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"60 Minutes" producer Andy Court has gone from high school journalist to Jerusalem Post reporter to editorial director of The American Lawyer magazine to Emmy-winning producer at Dateline NBC and "60 Minutes." And now, perhaps, his finest moment: Answering a few questions for Public Eye. Below, Andy talks about his job, his kids, and his take on the media bias question.



So, what do you do for a living?

I’ve got a great job. I travel all over the country, all over the world really, talking to people and trying to figure things out. A lot of work goes into making a "60 Minutes story" – reporting, directing, writing – and a producer is involved in all of it.

What is not being covered enough at CBS News?

Generally speaking, we have trouble covering things that are important but not particularly dramatic. Subjects like taxes, pensions, deficits, education, and health insurance don’t get as much attention as they should.

What’s the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on the job?

Once, before I came to "60 Minutes," I was in Sudan after the U.S. had launched cruise missiles against what it said was a chemical weapons factory. All the news reports said one person had been killed. I asked to meet the man’s family and see his grave. “O.K.,” the government representative said. “We’ll take you to the man who died.” I thought it was just an error in his English. But instead of taking me to the grave or the man’s family, sure enough, he took me to a local hospital and introduced me to “the man who died.” The whole world thought he was dead, but here I was talking to him. He was injured, but reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

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Last chance to send in a question for Emmy-winning "60 Minutes" producer Andy Court. Get on it, people! We're still looking for that one question that will make him sweat, so send in your queries or post them in comments ASAP. Only a couple hours left…

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"60 Minutes" producer Andy Court has been practicing journalism since his high school days. His first job was as a newspaper reporter in Concord, New Hampshire, but he soon got restless and headed to Jerusalem, where he ended up covering the first Palestinian uprising for The Jerusalem Post. He eventually became editorial director of The American Lawyer magazine and a producer at Dateline NBC, where he co-produced an Emmy-winning documentary called “Children of the Harvest” that explored the problem of child labor in American agriculture. His recent work at "60 Minutes," where he's been for the past year and a half, includes the first American television interview with Charles Robert Jenkins, the U.S. army deserter who spent nearly 40 years in North Korea. (Here's the backstory on that one.)



Got a question for Andy? You know the drill: Post it in comments, or email it to us. We'll pick the best and see what he has to say.

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Here, readers, is the story behind yesterday's "60 Minutes" piece on Charles Robert Jenkins, an army deserter who was imprisoned in North Korea for nearly 40 years. Most "60 Minutes" stories take days, weeks, or months to put together, but the Jenkins story took years of legwork to complete. It began when one of the primary producers, working for another network, was almost derailed by a hurricane and a typhoon, and looked for a long time like it wasn't going to see the light of day. We thought you would be interested in the backstory.



Producer Andy Court, who co-produced the piece with Jill Landes, began working on it in 2002, when he was a producer at NBC's "Dateline." North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had admitted that his country had engaged in the abductions of ordinary Japanese citizens in order to train North Korean spies, and Court noticed that one of those abductees, Hitomi Soga, had married an American deserter named Charles Robert Jenkins while the two were being held captive in North Korea. For a long time, the army hadn't even known if Jenkins was alive or dead. In 1996, however, he turned up as an actor in a North Korean propaganda film. Court was fascinated by the Jenkins story, and he started thinking about how he might be able to do a piece on him.



Landes, meanwhile, who worked for "60 Minutes II" at the time, began working on the story as well, along with then-"60 Minutes II" producer Peter Klein and associate producer Trisha Sorrells. Both Court and Landes' team separately started talking to Jenkins' family members and the North Korean authorities. They were able to develop a relationship with the families, but the North Koreans stonewalled when approached about the possibility of an interview with Jenkins, their prisoner. "It was one of those stories where I thought, this is never, ever going to happen," says Court.

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