On learning of the last-minute decision by 60 Minutes to spike an exposé on the horrors of an El Salvador prison, the biochemist Jeffrey Wigand was sent back three decades to when he acted on his conscience, only to discover that he had misplaced his truth in what was the most trusted entity in TV news.
“Their image was sterling when I went there,” 83-year-old Wigand told The Daily Beast on Monday.
Back then, Wigand had been tasked by Brown & Williamson to develop a safe cigarette. He then came to learn that the company, in fact, prized profit over lives and was happy to add dangerous additives to make its deadly product more addictive.
“Profit,” Wigand said. “Revenue becomes tantamount to amoral behavior.”
He added, “They want the addiction because it funds cash flow.”
When he was finally driven by a Bronx boy’s sense of right and wrong to make the first known, he contacted 60 Minutes as one place he figured he could count upon to get the word out. He spoke to the correspondent viewed as the most trustworthy on the most trusted show.
“I had a lot of respect for Mike Wallace,” Wigand said.
In the summer of 1995, Wigand flew to New York from Louisville, Kentucky, and met with Wallace for several days. Wigand was guaranteed that before anything aired, he needed time to prepare for the consequences.
“My finances, where I was living,” he recalled.
There was also personal safety. CBS assigned him two armed former Secret Service agents who started his car in the morning and followed him and his wife and young daughters everywhere, even when the girls were biking.
“I had my family protected,” Wigand said. “Then [60 Minutes] could release it.”
By October, everything was set.
But then, Mike Wallace called. He said the segment was being put off until after the first of the New Year.
Wigand later learned that CBS was in the midst of being acquired by Westinghouse and did not want the deal disrupted by a lawsuit from Wigand’s truly explosive revelations. He understood that the determining factor was the same one that prompted the tobacco company to add coumarin to improve the taste of cigarettes, even though it was known to cause liver damage.
“The balance sheet,” Wigand said.
The question of when 60 Minutes would actually run the report became moot when the Wall Street Journal got wind of it and broke the story. CBS at least continued to provide Wigand with the two former Secret Service agents. Wigand believes Wallace regretted caving in.
“He could have used his power, his image to do something, and he didn’t do it,” Wigand said. “He recognized that,”
The program was renowned for speaking truth to power. It was now party through CBS’s owners to speaking power to truth. Power being money.
“I trusted 60 Minutes and CBS, and that trust was really challenged,” Wigand said.
The show nonetheless largely retained a certain trust among its still massive audience.
But, as Bronx Bomber Yogi Berra might say, it was déjà vu all over again when Wigand learned that CBS News’ new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss decided to yank the El Salvador prison segment at the last moment on Sunday.
Weiss, who left the New York Times in 2020 decrying “self-censorship,” said that the El Salvador piece simply was not ready for prime time. Wigand suspected a 60 Minutes piece had again been spiked due to corporate machinations.
Billionaire Larry Ellison and his son, David, have been vying with Netflix to buy Warner Bros.
The Warner Bros. stockholders rejected the Ellisons’ offer.
But on Monday, the father sweetened the offer with a $40.4 billion personal guarantee.
David Ellison has already acquired Paramount, which has become the parent company of CBS.
Paramount facilitated approval of that deal by paying Trump $16 million to settle an iffy suit against CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes piece on Kamala Harris, which he felt gave her an undeserved electoral boost.
In the meantime, Trump had voiced displeasure with 60 Minutes, telling a North Carolina rally crowd just two days before the segment was cut that the show “has treated me worse under the new ownership.”
Other than the ever-present threat of another Trump hissy fit, the driving factor in the latest 60 Minutes mess is likely still money. CBS recently acquired new owners, but they were again speaking power to truth. Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent for the El Salvador piece, recalled the Wigand betrayal in a memo to her colleagues on Monday.
“CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.”
In both cases, the determining factor was likely the one Wigand recognized three decades ago.
“Greed,” he said on Monday.
The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS for comment.
