Right after being hired on “60 Minutes,” Ira Rosen witnessed one of Mike Wallace’s signature meltdowns.
The year was 1980 and Rosen, then 26, had his first assignment for the legendary news program, researching union violence in Los Angeles. The newly minted junior producer had spent weeks talking to a federal investigator to agree with Wallace, CBS News’ top correspondent. But while Wallace was in transit to the west coast, the well saved itself.
Senior producer Allan Maraynes announced the bad news when he drove Wallace from the airport to town, with Rosen in the backseat.
“Mike went crazy,” Rosen writes, grabbing handfuls of documents from Maraynes’s briefcase and throwing them in his face as he struggled to keep the vehicle on the road.
Wallace cursed Allan, telling him that he was a failure as a producer and that he would be demoted as soon as we returned to New York. It was the most amazing verbal abuse I have ever experienced. ”
Later Rosen shockedly asked Maraynes how he had weathered the tantrum.
“I took him out,” explained his colleague wearily. “If you’re going to listen to everything he says, you’re going to be crazy, so I’ve figured out a way to get into a cone of silence.”
That incident formed Rosen’s blueprint for the next four decades.
“I’d rather work with a talented bastard than a nice person with no talent,” Rosen writes in Feb. 16, “Ticking Clock” (St. Martin’s), his memoir about his career with “60 Minutes” and his competitors, ABC’s. 20/20 “and” Primetime Live. ”
Luckily for him, the TV news business is full of talented bastards.
When Rosen joined ’60 Minutes’, Wallace, then 62, was a journalistic legend, known for his hard-hitting revelations and difficult interviews that kept the culprits on fire. The CBS advertising department turned its reputation into a slogan: “The four most dreaded words in the English language: Mike Wallace is here.”
“Unfortunately,” says Rosen regretfully, “so did those who worked with him.”
Wallace gave Rosen his big break, teaching him the ropes of investigative journalism and teaching a masterclass in interviewing and showmanship – all while spewing out a constant barrage of swear words and disparagement.
In public and private, Wallace seemed to “define his life by how much trouble he could cause.” He loved questioning Rosen loudly about his sex life when the two were out for dinner, and destroyed Rosen’s wedding by whispering dark remarks to the bride’s father (“Does she know what she’s getting into?” He said, sighing deeply. ” I have to tell you about him – wait, the wedding begins ”).
In the office, he was notorious for his “Neanderthal behavior” towards women, cutting their bra straps and slapping their buttocks. When a female producer responded with a furious slap in the face, Wallace was perplexed.
“What the hell is her problem?” he wondered aloud.
Today’s colleagues “can call HR, hire a lawyer and threaten a very public lawsuit,” admits Rosen. “But in those days, the possibility of such actions never even occurred to me.”
Indeed, since Wallace left the airwaves in 2008, a string of CBS News correspondents and executives – including Charlie Rose, CEO Leslie Moonves, and “60 Minutes” boss Jeff Fager – have been evicted over allegations of sexual misconduct.
It wasn’t just subordinates who got the Wallace treatment. He also ran against his fellow correspondents, regularly poaching stories from colleagues Ed Bradley and Morley Safer.
“Mike would send his producers to steal a source or character that was the key to a story, and then he quickly filmed it before the other correspondent found out,” Rosen writes.
Safer in particular took offense at these thefts. “Months passed when Safer didn’t speak to Wallace, even though their offices were next to each other.”
Fighting with colleagues “gets your blood moving,” Wallace once told Rosen. “You feel alive.”
While Wallace’s behavior was extreme, he wasn’t alone. Rosen writes that the industry is full of divas and essentials that make life miserable for their crew.
The “two-faced” Diane Sawyer was notorious for her insults behind her. “If she was overly friendly and started kissing you on the cheeks to say hello, chances are she was throwing you behind your back,” Rosen scales the dishes.
Sawyer would only smile when she ran into Barbara Walters in the halls of ABC, chuckling at the rumors that the two disagreed – and dropped the act as soon as Walters was out of reach.
In the elevator, Diane looked at me and said, ‘I hate that woman. Don’t believe a word she says. She cuts me every chance she gets, ” writes Rosen. “She looked like someone who wanted to get even.”
In 1998, when ABC execs Sawyer and Walters co-anchors a Sunday night show, their secret enmity turned the forced collaboration into a nightmare.
“They fought over who greeted the TV audience and who said good night,” Rosen recalls. After much negotiation, Walters was given welcome duties and Sawyer was in charge of the signing. But no one could stop Walters from adding one last “ goodnight ” just after Sawyer said goodbye to the public, giving her the last word every week, and infuriated her on-air partner.
“They even counted the number of words they all had to introduce the stories,” Rosen writes. “It was a total disaster.”
Chris Cuomo, now a CNN anchor, brought little journalistic experience – but quite a chunk of justice – to ABC when he landed a job as a correspondent there.
“His brother [now-Gov. Andrew Cuomo] nicknamed Chris ‘Mansion Boy’ because Chris spent his teens in the governor’s mansion in Albany ”during their father’s administration, Rosen chuckles.
In 2003, Primetime Live executives asked Rosen to mentor Cuomo in investigative journalism.
“I reluctantly agreed,” Rosen writes. Cuomo greeted me with, ‘I understand you are my new bitch.’ ”
“He lost me at hello,” Rosen recalls. “That bastard Cuomo, I thought, he is definitely going to get far in this industry.”
While his biting arrogance wasn’t welcome at ABC, Cuomo made it part of his act on cable.
‘I hate that woman. Don’t believe a word she says. ‘
Diane Sawyer about rival colleague Barbara Walters
Katie Couric enraged Rosen during her short and unfortunate “60 Minutes” stint.
“Lazy and withdrawn, thinking she was smarter than all of us who worked on the show,” he said. “She wasn’t.”
In 2008, at the height of Hillary Clinton’s presidential primary battle with Barack Obama, ’60 Minutes’ scored a coup: both candidates agreed to show the behind the scenes show of their campaigns to film double segments set in the same slot on Sunday night. . Couric was assigned the interview with Clinton.
But while producers wanted to challenge the former first lady with weighty questions, Couric was determined to deal with her signature stubbornness. She threw out Rosen’s script and went for the fluff.
“How do you do it? … I’m talking about sheer stamina,” Couric began as Rosen steamed down the sidelines.
Clinton replied with a laundry list of grandmotherly nonsense, “I’m taking vitamins. I drink tea, no more coffee … Wash your hands all the time. And if you can’t, use Purell. ”
“The interview went downhill from there,” said Rosen. “I kept thinking, ‘They pay Katie $ 15 million a year for this?’ ”
Mike Wallace never softened with age. At ABC, Rosen worked with Chris Wallace, who had a troubled relationship with his father both personally and professionally.
“I was now in the weird position of passing on the lessons I learned from his father to his son,” Rosen recalls.
In 1997, when Chris Wallace was preparing a story about comedian Chris Rock, his dad derailed it – convincing Rock to sit down with him instead, since “60 Minutes” had better ratings.
“This was betrayal on so many levels. I felt that I had to call Mike ”, writes Rosen.
“” Mike, why would you drop your child off? ” I asked.
“He’ll get over it,” Mike replied.
Rosen begged him to reconsider, saying, “Your choice is simple. You can have Chris speak at your funeral, or you can mention Chris Rock’s profile. ”
Fifteen minutes later, Mike called. ‘I’ve solved the problem. I gave the story to Ed Bradley. ‘”
Father and son did not speak to each other for almost a year.
But when Mike Wallace passed away at the age of 93 in 2012, Chris still paid tribute to his father:
“My dad was everything you saw on television: fascinating and funny, provocative and irritating,” he said in a statement. “And while work has often come first for him, he has worked hard over the past twenty years to connect with his family. He became my best friend. “