Plus, It's Really More Like "42 Minutes"

On the Sunday, 1/08/06 edition of "60 Minutes," Andy Rooney read some of the angry mail he received, after saying that the U.S. no longer makes the world's best cars. To Rooney's credit, he didn't debate the complaints, just aired them.

Then, an odd moment: Rooney finished with this:
"Several letters questioned whether CBS complained about my comments regarding the car companies who buy commercials. No, they did not. I am proud to say that no CBS executive has ever stopped me from saying anything, no matter how dumb it was. " Okay, but Mike Wallace followed up that statement with-- "Me, neither."

Which made me think-- didn't I see a movie with Al Pacino, Russell Crowe and Christopher Plummer called "The Insider"? And wasn't that movie about Wallace's dealings with tobacco company Brown and Williamson's head of research, Jeffrey Wigand? And don't I remember something about CBS NOT SHOWING his segment with Wigand?

Yes indeed. Here's the documentation: a transcript from a 1999 episode of Public Broadcasting's "Frontline" show, where Mike Wallace tells the story behind "Anatomy of a Decision," when CBS initally left Wigand exposed and voiceless:

<interview airs on "60 Minutes". In the introduction to the story, Mike Wallace explains:
CBS management wouldn't let us broadcast our original story and our interview with Jeffrey Wigand because they were worried about the possibility of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against us for tortious interference, that is, interfering with Wigand's confidentiality agreement with Brown & Williamson. But now, things have changed. Last week, the Wall Street Journal got hold of and published a confidential deposition Wigand gave in a Mississippi case, a November deposition that repeated many of the charges he made to us last August. And while a lawsuit is still a possibility, not putting Jeffrey Wigand's story on "60 Minutes" no longer is."
At this point, the critical substance of Wigand's testimony has already been reported by other sources.>>

Right, but Wigand didn't get to tell his story directly to America, until the story finally ran on the tick-tick-tick.

Ya' think Wallace doesn't remember that episode? "Me, neither."