Word: cbs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Minutes ran a bowdlerized version of the story (without the interview) a week ago, at the end of which correspondent Mike Wallace announced that he and his colleagues were "dismayed that the management at CBS had seen fit to give in to perceived threats of legal action against us by a tobacco-industry giant." Wallace, Morley Safer and other CBS newsmen continued to voice their concerns in print and TV interviews, raising alarms that CBS's corporate bosses might be getting weak-kneed in the face of aggressive (and potentially expensive) threats of libel. It was CBS journalists on their...
...week, however, Hewitt and Wallace were no longer talking, after a published report suggested that CBS lawyers may have had legitimate cause for concern. According to the Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes made a number of unusual arrangements with the tobacco-industry source--later revealed to be former Brown & Williamson executive Jeffrey S. Wigand. He was reportedly paid a $12,000 "consultant fee" for work he had done on a previous 60 Minutes segment; was promised that the network would indemnify him against any possible libel suit resulting from the story; and given a pledge that the interview would...
...issue, it seems, was not libel. CBS lawyers feared the network might be vulnerable to a suit on the grounds of "tortious interference"--inducing one party to break a legal contract with another. Attorneys are divided over whether the network could successfully have been sued on such grounds. By paying money to Wigand and agreeing to indemnify him against a lawsuit, some contended, CBS had put itself at serious risk. Attorneys who have been involved in litigation against the tobacco industry, however, insisted that the network was needlessly timid. "I think it's appalling they would fold over such...
Legal issues aside, the revelations of behind-the-scenes dealmaking at 60 Minutes disturbed many journalists at CBS. Paying consulting fees to outside "experts" who help on stories is not uncommon in TV news; but some questioned whether, in this case, the payment compromised both Wigand and CBS. What most appalled some at CBS News was the notion that 60 Minutes would give a source veto power over whether to run his interview. One senior CBS producer expressed outrage that the 60 Minutes journalists would go on talk shows and cloak themselves in the First Amendment when they...
...CBS's scrapping of the Wigand interview prompted instant speculation that news decisions had fallen victim to the corporate bottom line, it was force of habit. Since taking control of CBS in 1986, Tisch has been a bottom-line boss. He sold off key pieces of the company (notably CBS's publishing and music divisions), instituted drastic cost-cutting measures and shied away from paying big bucks at key junctures. Two years ago, CBS lost its perennial Sunday-afternoon N.F.L. football franchise when it was outbid for the games by Rupert Murdoch's Fox network. A few months later...