With the possible exception of the egregious Geraldo Rivera, I
cannot think of another television interviewer who has stirred
emotions quite the way Mike Wallace did. I knew him slightly, sat
for an interview that was never broadcast, and witnessed his
strengths and weaknesses.
Heavenly praise and hellish condemnation always flowed in his
wake, and his death at 93 on April 7 prompted a renewed flood of
reaction. The admiration is over the top. Much of the hatred is
unprintable.
Although retired since 2006, his death has prompted a divided
public to give him one last word, pro and con.
The takedown artists let him have it:
“Good riddance to his ilk — the dinosaurs are dying off,”
shouted one blogger.
A master of “cheesy ambush interviews,” wrote another.
One amateur observer thanked another for “reminding me for all
the reasons I despised him.”
“Repulsive, narcissistic, condescending,” said another.
And praise from such barometers as the New York Times
was loaded in the opposite direction. He was a “paragon of
television journalism” who could be “riveting” to watch.
He had a “glorious career” of “great interviewing moments,” said
the Washington Post.
In fact, many journalists mistrusted him for failing to pay to
his dues. He never worked on a weekly or daily in the smalltime
world of reporting. He never did time in Los Gatos, California,
like I did, learning how to keep yourself out of a story or the
basics of objectivity. He came from the very unjournalistic world
of quiz shows — hardly the classic route.
He jumped the queue much the way Anderson Cooper has at CNN,
“making it up as I go along,” as Cooper once put it. Real
journalists are resentful, and not just about the salaries.
Like Cooper’s record, Wallace’s is a mix of good and bad,
magnified by the power of television. Wallace won 21 Emmys and was
the lead interviewer on 60 Minutes for 40 years. Cooper
has a long way to go, but will probably end up an icon of sorts,
too, if he can stay out of trouble.
Perhaps Wallace’s shortcut to fame at CBS News accounts for his
many lapses. How could a real journalist schmooze with the “Queen
of Mean,” Leona Helmsley? How could he pull his punches in the
Brown & Williamson investigation of spiked nicotine? How could
he use his weapons on an icon such as Oscar Hammerstein and nail
him for “excessive sentimentality”? How could he produce such a
limp interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
And how could he fault beleaguered Soviet Jews in the 1970s for
“breaking the law” in Russia?
I was in Moscow at the height of the Jewish protest when he
breezed through looking for the truth, as he often put it. He spent
a half hour with me digging into KGB harassment. I had reported on
the issue for the Associated Press and as a result my Volkswagen
had been vandalized. A stone wrapped in a Soviet newspaper ended up
in my front seat, including a hand-written note, “The worst is yet
to come, you reptile.” It was an unsettling time for all the
foreign press but none of this made it on the air.
I didn’t begrudge him. Television is a crowded medium.
And so few years later, sitting in my 37th floor office at
McGraw-Hill World News in New York, I sent Wallace a note about a
story I felt would be a natural for him. The limo of the mayor of
Miami had vanished without a trace. It turned up a few months later
in the possession of a Haitian government official. I immediately
saw this as a perfect Mike Wallace vehicle — Mike sticking his
mike in the black face of a sweating Tonton Macoute demanding an
explanation for obvious car theft.
To my surprise, Wallace telephoned me at my office to discuss
this suggestion. His normally super-confident voice seemed tinged
with embarrassment. He explained that this would indeed make a
great 60 Minutes story but it couldn’t be done. Wallace
confessed that he had a personal seaside property in Haiti and did
not wish to jeopardize his friendship with authorities — or risk
violence — by rubbing their noses in a case of petty theft.
The conversation was cordial, although he might have worried
that his prevarication could end up as an unfriendly story
somewhere. He carried on with an offer. He was in the market for
good business and economic stories, he said, and would welcome my
input. I was vain enough to imagine that this could lead to a spot
on the 60 Minutes among the worker-bees. I sent him five
or six good ideas over the next few weeks. He never responded.
In his position, I probably wouldn’t have, either.
Mike Wallace accomplished great things as a trend-setter in
television interviewing but he also made more than his share of
compromises. His legacy will forever be tainted by his lapses in
journalistic ethics. Given the choice, I wonder if he would do his
time in small-town journalism. Probably not.
