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Authors: David Blum
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Alaskan land, which ended with Wallace reading a stanza from a Carl Sandburg poem. A piece followed about Moscow at night; then came another Wallace report about a soldier confined to a sweatshop at Camp Pendleton (based on a story previously published in The Nation ), and, finally, a Reasoner story on racial discrimination by labor unions. But this time the show played better with the newspaper boys. âA varied TV magazine, as it were,â the New York Times raved, âwith almost limitless potentialities in electronic journalism.â
Two months later, the Times put a 60 Minutes story on its front page for the first timeâan interview by Mike Wallace with Paul Meadlo, a 22 -year-old Vietnam veteran who said he had been part of the team of soldiers ordered by Lt. William Calley Jr. to kill men, women, and children in a March 1968 attack on the Vietnamese village of Songmy. The scoop resulted from reporting done by freelance journalist Seymour Hersh, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for the storyâand who used 60 Minutes as a way of promoting his account. (The Times story raised a rumor that 60 Minutes had paid for the interview, which Hersh denied.)
Midway through the second season, Wallace made news with an interview with Eldridge Cleaver, at the time a fugitive from justice and, as a leader of the Black Panther Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, one of the most controversial figures in American radical politics. Cleaver had been arrested a year earlier in a police shoot-out at Panther headquarters in Oakland, California, and later charged with assault with intent to kill; he fled the country to avoid a trial. In the winter of 1970 he was living in exile in Algeria when Wallace (who had contacts in the black community from an interview years earlier with Malcolm X) reached him by phone and asked for an interview. After some delicate negotiations (Cleaver first asked for money, then settled for a tape recorder pedal to aid in the transcription of tapes for his forthcoming memoir), Wallace left for Algeria on New Yearâs Day, 1970 .
The interview itself made up only a few minutes of the story about the Panthers, but garnered headlines nevertheless:
Â
W ALLACE : When the American people hear that you want to shoot your way into the United States Senate, take off the head of a senatorâ
C LEAVER : Into the White House and take off the head of Richard Nixon, you see.
W ALLACE : What does that mean? This is rhetoric?
C LEAVER : This is not rhetoric.
Â
After the story aired, Wallace knew exactly what it meant when he saw the headlines in newspapers around the country, and when the Justice Department subpoenaed notes and outtakes from the interview. It meant 60 Minutes had finally arrived.
Chapter 5
Mr. Hewittâs War
In spite of the increasingly positive critical reception, the ratings remained just as bad in the second season. Marcus Welby, M.D. was an instant monster hit for ABC, the number one show on television, whereas 60 Minutes ranked 92 nd out of 103 any prime-time series and stayed alive only because of its low cost to CBS. The fact that it was on just twice a month also meant its ratings didnât drag on the networkâs overall numbers, which were bolstered by top 10 shows like M*A*S*H and All in the Family .
But the showâs future didnât get any brighter when in November 1970 , two months into the showâs third season, Harry Reasoner announced to Hewitt that he was jumping to the fledgling ABC News, where he would finally get to anchor the evening newscast every night of the week. As Reasoner had been fond of saying, Walter Cronkite was showing no inclination toward walking in front of a speeding truck.
Reasoner could have remained with 60 Minutes , of course, but the idea of cohosting a low-rated prime-time show that ran every other week, when it wasnât being preempted, lacked sufficient appeal for a man
Two months later, the Times put a 60 Minutes story on its front page for the first timeâan interview by Mike Wallace with Paul Meadlo, a 22 -year-old Vietnam veteran who said he had been part of the team of soldiers ordered by Lt. William Calley Jr. to kill men, women, and children in a March 1968 attack on the Vietnamese village of Songmy. The scoop resulted from reporting done by freelance journalist Seymour Hersh, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for the storyâand who used 60 Minutes as a way of promoting his account. (The Times story raised a rumor that 60 Minutes had paid for the interview, which Hersh denied.)
Midway through the second season, Wallace made news with an interview with Eldridge Cleaver, at the time a fugitive from justice and, as a leader of the Black Panther Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, one of the most controversial figures in American radical politics. Cleaver had been arrested a year earlier in a police shoot-out at Panther headquarters in Oakland, California, and later charged with assault with intent to kill; he fled the country to avoid a trial. In the winter of 1970 he was living in exile in Algeria when Wallace (who had contacts in the black community from an interview years earlier with Malcolm X) reached him by phone and asked for an interview. After some delicate negotiations (Cleaver first asked for money, then settled for a tape recorder pedal to aid in the transcription of tapes for his forthcoming memoir), Wallace left for Algeria on New Yearâs Day, 1970 .
The interview itself made up only a few minutes of the story about the Panthers, but garnered headlines nevertheless:
Â
W ALLACE : When the American people hear that you want to shoot your way into the United States Senate, take off the head of a senatorâ
C LEAVER : Into the White House and take off the head of Richard Nixon, you see.
W ALLACE : What does that mean? This is rhetoric?
C LEAVER : This is not rhetoric.
Â
After the story aired, Wallace knew exactly what it meant when he saw the headlines in newspapers around the country, and when the Justice Department subpoenaed notes and outtakes from the interview. It meant 60 Minutes had finally arrived.
Chapter 5
Mr. Hewittâs War
In spite of the increasingly positive critical reception, the ratings remained just as bad in the second season. Marcus Welby, M.D. was an instant monster hit for ABC, the number one show on television, whereas 60 Minutes ranked 92 nd out of 103 any prime-time series and stayed alive only because of its low cost to CBS. The fact that it was on just twice a month also meant its ratings didnât drag on the networkâs overall numbers, which were bolstered by top 10 shows like M*A*S*H and All in the Family .
But the showâs future didnât get any brighter when in November 1970 , two months into the showâs third season, Harry Reasoner announced to Hewitt that he was jumping to the fledgling ABC News, where he would finally get to anchor the evening newscast every night of the week. As Reasoner had been fond of saying, Walter Cronkite was showing no inclination toward walking in front of a speeding truck.
Reasoner could have remained with 60 Minutes , of course, but the idea of cohosting a low-rated prime-time show that ran every other week, when it wasnât being preempted, lacked sufficient appeal for a man
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