Leaked: ‘60 Minutes’ Independence Led to Trouble At CBS

Jeff Fager (Reuters photo)

For decades, “60 Minutes” has reigned at the top of television news, bringing in hundreds of journalistic awards, not to mention weekly ratings for CBS that are the envy of the industry. The success has allowed “60 Minutes” to operate independently from the larger network news division to which it belongs.

But, reports The NYTimes,  that independence came at a cost: The show proved unable to prevent inappropriate conduct by some of its top executives, according to lawyers hired by the CBS Corporation board of directors to investigate the workplace culture of the program.

In a leaked draft of a report for the board, investigators wrote that “the physical, administrative and cultural separation between ‘60 Minutes’ and the rest of CBS News permitted misconduct by some ‘60 Minutes’ employees.”

The executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Jeff Fager, was fired in September after he threatened a CBS News reporter looking into allegations about his behavior. The investigators wrote that the firing was justified, adding that Fager had “engaged in certain acts of sexual misconduct” with colleagues and failed to stop misbehavior by others.

Don Hewitt

They also said the misdeeds during Fager’s run as executive producer, which began in 2004, were less severe than under his powerful predecessor, Don Hewitt, who died in 2009.

Hewitt, who created the program in 1968 and produced the show for 36 years, is a journalistic legend. But investigators revealed that CBS continues to pay out a settlement to a woman who claimed that Hewitt sexually assaulted her on repeated occasions and destroyed her career. The settlement, reached in the 1990s, has been amended multiple times, including this year. In total, CBS has agreed to pay the former employee more than $5 million.

The investigators’ report will be presented to the CBS board next week, during a period of reckoning for the company. CBS forced its longtime chief executive, Leslie Moonves, out of his job in September after he faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied.