BEFORE JIM ACOSTA, THERE WAS MIKE WALLACE: Mike Wallace Is Here: New Documentary Exposes 60 Minutes Reporter’s Theatrical Shtick.
How he nailed those wingtip-wearing bastards, those human-rights-violating tyrants, those smarmy politicians! He destroyed every one of them, such as . . . er, well, such as . . . I mean, you know. But you don’t, really. Did Wallace nail . . . anybody important? Even anybody we remember? Or was he just really good at playing the role of a truth-seeking, take-no-prisoners, holy-man-on-a-mission journalist?
Avi Belkin’s new documentary, Mike Wallace Is Here, tries to make the case for Wallace’s importance but pretty much comes up empty. If Wallace, 60 Minutes’s attack dog on so many Sunday nights, did in fact line his trophy room with the skulls of the men he’d vanquished, you would think a documentary would provide the evidence. It doesn’t. There isn’t a single shot of Wallace really nailing anybody you’ve ever heard of, though there is a bitter exchange with the Vietnam War general William Westmoreland, who sued Wallace and drove the reporter to depression and a suicide attempt before dropping the case. If Wallace ever got a scoop that mattered, it isn’t in this film. One time he exposed a small-time dirtbag who was selling kiddie porn. Lots of times he managed to get shoved aside on camera, or to have people dramatically stalk off the set or try to put their hand over the lens. But that’s all theater, not journalism.
Kyle Smith doesn’t mention in his review whether or not the documentary mentions this infamous moment in Wallace’s career, as described by the late Roger Ailes, someone else who understood the blending of theater and journalism:
Recognize that any time you are in the presence of a newsperson, the conversation is fair game for the record. Jimmy Carter’s famous confession that he sometimes had lust in his heart for women other than his wife was uttered to a Playboy magazine journalist as he was leaving Carter’s home at the conclusion of the formal interview. Even Mike Wallace, big-game hunter of the unguarded moment, got caught in this snare. As recounted on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal by TV critic Daniel Henninger in March of 1981, Wallace:
was interviewing a banker in San Diego about an alleged home improvement fraud involving mainly black and Hispanics, who supposedly had signed contract they couldn’t understand, which led to foreclosures on their home mortgages.The bank hired a film crew of its own to record the interview with Mr. Wallace. The bank apparently left its recorder running during a break in the CBS interview, and the tape has Mr. Wallace saying, in reply to a question about why the black and Hispanic customers would have signed their contracts, “They’re probably too busy eating their watermelon and tacos.”
When the Los Angeles Times got wind of this indiscretion and reported it, there was at least a minor uproar from reporters and others about Wallace’s “racially disparaging joke”. Wallace ultimately pleaded “no bias”, admitting that over time he’d privately told jokes about many ethnic groups but that his record “speaks for itself”. Henninger added, “Needless to say, this has to be the most deliciously lip-smacking bit of irony to pop out of the oven in a long time. Here we have the dogcatcher cornered. The lepidopterist pinned. The preacher in flagrante delicto. This is the fellow who has imputed all manner of crimes against social goodness to a long lineup of businessmen and bureaucrats. From here on out, all future victims of Mr. Wallace can take some small comfort in knowing that although they may stand exposed as goof-offs, thieves and polluters, he’s the guy who made the crack about the watermelons and tacos.”
Eventually, as the cost of the equipment Wallace used for his stings became affordable to all, James O’Keefe and others on the right would begin to employ the same investigative techniques that 60 Minutes pioneered, only aimed at Wallace’s fellow leftists. As I wrote in 2011: Investigative Journalism: It’s All Fun and Games until the MSM Gets Stung.