America’s Broken Stopwatch: Time Has Run Out on “60 Minutes”

 

 

AMERICA’S BROKEN STOPWATCH: “60 MINUTES'” TIME IS UP

Dating back as long as I can remember, every Sunday night of my adult life was spent in front of the television watching CBS’ much-acclaimed 60 Minutes. The weekly trifecta of news features was an important part of our lives. Sunday nights spent with Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, and the rest of the journalists dropped the demarcation of a national drawbridge: One week ended and another began. This was especially true before the internet started scrambling our brains and when fewer options existed to stay informed about current events. 60 Minutes was THE SHOW, one reason a news hour was near top of the TV rankings for five decades.

Indeed, CBS News — which launched and then drove the program and provided all the on-air talent — was universally-regarded as the gold standard of broadcast journalism. News wasn’t a profit center. Reporting the news was a civic responsibility. Network headmaster Walter Cronkite was once famously called “the most trusted man in America” for a reason. He told the truth.

Then, the 60 Minutes stopwatch began losing time. The first crack in the glass occurred when executives decided to shelve a controversial segment on the known dangers of cigarette smoking and how the tobacco companies conspired to cover up damaging government reports about the impacts on health of tens of millions of smokers. Recall the movie The Insider, which exposed how CBS scrapped that 60 Minutes feature when company lawyers intervened and dropped the axe. Turned out, corporate profits were more important than truth. [Note 1: It’s hard to believe anyone would think a report exposing the *dangers of smoking* would be financially risky, but that’s what happened.] The segment’s producer Lowell Bergman (played perfectly by Al Pacino) resigned after 22 years with 60 Minutes, moving to PBS’ Frontline where’s he’s worked since then. [Note 2: Irony of all ironies, now the Trump regime and Republicans have slashed funding for PBS, hoping to starve programs like Frontline and gut investigative journalism.]

I continued to watch on Sunday nights, but after The Insider, deep inside ourselves we all knew CBS News and 60 Minutes weren’t quite the same anymore. When I visited the set in New York on W. 57th Street once during an actual taping and met Dan Rather, for me that moment was like a kid stepping into Yankee Stadium for the first time and meeting Joe DiMaggio. I looked around at the pitch-black studio where each host sat calmly on a director’s chair, and upon the hallowed walls were photos of the magic that had some from this same place. So many great television shows and news programs were broadcast from that spot. Yes, it was intimidating. And, inspiring. 60 Minutes wasn’t perfect, but it was.part of our ritual. You go along with it.

That all changed earlier this year. 60 Minutes caved into political pressure. The parent corporation agreed to pay a “settlement,” actually a shakedown, in the amount of $16 million directly to Trump in a frivolous lawsuit the network certainly would have won had it ever gone to court (and it likely wouldn’t have ever seen the light of a courtroom). Executives and lawyers, collared to much bigger financial interests, decided it would be best for their shareholders and their own job security and bank accounts to settle with the intimidator-in-chief who’s going to be in charge of the federal government for the next four years, and control the immense power of licensing, media access, and holds all the trappings of wealth and power. Pay the hostage-taker. Never mind the truth. Journalistic traditions and ethics be damned. Cozying up has become sucking off. After that happened, I asked — how can we trust these people anymore?

We can’t.

Well, enter the Barry Weiss House. Real name: Bari Weiss. She’s the new CBS News headmaster, but in reality she’s Trump’s shill and by her connections to these pillars of power, she’s become one of the most influential movers and shakers in media. The gold standard is now orange-ized.

This past weekend, CBS shelved its lead feature story that –according to inside sources– may have been critical of Trump, the White House, and the regime’s inflammatory deportation policies. I know nothing about the expose, because I haven’t seen it. I wouldn’t have watched it anyway, as 60 Minutes has blown away its credibility with me. Nonetheless, the last-minute decision to KILL a legitimate news story is yet another cliff from which this once-respected network has plunged into the abyss. If 60 Minutes credibility was shot before this latest development, its now riddled full of holes and about as reliable as a propaganda rag. CBS is the new FOX.

This doesn’t make me happy. It makes me sad. In some ways, it even frightens me. When such a wealthy and powerful entity as CBS and its property known as 60 Minutes begin surrendering, what chance do the rest of us have? When a huge corporation entrusted with delivering important news and has been doing so for 70 years begins scrapping countless weeks and perhaps months of investigative journalism so as to not upset the President, we have entered very dangerous times. When the most-watched news television show is afraid to do the right thing, and instead does the wrong thing, we are truly….fucked.

That famous stopwatch sound….tick, tick, tick, tick….is our truth, fading away into the dangerous destiny of a deafening silence.