Speaker I joined CBS, I came to CBS in 1969. I’ve been a producer and I’ve been a producer ever since then, but the last 30 years.
Speaker And had you had a background as a producer in other places or were you a print correspondent and what was your background at all?
Speaker I was a correspondent with Time magazine Time Life. I’ve been a correspondent for them for five years down in Latin America, Brazil. And after five years there, I came back to the United States and was offered a job by Life magazine to come and work as a reporter in Paris. And at that time, I asked the managing editor of Life magazine if you were me, what would he do? Go to work for life or try to get into television? He said go for television because life isn’t going to be around for much longer. And he was right. So that’s how I came to CBS.
Speaker It’s interesting that you you started working for a newspaper magazine format, so that was based on Life magazine.
Speaker True story. But most of my work was for was for time, very little for life. But it’s true. It was based on Life magazine.
Speaker But more and more it’s become like People magazine to what I’d like you to do, since I’m not giving in this too much whenever possible. If you could give it to me is a thoughtful thought or so I can cut myself out. I appreciate. All right. So let’s just start again. Just that last part, about 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes. What I said is and it started out as Life magazine and you said, well, it started 16.
Speaker I started off as a Life magazine, really copy Life magazine. But I think in recent years it’s become more and more like People magazine. So much like life. Of course, life isn’t around any longer. And people at.
Speaker Are you suggesting that there’s been a sort of downgrading of the quality of 60 Minutes in saying that because people in life have a qualitative difference?
Speaker I don’t think it’s so much a downgrading in the quality as the fact that 60 Minutes is basically now about individual people and it’s built around people. And the first thing they usually are asked if you come with a story idea is who’s the cast of characters and not even who’s the cast of characters, but who is the character. And so it’s built around one individual.
Speaker That’s very interesting. Wasn’t like that in the beginning, you know, started.
Speaker It wasn’t like that at all in the beginning. In the beginning, really, if you had a good idea, you went out and you did it and you sort of built up your quote unquote cast of characters as you as you went along. Also in the beginning, pieces on 60 Minutes could run 25, 30 minutes long if they were good. And often they did more and more. They’re down to 10, 11 better pieces, which really means you’ve got to concentrate on one individual. You really don’t have time to learn too much about other people, a little too much about any given subject.
Speaker It is interesting because I, I do want to talk about and we can talk about right now, since it seems appropriate, how 60 Minutes has changed over the years. So besides and those are two very important aspects, and there have been other changes over the years that that you have noticed.
Speaker I think I think the main changes that I’ve noticed over the years have been the question of time as the main changes that I’ve noticed over the years have been a question of time, the length that you’re given for a piece to do a report. At first no one really was breathing down your neck and you could do a piece as long as it took to tell a particular story. Nowadays, it’s really ten minutes, 11 minutes, and that’s it, no matter what it is.
Speaker At the beginning were the pieces of 60 Minutes as correspondent driven as they are today, what do you mean by the correspondent driven? Well, it seems as I’m looking at the early pieces, there are there were programs done that you are very the correspondents fairly in it. They seem more like little mini documentaries that you might see and British broadcasting or even on channel public television.
Speaker No, that’s what I meant.
Speaker I think more and more over recent years, 60 Minutes has become Don Hewitt himself admits it’s the ongoing adventures of the five correspondents. So they’ve got to be there. And whereas before you could spend 25 to 30 minutes without the correspondent being in the piece or have been doing the narration, nowadays he’s all over the lot. But I’m sure if you added up the amount of time that you’re looking at a 60 Minutes piece, the amount of time that you’re looking at a correspondent is more it’s probably greater than the amount of time you’re looking at the subject of the piece in the correspondents questions and his reactions and his wandering around, walking through the streets of London or Des Moines or wherever. He’s all over the place, probably, as I said, much more than the actual subject of the report, because really the subject of the report is the correspondent, what he’s doing.
Speaker It’s interesting. When do you think this changed you? Can you talk about a personal experience of when you feel that this change began to take?
Speaker Oh, it didn’t come all at once, it became over time and knew where it came over time by gradual accretions, if you will. At first we could go out into the field with only one camera. Then after a few years, you had to take a second camera with you, not because there were more things. You had to get more action going on, but you had to be sure to get pictures of your correspondent reacting, asking questions. He had to be part of the piece. So whereas it had to be part of the piece and you could start.
Speaker Yeah, I understand you change the lens.
Speaker Are you fairly where you can go a little bit wider, OK. Yeah, you can go.
Speaker And the correspondent had to be part of the piece so you had to have a second camera there together.
Speaker And whereas earlier on it was permissible to only go out with one camera in later years if you didn’t have two cameras there. The correspondent was actually upset, was put out by the fact that there wasn’t a second camera there, because I at first, because I guess I come from a background in print journalism and really felt we were there to be reporters. I resisted having a second camera. It seemed to be an accessory that wasn’t necessary. But at the end, there was no way to resist. You had to have that second camera there.
Speaker But wasn’t there also sort of a mandate after the Westmoreland case that 60 Minutes had two second cameras?
Speaker I don’t think it really had to do that much was with the Westmoreland case in itself. I think it was really the question of the correspondent had to be there. And it adds a tremendous extra expense to any story that you’re doing.
Speaker But it was felt worthwhile because after all, again, 60 Minutes is the correspondent story in some of your early pieces. That’s the door.
Speaker How can we kind a second to get, you know, sort of a suite?
Speaker Where should we think?
Speaker Oh, well, we’re talking about you have to sort of OK, I’m going to go try to go further on particularly. I’m going now. I’m going to do it right now.
Speaker OK, shall we run? Yes. OK, your first piece, it wasn’t your very first piece, but one of your first pieces was an amnesty, right?
Speaker Was that a two camera issue? Is that a one camera shoot? That was a one character issue. What was that?
Speaker And I preferred one camera shoots because they were faster. They were quick. You didn’t have to wait and set up your cameras and get the lighting or set. You just went and did it. We shot the entire story in about two and a half days in Canada and the United States, several different locations. We just went where the story was.
Speaker And that was done with Mike Wallace. Yes. And did he stay with you the whole time during that story?
Speaker No, he stayed. In other words, it took me several weeks to research the story. Mike was not there for the weeks that it took to research, and he was there for two or three days of actual shooting.
Speaker It was a very sort of timely piece, do you remember the screening of your first piece of that piece at 60 Minutes with Don Hewitt?
Speaker Well, not so much the screening it was. I had just really gone to work for 60 Minutes and we got this turned out to be a remarkable story about amnesty after Vietnam. What was going to happen to the kids who went to Canada and Sweden and so on? And I think it was the first piece that was done on American television on that subject. And I we went out, we got some extraordinary human reaction, people crying and mothers pleading for their kids to come back and kids saying they’d like to come back or didn’t want to come anyway. And a great barroom discussion at Danielsson, Connecticut, but all the different views on Vietnam, I took it back to New York and about a week cut it down to about 25 minutes. And I couldn’t cut it any further. And I knew that a 60 Minutes piece was supposed to be 50 and 60 Minutes. And I was stuck here with twenty twenty five minutes or 25 minute piece at least. And I thought if I cut it any further, I’d be cutting into the bone. So I called in Don and Mike and said, look, this is the piece. I can’t do anything further with it. What do you suggest? They took a look at it, cheered, and at the end they said, well, read it as it is. And it was a great piece. In retrospect, it was it was a good piece. Looking at it today.
Speaker It’s long, it’s boring. There are sound cuts that are now very easy to cut down because we’ve got a totally different way of looking at television today, a totally different way of reporting. But when I showed it to my kids a couple of years back, after explaining to them what Vietnam was and what amnesty was all about, I felt it was a very long, boring piece. Did they?
Speaker Yeah, they were not they were not carried away by it and they were not bowled over by it.
Speaker And yet at the time, there was no way I could cut it any further and no way Don or Mike could cut it any further.
Speaker Well, the comment on two things, it seems to be a comment on the way television has kept pace with life. And therefore, as the pace of life has increased, so has the pace of television ending, so to speak, and our attention span.
Speaker And it also seems to be a comment on on the more the I call it more the Sesame Street generation, Sesame Street, no segment on Sesame Street ran more than 30 seconds, 40 seconds. So you have a whole generation of kids who are now adults who know that nothing should run more than 30 seconds on television.
Speaker And so when you have somebody talking for more than 30 seconds, it’s too much. And the evening is sound. Cuts are down now to, what, five or six seconds where they used to eat maybe 15, 20 seconds. And 60 Minutes is down to 30 seconds in a ten minute pizza, 11 minute piece. And even those now seem long.
Speaker Does that mean that we can only deal with the highlights of the story, so to speak, and not even the highlights?
Speaker Really, we’re looking for emotional. We’re looking for the. What is it that we are looking for in store, looking for, you know, you’re looking really for the climactic moments, really, you’re looking for a rough sketch of what’s going on. There’s no way to really tell you what is going on all the way. There’s a sign that I used to have in my office wall that came from a journalist in Chicago, a long time journalist who said that the deeper you dig and each story collapses, which means that the deeper you dig, the more shades of gray there are and the less sensational the story is, which is true. Unfortunately, 60 Minutes, like all the magazine shows, we really only go for sensational stories. And if you dig long enough for the sensational story, it’s no longer a sensational, interesting way of putting it.
Speaker It is interesting how that 60 Minutes in the beginning in 1969 and when you begin 1970, 71, was like anything else was experimenting with finding its way. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of the mood of experimentation, finding its way, those in those early days?
Speaker Well, the mood of the kind of experimenting that went on in the early days, I think had largely to deal with the amount of time that you had to experiment with. If you’re given 25, 30 minutes to do a report, there’s all kinds of things you can do and all kinds of different textures you can bring out in that report. As the time becomes more and more reduced, there’s less and less experimenting you can do. And as it’s more and more driven by the character of the individual, the star of your course, your correspondent and the principal character in your report, it comes down basically to an interview between the two of them.
Speaker 60 Minutes now are basically interviews, in fact, on 60 Minutes now are basically 60 Minutes. Now is basically a program of interviews. In fact, Don often has a picture taken out of a 60 Minutes piece. He wants to see the person who’s talking. He doesn’t want to see the picture of what he’s talking about. And a lot of editors are very frustrated by that. They’ll spend a lot of time building up a very beautiful sequence or a very dramatic sequence, only to have it totally taken out because we want to see what that person looks like when he’s saying those things. We don’t want to see the stuff he’s talking about. It goes along with that series of words. Doesn’t have Danceteria, I think. Is that the strongest the most powerful thing on television is the human face saying something interesting.
Speaker That’s true. That is the strongest thing on television. I think it shows the talking head so that, again, as you said, Don Hewitt, one of Don Hewitt’s maxims, really is that the most powerful thing you can show on television is the talking head. And it wasn’t like that in the early days, you know, and the early days you had pieces, particularly ones that were done overseas by Maclure, by Tife and coming out of Europe, which were they were like little movies. They were beautiful production pieces. That doesn’t happen anymore.
Speaker Hmm, that’s true.
Speaker When you came to 60 Minutes back then, what did you know about Don Hewitt and what was your first impression of him?
Speaker Well, when I came on 60 Minutes, it was almost at the beginning of the show, the show had been on for only one one and a half years. And I just recently come to CBS. So I knew very little about what he was supposed to be very sharp in the editing process was supposed to be extremely difficult. You had to go through a lot of revisions and it was supposed to be very frustrating, but I didn’t know much more about it than that.
Speaker And what was the first thing that you sort of discovered about how was your first impression of him?
Speaker Well, Don has really the first impression of Don, it’s never really changed is that he has no no span of attention. Span of attention is basically that of five or 10 seconds. And if you can’t sell an idea to him or program to him in that period of time, forget it. So in other words, his span of attention is really close to that of the viewer and the fact that a piece is only going to be on the air now for 10 minutes on 60 Minutes versus a quarter of an hour or half an hour in the past. I think, Don, that also reflects Don Hewitt’s span of attention. I’ve expressed that very well.
Speaker Yeah, try to get an idea, but it can. Yeah.
Speaker Forgetting about the pieces like Don, the most interesting thing about Don really is his span of attention, and it probably probably reflects the span of attention of the average viewer. Don, span of attention is good for maybe 10, 15, 20 seconds if you can’t sell him a story idea. And that time, forget it. If you can’t sell a story idea and one or two and one or two sentences, it’s not going to fly well.
Speaker But there’s something there’s a dichotomy about, Don, that I’ve noticed, even though that is true. He also is someone who is extremely focused. You know, in other words, he also is someone who has blinders on. And in fact, he concentrates on the entire show with great energy. Yeah.
Speaker So it’s no, the other thing about Hewitt, tremendous energy. I mean, he’s he’s he’s in his 73, 74 years old now. And the fact is he’s 75 years old now, and yet he goes at his job as if he were in his 30s, as if it were just something new, something he was trying to fly. And I think at the beginning of each season, he sets himself a challenge to try to keep it going.
Speaker And the challenge is, will we still remain in the top 10? Can we be in the top 10 for 20 years each year? There’s got to be a different challenge up there. And the other thing about Don is he’s never really been able to be successful at anything else because he tried he’s been a number of other projects which he’s tried other types of magazine shows, other television enterprises. They’ve never worked. Don’s particular genius matched the structure of 60 Minutes, the people on 60 Minutes. And he’s been tremendously successful and he’s been tremendously successful at that. But all the other projects he’s tried, as far as I know, have not flown. Do you have any idea what those projects are? I think he tried a Project magazine show for Ladies Home Journal. I think there was another show on 60. There was another show on CBS called designed after People magazine. It may have even been called People, and it ran it for maybe three or four versions. And that was in Sally Quinn, I think was was the hostess on that.
Speaker Didn’t make it very interesting.
Speaker The first screening with Don, I mean, after besides Amnesty did a program prior to that, which was about kids where the liberals send their kids to school.
Speaker And again, my first experience was on 60 Minutes were terrific. That piece on where the liberals sent their kids to school, which also read, I think, twenty, twenty five minutes long and took apart the Washington establishment. We went after a lot of senators, went after blacks, went after whites. And it was a tough piece and it went sailing through the screen. No problem with that whatsoever. The next piece also on amnesty, which was twenty five, thirty minutes long, went sailing through and I didn’t know what people were talking about when they were complaining about the screening process. But then all of a sudden I tried. A third piece was about secrecy in Washington which got shot down and in fact never made it on the air. And all of a sudden I found out what the screening process was all about.
Speaker Tell me something. What was it? Never on the air because he didn’t like it because it was too hot to handle.
Speaker I mean, what was the reason he was never on the air? Because we tried to deal with four or five subjects at once. Don didn’t like it and that was it. We didn’t even really make serious attempts at repairing it. It was so bad.
Speaker Interesting.
Speaker Just go back to my sort of notes here. I want to talk for a minute about the selling of Colonel Herbert. It was I believe it was the first lawsuit against 60 Minutes. Is that is that correct? I don’t know.
Speaker OK, tell me about what happened with with the lawsuit and very sort of short order and how CBS News and Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace handled this problem.
Speaker So I said, what does he want to know? Well, I want to know I want a story that I did, a report that I did early on about an American army colonel supposed to be the most decorated of American soldiers who in Vietnam, while I was fighting there, lost his command, came back to the United States and started claiming that the reason he had his command taken away from him was because he tried to report war crimes in Vietnam.
Speaker And if he, a lieutenant colonel, could report war crimes in Vietnam, how could any soldier do? It was cause was taken up by the every liberal in the written and and television, including myself. And I did a piece on him we can use and then did a longer piece on 60 Minutes on him. We spent about a year investigating. Colonel Herbert started off believing in him and at the end not believing in it. And we put a piece on the air which ran for about 30 minutes. And I also wrote a piece for The Atlantic Monthly about my experience was kind of the greening of an American liberal. And a few months after that Atlantic piece was written, Herbert sued myself, Mike Wallace and CBS and The Atlantic Monthly for about 40 million dollars. For what libel. He claimed that he’d been libel and that he could prove it. So we went to court. We went to didn’t go to court directly. We went into pretrial procedures. And during those procedures, his attorneys started asking questions about conversations that I had with Mike Wallace and other people at CBS during the editing of the piece. And we objected to those questions, refused to answer them. Right, because we felt that it breached the First Amendment rights of freedom of the press, that how could the press be free if discussions that you had about subjects that you were reporting afterwards could be open to discovery, could be made public, how could people possibly have a free discussion? How could reporters possibly have a free discussion if they felt that afterwards people might be asking, well, what did you see and what did he say? And it could all come out in court. So we refused to answer those questions and that became a separate issue and wound up going up to the Supreme Court. And it finally was decided that, yes, I did have to answer those questions. That all took about three years. Was that a precedent? Oh, yeah. It was became at that time was a very important libel decision. It was part of a number of libel decisions which seem to be going against the press at that time. So I finally wound up having to answer those questions and the answers were very unimportant. It was more the principle of the whole thing. Is that held to this day? Yeah, but the interesting thing there was that the person who really pushed for to have the interesting thing was that the person who really pushed for us, for me not to answer those questions was the president of CBS News, Richard Sarlat, who was an attorney himself. And he was very outspoken on First Amendment issues. I doubt that that would happen again today.
Speaker I was going to say, I wonder what would have happened if if Richard Slant had been president of CBS News, when Lowell Bergman may be tobacco and Bergman and Mike Wallace, maybe Jeffrey Weigand programs?
Speaker I imagine in that case, the problem never would have arisen. He probably would never have allowed the lawyers to interfere the way they did.
Speaker Justin Pazzi has CBS legal department CBS News ever interfered with the process of reporting by you during all those years you were at CBS News?
Speaker No, I’ve never known any case where they’ve interfered and they’ve been present at many screenings after the report is done, if it’s any kind of a controversial report. The lawyers are brought in to look at, as you would expect, because of the problems of libel or whatever, and they’ve never interfered. In fact, my experience has always been I’ve been very impressed not only by the lawyers, but by the executives of 60 Minutes and CBS not willing to interfere in the editorial process, not willing to cut things, even though they may personally be against the program or the issues that are presented.
Speaker How does Don Hewitt handle these situations? I mean, how is he during the Colonel Herbert problem, by the way?
Speaker Oh, there were once the piece was on the air, they were supportive. I think, though I think they generally were supportive. And I think on other other cases where we I know if you want me to talk about the press junket stories.
Speaker Yes, I do. I to it. You got to read it. No, please, go ahead.
Speaker Well, in other case, in a in another story, which we did shortly after the Colonel Herbert Kay’s story about press junkets there, I took apart Ford Motors for having press junkets for automobile reporters. Ford Motor then was our only sponsor. We had the head of the radio, television news directors. Ford Motor was the only sponsor company. OK, OK, Walter Cronkite, you better start again. Okay. In the press junket story story we did shortly after the Colonel Herbert case about press junkets, there always seemed to offend just about everybody who was possible to offend. We had Ford Motors, who was our only sponsor, running press junkets for automobile reporters, trying to influence the way they report it. We had CBS News this week. We had CBS itself putting on press junkets for entertainment reporters, television reporters, bringing them to New York expense paid by CBS to look at the new television series. And we even tried to follow one such reporter into the CBS Home Office at BlackRock and had a CBS executive put his hand in our lens to stop us from filming. We had Walter Cronkite taking press junkets, so we offended just about everybody we could. And I was sure there was no way CBS would let us put that on the air. And in fact, I made a backup copy of the program and I was ready to quit as soon as the president had screened it and said, no, we couldn’t put it on the air. But instead, the president of CBS News came, sat, looked at the piece, laughed through the whole side, and it ran exactly as was. And what it did, Don, was fine. Don was fine. Mike was fine. Michael defended a close professional friend, Walter Cronkite. He took a lot of flak from Cronkite from doing that.
Speaker The impression I’m getting. Do you do you feel that you could do this today?
Speaker I don’t know. Today it might be different. And why maybe more sensitivities?
Speaker I really don’t know. On the other hand, it might be possible to do it today, but I’m not sure I would doubt it.
Speaker Just an instinct. Yeah.
Speaker On the other hand, they it’s difficult to say I can’t think of any story back then or recently that I haven’t been able to do because of concerns by Hewitt or Wallace or anyone else. The L.A. Times really were when Don did not want Mike Wallace or myself to do stories on Israel in the latter years because Mike had become known as somebody who was very critical of Israel. And the stories I think are very well researched. But Don felt that Mike was almost becoming a cliche with his ideas, his stories. So he simply said Lando and Wells cannot go to Israel. And it became very tough to do Israeli stories for you to. Yes. On the other hand, their 60 Minutes producers did go on to do tough stories on Israel.
Speaker And yet prior to that, you had done many important Israeli stories. I mean, let’s talk a little about Temple Mount. Tell me about the story and tell me about some of the fallout as a result of it.
Speaker Well, this was the Temple Mount story came after we’d done a story about AIPAC, about the influence of the American Jewish lobby on politics, essentially in Washington, on U.S. policy, which had already caused Don Hewitt a lot of headaches with Larry Tisch, who was our chairman of the board. After that, I suggested a story of. Jerusalem and I wanted to do a story about I said this is going to be a story about Jerusalem viewed from the Arabs point of view at the Palestinians point of view, because we always had stories of Jerusalem viewed from the Israeli point of view, Telecomix, Jerusalem. So I sold them the idea of doing a story, the Arab Palestinian Jerusalem. But when I went to Jerusalem, I found that the thing the Palestinians were all talking about was a riot that had taken place two or three weeks earlier in which 21 Palestinians had been killed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And they claimed that the official version that the the deaths were due to the Palestinians was a lie. And they said that the deaths were due to the actions of the Israeli police. So I went to our bureau and got the video, the raw videotapes of that incident. It turned out we had five or six cameramen who had been there covering it.
Speaker And then I went to the other networks and got their videotapes as well and reconstructed what had actually happened from the actual picture that had been taken. And it turned out essentially that what the Palestinians said was correct. The Israeli police had overreacted to the demonstration of the Palestinians and had used violent force and 21 Palestinians had been killed and that Israel essentially had been lying in the official version. In fact, Netanyahu then, I think was the Israeli foreign minister had was one of those who was caught essentially lying. We put that on the air.
Speaker And before he put it on the air, just a curiosity. The screening of that might don you sit down screening this film.
Speaker They were all very nervous about that story.
Speaker But I think there was nothing really they could do because we had the pictures and the pictures don’t lie. We actually showed what had happened and done before the piece went on. The air had gone very well, knew what the reaction was by the people. And it was it was very tough. Larry Tisch was very upset. The Jewish community was extremely upset. We got letters from every major Jewish organization in the United States condemning us. And it was only later that an Israeli court of inquiry thought that what we said was correct. And the ADL, the Anti Defamation League, was the only Jewish organization that then wrote a letter essentially apologizing to us for its reaction.
Speaker It’s interesting because 60 Minutes has been criticized as being pro-Israel, as being anti-Israel, as being I mean, they have been criticized for from every angle on the Middle East. What do you think that’s all about?
Speaker I have something in mind. Yeah, go ahead. Don always says that that, you know, he likes the fact that you can’t say that we are liberals, that we are conservatives, that we are provis, that we are anti this, that we try to show an even handed a certain amount of stories that show all points of view. So I was just wondering if if, if in fact that’s policy or if it just turned out that way.
Speaker I think it just turns out that way. I think a lot of things on 60 Minutes just turn out that way because it’s so freewheeling, because the producers of correspondents essentially come up with their own stories and are then left to do them and you then bring it back in the screening room. It’s awfully late for Hewitt or anyone else to say that’s really not what we want to say or that’s not the truth or what you’ve done your research, you’ve done your story and there it is. But you’re there’s no plan. There’s no editorial meeting at the beginning of each month saying, gee, the situation in the Middle East is really rough. We should be paying more attention to it. In some ways that’s good. At least everyone to be totally independent. In other ways. That’s too bad because it means that a valuable resource like 60 Minutes, which could be used to educate, inform Americans about what’s going on in the world, often does not, because there’s no one there is saying, gee, we really should be looking into this issue. It’s left to the individual producer if he wants to do it or not. It’s hard to imagine The New York Times operating that way, not having a meeting once a week or once a day saying, all right, you know what’s going on with what’s called what’s going on with Israel or what’s going on with China.
Speaker One of the things that that 60 Minutes always, you know, Don always prides himself, as he says, well, we don’t have an assignment desk like that. So I could see the positive, but the negative. And give me an example. We just talking to you. So there was an example of coming into America and having been in Iran, trying to tell me that I’ve been in Iran prior, during and after the revolution.
Speaker And I came back to the United States when the hostages were still being held to work on a particular story. And I was down in Washington and sort and all the doors of the State Department freed the 50 for how many hostages there were. And in New York, huge billboards of Khomeini, you know, looking like the devil over fifty seven street. And I couldn’t believe this was going on in the United States because I’m a Canadian and I guess I have a little bit more objective view of what’s going on in the world. I didn’t feel threatened by the American hostages being held. And also, I could understand what had been driving around to why so many Iranians didn’t like the United States because of the US’s particular history in that country. So I suggested to to Don and I said, hey, we should be doing a story on this. Why don’t they like us, essentially? And this is at a time when Iran was making very tough demands for the release of the hostages. Also wanted to show that their demands were not that unrealistic. So it was a very, very controversial program. We shot it all in about three or four days.
Speaker And afterwards, that was one of the most controversial pieces we did because we were commenting directly about the demands, as I said, that Iran was making at a time when American emotions were running extremely high. And President Carter found out that we were doing this particular report and actually called the president of CBS News, Bill Leonard, and asked him not to put the piece on the air because it would only inflame the situation, it would encourage the hostage takers in Iran and so on.
Speaker We felt it wouldn’t because all we were doing was explaining to Americans what was driving the situation in Iran. In any case, the president of CBS News getting that request from the president of the United States asked to take a look at our report. I figured we were in for big trouble. I also made a backup copy of that report, ready to quit and take that copy to anyone else who had run it. So I felt that in good conscience, I could not continue to work for CBS News if that program were cut. We went we showed it to the president and really the only change he made was in the title of the report. And instead of should we apologize, I think we changed it to the Iran file. And I was very proud of CBS and I was very proud of working for 60 Minutes at that time.
Speaker It is a very interesting story, but there is something I want to ask you about.
Speaker Speaking of Washington, have there been other situations where Washington was put pressure on you or 60 Minutes to do something about peace?
Speaker Not that I know of during the Colonel Herbert.
Speaker Court case, I understand that Don Hewitt, just before the court was about to make a decision as Justice Warren Burger to appear on 60 Minutes.
Speaker Are you aware of that?
Speaker Yeah, and I think it’s the decision to do as it was against 60 Minutes. And I don’t think Don was would even have entered his mind to to try to influence the decision. Just what if you knew about.
Speaker No, I think I read that somewhere that in fact, I definitely was that was given to me for some research.
Speaker OK, let us get back to something that was not about that was not about the merits of the case. That was just about this. The Supreme Court at the end of this First Amendment issue about whether or not CBS had to pay for million bucks. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We got out of the case. Ultimately, that case ultimately cost CBS News six million dollars to defend, even though we won it and it was thrown out of court and never, never went to court.
Speaker Can you say one thing?
Speaker The Colonel Herbert, the colonel that Colonel Herbert case, the suit for 40 million dollars, actually cost CBS News six million dollars just to defend it, even though it never went to court.
Speaker So libel is a tremendous threat.
Speaker But it is interesting the differences of money for court cases today and I mean, the wagon suit was 15 billion dollars. Right. Right. I’m sort of trying to find my way back where I am, I want to talk about you were the first person that I understand the first you and like in the first piece that you did, I think was called Selling of Sex. So I have that right or something. And you just start again, kiddie porn, then we start again. You were the first producer for 60 Minutes, as far as I understand, who used a hidden camera in kiddie porn. Can you tell me about that piece and how the hidden camera came into being and if there was any discussion in advance about the using, et cetera?
Speaker Well, it was there was no discussion in advance about using it. What I wanted to show was how child pornography was being shown in porno shops as this case was out in California. And this was long before hidden cameras had had became a standard kind of fare of magazine shows. We’re trying to figure out how we could show it without the person around the shop knowing it. I was talking to the cameraman. I think it was Larry Mitchell in Los Angeles, and he got an old film about a little sixteen millimeter camera that you had to widen like this. And he managed to secrete it into a bag, carried it hidden underneath his coat. I had a microphone hidden on me. And the only problem was that because it was a wound up camera, it would only last for about 50 seconds. And then you had to go around, try to go outside with the camera again and come back inside and continue and trying to do it very quickly. Larry ripped off his fingernail, trying to get it inside the camera back at the right time. But I think that was the first time a hidden camera was used.
Speaker And when you brought it back, I mean, was there any discussion about it? Were people happy? You know, was it.
Speaker Was there any other people were delighted by it. There was no real discussion about it as this invasion of privacy or not. I mean, it was a very seamy kind of operator selling kiddie porn. We really didn’t talk much about it. Later on, we did do other hidden camera pieces. There was much talk, much consulting with lawyers about should we be can we take your picture? Can we record their sound? It depends what state you’re in and the extent of the subject’s knowledge to it when you’re doing it. We did a piece on a fake Medicaid lab, which we set up in Chicago. I don’t know if you want to talk about that or not.
Speaker Go ahead, because I also want to talk about the program that was done about ethics. Was that they use that?
Speaker Yeah, we did. We did a piece in Chicago. We wanted to show Medicaid fraud. And the best way to show Medicaid fraud, we thought, was to set up a fake medical clinic and show how doctors and other medical providers went about ripping off the public. So we set up this fake clinic and in this case, we were trying to show a medical laboratory so that to do analysis of blood and urine, how they refused to give kickbacks, et cetera, to the doctors who sent people to them. And it cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Speaker And so we set up this fake lab and we had a hidden camera behind a one way mirror right behind the person who was running supposedly our lab. And we filmed people coming in to offer our medical clinic kickbacks if we if we would send them our business. But the question was, could we record what they were saying as well? And because it was the state of Illinois, you could only record if a person was knowledgeable and was agreeing to being recorded. So are the person who ran our lab obviously knew what was going on and we could have recorded his voice, but we couldn’t record the voice of the person who was talking to until Mike Wallace came out from behind the mirror and then said to this person, All right, I’m Mike Wallace, CBS 60 Minutes. We’re filming and recording this and then start asking questions to the subject. At that point, our lawyers told us you’re OK, but I doubt if any of the people, any of the subjects that we got, the criminals suddenly caught offering kickbacks, even understood what was going on.
Speaker But legally, that was that got us by the barrier to ambush journalism or cameras after that became almost like a fad, I guess. Like, when do you think it’s appropriate time to use a hidden camera? When do you think it kind of is just completely gratuitous?
Speaker I think it’s appropriate to use it when you are showing something that you could not otherwise get that society should know about. I think if it’s used just for the sake of using a hidden camera, I know that it shouldn’t be used. But it it’s really the only way you can show something going on.
Speaker Then why not? You used it with Colonel Herbert. No, you did not. You did something else with Colonel Herbert. You had the Herbert.
Speaker What we did do I knew that there were certain charges that Herbert was making that was appropriate with Colonel.
Speaker I think it’s all right. OK, we know what what we did was Colonel Herbert was. I was investigating his case. Had done an interview with an Army captain who had said some pretty strong things about Herbert attacking him, but he was a very good friend of Herbert’s as well. He called up Herbert and told Herbert, look, I’ve had to say this for 60 Minutes, but really they pressured me into doing it and we did it in the Pentagon. And so I was under pressure, et cetera, et cetera, to do this. So we told the captain, look, if that was true, tell us we won’t use the interview at all. He said, no, no, no. In fact, I wasn’t under pressure, but Herbert had called me. Let me go over that.
Speaker It. Yeah, I got myself. What had happened was the Herbert case.
Speaker What had happened was we had an Army captain who loved Herbert, but who have we told him certain things that Herbert talked about in a book. He said this just isn’t true. He said, it really hurts me to say it, but it’s not true. And he finally admitted that this case was a lying. So this is very strong stuff for a piece which was a man who adored Herbert and yet who said that he was a liar, which was a lot of people are beginning to say so we were planning to use it. But then Herbert called me that same evening and said the captain called me and just told me what he did. And he told me that he only did it under pressure. He was in the Pentagon. So I said, really? So I called the captain and he said, that’s not true. I told her what I said, but I never said I said it because of Pentagon pressure. And I said, sure, because if what you’re saying is not true, we will we won’t use it. You won’t have to worry. No, no, no. It was true what Herbert told you again now about me being under pressure. It wasn’t true. So I said, all right, we’re going to bring Herbert to New York for an interview if Herbert repeats this charge. But what you said that you only spoke with under pressure, would you be willing to confront Herbert Wright? So he said, yeah. So I felt this was one of the key moments in we what kind of a guy Herbert really was. We had the captain waiting outside listening to the interview in New York. And when Herbert repeated the charge that it only spoke not because the Pentagon pressure Mike. Well, I said to her, but he said, look, the captain is here. He’s been listening to what we’ve been saying. Are you willing to have brought in? Herbert said yes.
Speaker So we brought him in and there was a confrontation between the captain and and Herbert, which was one of the most dramatic pieces, I think, in the report, but also drove home the kind of person that whoever it was, that was the reason for doing it. And it was a technique which I think was was totally justified. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with confronting someone with what he said. Were you criticised for? Oh, I think a lot of people criticized us for that thinking. It was sneaky. It was unfair. But I don’t quite understand. What have I done? Oh, John was done.
Speaker Was there interesting kiddie porn? Would the story be done today?
Speaker No, I probably wouldn’t even have been done a few years afterwards because I think we all felt that it was really kind of an unseemly kind of story. It wasn’t the kind of story that led me to ask me that question.
Speaker Again, kiddie porn, would that story be done today?
Speaker I think it would be done today, but probably in a different kind of way. I mean, we were then experimenting with hidden cameras. We were experimenting with a lot of things. And I think some of us did feel uncomfortable afterwards about even even exploring that subject. I think the subject would certainly be explored today. That’s part of a magazine. Shows are open to that, including 60 Minutes.
Speaker But at the time I’m going around in circles, well, outside myself, what I would think it would be done today if what you said to me when we talk quickly on the phone thing, was that you that a lot of these affiliates insist upon cutting it because. Oh, yeah. Cutting so and because. Well, I think I think correctness today, the idea of showing off showing something like that on television would probably be people would be one of the I don’t know, this is the right I think you seem to say to me that you would be done today.
Speaker I think it would be done today. I think it was probably I think it would be done today because today just about any subject is open to television. I are a lot of subjects done today in the area of sex violence that wouldn’t have been done 15 or 20 years ago on 60 Minutes, I think as things have become more salacious. On the other magazines, shows they have on 60 Minutes as well, there’s a drive for sensation and a drive for ratings. It doesn’t mean that those subjects shouldn’t be covered. But at the time was the kiddie porn story. We were so sensitive about it that it was shown broadcast to all the affiliates one or two days before it was actually put out on the air to give them the option of not running it on their shows.
Speaker And what happened, I think just about everyone took it. But I think, you know, I think today no one would be insensitive with that particular subject. I think about any subject now. It’s fair game.
Speaker They recently did, I think was calling it the selling of sex. And they did. And I think was in Thailand. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. I think they use the exact same technique. Yeah.
Speaker Now that’s true. I, we probably wouldn’t have done it earlier on. Why. It probably would have been concerned. It probably would have been considered a little bit too sensational. Too vulgar.
Speaker Probably what makes selling sex in Thailand more vulgar than selling of sex right in our own backyard.
Speaker No child prostitution that in fact in art the piece on kiddie porn. We had a number of interviews also with child molesters as well, which Don and Mike didn’t even want to watch. They were so squeamish about the subject.
Speaker I understand that Don is a very squeamish person. Is that true?
Speaker You know, I don’t know about that. OK. All right, well, then don’t answer the.
Speaker Get you back to wherever I am, Don likes to talk about his staff being his family as the representative of 60 Minutes, having been the representative 60 Minutes in Paris for so many years, did you feel like one of the family?
Speaker What does he mean by family? Well, I don’t know. I thought maybe you tell me. Neither do I. I don’t know. I mean, part of the part of his family?
Speaker Well, I think that it’s I think that that there’s an impression that the people who work for 60 Minutes are this kind of one big happy family. And I’m I’m not sure if that’s the case. And I’m sort of wondering how you felt about that.
Speaker I don’t think that’s the case. I think probably earlier on when it was smaller and people have been there longer. There was probably more of a feeling of unity and bonding than I think I worked outside Paris, not in New York. But I mean, one thing that most of the producers and people talk about in New York is this sense of isolation that was you’re not really part of one big happy family. There’s not a lot of sharing. And really, each person is on his own. Very much so. So a great deal of competition. Yeah, there’s tremendous competition among the producers, among the correspondents. So it’s really not a happy family.
Speaker Did you come to 60 Minutes? A great deal of contacts, contacts, sources, contacts for stories. You know, do people share their sources?
Speaker No, I think generally probably no. You give it to me as a sentence so I could take this off.
Speaker I know generally I don’t think people share their sources. I don’t think they share their story ideas. And there is a lot of competition, which is good. I mean, if everyone were one big happy family, probably wouldn’t have the same kind of dynamism there. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s not quite correct to call it a happy family when it really is not one family.
Speaker Tell me the example of a story about landmines. We talk about competition among the correspondents, among people for ideas. You did a program on landmines. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Speaker I want to I want I suggested a story on landmines a couple of years ago to Don Hewitt. It was after seeing a piece about landmines in Angola. And I put in a suggestion on it. And Don Hewitt, it was called me back and said, Gary, forget about landmines. There’s no way I’m going to send a correspondent of mine to Africa to talk about a bunch of black people blown up by landmines. I thought that was pretty strong, but it was also pretty categorical and he just wasn’t going to do it. In other words, neither Mike Wallace nor Bradley anybody. But I kept pushing the story. And a few months later, I got Mike sort of interested in a story about landmines in Cambodia, and it looked like she was going to attack that one. And then all of a sudden, Morley Safer found out the dome was going to work it. And what he said, just a minute. I put in a story about landmines three years ago. And you also turn that down just about the same terms. And at that point, Mike and Morley got into a fight and over that particular story that Hewitt had earlier turned down. But now it looked like it was going to be OK. And finally it turned out that Mike came out victorious. But Mike really wasn’t interested in doing the story. It was no question that because he had beat Morley, he was going to have to do that story. And we did. And it turned out very well. But I think if it hadn’t been the fight with Morley, we never would have done it like this.
Speaker It’s like, you know, it’s like having five siblings, the correspondents, they’re there.
Speaker They have all the sort of five very jealous siblings. Right. And it’s amazing because you would think, you know, after all these years, what do they have to be so jealous about? But there’s still a tremendous amount of rivalry, which I guess is good.
Speaker Yeah. Is it fostered by Don?
Speaker No, it’s fostered by the egos of the correspondents themselves. And I think Don generally is afraid to take on any of those correspondents. So they’re basically left to work things out themselves. If there’s a battle that goes on more or less between the correspondents.
Speaker What do you mean? Don’s afraid to take out the correspondent, John.
Speaker Don does not like to confront the correspondents. And so if they make enough noise or stamp their feet enough about a particular subject or particular story or a particular producer, they usually get their way.
Speaker And why do you think that he doesn’t like to do that?
Speaker That’s got to deal with Don Hewitt and his mother and father. And it goes way, way back, I’m sure.
Speaker Do contacts now all over the world. Yeah.
Speaker I mean, if you have to go to shoot in, let’s say, somewhere in the Middle East, can you just, like, pick up the phone, make one phone call and have have it ready the next day, contact some producers who would do it for me.
Speaker But producers, fixers, camera people, I mean you just because like that, you know.
Speaker No, they’re not.
Speaker I can call make calls and a lot of different countries and other people to talk to to build a story. But the other thing is that things change so much in all these countries, in Russia, in China, in Israel, that you’ve got to be constantly renewing your knowledge. And that’s a question of really month after month after.
Speaker So the contacts help, but you’re almost starting at zero every time you go to a country again as a producer who’s worked with Mike Wallace for so many years, um, did you at the very beginning, I mean, also sort of write the questions and you write the questions, just kind of hand him a script. And you are you ever surprised about what happens in the interview? I mean, tell me how that works, where the questions were like, yeah, up until the last two stories I did with him.
Speaker I mean, I wrote the producer writes basically the questions for Mike and usually also indicates the answers that are going to be given as well, though those exact answers aren’t always good. But the good thing about Mike is he will take those questions and we’ll actually listen to the answers that are given in the interview. And if an interesting avenue, a new avenue presents itself via an answer, he’ll go up that avenue to start asking a whole series of questions you never even thought of. And that’s his big forte, the fact that he will listen to what someone is saying in an interview. I think that’s why producers like to work with him. It’s because as a producer, in a way, you are sacrificing your identity by stepping back to let the correspondent supposedly take over the story. You’ve done all the research. You’ve done basically all the reporting, and all of a sudden it’s the correspondent who’s going to get the credit. But with Mike, there was a reason for stepping back. That’s because he brought a certain amount of knowledge and a certain ability to listen to what people were saying and to follow up and to make an interview even better than you thought it was going to be.
Speaker What was the process of looking for a list of problems here, which is so normal? But it’s really quite amazing. I mean, just take a gander here, Tony, of the first time that you thought Mike really did an incredible interview on the very first story on amnesty.
Speaker Yeah, it was a very moving piece.
Speaker And we we had met we were in Montreal filming Thanksgiving dinner of Americans who had fled the United States in order to avoid the draft, in order to avoid going to to Vietnam.
Speaker And they were living in Montreal that we went to their Thanksgiving dinner and there were several hundred there. And Mike got up in the stage and asked, how many of you, if you were given the chance, would like to go back to the United States. Now, Americans watching the tube, of course, they all want to go back to the United States, but only about three or four out of a hundred or so the Americans were there. So they wanted to go back to the US. They were really disgusted with their country. And they like Canada. As a Canadian, that was fine with me. And we focused on one of those kids who was from Danielsson, Connecticut, kind of, you know, clean-Cut, redheaded kid who had deserted the Marine Corps to go to Canada. And we interviewed him in Montreal on the snow and then went back to Danielsson, Connecticut, to his home. And there we spoke to his mother and father, working class parents in their home. And it was a very, you know, good interview going forward. And tell Mike asked the key question, which was Mr and Mrs Duff. It’s all very well. You want your son to be able to come back from Canada, able to come back without being punished. But what are you going to say to the parents of all the other young men who went to Vietnam, although they didn’t want to, and either killed or maimed or whatever? What are you going to say to their parents? Why should your son be able to come back home? And this is Dr. Nassr and her eyes began to well up and she finally started to cry and the camera pulled back and she was framed next to the picture of her son. And my all of a sudden turned around and looked back at me towards the camera. And he was crying, too.
Speaker We didn’t show that on television, but the scene with Mrs. Uff Cry and it was powerful stuff. And Mike, of course, was identifying her son with his own son, who he had lost, had been killed in a mountain climbing accident in Greece a few years earlier.
Speaker And that and that impressed me because he had very few men. And he was. He was. And that question had not been planned.
Speaker No, the question had been planned.
Speaker That was that was the bottom line question to the interview was a plan that he used to get on the stage and ask how many days that was planned.
Speaker I mean, that’s usually things like that or set up figured out ahead of time.
Speaker But of course, his emotion in terms of she was watching him, too. So it probably freed him her to.
Speaker Yeah, yeah. And then that we got into another another interview with another kid who had gone to Vietnam but who supported Canada in the same hometown with his parents. And the kid on camera got into a massive fight with his parents who were saying, oh, they were all like they were German. They thought that Ken should be put in prison and the son went to Vietnam, was arguing, no, you should go to come back. But again, we got into a big generation gap debate there, which my account of extremely well might have had that ability to do. It still does.
Speaker Yeah. Now, history is pretty amazing.
Speaker Having now worked with Mike for 20 odd years, people say it’s like a marriage. Have you recently gotten divorced and is it like a divorce also?
Speaker No, we start working together, but we’re we’re still in contact. And when I go to New York, I will give him a call. The last time I was in New York, I didn’t call. And he called here to Paris to ask my wife why I hadn’t called. And he’s a very special person. He’s you know, he’s one of the only people I’ve heard from at 60 Minutes. And but I can go on about I know if you want to go on about in this line or not. I do think Mike is a very special person and he cares about people. He can be abrasive, too. And and but he cares a lot about people, people who he works with. And people come to ask him for favors, for recommendations from interns to other producers to important people during what’s happened.
Speaker I mean, why are you no longer working at 60 Minutes?
Speaker They wanted me to go back to New York. I didn’t want to go back to New York. I wanted to remain in Europe. I was French, a French child, and I really enjoy it. I was getting tired of what I was doing with 60 Minutes.
Speaker You started working with a new a new correspondent? Yeah.
Speaker What was that like with Christiane? No, it’s fine. She was good. And the problem was the kinds of stories that she does best war zone stories and quote unquote, dangerous third world locations. My wife basically put her foot down and said, no way. And what it turned out that it was going to be a conflict. In other words, that there was really no other correspondent I could work with. Mike was back in the United States and it was basically a question of either ending a marriage or remaining with 60 Minutes. And at that point, John Dawn said, look, we want you to come back to New York and work back here. And I didn’t want to do that either. So I chose to quit.
Speaker So we treated fairly by 60 Minutes.
Speaker Oh, yeah, I was treated equitably. I mean, how loyal has done to his producers, I really couldn’t tell you. I have not I haven’t experienced a tremendous amount of loyalty, but I don’t know what quite. What do you mean by that?
Speaker Well, you’ve had a relationship with this man for, you know, as long as you’ve had a relationship with Mike. I mean, he he runs he’s the patriarch of this enterprise, so to speak. He seems like just one of the guys the way he is. It, you know, he seems like he would be a very sort of, you know, good friend is, you know, is what you see is what you get or is it not quite like that?
Speaker I don’t think it’s quite like that. I probably with the correspondents on the show, it’s not like that either. I mean, everyone on that show to some degree or another is at the top are actors. And on the other hand, with Mike, I do feel still a bond with Don. I don’t.
Speaker Don is an amazing survivor. I mean, he’s you know, he’s he’s I was talking to someone in England in the broadcast industry, and he was saying that in England, if someone had created a show and after doing it for X amount of years, you know, they move on, you know, they moved on. He has held on to his position at 60 Minutes and at CBS for 50 years. He’s gone through three major regimes. Do you have any idea about what his survival tactics are?
Speaker No, I think one of his survival tactics has really been the ratings. I mean, he he, like everyone else on that show, who lives and dies by the ratings. If he can keep 60 Minutes as a relative cash cow for CBS, who’s going to interfere with that? Know who’s going to fix it if it’s not broken. On the other hand, you know, the ratings now are going down. Profits are less. But still, it’s it’s one of CBS whose top shows. So it’s not as Don wants to remain there. Why would anyone try to step down since the ratings don’t matter to him?
Speaker That’s not true.
Speaker The first thing that goes up on the board every Monday morning are the overnights, the ratings. And I think last year, the year before, sort of like was the year of maintaining 60 Minutes and the top 10 shows for 20 years. Or for the record, whatever it was, the ratings are extremely important. They have to be because that’s how their salaries are paid. That’s 60 Minutes survives.
Speaker Did your stock as a producer was affected by the ratings that your particular segments did?
Speaker I don’t think that they really know the ratings of any particular segment. It’s very hard to to figure out. I think people tuned in one particular week because of last week rather than because of what they’re going to see. But I don’t think it has to do that much with the individual producer. But certainly with Don, I think the show lives and dies by the ratings. And I think it’s very difficult for him to say that he doesn’t care about.
Speaker Where do your stories come from?
Speaker Just about every story that I did came from. For me, I mean, ideas that I had.
Speaker No, but so what you mean I know you get them in newspapers from the Internet, you get them from magazines, you get them from sources. They talk to each other. Reporters. I meant.
Speaker Yeah, stories come from all over from newspapers, magazines. More and more now on the Internet, too. It’s a fabulous place for story ideas and for research on the Internet. You can get something done in one or two days that would have taken you a month to do before. As far as research goes and contacts, just talking to people, calling up somebody you haven’t seen for a while. And often you get a story idea when you never thought you were you were when you were not aiming to just get a chance conversation.
Speaker Hmm. Did Christian have a different style of reporting than Mike Wallace?
Speaker I think in that she wanted to be around more and she was able to be around more with her, time was limited but not as limited as might. She is not as good as mine. And but she may become she’s still young.
Speaker And but what did you think about the choice of Don adding to new well-known foreign correspondents to the repertoire of 60 Minutes?
Speaker Was a very good idea. I mean, I think they actually could have taken the place of a couple of correspondents on 60 Minutes. They’re both very good.
Speaker It’s a sort of example of interviews that Don, you know, keeps reinventing 60 Minutes.
Speaker Well, except that the problem was, I think that they should have the correspondent they brought on Bob Simon. So that’s what they should have brought him on years ago. And I don’t think his choice of correspondents has always been that good. But Bob is extremely good. Christiane, I think maybe could become so.
Speaker Yeah, um.
Speaker How is the role of the producer changed 60 Minutes over the years?
Speaker I think the role of the producer has changed over the years in the. I think the role of the producer has changed over the years, mainly in the need to give more attention to the correspondent, make the correspondent more and more the center of what’s going on and focus on one individual in a report rather than really trying to do to look at the whole issue that’s concerned. Otherwise, I think the role of the producer is basically the same. In other words, he does most of the reporting. Most of the research writes the questions for the correspondent. Supervising the editing is basically responsible for the report from beginning to end.
Speaker The story doesn’t succeed.
Speaker Whose fault is it if the story doesn’t succeed? Usually it’s the producer’s fault. If it succeeds, if the story succeeds in-house, it’s often the to the producer’s credit outside, it’s Mike Wallace is great report on or Ed Bradley’s great report on this or that. That’s how it is.
Speaker Tell me about the one needing 60 Minutes is notorious for not having me, I should say, famous for not having meetings. Have they ever had any?
Speaker They’ve had the first big meeting and maybe one of the last big meetings that occurred happened almost at the beginning of the show. It was the show was maybe a couple of years old and it was just after I’d done a report on Colonel Herbert. And in that report, Mike, on air presenting the piece had given me credit as having done a lot of the reporting, which in fact was the case as it is for most producers and those 60 Minutes pieces. And but this was an exception made in introducing the piece.
Speaker And a few weeks afterwards, we called a meeting in New York with producers, asked for a meeting with Don to air some specific gripes. One of them was the lack of credit the producers were getting on this show. And at that meeting, I think it was me who suggested that at the beginning of most reports, the correspondents should quite openly say, look, this report on whatever it was was done by producer Barry Landau or Lowell Bergman and myself.
Speaker And here is our report, because that’s honestly how it’s done. In other words, give some credit to the producer. Explain what happens. The meeting ended very quickly. Don walked out with the correspondents, never came back again to the meeting, ended very quickly. Don walked out, conferenced with the correspondents outside, came back and announced that that wasn’t going to be done. And basically, if anyone didn’t like working at 60 Minutes, they were free to go and announce that just the same. We have the best credit on television. The producer’s name was put there, produced by so-and-so at the beginning of every segment. My feeling was that by saying produced by so-and-so, the viewer doesn’t understand that the producer is not just the one who handles the logistics and gets the piece together. He’s actually the one who’s done the report.
Speaker It’s going to be a hard story for me to cut into. And because she went back and had nothing to cut to, it’s just you telling a story. So how could you in so short order and you could actually end was it change, change, change that changes like how type were you on that. Yes, just slightly changed that.
Speaker Open up there to help you to cut it or go tighter now and open up a little. Yeah, OK. Please. OK.
Speaker Did you ever have any I mean, 60 I’ll start again. 60 Minutes is famous for the fact they just don’t have meetings. Very unusual. Did you ever have a meeting?
Speaker We had one big one, which may have been one of the last ones, also with the producers who were in town in New York just after I’ve done the Colonel Herbert piece, which was around nineteen seventy seventy one. And in introducing that piece on the air, Mike Wallace had given me credit as having done a good part of the reporting for that piece, which was true. But that’s also true for a lot of the most of the pieces that are done in 60 Minutes. The reporter reporting is really dying. Well, the reporting is really done by the producer. And the correspondent kind of parachutes in for two or three days does key interviews, often interviews where the questions are written out by the producer as well for him to ask. And then he does the narration afterwards based on a script which is usually written by the producer as well. The public doesn’t understand that when it’s written and produced by at the beginning of the segment and the producers name is given, that doesn’t make clear really what the process is that the reporting is done by the producer. So in any case, we called this meeting and I suggested that what should be done most often in introducing 60 Minutes pieces is that the correspondent should say, look, this report was done by myself and producer so-and-so and here is our story. In other words, really give credit to the producer for what he does. Well, Don and the correspondents who were there walked out of the meeting, conferred outside for a while, came back in, and Huet basically said, no way. Any of you who are not happy here, you know where you can go.
Speaker And that ended the subject. Did anyone leave? No one left a good place to work.
Speaker And as you said, we still got producers on that show, still got the best credit for producer on television.
Speaker And you’ve never had another meeting.
Speaker And all the years you think a few a few months ago, they had another meeting perhaps to discuss the cigarette story and explain what was going on there to be won like and more. They got into a row.
Speaker That’s what I want to talk to you about, actually.
Speaker Next, can you talk to me about actually, someone said to me at 60 Minutes the other day, they said, you know, we don’t have meetings here. And in the instance of during November, during the making and not broadcasting of the year Jeffrey Weigand piece, they thought it would have been a good time for them to have had a meeting at 60 Minutes so people could know what was going on. Can you talk to me about that time surrounding November 1995 and Lowell Bergman and the Mike Wallace tobacco story?
Speaker Well, I was in Paris, so I was only occasionally in New York and I was on the telephone, of course, with some of the principals who were involved.
Speaker My feeling was that it never should have gone that far. The lawyer should never have been allowed to get involved in it, and that if Don and Mike had at the very beginning stood up and said, which was already back in August, stood up and said, hey, just a second, this is our decision to make. We’re not going to let lawyers tell us whether we’re going to put this piece on the earth or not. We’re satisfied that we’ve got a good, strong report here and we understand what your concerns are. But, you know, this report has to go on the air. It’s groundbreaking stuff. I don’t believe they ever did. I think if they had made a stand back there with the the power that they have and the reputation that they have, they could have prevailed and this whole drama needn’t have occurred.
Speaker Did you ever talk to either of them about that? On a couple of occasions.
Speaker I talked to Mike, and you had dinner one night, have dinner with him one night in New York. On another occasion, we talked in Washington about it a bit in this period, December, January, which I basically said to Mike, hey, look, this is really your reputation at stake. Why don’t you stand up and say, I’m Mike Wallace. I’ve got a reputation. Either this piece goes on the air or I’m walking so close that and I think at a certain point, Mike liked the idea.
Speaker Finally, he didn’t do it.
Speaker You know what? I think he simply decided that that wasn’t the way for Mike Wallace to act. So Mike Wallace didn’t act that way. I was playing being Mike Wallace and I thought, hey, this is the way you ought to do it.
Speaker Yeah. Had you ever what do you think?
Speaker Did you ever talk to Dan about or do you ever do you ever discuss it with him? There’s a great story. Yeah, no.
Speaker Had there ever been an instant before where Don and Mike have acted the way they reacted this time on the cigarette story?
Speaker If there had been a time in 60 minutes that you know of where Mike and or Don didn’t back their producers and the right of 60 Minutes to report what they wanted to.
Speaker No, I’ve never known of any such case, I think generally they they have, I think, Mike.
Speaker And in general, who stood behind the producers and stood behind the reports, even with a dealt with very sensitive subjects, I had dealt with reports critical of Israel when Larry Tisch was chairman of the board of CBS, very Tisch was a major Zionist leader in the United States. And we did some extremely critical reports of Israel, reports that. Mike, and even more so, Don knew they were going to take a lot of flak over and they went ahead and put them on the air in the instance of the tobacco.
Speaker Do you think Bill Burton became the fall guy?
Speaker For what?
Speaker I don’t know, it seems that his reputation was at stake. I’m referring to the Charlie Rose Show, I’m referring to a fax that Morley Safer sent out to all the staff at 60 Minutes, which basically said.
Speaker I don’t believe the report, I don’t believe overtly.
Speaker Well, I guess it’s the problem there. You’re coming back to the question of who’s really doing the reporting on 60 Minutes and you can’t have it both ways. And 60 Minutes likes to make it look like it’s the correspondent doing the report, but in fact, it’s the producers. So if you know what’s going on and you criticize a report, almost always, you’ve got to criticize the producer because he’s the one who’s really done the reporting.
Speaker This is sort of unprecedented kind of criticism of a former correspondent or a producer.
Speaker Obviously, something like that. I don’t think it had ever happened before. And it was very bitter. It got into tremendous bitterness between Mike and Molly. And I think it probably went beyond just the tobacco story. Mike and Molly’s feelings about each other go back over the years that they were enemies and they became friends again. And so there’s always been a certain resentment and rivalry and that may have played into it as well.
Speaker I mean, I think that Lowell Bergman quit as a result of what went on. I mean, from his point of view, it’s bad enough being out there and hard enough to do the report.
Speaker But if you have to start looking over your shoulder in the back to see who’s stabbing you, absolutely.
Speaker That’s untenable. Absolutely.
Speaker Were you aware of this? And we aware of the position that law was put in? Yeah.
Speaker So that’s why I asked you, the global locals, for a fall guy. That was the source of my question, in a way.
Speaker Yeah, I have to I’m really not familiar enough with I’d have to go back over that history to see to what extent, Mike, that stood up for law and said, no, I backed this kid 100 percent. I think he did. After a while, he wrote that letter and I think he did on the Charlie Rose Show. If that’s the case and it’s hard to make light of the fall guy. On the other hand, according to law, at one point he was ready to fire him and then a few weeks later was slapping him on the back after putting his piece on the air. And so Don, I think, is much more mercurial as far as supporting people who work for him and then Mike.
Speaker I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Scanlon was a friend of Don Ewart’s and that Scanlon, John Scanlon, I know there you’re going beyond my knowledge, but he’s a public relations man who was trying to I don’t know about all that.
Speaker And but again. All right.
Speaker Do you think that Don could have done anything differently?
Speaker Yeah, well, it seems to me that I think both Don and Mike and I say this, not having us all about it, not knowing the details. But it seems to me of early on in August when it became evident there was a problem, I happened to be in New York at that time and it became evident that the problem was CBS was afraid of getting involved in a major libel or some kind of legal action because Westinghouse was about to take them over. That would have knocked the deal apart.
Speaker They knew that back in August, they knew that was a consideration. If at that time, Don and Mike had stood up and said, hey, just a second, we’re in the news business. This is a great story. This is great reporting that’s going on the air. We’re going to know the reason why. And I don’t think the president of CBS News and the people of BlackRock would have tried to do what they did. And I think at any point along the way, if Mike Wallace stood up and said, hey, this see goes on here or I’m going to work for somebody else, it would have gone on the air.
Speaker Thanks. Well, we did it again this better the second time told I’ve told Mike that good luck in your history as a producer for 25 years at 60 Minutes.
Speaker Was there ever a story that was too controversial for you to do?
Speaker The only stories that were too controversial were stories dealing with Israel after we had kind of become known as doing Hard-Hitting reports on Israel.
Speaker Don simply told me that Mike and I could not go to Israel to do stories. On the other hand, they did let other producers go to Israel to do tough stories on Israel, right.
Speaker I mean, it’s been said to me, I think I think more it’s a question about stories not too controversial, but stories that don’t just doesn’t care about. I mean, Third World stories, important stories out there that 60 Minutes, Christiane, just did.
Speaker When? This weekend. Yeah, on in Africa. Nigeria. Yeah. But young girls being held slaves and held slavery in slavery. So I suppose, again, this is her doing that.
Speaker She’s she’s wanted to do that story and they did it. But I think 60 Minutes still, although it has a lack of interest in what’s going on in the rest of the world, its interest is still much stronger than that of any other American magazine show.
Speaker So absolutely. The fact that that 60 Minutes has foreign offices. Yeah, well, the Foreign Office is really don’t count anymore.
Speaker I mean, it’s just as easy to do a report out of New York on Africa as it is to do out of London, out of Africa, on Africa. Being based in London or Paris doesn’t make a bit of difference. You can do just as well being in New York or San Francisco or wherever, although it seems that a lot of the foreign stories come out of the London office just because that’s been kind of their purview.
Speaker But if London were to be shut down tomorrow, you’d do the same stories out of New York. In fact, I mean, there’s was hardly anything being done out of Asia.
Speaker Why not?
Speaker I mean, it’s got nothing to do with people being placed in London or Paris or wherever. Why is. I think there’s just a general lack of interest.
Speaker It’s been said when an issue is not black and white.
Speaker 60 Minutes 10, we, meaning television, tends to force it into a black and white mold to make it good TV.
Speaker Absolutely. We’ll talk a little bit about that. I think if something is not clear cut, we don’t know who the bad guys are. And the good guys are on television and weekly magazine shows can’t handle it in 10 or 11 minutes if you can’t let the viewer know who is going to be rooting for, forget it. And there used to be a sign on my wall in my office which said that the deeper you dig and his story collapses, which means the deeper you dig, the more gray a story becomes, the more you begin to understand that the other guy may not really be that bad. And that is the case, so everything has to be very clear cut and we often make it more clear cut.
Speaker Actually, it’s.
Speaker We bumped into the coffeepots. Are you worried or tighten the last thing?
Speaker Well, let’s just pick up the end of it, you you were saying you’re sort of repeating the premise that when an issue is not black and white, we tend to yeah.
Speaker If an issue is not black and white, we tend not to do it. There’s no story.
Speaker OK.
Speaker Yeah, ten minutes. It sort of don’t bother me with the details.
Speaker What do you think? I mean, you mention it was the ratings, but do you think there’s a cap? Oh.
Speaker What is Dan’s trick for surviving all this? Do you have I mean, some people think he’s an E promoter. Some people, you know, he talks in soundbites. I mean, he’s Mr. Television. Do you have any particular take on his ability to check for surviving so long and a very material industry?
Speaker Well, I think he survived so long because he’s kept 60 Minutes up there. 60 Minutes is still a ratings leader. It still brings in a tremendous amount of money for CBS, CBS News. And so as long as he wants to be there, why fool with it? You know, there’s nothing. The wheel isn’t squeaking. Why oil? Why fix it? And I think the way that he’s managed to stay up there is probably by giving the amount of independence that he has to the producers on this show and to the correspondents on the show, I’m kind of letting them run on their own, bring him a final report which he can edit, rework, play out, but in essence, by giving a tremendous amount of independence and money to his staff and hiring good people to him. But the other question is, why hasn’t Don wanted to go anywhere else? I mean, normally someone else who’s he’s there because he’s decided to stay there. Normally, somebody else who’s ambitious and wanted to, you know, would have tried to become something else, take over a network, be president of CBS, the chairman of the board, or something like that, which has happened with a lot of other people that has been content to stay where he is to, which is another reason that he’s still there.
Speaker It’s true. It’s absolutely true. What do you think might happen to 60 Minutes if, God forbid, anything happens to Dan you?
Speaker It depends on who they make who takes over. Do you think there will be someone?
Speaker Oh, sure. There are lots of talented people on television.
Speaker It’s been talked about, it’s the only place that has sort of franchised the name 60 Minutes. Do you have any particular take on that or. Do you think, Don, is more in the tradition of Murdoch, Maxwell or Edward R. Murrow?
Speaker I’ve kind of none of the above, I mean, Edward R. Murrow was a person who went out and did a lot of reporting on his own.
Speaker Don has not I don’t think ever Robert Maxwell is just basically a talented promoter.
Speaker And Murdoch, you know, a good businessman and promoter also, Don, is none of those things. I mean, he’s a person who knows a good idea. Generally, when he hears it, when he sees it, lets people gives them the independence to be creative and do stuff and more times than not has good ideas when he sees the finished product in the editing room. You know, sometimes his ideas are off the wall, but I think more often than not, he makes the piece better. By dealing with the.
Speaker We talked a little bit about the fact that do some people think that what we see every night on every Sunday night on 60 Minutes in America is really the vision of ultimately one man, despite the fact that it’s been a collaboration of a lot of other people’s ideas? What what we see there is is Don’s Don’s view. Do you think that’s true?
Speaker No, I know what you see there is the view of a lot of people, producers and correspondents, associate producers who are interested in the world around them and go out and bring back interesting ideas.
Speaker In fact, I don’t believe that even there’s a lineup now for the show each week. Uh, he does with merit.
Speaker Yeah. But I think it’s basically merit. And in the summertime, it’s hurt.
Speaker I think it’s I think he’s just he he gives people a certain he gets creative people the chance to be creative.
Speaker Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker No, I agree. I’m just trying to figure out if there’s something that one wants to say. There’s a short point to me. I’m not asking the right the right question of you. Maybe I should ask.
Speaker Actually, there is something that we talked about at lunch, back to the incertain, jumping around a little bit now, I’m just trying to catch up with with little getting tired. Go ahead. Okay.
Speaker We talked about the Jeffrey Weigand story, part of it the issue was the fact that he had a confidentiality agreement with BMW. Do you have a confidentiality? Did you have a confidentiality with CBS?
Speaker Yes, yeah. Probably very similar to the one that Reagan had with his employers. And I think probably somebody, the one that most major corporations have with their employees.
Speaker Did you ever run up against a situation in which a confidentiality agreement came into play?
Speaker I ran smack up against it a few years back when I wanted to write a book about 60 Minutes and was offered a contract for a hundred thousand dollars to sign by a publisher and was told by CBS News, the president of CBS. I was told by the vice president of CBS News that I could not sign that contract. They didn’t want me writing about 60 Minutes. I didn’t have the time to spare to do it. And Hewitt and Wallace were totally supportive of that view and the words they didn’t want to read in that book.
Speaker So there’s really nothing unusual about a confidentiality agreement as far as I know.
Speaker No, I don’t think there is. And the funny thing was that the person, the agent who approached me about writing that book was Mike Wallace, his agent, and he’d gotten my phone number from Mike.
Speaker Have you ever seen in your years as a producer at 60 Minutes, run up against a story in which the prime subject similar to Jeffrey Wigand had a confidentiality agreement, and yet you went ahead with the story?
Speaker I’ve never run up against that. Just wondering, had you ever heard of this?
Speaker But since that I mean, I’ve run up.
Speaker There was another story that I wanted to do, actually, was in the area of cigarettes as well. And one of the key people that I needed to interview for that had a confidentiality agreement with his employer and was afraid of talking because he was afraid that he would be pursued by the cigarette companies just as it was. And what happened? He didn’t do the interview.
Speaker Did you have any difficulty in making the cigarette story that you did that follow the wagon? I never did it. You never did.
Speaker Oh, excuse me. What are you talking about? Two different stories. Go ahead. You want to stay the course?
Speaker Did you ever hit you did a cigarette the tobacco industry on smoking after the weekend incident, I believe. Right. Did you have any problem making that story?
Speaker No. But then we never had anybody from the tobacco companies themselves talking about this particular story that we attempted to get several people, many people in journalism to.
Speaker They feel that one of the issues facing reporters as we approach the 21st century and as the world has become this kind of global conglomerate, that it’s going to be more and more difficult to tackle stories about big business when the place you work is owned by one of those big businesses. Have you ever had that? And what do you think about that as an issue?
Speaker No, I never I’ve never had that.
Speaker In fact, the only time that I did a report really like that on press junkets where we accused CBS themselves of of corrupting essentially reporters, we put that on the air. We accused our own boss of doing it.
Speaker But I don’t know, today things have changed and that may well be true.
Speaker Hmm.
Speaker 25Th anniversary party.
Speaker 60 Minutes been on the air for 20, 25 years. It’s a big event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker What happened? Larry Tisch had, I think, spent a million dollars to throw a party celebrating. Twenty five years of 60 Minutes. And my wife and I flew over to go to this party, which is a grand affair at the and we were both shocked.
Speaker I think my wife was more shocked that I was about the fact that the producers were hardly mentioned in the entire evening. It was basically to celebrate. You have to glorify the correspondence and Don, I think the only. I think the only correspondent who even mentioned the producer was Lesley Stahl. When she went and made a speech, but the producers were asked to stand up during that evening, the producers were asked to stand up along with the editors and everyone else on that show. And so one hundred people stood up and then sat down. And the tragedy is that those were really the people that made the show. But that also didn’t play into the public image of 60 Minutes.
Speaker Some people say that we don’t like to see what’s in the sausage. We don’t like to see the sausage factory. Is that what goes into making the sausage?
Speaker That it actually that’s because it’s kind of ugly, the sausage factory.
Speaker But in this case, the the the process of producing a show of reporting turning it up is actually fascinating. And I see no reason to hide it except for the apparently the public relations value of glorifying the correspondents.
Speaker Hmm.
Speaker I had a very hard time getting into one of these, so to speak, screening’s, you know, sort of the screening that why did I have so much trouble? I mean, I did finally. But why do you think everyone was so reluctant to let me into a screening when, in fact, everyone says I’m very proud of the screening process or Don says we’re very proud of it?
Speaker Well, I think because of screening process is a very can be a very difficult process, particularly for the producer, because his ego is out there on the line.
Speaker You brought in something you’ve worked two months on and it can either be tremendously praised when the pieces when the lights come on and the piece has been seen or can be ripped apart. So I would think to have your camera going at that particular time would make it very tough to have a frank screening process with. Don wants to take the producer apart or take the piece apart, frankly, is going to be unable to do it with your camera watching it once the ego is out there and bleeding. So you don’t want that in public.
Speaker And yet one of the the the sort of interesting things about the office at 60 Minutes is this constant dialogue that’s going on. I mean, the fact that people are screaming and yelling and arguing and debating, and that seems to be where do you see this constant dialogue? Well, I get a sense of it. I get a sense of a dialogue.
Speaker I followed a story and the the people would disagree.
Speaker People would have their opinions, but then would go on, you know, and this story kept in getting revised or revised, revised. But it seemed to be a very sort of healthy, um, uh, dialogue part of the process. So I think that’s actually quite there often is often can be screaming and yelling back and forth.
Speaker But then quite often what happens is that basically in a screening, Don then says what he has to say about a piece, and that is usually accepted by just about everybody. There are very few people stand up to God in the screening. On the other hand, it’s strange because Don is unwilling to stand up to the correspondents that I think in the screening process, the the correspondents have so much faith in Hewitt and his ability to take apart a piece and to see what’s good that they’re reluctant to do, stand up also in the screening room.
Speaker But Don, can’t is not totally inflexible, is he?
Speaker I mean, he can be in the screening room normally.
Speaker His reaction to if you think he’s inflexibly comes across very adamant to scream or yell and, you know, throw his hands around. But in fact, what I found out very later, very late in life, unfortunately, was that if you come back to them one or two days later, very quietly and say, Don, I just a minute, all of a sudden, these positions which is taken, which you think he believes in 100 percent doesn’t, and he’ll back down and he’ll be a pussycat. The only problem is I really learned about that at the end of my career rather than at the beginning.
Speaker 60 Minutes has made everyone very rich.
Speaker It’s made CBS rich, it’s made Don Rich to make the correspondents rich. Has that affected the the program in itself? Have they gotten soft?
Speaker I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Speaker You’d have to see a rundown on what they’ve done. I really don’t know if it has or not.
Speaker Very so that in very Landow, in speaking to said, you know, in the 70s, it’s me, you I’m sorry, a little low. You’re good. I got to get to my mind. When I spoke to Low on San Francisco, Lowell Bergman said in the 70s 60 Minutes was hungry. Yeah. And they would go after a story like nobody’s business in the 80s. They they kind of expanded what they learned and developed and kind of took it easy. And now they’re just kind of riding on it.
Speaker How do you feel about that? I feel there was much less hunger and also the strange kind of attitude about stories, in other words, come February or March, and you get a hype story and they say, but just a minute, we’re full up for the season.
Speaker You mean we’re only interested in a story now for next fall, October, November? How on earth do you start planning stories five or six months? In the future, if you’re trying to be a news show or on top of what’s going on. So that became a very, very serious factor in kind of slowing down the show to the fact that halfway through the year you’re now starting to think of what pieces that are going to go on a year and a half years time on a newsmagazine. Can’t be done.
Speaker I didn’t realize that because I was following the show at the beginning of the season.
Speaker Yeah, well, if you can’t if you if you went back now in February.
Speaker March.
Speaker Your march is starting to sweep for the following season. Most of the people there still do still have the occasional story for this season, but basically for the following season. And if you figure it out, it’s not even for September or October, because then you’re going to be using pieces that have been done in, you know, in August that are really hot. So that may mean that a piece shot in March may not get on the air for seven or eight months. And this is a news magazine. It’s not.
