The award-winning broadcast journalist talks about “60 Minutes” and more.
The award-winning broadcast journalist talks about “60 Minutes” and more.
WASHINGTON — For nearly 50 years, Lesley Stahl has been involved in television journalism as a producer and reporter. The award-winning foreign reporter and one of the faces of CBS’ “60 Minutes” was recently greeted by a standing-room-only crowd at the American News Women’s Club Roast & Toast in Washington, D.C., to benefit scholarships for young women journalists.
While celebrating a big night in journalism, she set aside time to talk about a variety of topics.
Q. The future of TV news?
LS: Well, I don’t want to be a downer, but I despair. … Well, obviously everything will end up on the internet. So the way we do our work will inevitably change. I don’t know when…. I remember — how many years ago — gosh let’s go back 15 years……I asked Barry Diller (chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia, and founder of Fox Broadcasting Company) …if he thought I should leave my job and go do something on the web because it was clear that was where everything was going…and he said, “Well, television news is going to sink into the West, but very slowly, so hang in…” And he was right. … I was already thinking, can we survive? But eventually it will morph. And I do think it will be a transition. I don’t think we are going to fall off the cliff because we know it now. We are aware, and we are beginning already to become a hybrid. And then the weight of the internet will just drag us all into it. But we will have to change because what we do is very expensive.
On division in the ranks of the media?
LS: How do you change? It’s like the whole country, everybody is divided. In terms of the pres, something happened somewhere in the past couple of decades where we all became “media.” Rush Limbaugh was media. And Joe Scarborough is media. And Lester Holt is media. The mainstream press ……they are all in that salad bowl. It may just go in that direction. If you are still mainstream, it becomes very difficult because…we’ve all been tainted…It may just go in that direction, if you are the way we are, it If you are still mainstream….because we are “media.”
Do you think that you are biased?
LS: No, I think that I have opinions, but I think I have been trained because I’ve done it every day, since I can’t tell you how old I am, and I’ve been around a long time. But I’ve been trained to be fair, to listen to both sides. When I started, we had the fairness doctrine. We were mandated to present both sides in the story. We’re not mandated anymore, but it’s a muscle and we use it, so I don’t think I’m biased.
Now what is the perception out there?
LS: I promise you that the perception is that … I know our credibility has been shredded. And while Donald Trump went a long way to make those tears, he didn’t start it. It was that way for many years before he became president. We have a problem.
What is the quality that has kept you out front?
LS: The secret is surviving, ,and that’s what I’ve done. Actually, the secret is I love what I do. I am enthusiastic about really every story I have done at “60 Minutes” And the reason, I think is, unlike most news organizations at “60,” we pick our own stories. And if the boss comes and says, will you do this, and we don’t want to, we don’t. So we are committed to every single story, we love every story; they are my children, and yeah, I’m enthusiastic about everything. Is that a boring answer?
(Edited by Judith Isacoff and Bryan Wilkes)
