Congratulations, Phil

In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer pays tribute to one of his mentors at CBS News.

Phil Jones will graduate from CBS News at the end of June. His education here lasted 32 years.

Jones never stopped learning, because it never stopped bugging him when he couldn't uncover something important about a story he was working. After so many years, quite incredibly, his curiosity never waned. That made him a great reporter. And a great teacher.

My tutorials with Jones began in the last weeks of 1986 when the Iran-Contra scandal was breaking. He had been covering Congress since 1977 and was unquestionably the most respected reporter on the beat – print or television. He allowed the Washington bureau of CBS News to assign me to the Capitol as an "off-air reporter," or legman, for him.

At first, I would sit with Jones in our walnut-sized press booth in the Capitol until he gave me an order. It was usually something glamorous like, "Meyer, go wait for Senator X by the Senate subway. Tell him I sent you, get him away from the other reporters and ask him Y. Get back here and tell me what he said." Eventually, he allowed me to put the questions into my own words. Grudgingly.

The next year, 1987, was a historic one for the Congress. Hearings on the Iran-Contra saga began in May. Oliver North testified in July. President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and that epic confirmation battle began in September. By winter, we were reporting on investigations of Speaker Jim Wright that would lead to his resignation. A fissure of partisan acrimony and distrust opened in the gentlemen's club that had been Congress – and it hasn't closed yet.

Jones was on television constantly. There were Evening News pieces and live Special Reports almost every day. Under this immense pressure, Jones, who had covered both Vietnam and Watergate, unwittingly gave me my journalism degree.

The only possible way to cope with the deluge of news that year, he instructed, was to get the details exactly right. Whether it was getting a fact properly documented or getting the best picture, it was vigilance over the little things that guarded and ensured the integrity of the whole.

It used to amaze me when Jones would go ballistic after a competitor got a picture of some minor conspirator skulking into the Capitol. How could a guy who covered so much, care so much? He did. And that quality provided the checks and balances for his reporting and the elegance of his storytelling. If I were a better student, it was a lesson that could have served me well, not just as a reporter, but also as a father.

Jones clearly revered the Senate. And despite a famous cantankerousness, his admiration for people in public service was deep. But by nature, Jones is a bubble-burster, the guy who wants to pull away the curtain. That's what reporters are supposed to do. It may sound corny, but it was his appreciation and understanding of Congress and American politics that allowed his extremely aggressive reporting to be respectful.

Jones is also temperamentally indisposed to another journalist's affliction: bias. It's not that he isn't stubborn and opinionated – he is. But he's too suspicious and too skeptical to be captured by any "ism." A newspaper columnist named Lars Erik Nelson once said, "The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bull****."

I don't think Jones would argue with that. But in 1987, he taught me, again unwittingly, that a temperament of suspicion and questioning is something to be learned and cultivated. It was an important lesson for a former Nader's Raider fresh out of graduate school.

This season of commencements is a good time to thank teachers, to remember that the best ones are students, too, and that even teachers get to graduate. Congratulations, Phil.