Shortly after being hired by “60 Minutes”, Ira Rosen witnessed one of Mike Wallace’s characteristic breakdowns.
It was 1980 and Rosen, then 26, was on his first assignment for the legendary news program, investigating union violence in Los Angeles. The newly hired junior producer spent weeks talking sweetly to a federal investigator to agree to appear on camera with Wallace, the main correspondent for CBS News. But while Wallace was in transit to the West Coast, the source rescued him.
Senior producer Allan Maraynes broke the bad news by taking Wallace from the airport to the city, with Rosen in the back seat.
“Mike went crazy,” writes Rosen, taking handfuls of documents from Maraynes’ folder and throwing them in his face as he struggles to keep the vehicle on the road.
“Wallace cursed Allan, told him that he was a failure as a producer and that he would be demoted as soon as we returned to New York. It was the most surprising verbal abuse I have ever witnessed. ”
Later, in shock, Rosen asked Maraynes how he resisted the tantrum.
“I disconnected from him,” explained his colleague, tired. “If you’re going to hear everything he says, you’re going to go crazy, so I figured out a way to get into a cone of silence.”
This incident defined Rosen’s plan for the next four decades.
“I prefer to work with a talented idiot than with a nice, untalented person,” wrote Rosen in February 16’s “Ticking Clock” (St. Martin’s), his memories of his career at “60 Minutes” and his competitors, ” 20/20 ”and ABC’s“ Primetime Live ”.
Luckily for him, the TV news market is full of talented idiots.
When Rosen joined “60 Minutes”, Wallace, then 62, was a legend in journalism, known for his hard-hitting revelations and tough interviews that put the wrongdoers on fire. The CBS advertising department turned its reputation into a slogan – “The four most feared words in the English language: Mike Wallace is here”.
“Unfortunately,” says Rosen sadly, “that applied to those who worked with him too.”
Wallace gave Rosen his big break, taught him the ropes of investigative journalism, and provided a master class in interviews and exhibitionism – all while spewing out a constant flood of injury and depreciation.
In public and in private, Wallace “seemed to define his life by the amount of problems he could cause”. He loved to interrogate Rosen out loud about his sex life when the two went out to dinner and destroyed Rosen’s wedding by whispering dark comments to the bride’s father (“Does she know what she’s getting into?”, He said, sighing deeply. I I have to tell you about him – wait, the wedding is starting ”).
At the office, he was famous for his “Neanderthal behavior” towards women, breaking the bra straps and hitting the buttocks. When a production company reacted with a furious slap to the face, Wallace was taken aback.
“What the hell is her problem?” he asked himself out loud.
Coworkers today “can call HR, hire a lawyer and threaten a very public case,” admits Rosen. “But at that time, the possibility of such actions never crossed my mind.”
In fact, since Wallace left the radio waves in 2008, a number of CBS News correspondents and executives – including Charlie Rose, CEO Leslie Moonves and “60 Minutes” chief Jeff Fager – have been fired on charges of misconduct sexual.
It was not just subordinates who received Wallace treatment. He ran over his fellow correspondents as well, regularly stealing stories from colleagues Ed Bradley and Morley Safer.
“Mike sent his producers to steal a source or character that was the key to a story, and then he filmed it quickly before the other correspondent found out,” wrote Rosen.
Safer, in particular, took offense at these thefts. “Months would pass when Safer did not speak to Wallace, although his offices were neighbors.”
Risking fights with colleagues “makes your blood run,” 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 managerial cases that make the lives of his crews miserable.
The “duo” Diane Sawyer was famous for his insults behind his back. “If she was very friendly and started kissing you on the cheeks to say hello, she was probably destroying you in the back,” Rosen says.
Sawyer would be all smiles when he found Barbara Walters in the corridors of ABC, laughing at rumors that the two were at odds – and giving up the moment Walters was out of reach.
“Inside the elevator, Diane looked at me and said, ‘I hate this woman. Don’t believe a word of what it says. She stabs me whenever she can ‘, ”writes Rosen. “She looked like someone who wanted revenge.”
In 1998, when ABC executives turned Sawyer and Walters into co-anchors for a Sunday night show, their secret enmity made forced collaboration a nightmare.
“They fought to see who greeted the TV audience and who said good night,” recalls Rosen. After much negotiation, Walters was given the welcome duties and Sawyer was responsible for the approval. But no one could stop Walters from adding a last “good night” a moment after Sawyer said goodbye to the audience, giving her the last word every week and infuriating his partner in the air.
“They even counted the number of words each had, presenting the stories,” writes Rosen. “It was a total disaster.”
Chris Cuomo, now an anchor for CNN, brought little experience in journalism – 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 mansion in Albany, ”during his father’s administration, Rosen laughs.
In 2003, Primetime Live executives asked Rosen to mentor Cuomo in investigative journalism.
“I reluctantly agreed,” writes Rosen. “Cuomo greeted me with, ‘I understand that you are my new bitch’. ”
“He lost me right away,” remembers Rosen. “That son of a bitch from Cuomo, I thought, he’s definitely going a long way in this business.”
Although her caustic arrogance was not welcome at ABC, Cuomo made it part of her role on cable TV.
‘I hate this woman. Don’t believe a word of what it says.
Diane Sawyer talks about her rival colleague Barbara Walters
Katie Couric infuriated Rosen during her short and unhappy “60 minute” period.
“Lazy and disinterested, and I thought he was smarter than all of us who work on the program,” he says. “She was not.”
In 2008, at the height of Hillary Clinton’s presidential primary battle with Barack Obama, “60 Minutes” struck a blow: both candidates agreed to leave the show behind the scenes of their campaigns to film twin segments that would be shown at the same time on Sunday at night . Couric was assigned to the interview with Clinton.
But while the producers wanted to challenge the ex-first lady with heavy questions, Couric was determined to go with his characteristic joy. She threw out Rosen’s script and got to the point.
“How do you do that?… I’m talking about sheer resistance,” Couric started as Rosen cooked on the sides.
Clinton replied with a long list of grandma bullshit: “I take vitamins. I drink tea, not coffee anymore … I wash my hands all the time. And if you can’t, use Purell. ”
“The interview got worse from there,” Rosen complains. “I kept thinking, ‘So, are they paying Katie $ 15 million a year?’ ”
Mike Wallace never matured with age. At ABC, Rosen partnered with Chris Wallace, who had a turbulent relationship with his father, both personally and professionally.
“I now found myself in the strange position of passing on the lessons I learned from your father to your son,” recalls Rosen.
In 1997, while Chris Wallace was preparing a story about comedian Chris Rock, his father derailed it – by convincing Rock to sit down with him, since “60 Minutes” had better ratings.
“It was a betrayal on many levels. I felt like I needed to call Mike, ”writes Rosen.
“‘Mike, why would you steal your son?’ I asked.
“‘He’s going to get over it,’ replied Mike.”
Rosen begged him to reconsider, saying, “Your choice is simple. You can have Chris speaking at his funeral, or you can profile Chris Rock. ”
“Fifteen minutes later, Mike called. ‘I solved the problem. I told the story to Ed Bradley. ‘”
Father and son did not speak 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 saw on television: fascinating and funny, challenging and exasperating,” he said in a statement. “And although work was often first for him, in the past 20 years, he worked hard to make connections with his family. He became my best friend. “