
Watch Morley Safer Lie in Real Time, on 60 Minutes - adrianscott
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/05/21/morley-safer/
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vannevar
Michael, thou doth protest too much. You were teaching them how to walk up to
influential people and make their acquaintance. Safer shorthanded that to
"handshaking and eye contact" to make it simpler (and yes, to play into the
geek stereotype). Welcome to television. If you're that thin-skinned, it's
probably a medium you should stay away from.

~~~
larrys
"doth protest too much"

Funny exactly the thought that came to my mind as well.

And then again the linkbait headline is without merit: "Watch Morley Safer
Lie". We don't know who was behind this (even if you want to consider it a
lie). Morly has input but I'm not aware that he (and not the producers and
editors) make the determination of what makes it "in the can" on a report like
this.

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caffeine5150
I have an experience with 60 minutes that similarly gave me concern about the
integrity of their reporting. I was born and raised in Las Vegas. When I was a
teenager, 60 minutes did a report the message of which was something along the
lines of "look at the poor youth of Las Vegas and how they are the victims of
this grown up town with its neglectful gambling parents and are spending their
time around casinos, etc. etc." Fine - for some reason people feel free to say
rude things to people from Vegas about Vegas. Me and many I know have
routinely heard things like, "I hate Vegas" and "How awful for you" when we
say we're from there. The problem with the 60 minutes spot was that they did
things like show an establishing shot of the strip and then cut to a bunch of
teenagers hanging out in front of the Red Rock movie theaters that's many
miles from the strip, but which had a blinking marquee that might look like
something on the strip. It clearly was meant to appear like the kids were
handing out on the strip. At the theater, they interviewed a girl I happened
to know and I can't help but think that they cherry-picked her. She was a goth
chick - very smart and loved to be odd and controversial. She said all kinds
of things about her neglectful mother and other things that fed into their
premise. 60 minutes has done some excellent reporting that's directly resulted
in positive change and Vegas is not a shangri-la for kids, but the manner of
that report has forever made me question the show's integrity.

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grannyg00se
That was a tv cheap shot and classic spin method using editing and voiceover.
The media wanted a particular viewpoint expressed and in the process they
offended somebody. I suspect they didn't mean to personally offend but they
did. And so the blogger blogs about the offense. I think his reaction was
reasonable and provides a good reminder of how media operates sometimes.

~~~
jsprinkles
That might be the case had the author not used words like _lie_ and _slander_
, which are big charges. Similar to plagiarizing in an educational context,
you don't ring that bell unless you know exactly what it means.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting rant. So the author seems to completely "miss" the point of
television and web based "news."

    
    
       Priority #1: Get ratings, everything else is subservient to this.
       Priority #2: Make your advertisers happy.
       Priority #3: Inform the public.
    

Really, they are in that order. So if you're not working on #1 you're working
on #2 and if you aren't working on that only then are you working on #3.
Generally organizations stay away from making up news from whole cloth (as
wonderfully lampooned in Dave Barry's "Big Trouble") but they 'film' to get
stuff for someone's eyes to look at during the story, not necessarily to
report on what is being filmed. Then they tell their story and some film
editor goes and cuts in bits of video that 'look like' what the story is
saying at the moment.

So the fact that they filmed a talk you gave can have nothing at all to do
with the story they are writing. So complaining that they used footage of you
doing one thing, while they talked about something else, well that is their
right, you signed the release. Now if you had added a codicil which said "My
only use my image when reporting on this talk about this topic." That would
have prevented them from using your likeness in the story.

True story, had a friend at a sports bar when a film crew came in to pick up
background video. After the fact they passed around releases for folks to
sign, and my friend, being precise, added a clause like the above to his
release. The station used the film on a story about sports and drinking and
his face was a big blur :-) It was kind of hilarious but they take those
things seriously.

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berberous
As a long-time 60 minutes viewer I was actually a little shocked by what a
dick Morely was last night. The piece really did seem very slanted against
Thiel, with not much substance to back it up.

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fleitz
Business schools also teach students how to play golf, why doesn't he mock
business schools for taking $200K off people to teach them to play golf?

~~~
pron
There might be a lot to mock business schools about, but the piece was about
Thiel's school, which has apparently earned some mockery as well.

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cafard
60 Minutes has been burned in the past by people who did their own taping of
an interview and were able to demonstrate that 60 Minutes cherry-picked.

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T_S_
tl;dr. Guy upset with the tiny snippet of himself on 60 minutes and how it was
used to illustrate one of their points and not make his.

~~~
jasonjackson
tl;dr Guy upset with the tiny snippet of himself on 60 minutes and how it made
a false claim about what he was teaching.

~~~
pbreit
At worse, a mis-representation, but hardly a "lie" or "false claim".

------
jsprinkles
The armchair lawyer in me cringed reading this entry. Black Rock's lawyers
could swoop in and eat the author for lunch, given the legally-strong words
he's throwing around in his prose. This is dangerous, dangerous territory and
take heed, folks; any chance you have for legal recourse in a case such as
this is completely and irrevocably undermined by temperamental writing in the
heat of the moment. This has liability written all over it for the author, in
fact, and one should really think twice before squaring off against a legal
team that has been in the trenches against _all of big tobacco_ for the very
same program.

Morley Safer is one of the old guard, one of the few journalists (the
traditional meaning, not a blogger) left who has actually seen Vietnam. His
work on _60 Minutes_ is, typically, quite strong, and he has doubtlessly been
on _60 Minutes_ longer than this person has been alive. I find myself siding
with Safer here instead of this blogger, and that's even with a deep-seated
distaste for the media these days; that's merely on the credibility that _60
Minutes_ has established, in my mind, and I really hope the author is prepared
for many people with similar mindset to mine.

Namedropping your blog on Forbes isn't something that gives weight to your
argument, since they've been comically easy to get for the last couple of
years (troubling for Forbes's image, in my opinion). I don't think this entry
will have the effect the author intended, as I'm more prone to indict the
author instead of the person he wanted me to condemn.

EDIT: Clarifying a remark that confused my intent.

~~~
boxy_brown
The blog post makes a substantive charge of journalistic misconduct against 60
Minutes and includes evidence supporting the charge. What do Vietnam and
Morely Safer's age have to do with it? Why are you siding with anyone if you
haven't seen the evidence? Are you too lazy* to watch the video, yet
nonetheless possessed of a need to share your opinion about it?

What, exactly, do you want to accomplish with this comment?

* EDIT: this is inappropriately unpleasant language on my part, I apologize

~~~
jsprinkles
> Why are you siding with anyone if you haven't seen the evidence?

Why are you assuming I haven't? Anybody that disagrees with the author
automatically hasn't done the necessary research, in your mind?

I appealed to Morley Safer's incredibly long history with the program for a
specific reason. The author of this piece charges _60 Minutes_ with slander,
which is a _very_ big word, and journalists don't have multi-decade careers
when they're stupid enough to open up their company to claims of slander.
Particularly on a (to them) relatively unimportant story.

~~~
boxy_brown
Because you did not engage at all with the facts of this specific complaint.
You still have not done so.

It's not clear what a long career in broadcasting has to do with any of this.
You're talking about credibility. Credibility has it's place, but it's a
heuristic for evaluating claims in the absence of facts. When the facts are
available it counts for nothing.

If you want to know whether it's raining outside, don't ask Morley Safer--look
out the window.

~~~
jsprinkles
You completely missed the point of my comment. I am completely noncommittal on
this specific allegation, and my comment remains a generality. You clearly
read it and assumed I implied the author is wrong or that I disagree with the
allegations, which I most certainly did not.

I reacted to the presence of words like _slander_ , which is an entirely
different ballgame from accusing Morley Safer of skewing the truth. Slander is
a big, legally-actionable word, and you don't bang that drum unless you're
ready to march behind it. My point about siding with Safer is that due to his
credibility, I'm prejudiced to his side even before being told of this issue.

Nowhere in my comment did I address this specific issue.

