Just after being hired at “60 Minutes,” Ira Rosen witnessed one of Mike Wallace’s signature defeats.
It was 1980 and Rosen, then 26, was on his first mission for the legendary news program, investigating union violence in Los Angeles. The newly coined junior producer had spent weeks talking to a federal investigator to agree to appear on camera with Wallace, CBS News’ chief correspondent. But while Wallace was in transit to the west coast, the source was saved.
Senior producer Allan Maraynes broke the bad news when he was driving Wallace into town from the airport, with Rosen in the back seat.
“Mike went crazy,” Rosen writes, grabbing a few documents from Maraynes ’briefcase and throwing them in his face as he struggled to keep the vehicle on the road.
“Wallace cursed Allan, told him it was a failure as a producer and that it would be degraded as soon as we got back to New York. It was the most amazing verbal abuse I’ve ever seen. ”
Later, a surprised Rosen asked Maraynes how he resisted the rage.
“I tuned it in,” his companion explained wearily. “If you listen to everything he says, you’ll go crazy, so I found a way to get into a cone of silence.”
That incident set the plan for Rosen’s next four decades.
“I’d rather work with a talented asshole than a nice, untalented person,” Rosen wrote in “Ticking Clock” (St. Martin) on Feb. 16, his memoirs about his 60-minute career and his competitors, ABC “20/20” and “Primetime Live”.
Luckily for him, the TV news business is full of talented assholes.
When Rosen joined “60 Minutes,” Wallace, then 62, was a journalism legend, known for his harsh expositions and harsh interviews that kept criminals’ feet on fire. CBS’s advertising department turned its reputation into a slogan: “The four most feared words in English: Mike Wallace is here.”
“Unfortunately,” Rosen says sadly, “this also applies to those who work with him.”
Wallace gave Rosen his big chance, taught him the ropes of investigative journalism, and offered a master class in interviews and entertainment, all while launching a constant mess of invective and contempt.
In public and in private, Wallace “seemed to define his life by how many problems he could cause.” He was delighted to ask Rosen out loud about his sex life when the two were out for dinner and destroyed Rosen’s wedding by whispering dark comments to the bride’s father (“Do you know what he’s getting into?”, He said. sighing deeply. I have to tell you about him: wait, the wedding begins ”).
In the office, he was famous for his “Neanderthal behavior” toward women, breaking the straps of his bra and punching them. When a producer reacted with a furious blow to the face, Wallace was puzzled.
“What the hell has your problem?” he wondered aloud.
Today, co-workers “can call HR, hire a lawyer, and threaten a public lawsuit,” Rosen admits. “But in those days the possibility of such actions did not even cross my mind.”
In fact, since Wallace left the airwaves in 2008, a number of CBS News correspondents and executives, including Charlie Rose, CEO Leslie Moonves, and Jeff Fager, none of the “60 Minutes,” have been fired on charges of sexual misconduct. .
Not only the minors received Wallace’s treatment. He also ran over his correspondents, regularly stealing stories from teammates Ed Bradley and Morley Safer.
“Mike would send his producers to steal a source or character that was key to a story and then film it quickly before the other correspondent found out,” Rosen writes.
Safer, above all, felt offended by these thefts. “There would be months when Safer wouldn’t talk to Wallace, even if his offices were next door.”
Choosing fights with colleagues “makes the blood move,” Wallace once told Rosen. “It makes you feel alive.”
Although Wallace’s behavior was extreme, he was not alone. Rosen writes that the industry is full of divas and cases that make life miserable for its crews.
Diane Sawyer’s “two faces” were infamous for their insults on her back. “If he was too kind and started kissing you on the cheeks to greet you, he would probably throw you on your back,” Rosen said.
Sawyer would be all smiles when he met Barbara Walters in the ABC aisles, laughing at rumors that the two disagreed – and dropped the act by the time Walters was out of his reach.
“Inside the elevator, Diane looked at me and said,‘ I hate this woman. Don’t believe a word. Any chance I have has stabbed me, ”writes Rosen. “He looked like someone who wanted revenge.”
In 1998, when ABC executives turned Sawyer and Walters into co-anchors of a Sunday night show, their secret enmity turned forced collaboration into a nightmare.
“They fought over who greeted the TV audience and who said good night,” Rosen recalls. After many negotiations, Walters was given welcome tasks and Sawyer was responsible for the closure. But no one could stop Walters from adding a final “good night” a moment after Sawyer proposed to the audience by saying goodbye, giving him the last word each week and infuriating his partner on air.
“They even counted the number of words everyone had, introducing the stories,” Rosen writes. “It was a total disaster.”
Chris Cuomo, now a CNN presenter, brought little journalistic experience (but a lot of rights) to ABC when he got the job of a correspondent there.
“His brother [now-Gov. Andrew Cuomo] nicknamed Chris “Mansion Boy” because Chris spent his teenage years at the governor’s Albany mansion ”during his father’s administration, Rosen snorts.
In 2003, “Primetime Live” executives asked Rosen to mentor Cuomo in investigative journalism.
“I reluctantly agreed,” Rosen writes. “Cuomo greeted me with, ‘I understand you’re my new bitch.'”
“He lost me in hello,” Rosen recalls. “That son of a bitch Cuomo, I thought, will definitely go a long way in this business.”
While her caustic arrogance was not welcomed on ABC, Cuomo made it part of her cable act.
“I hate this woman. Don’t believe a word.
Diane Sawyer to fellow rival Barbara Walters
Katie Couric infuriated Rosen during her short and unhappy “60 Minutes” stage.
“Lazy and detached, and I thought I was smarter than all of us who worked on the show,” she judges. “She wasn’t.”
In 2008, at the height of Hillary Clinton’s presidential battle with Barack Obama, “60 Minutes” staged a coup: both candidates agreed to leave the show behind the scenes of their campaigns to film twin segments. which would run in the same strip on Sunday night. Couric was interviewed by Clinton.
But even though the producers wanted to challenge the former first lady with big questions, Couric was determined to keep up with her brand. He tossed Rosen’s script and went to get the fluff.
“How do you do it? … I’m talking about pure resistance,” Couric began as Rosen steamed on the sidelines.
Clinton responded with a list of Grandma’s inanity laundries: “I take vitamins. I already take tea, not coffee … Wash your hands all the time. And if you can’t, use Purell.”
“The interview came down from there,” Rosen says. “I kept thinking,‘ Why do they pay Katie $ 15 million a year? “”
Mike Wallace never calmed down with age. On ABC, Rosen partnered with Chris Wallace, who had a fragile relationship with his father both personally and professionally.
“Now I was in the weird position of passing the lessons I learned from his father to his son,” Rosen recalls.
In 1997, while Chris Wallace was preparing a story about comedian Chris Rock, her father derailed her, convincing Rock to sit down with him, as “60 Minutes” had better ratings.
“It simply came to our notice then. I felt I had to call Mike, ”Rosen writes.
“‘Mike, why would you tear up your son?’ I asked.
“He’ll get over it,” Mike replied.
Rosen begged him to reconsider, saying, “Your choice is simple. You can have Chris speak at your funeral or profile Chris Rock. ”
“Fifteen minutes later,” Mike called. ‘I have solved the problem. I gave the story to Ed Bradley. ”
The father and son did not talk for almost a year.
But when Mike Wallace died in 2012 at the age of 93, Chris still paid tribute to his father:
“My dad was everything you see on TV – fascinating and funny, challenging and exasperating,” he said in a statement. “And, although work was often the first thing for him, during the last twenty years, he worked hard to establish connections with his family. He became my best friend. “