'60 Minutes' Executive Producer Jeff Fager Responds To Criticism Of Golf Stories

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: CBS News Issues

(AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Writing on the Huffington Post, law student Ankush Khardori offers a criticism of the number stories about golfers on "60 Minutes" this season. (There have been three – on Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie and John Daly.) "Now, individually, all of these pieces may have been justifiable by their potential news value, but CBS happens to have a unique interest in seeing these athletes get prime publicity -- the network is one of several that airs PGA events. That fact renders the relatively high number of golfer profiles in recent weeks somewhat suspect, particularly since 60 Minutes is supposed to be a news show, and although they run fluffy, largely news-less profiles all the time, obliquely promoting sports events on their own network should still be beneath them."

Khardori concludes:

Amidst these lingering questions, it's hard not to recall that, last October, then-President of CBS News Andrew Heyward was replaced by Sean McManus, who had been the head of CBS Sports since 1996. McManus, however, in a somewhat strange move, was to keep his job at the helm of CBS Sports while also running CBS News. Is it possible that the two divisions have become linked in a much more significant, tangible way? Surely there's a line between legitimate cross-promotion and a more peculiar and distasteful form of news-as-sportscast. Has it been crossed by one of the most venerable news shows to have ever existed?

I asked "60 Minutes" executive producer Jeff Fager to respond. He first addressed the claim that "60 Minutes" had done too many stories about golfers this season.

"The criticism is correct," he said. "We shouldn't have done three golfers this year. It's unfortunate it worked out that way. We were committed to one, and then another came up that became irresistible, and then Tiger Woods became a possibility." He noted that the show had been trying to get the Woods story "for 10 years."

He also said, however, that McManus' arrival at the news division had nothing to do with this season's focus on golfers. "To suggest this has something to do with Sean McManus coming from sports is absurd," said Fager. "He's hoping for us to do good, interesting stories. He's focused on news. He's not pushing sports on us."

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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by geoffrey1986 May 17, 2006 1:55 PM EDT: Aside from McManus being in charge of both news and sports, the reason 60 Minutes continues to do these sports profiles is that they want the golf audience to stick around. I am interested to know if all three of these profiles came on a Sunday when CBS was covering golf events. I'm betting that the answer is yes. Same thing happens during football season: 60 Minutes does profiles of football players. You don't often see anything about baseball on 60 Minutes unless it's related to steroids, and that's hardly a glowing profile. It's smart to try to get your audience to stick around but it's not a good idea to use 60 Minutes as a marketing tool for CBS Sports. Nor is it a good idea for Public Eye to be a marketing tool for CBS News.; Reply to this comment


by pherford May 16, 2006 10:00 PM EDT: The strength of 60 MINUTES is that it has the power and integrity to say no. Just because Mssrs Woods, Daly, and Ms Wie became available the same year does not mean Mr. ***** had to choose to do stories on them. Ms Wie had been done. As others have pointed out she has done nothing notable to deserve a revisit. If a spike in ratings was not the motivation for choosing these profiles then Mr. Daly could easily have held or gone to someone else. There are infinitely more interesting and important people in this world who likely would only sit for 60 MINUTES. Hard as it is to say no, that was the hallmark of 60 MINUTES.; Reply to this comment