Among oth­er things, the trav­es­ty that has been unfold­ing at CBS’s sto­ried and incom­pa­ra­ble 60 Min­utes, has led me to con­clude this: “The thin­ner the skin, the more ema­ci­at­ed the intel­lect and char­ac­ter of the one wear­ing it.”

Nick Bil­ton, the new head of 60 fired Scott Pel­ley because he thought the broadcast’s most respect­ed cor­re­spon­dent, had treat­ed him “with remark­able inci­vil­i­ty and contempt.”
That pos­es the ques­tion: “And your point being…”
Con­fronta­tion is part of the DNA of 60 Min­utes, and not just when it comes to inter­views and sto­ry choices.
A long time, mul­ti-award-win­ning pro­duc­er said 60 founder Don Hewitt “…delib­er­ate­ly prompt­ed a fierce­ly  com­pet­i­tive atmos­phere that often cre­at­ed shout­ing  match­es between pro­duc­ers, cor­re­spon­dents and exec­u­tives, all in the inter­est of attain­ing the best pos­si­ble sto­ry telling and journalism.”
The clash­es between Hewitt and the late, great Mike Wal­lace are legendary.
All of which goes a long way to prov­ing Pelley’s  point to Bil­ton: “You’ll  nev­er be wel­come here.”
And if that’s what hurt Bilton’s feel­ings enough to fire Pel­ley (who was, if  you think about it, actu­al­ly doing Bil­ton a favour in point­ing out what should have been obvi­ous to him in the first place), I’d love to have been in the room had he ever come up against the late and incom­pa­ra­ble Andy Rooney, 60 Min­utes’ res­i­dent pro­fes­sion­al curmudgeon.
Rooney refused to recog­nise even the most sacred  cows, and took delight in tak­ing on any and all who crossed his lines.I had the some­what nerve-wrack­ing priv­i­lege of  being seat­ed next to him at a table at an awards cer­e­mo­ny, along with sev­er­al CBS News senior man­age­ment hon­chos, and the then Evening News Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er Al Ortiz.
In a gen­tle­man­ly way of includ­ing me in the con­ver­sa­tion, Al asked me what I thought was wrong with the way the Evening New was being done.
I was doing my best to state my case and still be polite, when Rooney leaned for­ward and said, as near as I can recall: “God­dammit, at least there are two of us here who know how news ought to be done.”
As he laid into the sub­ject, not allow­ing any­one else to get a word in edge­wise, Ortiz leaned over and said qui­et­ly in my ear:  “I’ll get you for this, Pizzey.”
I knew he wouldn’t. Fight­ing your cor­ner,  stat­ing your case and even step­ping over the line some­times to do it, wasn’t a car­di­nal sin at CBS back then.
On dif­fer­ent occa­sions, in a state of over-emo­tion­al anger about what I thought were unjus­ti­fied and unfair deci­sions,  I said “F*** you” to a Pres­i­dent and a Vice-Pres­i­dent of CBS News.
Nei­ther of them threat­ened to fire me,  or even demand­ed an apol­o­gy. The sub­ject was nev­er men­tioned again,
I can only assume it was because they thought it was jus­ti­fied, from my point of view. Or maybe theirs. Or both.
Bari Weiss fired Sharyn Alfon­si for the “insult” of  crit­i­ciz­ing — with­out so much as a hint of pro­fan­i­ty — one of her deci­sions, and didn’t even both­er to oth­er­wise jus­ti­fy her actions.
But then, that seems to be part of Weiss’s DNA.
In spite of being in charge and hav­ing made the deci­sions that prompt­ed Scott Pel­ley to speak truth to pom­pos­i­ty, accord­ing to reports from a meet­ing to try to resolve things, she replied to Pelley’s ques­tions as to why she had fired his col­leagues and 60 Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er  Tanya Simon, with a  weasel word ver­sion of the Fifth Amend­ment: “I’m not answer­ing that ques­tion”, and  didn’t  have the decen­cy, or maybe courage, to  add “on the grounds that it may incrim­i­nate me.”

             LIKE WORSHIPPER LIKE IDOL

Con­sid­er­ing that Weiss owes her posi­tion to efforts by the new own­ers of CBS to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, her thin-skinned­ness (a fair descrip­tion, even if not an actu­al word) should come as no surprise.
He, after all, per­son­i­fies the mal­a­dy, as evi­denced by his own treat­ment of jour­nal­ists he sees as hav­ing slight­ed him by not being suf­fi­cient­ly obse­quious, or, as he would see it, loyal.
Jour­nal­ists trav­el­ling on Air Force One, women in par­tic­u­lar, are often insult­ed by Trump in ways that would get any­one in the pri­vate sec­tor fired on the spot.
An increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar admo­ni­tion on forums like Face­book is that the insul­tees should respond in kind.
One recent exam­ple sug­gest­ed the retort to his per­ni­cious ”You’re a ter­ri­ble reporter”, ought to be an instant “You’re a ter­ri­ble president,”
Retort­ing to child­ish slurs is nei­ther the job of reporters, nor wise.As the quote wide­ly attrib­uted to the humourist and sage Mark Twain advis­es: “Nev­er argue with a fool, onlook­ers may not be able to tell the difference.”
Telling thin-skinned puta­tive boss­es what they need to know is anoth­er mat­ter alto­geth­er, espe­cial­ly it if reveals what they real­ly are.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.

To SHARE, click the appro­pri­ate icon below.