23
Sep
What Would Hewitt Do?
Why didn’t anyone ask Don Hewitt what he thought?
Of all the unanswered questions raging over the CBS News/Bush National Guard service memo flap, this remains one of the most puzzling. After all, Hewitt is the acknowledged creator of the 60 Minutes “brand” that is now endangered by the controversy.
Moreover, for all his obvious flaws — he’s famously mercurial, abusive, demanding, and profane — Hewitt is a certified broadcasting legend, and his decades of experience might have spared CBS News the painful public embarrassment it now faces.
In other words, if I had been in the room with Jeff Fager — Hewitt’s successor at the helm of 60 Minutes — or program producer Josh Howard, or field producer Mary Mapes, or the now-beleaguered Dan Rather, or senior executive Betsy West, or CBS News head Andrew Heyward (and there was any question or doubt at all about whether or not to move forward with the broadcast) I would have suggested taking advantage of the experience and wisdom of Hewitt.
So why didn’t anyone ask Don Hewitt what he thought?
Puzzled, I decided to put that question to Hewitt myself.
At first the now sidelined 60 Minutes producer was a little difficult to find, which may tell you something in itself. Since I don’t talk to Hewitt often — our few previous telephonic encounters have been fairly one-sided and volcanic — I don’t have his direct extension and called the main CBS switchboard to reach him.
The operator forwarded my call to a general 60 Minutes extension, where a young woman answered and said that Hewitt “wasn’t around much” and didn’t have his own extension any more, but she would take a message and give it to him if she saw him.
Given the nature of my call, I demurred and instead took the unusual step of phoning Hewitt at home. His wife answered and cordially asked why I hadn’t called him at CBS.
“He’s there right now,” she said. I explained what I had been told when I called initially, and she pointedly responded, “That’s not true,” and gave me his direct extension. Before hanging up, she urged me to “tell him what they told you — tell him they said he doesn’t have his own extension anymore.”
More trouble in paradise, obviously, but not a flap I wanted to insert myself into. Instead I simply dialed the extension and, when Hewitt answered, put the question to him: Why didn’t anyone consult with you?
“I don’t know,” Hewitt answered, in his usual forthright manner. “I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing.”
“A lot of guys up here know what I can do,” he continued. “They think they know better than me — now it’s been proven that they don’t!”
The gravity of the situation and its ongoing impact on CBS News, however, seems to have left Hewitt in a less-bombastic mood than is his norm.
I asked if he agreed with 60 Minutes correspondents Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, who have been loudly expressing to other reporters what many others both inside and outside CBS else have been whispering — “This never would have happened on our show [Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes]. The Rather gaffe aired on the Wednesday edition] because we have higher standards.”
In other words, this never would have happened on Hewitt’s watch.
“Morley and Steve are full of shit. Why are they beating up colleagues in public?” Hewitt said. “I told them they should both keep their mouths shut.”
Then, uncharacteristically, Don Hewitt decided to do the same. Sounding strangely subdued, he concluded only that “people here should know better,” and said he wanted to wait for the outcome of the of the independent investigation led by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press head Lou Boccardi before commenting further.
Which begs the question: Why didn’t anyone ask Don Hewitt what he thought?
I would have.
I’ve gotta say I find it intriguing that this story has received so very much focus while all the false reporting that took place during the Clinton administration just seemed to fade away or, at best, was corrected far later and with few repercussions for the journalists that aired them.
In some ways this story reminds me of what happened to the with Andrew Gilligan’s report about the “sexed-up” Iraq dossier at the BBC. The particulars are different, of course, but there’s something about the rapid attack on the story and the campaign against the reporter and network that feels disturbingly familiar. Let’s hope an alleged source doesn’t end up dead in this affair.
September 23rd, 2004 at 9:26 pmI attempted to post a comment but from here it seems not to have been recorded. If it does show up, my apologies for repeating myself.
I’m not familiar with Don Hewitt but I sure do have questions about why this story seems not to have been vetted properly; also about why it was so important to run with it that, according to reports, a story on the forged Niger documents was bumped to make room. Of course, I’m also wondering why the Bush documents story was challenged so quickly and why there is now an email campaign calling for Rather’s ouster, when the false reports that hounded the Clintons throughout the 90s mostly faded away without repercussions for the journalists who aired them. Indeed, the current affair reminds me a bit of the campaign to take down Andrew Gilligan and others at the BBC over the report of the “sexed-up” Iraq weapons dossier that led to the death of Dr. David Kelly. There’s some element of “bring the media to heel” in the furor over Rather’s story that feels awfully familiar . . .
All that being said, I really don’t know what to think about any of this. Were the documents a set-up? If so, by whom? Why the shoddy journalism, if that’s what it was that led to airing the story? And if not shoddy journalism, then what? A deliberate decision to air a story based on faulty evidence in advance of airing a story on the faulty evidence used to justify invading Iraq?
These are only a few of the questions that whirl around in my head, but I do have a couple for you, Rory. Do you think the independent investigation CBS has initiated will uncover the whole story behind the story? And do you think the story will be told or covered up?
September 23rd, 2004 at 9:56 pmRory — Now we have the news that, in light of TANG docs debacle, CBS will not air the much-more-important story on Niger forgeries before election. What do you make of this? For me, the alarm bells have been going off for some time, and now they are deafening.
September 25th, 2004 at 12:26 pm