Tick... Tick... Tick... (31 page)

The season begins well enough, with an opener that includes an Ed Bradley interview with the undercover drug officer from Tulia, Texas, accused of targeting the town's black community. It continues with provocative interviews with disgraced ImClone founder Sam Waksal and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Srushy. A two-part Steve Kroft examination of pornography lands in the November sweeps. But the first blockbuster doesn't come until November
30
, when Mike Wallace's interview with former New York Giant star Lawrence Taylor (tied to the release of Taylor's book) lands the show in the number four position for the week in total viewers—thanks in large measure to blanket promotion during the CBS football games that preceded it that day and to Taylor's sensational revelations about sex and drugs in the NFL. The show even manages to end up in the top
10
shows of the week in the coveted
18
–
49
demographic, with a
6
.
4
rating for that age group.

Buoyed by its success,
60 Minutes
follows up the next week with another piece aimed at the youth market: “The Look,” a Morley Safer segment about discriminatory hiring practices at upscale retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. The story, prominently featuring shots of scantily clad women, draws an unusually large audience to the show. The special broadcast about the capture of Saddam Hussein wins even bigger numbers.

With the show experiencing its biggest success in years, Hewitt is feeling in a better position to accept his fate at last.

 

It's a lazy Friday afternoon in early December
2003
. Outside, a blizzard has just descended on Manhattan. The picture window behind Mike Wallace's desk shows nothing but a wall of white, with snowflakes floating upward as they seem to do when they fall particularly hard. Elsewhere at
60 Minutes,
staffers are packing up purses and briefcases and backpacks to leave early for the weekend, but not Wallace. He doesn't even notice the snow. He's at his desk, working; it is the place he loves the most, and he shows no particular desire to get home before dark.

“Did you read Liz Smith's column from a couple of days ago?” Wallace asks, referring to the famous gossip column that appears in the
New York Post
and is syndicated around the country. Wallace presses the buzzer on his phone that signals to his secretary. It takes her a while to respond, so he keeps buzzing, annoyed. When she finally answers, he says, “Do you have that Liz Smith column?” She enters and finds it on his cluttered desk.

“Here,” Wallace says. “Read it, and then I'll tell you a funny story.”

The December
4
,
2003
, Liz Smith lead item is about Michael Jackson. After describing network plans to cover the forthcoming Jackson trial, Smith recalls similar overkill in the O. J. Simpson story.

It hasn't been lost on a single network executive that the people who pursued the O. J. Simpson trial from the get-go, the ones with the most pizzazz, push and perseverance, were the ones who left the others, the more fastidious ones, in the dust. (I do recall when
60 Minutes
producer Don Hewitt sniffed at coverage of O. J. and took his show out of the running. I don't think the great news magazine has completely recovered even yet.)

But this time they are
all
going to mix it up; they are going to war like you can't imagine. As Al Jolson said: “You ain't heard nothing yet!”

“Don went nuts when he saw that item,” Wallace whispers, in the conspiratorial tone he often takes on when talking about Hewitt. “Nuts! He called Liz's office three or four times yesterday. Yelled at her assistants. Screamed at them! He was furious. Liz wasn't there. Who knows if she even wrote the item? Anyway, she wrote Don this letter, and she sent me a copy. I've known Liz for years. She worked for me a long time ago as a secretary, in the
1950
s.”

Wallace hands over a faxed copy of a letter from Smith to Hewitt. Written in her chatty, friendly voice, she chides Hewitt for exploding at her over the item and mentions that she has resisted the temptation to do the same with him in the past, when she'd felt his show had slighted her.

“You want to know the real reason we didn't cover O. J.?” Wallace leans forward to whisper again. “The true story is, the whole O. J. thing happened during the summer. We were on vacation. We didn't want to come back in. It had nothing to do with anything but the fact that we didn't want to come back in. Who wants to come in and cover the goddamned O. J. story? Everybody's going to be all over it, all the time, anyway. So it was concocted . . . along with everybody else. Don sniffed at coverage of O. J. and took the show out of the running.”

Wallace leans back in his chair again. The snow has started to fall even heavier now.

He is asked to reflect on how he and Hewitt are getting along these days.

“Better, these last couple of months,” he says. “Finally.”

For a moment Wallace glances toward the wall of his office, in the direction of where Hewitt would be if he hadn't already left for the weekend. By now the entire office is empty except for Wallace.

“We were like brothers,” Wallace says softly. “We were such good friends for such a long time. I said to Don, ‘You have it all. You have all the money in the world. You have all the reputation in the world. Don't get angry. If people criticize you, the criticisms are like this'”—Wallace holds his hands close together—“‘and the accomplishments are like this'”—his hands spread wide apart. “‘For Christ's sake, why get so excited about this?'”

Wallace holds up the Liz Smith column again. “For him to get that excited about that kind of thing,” he says, shaking his head. “On the phone to her, apparently three or four times.”

Wallace rests the column on his desk and looks as though he's about to cry. “For Christ's sake,” Wallace says. “He's a major figure in TV history. Isn't that enough?”

By then darkness has fallen outside the window. It is almost evening, and time at last for Wallace to leave for home.

 

Early on the morning of December
16
,
2003
—the morning after the Christmas party—Hewitt sits down at his computer and bangs out a memo to the entire
60 Minutes
staff. At
11
:
30
A.M.
, the message appears in the e-mail in-boxes of everyone on the show.

Dear 60 MINUTES:

On this, our last Christmas together let me get a little “mushy” and say this morning what I wanted to say last night at our Christmas party but frankly didn't seem appropriate to the occasion.

Having been for more than 35 years on the receiving end of an untold number of “Dear Sixty Minutes” letters it doesn't seem unreasonable to pen one of my own—to
you
, the heart and soul of the best broadcast of its kind anywhere on earth.

After praising the talents of his staff—and patting himself on the back for his own
55
-year television career—Hewitt finally acknowledges that the show he created will soon continue with new leadership.

One of the more rewarding things about that long tenure is leaving this extraordinary broadcast and its offspring in the hands of two extraordinarily good guys—Jeff Fager and Josh Howard who will soon become the new managing directors of a company I like to think of—even if no one else does—as “Don Hewitt & Sons.”

At which point Hewitt at last addresses the issue of his own departure and eventual destination, to a staff that wasn't sure Hewitt would ever leave voluntarily.

I'll be downstairs on the eighth floor in a corner office even bigger than the one I'll be vacating with a fancy new title and a mandate to come up with new ideas for broadcasts and old ideas to improve the new ones we already have . . . and if they're real lucky not second-guessing Jeff and Josh . . . and trying, with all my heart, not to be a pain in the ass.

How can anyone be sad about basking in the warmth of the largest and most talented television family anyone ever gave birth to?

Don

It is the first hard evidence that Hewitt will indeed leave his office as promised in June. While it contains lines that may annoy one person or another (one could easily imagine that the image of “Don Hewitt & Sons” might bother his successor), it leaves everyone with at least the possibility that, come June, he would stick to his word and go downstairs at last. “I figured it's almost Christmas,” Hewitt explained that afternoon, “and I didn't want everyone spending the holiday worrying about me.” It was not at all surprising to know that Hewitt assumed his staff would spend their two-week vacation worrying about his future.

As it turns out, everyone will be thinking about Hewitt and
60 Minutes,
though hardly for the reasons he might have hoped. What was supposed to become a quiet and dignified denouement for Hewitt is about to become one of the most tumultuous and controversial moments of his career.

Chapter 27

Bending the Rules

“Goddamn it! God-fucking-damnit!”

It's
4
:
49
P.M.
on Sunday, December 28
,
2003
, slightly more than two hours from the scheduled start of
60 Minutes,
and Don Hewitt is furious. For much of the afternoon, he has been wandering Control Room
33
in the CBS Broadcast Center, waiting desperately for the arrival of “Michael Jackson,” Ed Bradley's two-part exclusive interview with the beleaguered pop star. The final version has yet to be fed from Los Angeles, where Bradley is still feverishly working with producer Michael Radutzky to finish a story that will surely result in the highest-rated
60 Minutes
episode of the season. Jackson, under increasing media scrutiny due to the latest round of rumors and accusations against him, finally met with Bradley three days ago, on Christmas afternoon in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, surrounded by a phalanx of whispering lawyers and managers. After
23
minutes of on-camera questioning, the pop star abruptly stood up and walked out, claiming he was in too much physical pain to continue.

Under normal circumstances, an interview with a prominent newsmaker that ends in a walkout might result in a delay or cancellation of the piece. But these are not normal circumstances. Hewitt has to run the piece that Sunday night, no matter what, or risk violating an agreement made between Jackson and CBS Entertainment to air the interview prior to a Jackson musical special the following Friday. The interview and the special has been linked by CBS, in an unorthodox arrangement that will earn Jackson millions of dollars' worth of free network promotion for a new album that might have otherwise been lost.

“My show is being held hostage!” Hewitt screams at Radutzky, with Josh Howard and Betsy West in the background. “Where the fuck is the piece? This is fucking ridiculous! God-fucking-damnit!!!”

Hewitt is frustrated, but he isn't about to let the interview slip away. The Jackson segment represents a potential ratings bonanza for
60 Minutes
—and high ratings, after all, remain Hewitt's obsession. High ratings are the main reason Hewitt is still, at
81
, sitting in a CBS News control room and not on a golf course somewhere.

It might not seem unusual for other network news divisions to agree to extraordinary demands in return for access to Michael Jackson. But CBS News (and
60 Minutes
in particular) has always prided itself on adhering to a higher standard. This eyebrow-raising agreement between CBS and Jackson reflects the desperation of CBS News to keep
60 Minutes
popular and relevant—and profitable—in the face of declining ratings and demographics.

This moment, and the circumstances that led to it, is totally in keeping with the approach of Hewitt his entire career—to grab the attention of the TV audience, no matter what the price.

 

Thirty-eight days earlier, Michael Jackson was arrested in Santa Barbara, California, and charged with seven felony counts of child molestation involving an overnight guest at his sprawling Neverland Ranch. These latest charges sparked a level of media and public interest in Jackson that transcended any previous moment of his two decades in show business. While news organizations—including Bradley and
60 Minutes
—had long been pursuing a sit-down interview with Jackson, the arrest made him an even more coveted prize for the newsmagazine. Every major talking head, from Diane Sawyer to Katie Couric to Larry King, desperately wanted the chance to ask him about the charges. An exclusive on-camera sit-down would pull in huge ratings for whoever managed to land him first.

Hewitt wanted Jackson as much as anyone. But in recent years it had become more problematic than in Hewitt's early days for network news divisions to make deals with subjects without arousing suspicion. Only six months before, Betsy West had written a controversial letter to the family of Private Jessica Lynch, the putative war hero, raising the possibility of tie-ins with other units of Viacom (CBS's parent company, which also owns MTV) as part of her pitch for an exclusive CBS News interview. Despite his own controversial track record, Hewitt liked to insist that
60 Minutes
would never make deals with anyone to get an interview.

“We don't play that game,” Hewitt had barked to Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS, at a meeting in Moonves's New York office in November
2002
. Moonves had called the meeting to scold Hewitt and his counterparts at the other CBS prime-time newsmagazines—Jeffrey Fager of
60 Minutes II
and Susan Zirinsky of
48 Hours
Investigates
—for not having gotten an interview with Jennifer Lopez. The actress-singer had just appeared on
Primetime Live
in an hour-long conversation with Diane Sawyer that had garnered huge ratings for the network, particularly in the coveted
18
–
49
demographic. Those numbers made Moonves angry.

“I want those stories,” Moonves told his assembled staff, which included West and her boss, Andrew Heyward. “I don't want to see her on ABC. I want to see her on CBS.” But Hewitt (who described the meeting as the first time in
55
years that he'd been “summoned” to CBS corporate headquarters) explained that to get Lopez on CBS would have required making deals that went beyond the network's rules. The
60 Minutes
bosses left Moonves's office bruised and battered. They'd basically been admonished for not sacrificing standards and not bending the rules the network news division had supposedly always held sacrosanct—all for the purpose of ratings.

It seemed an ironic pose for Hewitt, who'd been bending the rules of television news for the last half-century—to replace the dull presentation of news headlines and the tired rhythms of documentaries with something not only informative but also entertaining. In doing so, Hewitt had transformed TV news into a profitable enterprise that would forever depend on ratings for its continued success.

 

After the story of Jackson's arrest broke, CBS scrambled to figure out a plan for its “Number Ones” special—the musical hour pegged to the release of Jackson's new album that was set to air in less than a week, in the middle of the November sweeps period. Moonves and his lieutenants first announced that the show wouldn't air until after the case against Jackson had been fully resolved in the courts. “Given the gravity of the charges against Mr. Jackson,” the network said in a press release, “we believe it would be inappropriate at this time to broadcast an entertainment special.”

But Jackson's managers kept badgering Moonves to air the special; after all, the singer still had an album to sell. CBS finally relented and negotiated a new deal with Jackson to air the special on Friday, January
2
,
2004
—hardly a premium spot on the network schedule—in return for an interview with Jackson.

Moonves later said that the Jackson camp initially rejected CBS's suggestion of a news interview following the arrest. “The Jackson people, their first thing was, ‘No, no, no, we can't talk about it,'” Moonves recalls. “Then they called back and said we might be willing to do an interview . . . with
Ed.
He trusted Ed. He liked Ed. So I spoke to Andrew [Heyward] and said, ‘This is the situation.' It was all laid out, what the quid pro quo would be.” As for which broadcast the interview would appear on, Hewitt conceded that it had to air that Sunday “because of an obligation” to Jackson—and admitted several weeks later that the arrangement was “unorthodox.”

“Now, are you caving in to the entertainment division?” Hewitt asks, looking back. “In a way you're caving in to the corporation you work for. You're not in business for yourself. There is an entity that has a lot of arms, and I think the bind you get in sometimes, like that, the very fact that you work for this conglomerate, sometimes works to your advantage and sometimes works to your disadvantage. . . . Was the circumstance under which we aired the Jackson thing unorthodox? Yes. Unorthodox in the way we do business. Okay, he can have the special if we do this. . . . Yeah, there were a lot of caveats. Got to be on that Sunday, got to do all that stuff.”

Given the now pressing deadline, Bradley reluctantly postpones a planned vacation to Mexico with his wife and travels instead to Los Angeles to conduct the Jackson interview. Initially Jackson's handlers say he'll only be available for a
10
-minute interview on Christmas Eve; then Jackson doesn't even show up. On Christmas Day, Bradley, Radutzky, and a
60 Minutes
film crew—along with Jack Sussman, CBS Entertainment's executive vice president for specials and the network's chief liaison with the Jackson camp—return to the Beverly Hills Hotel suite, awaiting Jackson's rescheduled noon arrival for the interview. He and his entourage finally show up sometime after
4
:
00
P.M.

Bradley and Jackson sit opposite each other in armchairs, their conversation frequently punctuated by stops and starts dictated by the Jackson camp. Every time Bradley asks Jackson a specific question related to the charges, the interview stops and Jackson confers with his team. Much of the
23
minutes of taped conversation is devoted to Jackson's denials of the molestation charges.

 

B
RADLEY
: What is your response to the—the allegations that were—were brought by the district attorney in Santa Barbara that you—you molested this boy?

J
ACKSON
: Totally false. Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrists. I would never hurt a child. This is totally false. I was outraged. I could never do something like that.

B
RADLEY
: This is a kid you knew?

J
ACKSON
: Yes.

B
RADLEY
: How would you characterize your relationship with this boy?

J
ACKSON
: I've helped many, many, many children, thousands of children—cancer kids, leukemia kids. This is one of many.

 

A few minutes later, Jackson alleges abuses of his own, claiming he was mistreated at the Santa Barbara police station during the booking process on November
25
, a month before the Bradley interview took place.

 

J
ACKSON
: They manhandled me very roughly. My shoulder is dislocated, literally. It's hurting me very badly. I'm in pain all the time. This is—see this arm? This is as far as I can reach it. Same with this side over here.

B
RADLEY
: Because of what happened at the police station?

J
ACKSON
: Yeah, yeah, at the police station. And what they did to me—if you—if you saw what they did to my arms—it's very bad what they did. It's very swollen. I don't want to say.

 

However, it seems Jackson does want to say. The next day, Jackson, through his attorney Mark Geragos, provides Bradley with photographic evidence of his injuries. During the interview, Jackson also alleges that the police locked him in a bathroom for
45
minutes, while taunting him. The interview then turns to more discussion of Jackson's behavior toward children, before Jackson finally stops the interview. He and his entourage leave the hotel suite soon afterward.

 

The interview, transcribed and sent to New York within hours, whets Hewitt's appetite. Meanwhile, for the next two days, Hewitt and Howard wait anxiously for a script of the story to arrive from Los Angeles.

Finally, Radutzky e-mails a draft of the first part of the script to Howard on Sunday at
6
:
00
A.M.
West Coast time. It is five minutes short. (“We lost a lot of time because we started with an idea in mind that this was more a chronological piece explaining his life, and then come to the conclusion that, hey, it's not about that,” Bradley says, looking back on the editing process. “We probably blew most of Friday trying to sort out the form, the shape of the piece. And a lot of Saturday trying to get comment from the people we felt we needed comment from.”) The draft focuses almost exclusively on the interview itself, and, from Hewitt's point of view, doesn't adequately address the response to the charges made by Jackson against the authorities. Hewitt and Howard read through the script and point out holes everywhere that need to be filled.

“Where's the fucking police department?” Hewitt keeps asking. “You have to have the goddamned police department's response, otherwise it's bullshit.” With only
12
hours left, Howard reluctantly gives the team more time to fill in the gaping holes.