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)?

Sarah from San Francisco, CA, asks: Was it really necessary to air the segment up to point of the patient's death? Mike Wallace , senior correspondent and co-editor of "60 Minutes", responds: It was the moment of death that put the issue of euthanasia in the public eye.  Without it, there would have been nothing like the national debate it triggered. Ned McGrath, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, responds: Without the "moment of death" on national television, CBS would have had just another story of Jack Kevorkian's one-man crusade, a campaign that has involved the lives-- and assisted-deaths-- of over 130 people since 1990. Subsequent to the NewHour presentation, published and broadcast reports have suggested that the "death tape" was actually "shopped" around to more than one national network. Considering the fact that Jack Kevorkian's publicity-agent/attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, tried a year ago, unsuccessfully, to get ABCs Barbara Walters to televise an assisted-death on 20/20, one can reasonably assume that the Youk tape was offered to CBS "on condition." Those conditions, it appears, involved showing the actual moment of death and, more than likely, the date of broadcast. Considering the long history of media-savvy decisions by the Kevorkian team, those involved in brokering this tape to CBS apparently wanted this video on during the November ratings period. There can be no other credible explanation for rushing this tape-- recorded in mid-September!-- onto the air within 10-days of receipt in mid-November. This was hardly a "breaking news" story. This was, by all appearances, an arrangement between CBS and Kevorkian, which also further explains why the Kevorkian tapes were so quickly provided to prosecutors.

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