All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Before they made news, Mike Wallace and Dr. Jack Kevorkian made waves.

The image of the “60 Minutes” correspondent and “Dr. Death” embracing upon Kevorkian’s release from prison Friday was beamed up on the web within minutes of its occurrence and spread like wildfire, immediately raising questions about credibility and objectivity – including inside this writer’s head.

After all, isn’t this the “cozying up” problem that pops up in concerns about embedded reporters and the White House Correspondents Dinner? Particularly in light of Mike Wallace’s favorable quote about Kevorkian in a USA Today interview last year:

”He's a decent and compassionate man who tried to help people get out of the suffering of their lives," says Wallace, whose interview showed Kevorkian ending a patient's life. That piece was used as evidence that sent Kevorkian to jail. Prison officials have refused to allow Wallace to see Kevorkian; Wallace says Kevorkian's incarceration amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment."

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It would have been a surprise if last night's "60 Minutes" profile of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his family hadn't generated some criticism directed towards CBS News. But I must admit I did not anticipate the outrage in some quarters that greeted interviewer Mike Wallace's decision to question Romney about whether he'd had pre-marital sex. We are living in a post-Starr Report era, after all.

And yet:

"Must everything be about sex – or at least have a sexual component – these days?" asked Carol Platt Liebau at the conservative Townhall.com. "Remarkably, in the course of an interview for '60 Minutes,' Mike Wallace actually had the nerve to ask presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney whether he and his wife had engaged in premarital sex."

The American Daily, also conservative, called the question "so utterly rude it isn’t even funny."

Romney, of course, is a Mormon, a religion with strict rules against pre-marital sex. I can understand the objections to Wallace's question to some degree – one's sex life shouldn't automatically become fair play just because one is running for president.

At the same time, there was a journalistic justification for asking the question: Romney's answer, in theory anyway, could go to how serious of a Mormon he really is. And Romney's Mormonism is an issue for many voters.

In the interest of fairness, here's the counter-argument from Liebau: "It’s ludicrous to assert that Mormonism’s strict prohibition on premarital sex brought the question 'in bounds,' given that Romney is the first Mormon to run for President. The Catholic Church likewise frowns on premarital sex. Is anyone planning to ask the Giulianis the same question? Of course not."

(Incidentally, Romney's response to Wallace's query was this: "No, I'm sorry. We don’t get into those things. The answer is no.")

While we're on the topic of objections to the interview, let's go to Dean Barnett, another conservative, who objected to Wallace talking to Romney's sons about their decision not to enter the military. He writes:

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Interviews with controversial figures often, and inevitably, become those that are the most-watched and the most talked about. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become far more amenable to interviews with Western journalists than ever, those interviews are generating substantial reaction from audiences.

NBC “Nightly News” Anchor Brian Williams’ interview with Ahmadinejad this week is generating much of the similarly impassioned reaction from viewers as CBS received following Mike Wallace’s interview with the Iranian leader. On Wednesday evening, Williams read a few such e-mails, many of which expressed disappointment that the interview was conducted at all. For example, Williams read this e-mail, from a viewer in Flushing, N.Y.:

"I was very disappointed that NBC's Brian Williams gave a forum to Iranian President Ahmadinejad. He treated him as he would any rational leader from any other country, while the truth is he is not rational at all. I think President Bush was right not to meet with him, and I think Brian Williams did a disservice by interviewing him."

That sentiment was similar to many of the e-mails we received from viewers regarding Wallace’s interview, and we later discussed the issue with Bob Anderson, who produced the story (you can read that story here.) “Whenever you interview someone who's controversial, there are always those who think he shouldn't be interviewed,” Anderson told us at the time.

Interviewing Ahmadinejad, says Anderson, is “not an endorsement of his policies,” he said, adding that “the tenor of Mike's questions probably indicated as much.”

“It’s an opportunity for the American people to hear his view of the world,” said Anderson. “And the audience can take its own measure” of the Iranian president.

In light of that, it seemed worth noting Williams’ response to viewers with a negative impression of the interview, which he conveyed on the “Nightly News’” blog:

If you watched last night's broadcast, you saw and heard a small selection of the e-mails we've been getting -- most having to do with our interview of the President of Iran. A staggering number of e-mails are harshly negative, and the writers vehemently argue that we should not have interviewed Ahmadinejad and should not air his comments on NBC...

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As the president of one of the countries that President Bush has identified as part of the axis of evil, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a world leader who garners a lot of attention and one who rarely gives interviews to Western media. He did grant an interview to Mike Wallace, which aired on “60 Minutes” Sunday, and again last night, uncut, on C-SPAN. (You can also watch the full interview here.) According to producer Bob Anderson, who produced the story for "60 Minutes," CBS News had been chasing an interview with the Iranian president for some time. It was CBS's “fixer,” or liason, in Tehran, Sia Zand, who had been in touch with the Ahmadinejad administration with an ongoing request to interview the president. In July, the press office called and said the president would be interested in granting Wallace an interview. Although Anderson isn’t entirely sure why Wallace got the interview, his best guess is that “we were probably helped by Mike’s stature in Iran,” given that Wallace had interviewed the Shah, the Ayatollah Khomeini and former President Hashemi Rafsanjani in the past.

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On Sunday, "60 Minutes" aired a special on the career of Mike Wallace, who is going into semi-retirement after 38 years with the show. As the retrospective illustrated, Wallace has a reputation as a tough, sometimes even "mean" interviewer, as Lesley Stahl put it. "Let's ask the questions that might be on the minds of the people looking in," Wallace said of his interview strategy. But there was at least one question on my mind that went unanswered during the special: If Wallace was known to be tough, how did he get people to keep talking to him? I asked him today.

When people think about going on "60 Minutes," Wallace said, "they know they're going to be treated fairly…if they have an idea they want to get across, or a favorite cause they want to get exposure for, they figure it's worth the price. And besides, they think, 'I can handle it.'"

I asked Wallace who in the journalism world has interview skills that he admires. "[Ted] Koppel used to do it well," he said. "To a certain degree, [Bill] Moyers does it. Anderson Cooper does it some degree. It doesn't cause as much stir as it used to. The audience is used to more candid talk because of what we've done down the years."

Wallace said the expanded media universe has changed the rules for getting interviews, but he said the "60 Minutes" name still carries weight. "There used to be three networks and PBS. Now there are 300 places to go if you want to be interviewed. But if you want the prestige of and credibility of something like "60 Minutes," there's nothing quite like it."

Still, if someone wants to follow in his footsteps, he doesn't advise starting out in his favored medium.

"Try radio," he said. "It's easier to be tough on the radio. And that's where you begin to understand what works and what doesn't work, and how you can persuade people."

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Jacques Steinberg reports on The New York Times Web site that “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace will retire when the show wraps up its current season this spring. Wallace has been with "60 Minutes" since its premier in 1968 and first joined CBS in 1951. From The Times:

After serving as a correspondent on "60 Minutes" since its inception in September 1968, Mr. Wallace said today that he had decided to retire this spring, at the end of the current television season. He said that the move had come at his initiative, and that "CBS is not pushing me."

"As I approach my 88th birthday, it's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be," said Mr. Wallace, whose birthday is May 9. "The prospect of long flights to wherever in search of whatever are not quite as appealing."

Update: CBS News comments on Wallace

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