MAD AS HELL

A longtime documentarian and 60 Minutes producer takes readers behind the scenes.

Moses fell into journalism more or less accidentally, his first go as a reporter “a total bust”—that being an interview with a rural Virginian who answered Moses with monosyllables. He grew on the job, though, schooled by “a profane alcoholic” and the comedian/activist Dick Gregory, as well as an array of ordinary folks who imparted life lessons. Moses landed at 60 Minutes early on. It was a show that almost didn’t happen until executive rivalries kicked in: Famed producer Don Hewitt had been turned down by CBS News president Fred Friendly, who was fired not long after, and he used reverse psychology to pitch his successor by saying that Friendly hated it. “That was all [Richard] Salant needed to hear. It took Hewitt three years, but 60 Minutes had its green light.” In an early anecdote, Moses suggests that “the first ambush interview in history” took place under his watch, when a military blowhard had his purported record of heroic acts shredded by an eyewitness. Another anecdote recounts the discovery of corporate correspondence in which a chemical manufacturer acknowledged that factory workers would die making one of its products—but then ordered that the expenses of settling lawsuits be built into the P&L paperwork. Moses dissects the hundreds on hundreds of hours and the army of technicians that go into making a single segment—of interest to any fan of the show and documentary films in general. He also dishes dirt on subjects and colleagues alike (Mike Wallace in particular) while recalling successes and failures. He closes with a vigorous takedown of the current CBS News regime, “headed by conservative print journalist Bari Weiss,” quoting fired correspondent Scott Pelley’s aperçu that a republic without a free press is “a stage set.”

A revealing fly-on-the-wall account of how news is made.