By Menachem Wecker
“The good news is we’re not the cops,” said Steve Kroft, a 60 Minutes correspondent, to a man he had just caught on camera illegally tampering with odometers. “The bad news is we’re 60 Minutes.”
The quote was one of several sound bites in a short biographical video that aired at the beginning of the Kalb Report’s Nov. 17 program “What Makes 60 Minutes Tick?” at the National Press Club.
Throughout the program, Marvin Kalb, James Clark Welling Presidential Fellow at GW who worked as a reporter at CBS for more than two decades, questioned panelists Jeff Fager, executive producer of 60 Minutes, and Lesley Stahl, a 60 Minutes correspondent, about their show, its budget, highlights and low points. The Emmy Award-winning program, which first aired in 1968, holds the record for the longest running TV series.
“60 Minutes is the gold standard of broadcast journalism, and on this forum we found out why,” said Michael Freedman, executive director of the GW Global Media Institute, executive producer of the Kalb Report and professor of media and public affairs.
“We don’t have a lot to look up to today when it comes to substantive, thoughtful and hard-hitting pieces on television,” he said. “Yet, week after week, 60 Minutes seems to break new ground.”
Like a 60 Minutes program, the conversation oscillated between formal and casual, comic and severe.
Mr. Fager shared with the audience his favorite quote from comedian Jon Stewart’s appearances to Mr. Kroft about 60 Minutes’ slogan. When Mr. Kroft stated he was fairly sure the show had no slogan, Mr. Stewart corrected him: “May cause drowsiness.”
But when Mr. Kalb pressed Mr. Fager on the operating budget of his program, Mr. Fager, who came to CBS in 1982 and joined 60 Minutes in 2004, would only commit to it being “a high number.” Mr. Fager said he did not know CBS News’ total budget, and though he knew the number for 60 Minutes he would not reveal it.
“It’s privileged information. I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he said, adding that “the number is more significant than I think people would imagine.”
Ms. Stahl, who joined CBS’ Washington bureau in 1972 as a colleague of Mr. Kalb’s and has worked at 60 Minutes since 1991, said has concerns about the future of her program.
“What worries me is as we have this proliferation of news outlets and the ‘niching’ down of the audience into smaller and smaller slices, none of these outfits are going to be able to pay the kind of wage for people to make a living but also to send us around the world.”
“I despair for the future of what I do and journalism in general,” she said.
According to Mr. Fager and Ms. Stahl, 60 Minutes’ high price tag is due in part to its large staff of 200, which includes 70 on- and off-air reporters. Ms. Stahl said each correspondent has a team of four producers, and each producer has a partner and an associate producer. But according to both panelists, the 60 Minutes office environment is anything but a bureaucratic environment.
For one thing, Don Hewitt, who created the show, has said he is proud to have no meetings or memos – reporters must pitch their ideas in person. Unlike her colleagues in the news industry, who often grumble about their assigned stories, Ms. Stahl said 60 Minutes correspondents always get to choose their own ideas, so they end up covering stories they are passionate about.
Even if Mr. Fager initially rejects a story, correspondents can fight for it, though he is “the court of last resort,” Ms. Stahl said. “If he says no three times, you’re dead.”
According to Mr. Fager, 60 Minutes covers about 100 stories a year, Ms. Stahl, Mr. Kroft and correspondent Scott Pelley carry “the lion’s share” – about 60 stories – Mr. Fager said. Longtime reporter Morley Safer and Bob Simon account for 10 stories, and contributors add about five more.
In those 100 stories a year, Mr. Kalb notices a unique style of questioning that seems to be common to all the reporters that combines repetition with strategic pauses. “You listen to the person you’re interviewing,” he told Ms. Stahl. “The person says: ‘Ah it’s going to rain tomorrow.’ Pause. Anchor for 60 Minutes: ‘Rain tomorrow?’ Pause. Waiting for the other person to speak.”
Ms. Stahl joked that if there was a style common to the correspondents, she would change her own style immediately. But Mr. Fager agreed that the style Mr. Kalb had characterized was a technique that Mike Wallace perfected when he was working for the program Night Beat in the 1950s.
A question from Mr. Kalb about 60 Minutes’ policy on lawyers screening stories revealed that about 15 percent of Ms. Stahl’s stories are typically reviewed by CBS legal staff. “We make a decision to do it,” explained Mr. Fager. “It’s not something imposed by the company.”
“These issues aren’t legal as much as they are questions of fairness,” he added. “If you are always thinking about how best to be fair, you are going to be in good shape.”
But though Mr. Fager said 60 Minutes employed a full-time journalist just to screen transcripts to make sure stories were fair, the program has made mistakes. Ms. Stahl admitted she was embarrassed and had to apologize for an interview with a defector who said he had bought trucks to move Saddam Hussein’s weapons around the country to elude inspectors. The defector was found to have overstated his connection to Mr. Hussein. “We bought his line,” Ms. Stahl said, adding that she felt personally responsible for a story that led the country in the wrong direction.
Ms. Stahl also recounted an interview in which Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, turned her “into a bloody pulp.” After pressing Ms. Thatcher several times on how she felt about the United States lying to her, Ms. Thatcher responded, “Well, my dear, why is it that I seem to love your country more than you do?”
Ms. Stahl was also shocked when French President Nicolas Sarkozy stormed off during an interview after she asked him if he was separating from his wife. “I was warned that no French reporter would ask that question, but I’m not a French reporter,” she said. But though she initially worried about the broadcast, Ms. Stahl decided Mr. Sarkozy’s behavior offered her a unique insight into his “volatility and his rudeness.”
Mr. Kalb put Mr. Fager on the hot seat for a story 60 Minutes did not run with a defecting executive from a tobacco company and for its treatment of longtime CBS employee Dan Rather, who appeared on the Kalb Report in 2001, 2005 and 2007.
“I remain puzzled, and part of me offended … by the way in which a corporation treats someone who had been with them for 42 years, who covered wars for them, who put his life on the line time and again, who fearlessly covered all kinds of things,” said Mr. Kalb. “There is one story that went sour. Do you stand with him, do you dump him? CBS dumped him.”
Mr. Kalb’s questions impressed Andrew Kaplan, a writer and editor at the Department of Justice, for their toughness without being overly aggressive.
“It seemed a bit ironic when Jeff Fager dodged a few tough questions – such as the show’s budget or the Dan Rather episode in 2004 – given that he runs a program that has built its reputation going after the unvarnished truth,” said Dr. Kaplan, who recently earned a doctorate in journalism and public communication from the University of Maryland.
“Some of the night was spent celebrating the show’s success,” Dr. Kaplan said. “But that is appropriate. What other news magazine show has been on the air for 41 years that has influenced politics, business and culture in the way 60 Minutes has?”
The Kalb Report series is produced by the GW Global Media Institute, The National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
Comments? Criticism? The conversation continues. We welcome reactions, commentary and story recommendations on our Facebook page.