The Public Eye Chat With…Steve Kroft

(CBS)

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to listen to the interview.

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Steve Kroft: As I said in the story, I think that the press likes to cover interesting races. And I think they believe he is an interesting candidate. So I think that they have pushed his candidacy, and they have created a certain amount of pressure on him, to feel like his candidacy was viable, and that he should run.

So I think it's been favorable, and I think at some point – and I think that point was last weekend – that it's going to become much, much tougher. He's not been on the national stage like a Hillary Clinton or a John Edwards or a Rudy Giuliani, so I think that to a certain extent the press is still trying to define him. Or help him to define himself, or give him the opportunity to define himself. And we're still two years away from the presidential election, a year away from the primary, so I think there will be plenty of time for tougher questions.

Brian Montopoli: You did a piece on Charlie Weiss in October, and you've covered Michelle Wie multiple times. You also talked to Tom Brady in Nov. 2005. The New York Times has suggested that "60 Minutes" has increasingly embraced sports stories in the last couple years. Do you think the program has the right mix when it comes to covering sports?

Steve Kroft: I think the mix is about right now. If you look back at the past ten or twenty years, we didn't do very many. And I think there is a real audience for them. I think the article you're referring to implied that one of the reasons we're doing it is because we have football games on Sunday, and we have a large audience of…people who are interested in sports, that have been watching the football game before "60 Minutes." And I think that's true. I think there's been an added emphasis to do it, because the audience there seems to want it. You've got to build an audience. I don't think you can ignore that, and I don't think "60 Minutes" needs to apologize for it, as long as the sports stories meet the standards of "60 Minutes."

Brian Montopoli: In 2003, you, along with Morley Safer and Lesley Stahl, complained about the increasing trend towards celebrity interviews in the media, particularly when the celebrities insist on promoting a project and controlling what gets discussed in the interview. "It's made doing these interviews a little more distasteful for all of us," you said. "It's turned us all into shills." Can you expand on that a little bit?

Steve Kroft: I certainly wouldn't back away from that statement. I think if anything I have done fewer. And I don't think I've done any where there were any sort of ground rules. I did…Russell Crowe earlier this year, and we were criticized by him for not promoting the movie enough, and I did the Dixie Chicks last year when they released their album, which was a good story, a genuine news story.

I tried to stay away from things that are just promoting movies. And I think the show has probably done less of it. But, yeah, back in the days when "60 Minutes" was the only place on television, really, aside from the morning show, where you could do a profile on a celebrity, we did some great ones. Now it's harder to, because, first of all, everybody's everywhere, particularly when they're promoting a movie. And we don't really bring that much to the process. There's nothing unique, or, except in rare cases, exclusive. And I don't think that people are as interested in seeing and hearing from movie stars as they used to be, simply because they see and hear from them other places 24/7.

It is distasteful business. A lot of times the publicist will try and dictate to you what you can do – well, first of all, they tell you how much access you can have. And they try and dictate to you people to interview, and to extract pledges and promises from you about how the movie is going to be mentioned. And I think we've all lost the appetite for doing that. It would have to be somebody really great who hasn't been interviewed in a long time.

Brian Montopoli: In 1992, you rather famously interviewed Bill and Hillary Clinton, and you asked Bill if he'd had an affair with Gennifer Flowers. Clinton denied the affair then, but he later admitted that what he said in the interview wasn't true. The interview helped Clinton, but he later wrote in his book that he wanted to "slug" you for bringing the matter up. What was your reaction when you found that out?

Steve Kroft: I said that he'd have to get to the end of a long line of people that I've interviewed who have thought about slugging me. (laughs) Look, that interview was a very, very tough interview, and it helped him only to the extent that it was so tough. In that he, and, particularly Hillary, handled the situation pretty well…Without that interview, I think it would have been very difficult for him to get elected. He needed to answer some tough questions. He didn't like it, and it was a very difficult moment for him, but I think that the way he was able to handle the situation kept his candidacy alive. And ultimately he was elected.

It's one of those interviews where people either think I was too easy on him, or the Democrats think I was too tough on him. The conservatives think that he got a free pass. And it really was a very tough interview, and one of the things that I'm proudest about.

Brian Montopoli: Do you think you're going to be able to interview Hillary this time around?

Steve Kroft: I think that somebody from "60 Minutes" will interview her at some time during the campaign. I'm not sure exactly when it will happen or who it will be, but I know that we're trying to get that interview.

Brian Montopoli: You've been at "60 Minutes" for 18 years and with CBS News for more than 26. What do you think about the state of television journalism today? Has the quality changed over the years?

Steve Kroft: Yeah. I think that when I came to work at CBS in 1980, it was one of the great news organizations in the world. It was a much different kind of place. We had bureaus all over the world, we had a lot of people – for every person that was on the air, we had many people that were working on day-to-day events all around the world. And that was the case at pretty much all of the networks.

What's happened is, back then there was no Internet, and there was no cable to speak of, other than the fledgling CNN. And the world changed. The audience has become much more fragmented, and the resources that corporations or companies like the networks can devote to original news coverage is diminished. Particualarly without a cable or 24 hour news outlet.

So, yeah, I think that we still do a great job. I think we do a better job that the cable TV networks, albeit with less time. More in depth reporting. But we are not nearly the news organizations – and I say that for all the networks – that we were 20 years ago. Or almost 30 years ago. It's just the way things have changed. And it's the same with the newspapers – newspapers now are going through the same thing the networks went through beginning 15 years ago or 20 years ago, and they're having to cut back resources. It's just economic reality.

Brian Montopoli: Last question: Can you talk a little bit about how things have changed at "60" since Ed Bradley died and Mike Wallace stepped back? You talked in one interview I saw about how the workload has increased a little bit for people. So maybe it's just that. But I'm just curious if the atmosphere has changed, or if the feeling here is different.

Steve Kroft: Yeah. I don't want to say that the workload has increased that much – it certainly has increased a lot, it hasn't increased that much for me. I know it's increased for Scott Pelley and Bob Simon, who were originally going to be doing 10 or 12 pieces and now are doing considerably more.

I think that, yeah, it has changed. It's hard to say how. I think it's definitely changed things for Ed's producers. We have always worked up here, the correspondents, with our own teams, sort of as individual production companies, and there has been very little byplay between the correspondents on this show. We miss Ed's talents and collegiality and the great stories that he would have done this year that we haven't had. And I think it's been very difficult on his team. I think everybody right now is just working really hard and trying to get through the season. We went through a very tough month leading up to his death and immediately after, and since then we've just been working hard and trying to get through.