CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter routinely trashes President Trump for sticking to “his safe space” and doing interviews on Fox News. But on his show on Sunday, he provided the safest of spaces to 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager. Both on CNN and in his 22-minute podcast, Stelter discussed the history of the CBS magazoine show without once mentioning Dan Rather or his phony-documents fiasco attacking President George W. Bush on 60 Minutes II in 2004.
In discussing Fager’s book on 50 years of 60 Minutes, Stelter talked about the high points and then asked “Are there low points in the 60 Minutes history, too?” How naive or uninformed does that sound?
Fager avoided Rather entirely, talking vaguely about the Jeffrey Wigand tobacco interview (without naming Wigand), blaming the CBS company brass for getting in the way of the journalists.
Fager talked repeatedly (and ridiculously) about how 60 Minutes is known for fairness, for interviews that are “tough, direct but fair.” Anyone who’s watched Steve Kroft rhetorically massage Barack Obama knows that deserves a laugh track.
Stelter noted new anchors on several CBS shows, like incoming CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor and asked “What is this period at CBS News?” Fager said: “It’s a healthy period.” The podcast really sounded like an internal CBS News PR product.
In the part that aired on CNN, Stelter asked the dim question of why President Trump hasn’t consented to a 60 Minutes interview this year.
FAGER: [A]t some point, they're going to want to do and need to do a mainstream interview in a place like "60 Minutes", with a big audience.
STELTER: As opposed to all of the Fox News interviews he’s doing with pro-Trump hosts?
FAGER: Yeah, I guess. I don't want to judge that either. I just -- I think it -- I think the 60 Minutes interview is an important interview to do, and they know it's going to be tough, but direct and fair.
On the podcast, Stelter asked how they sell the Trump team on a 60 Minutes interview, but Fager returned to their alleged fairness: "The White House knows what we offer, and they know that we are going to ask very direct questions. I think they also know that we’re going to be fair." Now back to where it continued on CNN:
STELTER: But you think he will eventually say yes?
FAGER: I think.
STELTER: Because a pessimist would say he's decided to stay within his safe space, and not give interviews anymore to journalists.
FAGER: Maybe so, I don't think so. I think we will be doing an interview with him.
Notice Stelter is suggesting an interview with Fox is not with "journalists." But this interview wasn't tough or direct. Why couldn't Stelter ask Fager about the Rather fiasco? Why couldn't he ask about the demotion of CBS anchor Scott Pelley back to 60 Minutes instead of just offering Fager a chance to sell the professionalism of Jeff Glor? Fager kept touting how wonderfully objective they were at his show:
FAGER: People know if you’re being fair, or if you aren’t. If you’re coming from a particular place, the viewer sees that. You know, one of the rules at 60 Minutes and the original CBS News is never underestimate the viewer. It’s so important….I think one of the most important, if not the most important tenets of good journalism is to be unbiased, is to not go into the story with any pre-conceived notion. And that’s where mistakes happen in journalism. Someone goes in and tries to prove a point – you know, anything that comes up that’s mitigating, that might go against that point, they tend to discard.
Stelter certainly could have questioned how Fager could say their interviews were "tough." We issued a Special Report titled Syrupy Minutes to underline how supportive CBS interviewers were with Democrats, especially Steve Kroft's interviews with Barack Obama. Kroft skipped over the controversy over Obama's minister Jeremiah Wright including in an interview on March 2, 2008, where he sympathized with Obama at facing rumors that he was a Muslim. Notice how Obama expected his support:
STEVE KROFT: One of the things we found in southern Ohio – not widespread, but something that popped up on our radar screen all the time, people talking about it, this idea that you're a Muslim.
BARACK OBAMA: Did you correct them, Steve?
KROFT: I did correct them.
OBAMA: There you go.
KROFT: Where's it coming from?
Obama explained that it was a "systematic e-mail smear campaign," and said "I have never been a Muslim, am not a Muslim," but asserted he was "a devout Christian who's been going to the same church for the last 20 years." Despite that cue, Kroft never mentioned Reverend Wright.
But on this same program right after President Trump was elected, Lesley Stahl told him he was terrifying to minorities: "I want to ask you all about something that's going on right now around the country. A lot of people are afraid. They’re really afraid. African Americans think there’s a target on their back. Muslims are terrified.”
MRC's Kyle Drennen told me Fager was interviewed on CBS This Morning on October 24, and volunteered Rather's name in that safe space. Fager said 60 Minutes struggled in several time slots...until they landed on Sunday and until "Dan Rather joined" and "it took off."
FAGER: It was taken off the air, put on the air. And eventually it settled in at 7:00 on Sunday in 1975. And it was bouncing around all that time. It was new, it was still new. And it was Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, and Dan Rather joined that first Sunday, 7:00. And from then on, it took off.
CBS anchors underlined how allegedly rigorous 60 Minutes was with facts (pay no attention to Rathergate):
CHARLIE ROSE: There's an effort in the editing room to make sure you've got it right and you have been fair.
FAGER: Yes.
NORAH O'DONNELL: And also, I think the process is so interesting, about how rigorous the process is before something makes it on the air.FAGER: Yes.....But in the interest of fairness and accuracy, it should be intense.
