TV News’ Credibility Up In Smoke
After decades of watching Mike Wallace dish it out, you’d think it might be fun to watch him finally get nailed to the wall. But in the end it was only sad on Sunday night, as a visibly whipped Wallace fronted for a “60 Minutes” piece on the tobacco industry that had been censored by his own network.
The show - which began with Wallace’s emasculated story and concluded with the newsman’s expression of dismay that CBS had “seen fit to give in to perceived threats of legal action against it” - had a somber, end-of-an-era tone.
That era was one in which Americans took it for granted that their free press would fight to the bitter end - from jail or before the Supreme Court if necessary - to tell the truth about those in power.
On Sunday, “60 Minutes,” once the least easily intimidated of all TV news magazines, said it wouldn’t even report for battle. An interview with a former tobacco industry executive had been spiked not because it was erroneous or libelous but because CBS’ lawyers feared a costly lawsuit.
In reality, there was no threat of a lawsuit, and even if there had been, the network still might have prevailed in court.
If CBS’ decision to cut and run were merely an isolated incident, it could be dismissed as a bubble-headed corporate foul-up. But the “60 Minutes” retreat is only the latest and most visible example of a new corporate caution that is roiling broadcast news.
CBS was following a precedent set by ABC. This summer, as it was betrothed to Disney, ABC settled a Philip Morris lawsuit against its TV news magazine “Day One.”
ABC denied it was folding in order to rid its suitor of a costly legal albatross - just as CBS is now saying that its decision to betray “60 Minutes” has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the fact that its sale to Westinghouse comes up before shareholders today.
The timing of ABC’s and CBS’ cave-ins is all, apparently, just an incredible coincidence. We’re also supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that ABC killed another documentary about the tobacco industry, this one commissioned by its news magazine “Turning Point,” shortly after Philip Morris filed its suit against “Day One.”
And CBS says it’s yet another coincidence that its Los Angeles affiliate abruptly yanked an anti-smoking commercial last week just as “60 Minutes” took its fall.
At what point do all these innocent coincidences become a chilling pattern? If this is how cautiously ABC and CBS are behaving before they are swallowed up by Disney and Westinghouse, what will happen to these networks’ news divisions after the sales are completed and they are owned by even larger corporate behemoths?
In the current Columbia Journalism Review, a troubling behind-the-scenes account of ABC’s apology to Philip Morris is followed by an even more alarming article that portrays Disney’s new president, the former agent Michael Ovitz, as a ruthless foe and manipulator of news organizations. Ovitz’s history hardly suggests that he will champion the independence of the news division of Disney-ABC should it come into conflict with his own priorities.
The press isn’t perfect, but if anyone doubts that its freedom is essential to democracy, consider the cowering of ABC and CBS before Big Tobacco.
In 1995, tobacco corporations are by far the biggest contributors to the Republican Party - which is why, for instance, Bob Dole is more likely to attack the cultural industry that poisons children’s minds than take on the tobacco industry that poisons their lungs. If bottomless corporate coffers can both buy off elected officials and scare off news organizations as huge as CBS, who will defend the public interest?