Critics Saddened Cbs Throttles ‘60 Minutes’
The CBS News program “60 Minutes” offered its own explanation Sunday night for why it decided not to broadcast a planned interview with a former tobacco industry executive, saying on the air that because of fears of a lawsuit, “CBS management told us we couldn’t do that.”
Instead, the program reported on the lengths the tobacco industry has gone to muzzle its critics.
In so doing, in the eyes of some journalism analysts, the program risked its 27-year reputation for taking on any subject, no matter how large or powerful.
“The conflict of interest between business and journalism was naked on the stage,” said Joan Konner, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. “I felt very bad for the ‘60 Minutes’ crew because they’re great journalists, but they were embarrassed, and it showed.”
“I think what happened here is proof of the primacy of lawyers over editors,” said Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center on Press and Public Policy at Harvard University. “It is sad that ‘60 Minutes,’ which has always been freewheeling in its approach and has always produced solid journalism, should be in this position.”
The original report was to have contained an interview with a former executive of a tobacco company. The man was to have been identified and interviewed on camera.
But CBS management reportedly feared, in part, that they might be held legally responsible for inducing the executive into breaking an agreement he had made with the company, upon his departure, not to disclose internal company matters. Other CBS employees have identified the company as Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.
Sunday night’s report contained a brief comment from the executive off-camera and with his voice disguised. A spokesman for Brown & Williamson has said the company has not threatened a lawsuit and has not contacted CBS about the report.
Richard Campbell, a former professor of journalism for the University of Michigan and author of a book on “60 Minutes,” said Sunday night’s report contained some of the familiar strengths of “60 Minutes,” mainly its ability to shed a bright light on issues that the public may have been only glancingly aware of.
“But I think the end result was pretty weak-kneed,” Campbell said. He said he was especially struck by the program’s failure to say that the management decision came as CBS stockholders were considering a merger with Westinghouse Electric Co.
Noting that “60 Minutes” has a spotless legal record despite all those years of investigative reporting, Campbell said, “It just strikes me as fishy that the management would not go to the wall for an institution with that kind of track record.”
He added, “We’ve come to depend on ‘60 Minutes’ for upholding the tradition of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, and they didn’t do that tonight.”
Mike Wallace, the correspondent who reported the story Sunday night, said in a closing “personal note” that the program’s staff had been “dismayed that the management of CBS had seen fit to give into perceived threats of legal action.” He noted that the program had broadcast many such investigative reports in the past “and we want to be able to continue.”
He added, “We lost out - only to some degree - on this one, but we haven’t the slightest doubt that we’ll be able to continue the ‘60 Minutes’ tradition of reporting such pieces in the future, without fear or favor.”
Campbell said when he heard those remarks, “I was yelling at the TV: ‘Unless it involves the tobacco industry.’ “