60 Minutes

Could Scott Pelley possibly be this naive, or was he willingly playing the role of MSM cheerleader for the developer of the Ground Zero Mosque?In the course of a chummy interview of GZM developer Sharif El-Gamal aired on Sunday's 60 Minutes, Pelley produced a pearl.  Instead of asking a probing question, the CBS "reporter" served as an advocate for El-Gamal's position when it came to the siting…

As media members across the fruited plain try to convince skeptical Americans that Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Islamic Imam behind the Ground Zero mosque, is a moderate cleric, most have totally ignored an interview that he gave on CBS's "60 Minutes" less than three weeks after the 9/11 attacks.To demonstrate just how wrong the press are about this man, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly played the relevant…

James J. Kilpatrick, best known as the conservative-curmudgeon commentator on "60 Minutes" in its "Point-Counterpoint" segment in the 1970s, has died at the age of 89. Washingtonians also remember his years as a panelist on the local weekly political talk show "Agronsky & Company." His column "A Conservative View" was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers.The Washington Post obituary on…

These are some of the outtakes that the Ecuadoran plaintiff lawyer Steve Donziger probably wished were left on the cutting room floor. Back in May 2009, CBS's "60 Minutes" featured a story on the legal conflict between Chevron and an eco-group called the Amazon Defense Coalition for $27.4 billion in so-called environmental damage in Ecuador's rain forest from then-Texaco Petroleum's (Texpet)…

A journalist with a political agenda is not necessarily a dishonest one, and a journalist who claims to be objective is not necessarily honest. These are useful facts to bear in mind as media liberals call for Andrew Breitbart's head.Breitbart posted video of recently-fired USDA official Shirley Sherrod claiming she considered race in allocating federal agriculture funds. The apparent racism was…

It seems that the vast majority of journalists who bemoan unaccountable, unabashedly opinionated digital reporting are the same ones who have, without challenge, pushed a liberal perspective through their own reporting.The latest such journalist, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, is concerned that "nobody is cross-examining" the "position papers" that supposedly comprise a critical mass of new media…

Before the media hoopla begins in a few hours for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, let me squeeze in a quick look at the flavor Sunday night’s fawning 60 Minutes profile of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which, after some questions about the Time Square botched bomber, framed her job around the challenge of fixing a world abused by George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, a situation…

On April 13, I reported on CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft complaining about the fact that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have refused to appear on the program. I pointed to recent instances of 60 Minutes smearing both men as a possible cause of their unwillingness to be guests and found that one of those examples was referenced by Rove in his new book, Courage and Consequence. On February 24…

In wake of Arizona's new immigration law, CBS 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley fretted over illegal immigrants entering the United States by swimming across California's All-American Canal: "a national moat on our southern border, and hundreds of people have perished in its waters. It is a carnage that has gone mostly unnoticed because many of the victims are buried without their names." [Audio…

On Thursday, Time magazine published a love letter from activist and musician Bono to former President Bill Clinton."There are professors who pretend to be populists and populists who pretend to be professors," the U2 lead-singer began his piece in the Heroes section of the 2010 Time 100 list. "But there have never been a head and heart so perfectly matched as the pair within William Jefferson…

Well, it only took them nearly a year to tackle this breakdown journalistic ethics, but the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) took on a CBS "60 Minutes" segment that aired back in May 2009. Nonetheless, an analysis by Martha M. Hamilton posted on the CJR Web site on April 14 found several flaws with a May 3, 2009, segment (critiqued by the Business & Media Institute on May 4, 2009). According…

While attending the Radio Television Digital News Association conference in Las Vegas on Monday, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft spoke to a crowd of young journalists and claimed that his dream interview would be with Dick Cheney, but complained how the former vice president and Bush adviser Karl Rove simply "make hay" in criticizing 60 Minutes coverage, but would not go on the show.  If one…

"As President, George W. Bush did something momentous that few of you may know about, something so momentous that it is saving millions of lives and generating goodwill for America around the world."So astonishingly began a "60 Minutes" segment last Sunday actually praising the former President that likely got worse press than anyone ever to reside in the White House. "Millions of Africans who`d…

Update 9:35 AM: Larry O'Donnell "stunned" Stahl doesn't realize ObamaCare raises taxes.  See O'Donnell video after the jump.______________________________What kind of correspondents do they have at 60 Minutes?  The kind who can't tell that the biggest tax increase in history is a tax increase at all.  The kind who complain that even if it is a tax increase, Americans should be willing to pay it…