“60 MINUTES”….YOUR TIME IS UP
For 50 years, CBS “60 Minutes” was my Sunday school. From the mid-1970s, up until just a few years ago, the familiar sound of a ticking stopwatch marked the end of one week–and the start of another. Program hosts — Reasoner, Bradley, Wallace, Safer, Rather and those who later filled investigative journalist duties that couldn’t possibly be equalled — were invited weekly into my living room, becoming de facto members of the family. While others attended church on Sundays, my religion was NFL football in the daytime and the legendary television news magazine in the evening then at the pinnacle of its popularity.
Sadly, my reverence has degraded into revulsion. Everything changed when “60 Minutes” abandoned the most fundamental principle of ethics in journalism, which is just “tell the truth.” When they deliberately surrendered the mantle that made them both so trustworthy and so successful as an American institution, they became just another profit-driven entertainment commodity. The cracks began years earlier when corporate executives at CBS refused to air a segment on the clear dangers of cigarette smoking (how scandalous!). Then the fissure occurred when “60 Minutes” parent-company agreed to pay a ransom of $16 million in a legal settlement (translation: payoff) directly to Trump, for editing a routine interview of his political opponent during the 2024 presidential election.
Let’s be clear. Editing lengthy interviews with public officials into a much shorter more perspicuous programming for television isn’t just standard operating procedure. It’s essential–even mandatory. That was true for the much-ado-about nothing interview that cost the network $16 million in a frivolous lawsuit. And, it was certainly true this past weekend, when “60 Minutes” edited a 42-minute sit-down interview into a 12-minute segment. So, THIRTY MINUTES was cut from the original interview seen by approximately 20 million viewers, and later many millions more in abbreviated showings on other news networks. The public saw only a heavily-edited, cleaned-up, well-polished version of a presidential interview that didn’t capture any of the rambling and erratic thought process of someone who resembles a grease fire every time he opens his mouth.
The Trump interview footage that hit CBS’s cutting-room floor (meaning it didn’t air on the original “60 Minutes” and was only shown days later on a little-watched online platform) is a textbook case of mental illness. Many families have a crazy uncle at holiday feasts. Well, this was “crazy uncle” goes off on everyone, everything, everybody–pivoting from one obsessive grievance to another, often within the same sentence. Reports are that he’s much worse in private when the cameras are not around. As hard as it is to believe, we saw just the BEST of Trump on Sunday night. Shivers! That’s scary.
Of course, I have no problem with the network editing a political interview for reasons I’ve already stated. But I do have a huge problem with this network and news organization which is entrusted with a public responsibility — repeatedly and demonstrably — abdicating that responsibility in deference to Trump in one instance, and then protecting him in a second instance by not showing the real mess of a fragile man who’s in charge of the country and makes decisions about life and death. News coverage and company policy should at least be consistent. It’s not.
The final twist of the latest slide into state-run media was “60 Minutes” getting hammered by the delusional creep during the interview when he attacked the interviewer with personal insults, simply for asking a question about the (alleged assassin’s) motive. Hence, even with a defanged news organization that’s cleaned up his dirty laundry in the past, he’s never satisfied. Lunatics think like that. With narcissists, it’s always about them.
If anyone expects this problem to diminish or go away anytime soon, think again. We’ve got at least two-and-half more years (30 more months) of this delirious madness–that is, if we make it. Trump’s volcanic insecurities and raging paranoia has already consumed him, and rotted the minds of all those insulated sycophants inside his increasingly-isolated bunker. Now, the biggest news organizations are complicit, as well. And this fact should scare the hell out of everybody.
Once trust is gone, it’s usually gone forever. That’s true for people. That’s true for Presidents. And that’s true for the media. This was the final countdown. “60 Minutes” time is up.
