORITE AUTHORS: I’m an enormous fan of John McPhee. He’s written more than 25 books, all of them non-fiction, but with a wonderful literary style. I just finished his Annals of the Former World, a 1,200-page appraisal of the geology of North America. It is a fascinating book.

WATCHING: Part of our Sunday, of course, is watching 60 Minutes and we typically watch it live. That’s been a tradition since long before I came to 60 Minutes. My wife is a fanatic for The Good Wife and Madame Secretary. We binge-watched House of Cards, of course. Our son works in Washington so we just wanted to catch up on what he was doing.

WORKING OUT: My other hobby is fitness; I’m in the gym every day. I’m going to be 59 pretty soon and this job can be physically demanding. It helps me keep my mind straight and also keep my body in one piece. I work out six days a week; I always make a point of taking one day off because you need recovery time. My assistant picks hotels for me based on their gyms.