‘60 Minutes’ Founder Urges ‘Tasteful’ Journalism

NEW YORK —  The founder of “60 Minutes” delivered a blistering attack on network news divisions Thursday for shoddy quality, an unhealthy hunger for ratings and obliterating the line between news and entertainment.

Broadcast journalism is “becoming a lost art and may all but vanish by the end of the century,” Don Hewitt said in a speech Thursday night to members of the Institute for Public Relations Research and Education.

“The kind of tasteful and important journalism that made CBS News, ABC News and NBC News giants in the news business is, for the most part, gone, and nobody seems to care,” said Hewitt, the executive producer of the CBS Sunday night newsmagazine he helped create in 1968.

At age 74 and somewhat of an elder statesman in the TV news business, Hewitt said he feared the success of “60 Minutes” is partly to blame for a feeling among network executives that television news can be a gold mine.

The Big Three networks have 10 hours of newsmagazines on their prime-time schedule this fall, with Saturday the only night free of them. The latest to premiere, “Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel,” is on Hewitt’s home network, CBS.

Particularly in summer months when entertainment shows are in reruns, newsmagazines are consistently among the highest-rated programs on television.

As a result, network executives have become more interested in ratings than good journalism from newsmagazines, Hewitt said.

“News is news and entertainment is entertainment, and crossing the line between them is often dishonest and always bad broadcasting,” Hewitt said. That axiom was an article of faith for broadcasting’s founders, he added.

“I think it would be a better television world if there were fewer newsmagazines and more sitcoms,” he added.

Although he praised some shows besides his own--the evening news programs, ABC’s “Nightline” and Sunday morning talk shows--Hewitt said the news divisions don’t have enough talent to replace newsmagazines with higher-quality work.

Hewitt recalled cameras turning a private moment of grief between Prince Harry and his father, their viewing of floral tributes to Princess Diana, into a public one.

“By the paparazzi?” he asked. “No, by us, by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and every respectable newspaper in the world. Should we have shown it? Of course . . . but let’s stop painting ourselves as somehow more respectable than the paparazzi when, more often than we want to acknowledge, with very different cameras, we’re after the very same thing.”

Hewitt said his show has been able to maintain its success by sticking to its standards.

“Ratings sought us,” he said. “We never sought them.”