TO AIR OR NOT TO AIR?

December 3, 1998
		Did CBS' "60 Minutes" make the right decision to air the tape of a doctor-assisted suicide? CBS' Mike Wallace and Ned McGrath, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, answer your questions. Return to this forum's introduction.

How do you think the airing of this segment highlights the negatives or the positives of assisted suicide? Didn't the 60 Minutes segment illuminate the public debate by providing information on what actually occurs in euthanasia? Was it really necessary to air the segment up to the point of the patient's death? Given that Dr. Kevorkian told CBS hat he wanted to get arrested to bring the issue into the open, did CBS not do his bidding? Are you doing enough to promote honest, intelligent, informed discussion of difficult issues among your viewers or members (of your Church)?

Sylvia Borowski of Evanston, IL, asks: How do you think the airing of this segment highlights the negatives or the positives of assisted suicide? Mike Wallace , senior correspondent and co-editor of "60 Minutes", responds: It puts the debate on the national agenda and that's what we wanted to do. Ned McGrath, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, responds: Television journalism, by its very nature, is a selective and subjective medium. At some point, the producer and/or editor decides what pictures and words will best tell the story, and eliminates those elements, which in his/her opinion, do not. In the case of Thomas Youk, the Michigan man whose euthanasia was televised by 60 Minutes, we were not only on the receiving end of the selective and subjective judgments by CBS personnel, but, more importantly, we were limited, if not influenced, by the video tape(s) and documents supplied-- or not-supplied-- by Jack Kevorkian. Put another way, what didn't we see or hear? Accepting the video record and version of this event from an avowed assisted-death advocate such as Kevorkian, without serious challenge or corroboration, made this edition of 60 Minutes look more like a slick informercial than a respected news magazine. In a subsequent appearance on CNN, Mike Wallace and 60-Minutes executive producer, Don Hewitt, both expressed their personal support for assisted-death. In such a receptive environment to the arguments for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, it's no surprise that the "negatives" surrounding Thomas Youk's death, and end-of-life decisions in general, were not fully explored, e.g.: pain relief is possible for all patients; consideration for the vulnerability of the sufferer; compassion is an emotion, not a principal or reason for assisted-death; the desensitization that results from televised death; the distinction between killing and letting die; the stark reality of the slippery slope.

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