Mike Wallace changes his tune

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 17, 2002 | by John Berlau, | Sam MacDonald

At a media forum at the Brookings Institution, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes was, for a change, on the hot seat, answering questions about the past, present and future of broadcast news. Like many of those he interviews, Wallace did a bit of a reversal under tire. Asked why the media were not reporting on terrorism issues before Sept. 11, the veteran broadcaster replied in part that "We were fat, happy and arrogant." When asked by the panel moderator if he included 60 Minutes in that assessment, Wallace replied, "I'm including all of American journalism."

Eventually, the moderator agreed to open the floor to questions and turned first to a reporter from INSIGHT, who cited controversial remarks Wallace made at an earlier "ethics roundtable." Back in the 1980s, a moderator asked a panel of newsmen, including Wallace, what they would do if they were traveling with and covering enemy forces and realized U.S. troops were walking into a deadly ambush.

Another panelist, ABC's Peter Jennings, initially said he would try to warn the troops, but the scrappy Wallace disagreed, insisting that his duty as a reporter would outweigh his sentiments as an American. Jennings quickly came around, but U.S. military personnel both on and off that roundtable expressed outrage at the Wallace remarks.

So naturally INSIGHT's reporter asked Wallace if he still holds those views about protecting a news source at the expense of the lives of others and whether that would apply today to a reporter covering, say, Hamas terrorists in Palestine when the newsman had direct knowledge of a pending suicide attack on civilians.

Wallace first pointed out that the Vietnam hypothetical was a difficult one. He recalled that he listened to Jennings' response before answering: "I said I disagree for the following reasons: I'm a reporter. I am covering a story. It's apparent that I'm not going to survive if I shout. You know, they'll kill me, and I don't know that I'm necessarily going to save any lives. When you're sitting there [at the roundtable] at that moment, with [the former U.S. commander in Vietnam Gen. William] Westmoreland sitting to your right ... and a variety of reporters who had covered Vietnam, you don't know whether to punt or run. It's a tough one, and I think, in retrospect, particularly with a suicide, I mean, if I knew a suicide bomb was about to go off and I stand there as a reporter? Not in a million years."

Moderator Marvin Kalb interjected: "You would try to stop it?"

Wallace confirmed, "I would try to stop it."

"So there are rimes when being a journalist doesn't mean abstention from any kind of action?" Kalb ventured.

"That is correct," Wallace said.

It was a reversal, all right, showing that in addition to making waves as a tough television reporter, Wallace still knows how to make news in front of the camera.

JOHN BERLAU IS A WRITER AND SAM MACDONALD IS A REPORTER FOR Insight.