One of the greatest reporters I have ever known is CBS’s Lesley Stahl starting with her historic coverage of Watergate as one of the youngest and few women on that story. For more than 35 years, she has been a journalistic superstar on 60 Minutes, the highest rated news program on television for decades and decades.
She had been working on an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the pro-BB boss of CBS News, Bari Weiss interfered and sidelined her and handpicked Major Garrett to interview Netanyahu instead. Now I have nothing against Garrett. It wasn’t a bad interview, but he is not in Lesley Stahl’s league.
He allowed himself to be used as Bari Weiss’s poodle. Wise, who had no broadcast experience before she took the top job at CBS News. And it’s been an opinion writer and editor, albeit a successful one, but not a news journalist in any sense. In pursuing her personal and ideological agenda, the CBS News already is cratering. Now she has her sights on destroying the gold standard, 60 minutes.
In addition to the outrageous sidelining of Lesley Stahl, she’s sandbagging the legacy of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.