Mike Wallace always had the upper hand

Broadcast journalist Mike Wallace, a full-time correspondent for the pioneering TV newsmagazine “60 Minutes” from its debut in 1968 until 2006, dies at age 93 in New Canaan, Connecticut in 2012. During his career, Wallace interviewed everyone from world leaders to Hollywood celebrities to scam artists, and was well-known for his hard-nosed style of questioning.

In the 1950s, Wallace worked on TV talk shows and game shows in New York City, and also appeared in commercials and acted on Broadway. He developed his style as a tenacious interrogator on the TV interview show “Night Beat,” which aired from 1956 to 1957. In 1962, the eldest of Wallace’s two sons died at age 19 in a hiking accident in Greece, a tragedy that inspired Wallace to focus his career on serious journalism. In 1963, he became a correspondent for CBS News, and went on to report about the Vietnam War, among other stories.

“60 Minutes” premiered on CBS on September 24, 1968, and was co-hosted by Wallace and Harry Reasoner. The show, with its trademark opening sequence featuring a ticking stopwatch, became hugely popular and influential, spawning a slew of other newsmagazine programs, such as “20/20″ and “Primetime Live,” and ranking among the top 10 programs in the United States from 1977 to 2000. Wallace became known for investigative pieces in which he used ambush interviews and hidden cameras to uncover corruption and scams. He also conducted scores of memorable interviews with newsmakers ranging from Clint Hill, the former U.S. Secret Service agent who was in President John Kennedy’s motorcade when he was assassinated, to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 American hostage crisis.

At the 1978 commencement at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Mike Wallace was the keynote speaker. Before Mike was scheduled to speak to the graduates, all of the teachers onstage walked off in protest. The teachers were embroiled in a salary battle with Governor Mike Dukakis. Both Wallace and Dukakis were from
Brookline, Massachusetts. The governor was speechless, but he was bailed out by Wallace who grabbed the microphone, and said "who needs them, anyway?"

Some of Wallace’s reporting proved controversial. In the 1980s, he and CBS were embroiled in a $120 million libel lawsuit brought against them by General William Westmoreland for the way he was portrayed in a 1982 documentary about the Vietnam War. The general dropped the lawsuit in 1985, but Wallace later revealed that the pressure of the situation caused him to suffer a deep depression and attempt suicide. His final piece aired in 2008–an interview with baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, who was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.

The teammate of Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees appeared on "60 Minutes" on January 12, 2014. "One click of night cream at night, one cohete at night, one click of night cream in the morning, one gummy in the a.m., four clicks of day cream before leaving the field, one cohete in a.m., pink cream before the game, any oral pills in the a.m." Alex had a great game. He doubled; he scored twice. Mike Wallace would have eaten A-Rod for lunch.

The 1993 hit song by R.EM. refers to an incident in New York City in 1986, where news anchor Dan Rather and 60 minutes correspondent, was the victim of an apparently unprovoked attack by two then-unknown assailants who, between beatings, would ask, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"

It is too bad they didn't try that with Mike Wallace. They would not have gotten away unharmed.

Paul Murphy

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