I have been waiting for Dan Rather to chime in on the “60 Minutes” debacle and he did so today on his Substack page. Good for him. You may have read my earlier piece here about bookies deciding that Megyn Kelly was a potential “60 Minutes” talent in the days and weeks to come. I hope not. I hope we don’t see Fox News alumni on “60” although it certainly can’t be any worse than some of the cabinet appointments we’ve seen. Our country is going through some changes and I don’t know how indelible these changes will be.
I am heartened by the fact that as we speak Trump’s name is being removed from the Kennedy Center. The good guys won that round. But this “60 Minutes” debacle is a real tragedy. I shudder to think what the best news show on television may look like in the months to come. Here’s Dan Rather’s two cents.
For anyone who watches the next season of “60 Minutes” this fall, understand this: It is not the “60 Minutes” we have all come to trust and respect. It will be a diminished, Trump-approved version.
There is a tendency to view this as a story about journalism and corporate finance. But more than anything it is about big business in bed with big politics to monopolize news for their benefit, not for the country as a whole.
It pains me to write this, but the president and the corporate billionaires who curry his favor have eviscerated the best news program in the world, one that I called home for many years. So far, three correspondents have been fired, one left, and the broadcast’s top producers were let go.
Sharyn Alfonsi, one of the three correspondents dismissed, wrote, “They fired the best of us and anyone wondering whether ‘60 Minutes’ is over can stop wondering. What’s left will carry the name, but without the spine or courage that made it matter.”
Going forward, every interview, every story, every shot should come with an asterisk superimposed on the screen right next to the CBS eye: *“This story was approved by Donald Trump.”
He won’t personally read the script or sanction the stories, of course, but the higher-ups know what Trump wants to see, and especially what he doesn’t. The president is no doubt thrilled at the demise of a journalistic nemesis that continually called his bluff.
Remember when Trump went on camera with Lesley Stahl and he stormed off the set because she asked a question which annoyed him? Those days are past. Dan Rather goes on to cite all the ratings coups that “60 Minutes” has pulled off. Yet that didn’t stop Bari Weiss from saying, “the program must change to survive the “new media landscape.” Rather replied, “Unless that landscape is on Mars, I don’t know what she’s talking about. You can see for yourself it wasn’t just surviving but thriving, before she blew it up.” Indeed,
- 60 MINUTES made the top 10 for every week this season and top five 12 times.
- Nearly 20 billion minutes of 60 MINUTES have been consumed this season across linear and streaming.
- The total video views across 60 MINUTES social platforms are up 185% year over year.
That’s not a show that is looking to survive, that’s a hit. I’ve watched “60 Minutes” my entire life since high school. It is the gold standard of journalism. Or was. Rather agreed with Scott Pelley, who said Bari Weiss “murdered” the show and Rather added that the murder was premeditated.
I don’t know what we’re going to see under the “60 Minutes” banner. I guess that’s the next awful revelation in this ongoing soap opera. It’s time for another network to answer the call and produce a clone of what “60 Minutes” used to be.
