Search Results

This chapter begins with 60 Minutes alleging that President Bush shirked National Guard duty in the 1970s in a story based on documents provided by an unnamed source. Immediately after it aired, conservative bloggers charged that the piece was a deliberate attempt to discredit Bush with fake documents two months before the 2004 election. CBS News spent two weeks defending its reporting before Dan Rather apologized and retracted the story. The incident hastened Rather's retirement and led to the firing of senior news producers. Discussions of what happened resulted in conservative claims of widespread liberal bias, concern by journalists over competitive constraints on news work, and a consideration of how the growing influence of new media challenged journalists' use of unnamed sources in their prosecution of controversial subjects.

Once again, Berkman’s cancer care was delayed, mistreated and ignored in the prison health care system. As he would tell a CBS News interviewer on “60 Minutes,” if he hadn’t been a doctor, he would have died because again and again only his own knowledge and actions saved him. Sure that he would perish if their trial went on as planned, his comrades agreed to plead guilty and to take harsher punishments so that he would be severed from the case. Sent to a federal prison near the Mayo Clinic, Berkman finally healed and was released in July 1992.

This chapter analyses The Insider, a 1999 film by Michael Mann. Starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, The Insider is based on the real events sparked when Jeffrey Wigand, former head of research and development at Brown & Williamson, violated the confidentiality clause in his severance agreement by going public with his knowledge of the carcinogenic properties of the company's products to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman. Bergman then put his devastating testimony on tape in an interview with 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace. However, by the time the segment was due to air, Wigand had become a central witness in the lawsuits filed by Mississippi and forty-nine other states against the tobacco industry. The Insider is one of the few major Hollywood products of recent years that's actually about something — morality, conscience, culpability — and which also has the temerity to prod American apathy in the face of corporate condescension.

One of Shilts’s last interviews, with Steve Kroft from CBS’ 60 Minutes, considers his breakthrough role as a gay journalist. Shilts’s future plans for a book about alleged sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church, and his desire for a national column are revealed. Shilts’s last interviews and written words reflect the fleeting nature of his life as he attempts to promote his final book, Conduct Unbecoming. Shilts’s health continues to deteriorate until he dies at his Guerneville, California home on February 17, 1994. Shilts’s death wins nationwide notice and his funeral becomes the first-ever picketed by members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. Shilts’s friends, colleagues and his partner, Barry Barbieri, offer insight into his last months of life.

This introductory chapter discusses the shocking photographs from Abu Ghraib depicting American military personnel and their prisoners. Though the story broke on April 28, 2004, when CBS's 60 Minutes II aired the Abu Ghraib photographs, this was not the first time the public was made aware of torture after September 11. As early as December 26, 2002, the Washington Post ran a story about secret CIA detention centers, and on March 31, 2003, the Nation led with a cover story entitled “In Torture We Trust.” However, it was the Abu Ghraib photographs that finally caused the scandal, the congressional hearings, the calls for impeachment, and the widespread national debate on the ethics of torture. As powerful images, they also posed questions about violence, truth, and ideology that could not be easily answered.

Shilts and book editor Michael Denneny make controversial decisions about how to get And the Band Played On properly promoted and reviewed. The New York Post’s screaming headline about “Patient Zero” sets in motion worldwide publicity for the concept that one man, Gaetan Dugas, was responsible for spreading AIDS in North America. Shilts’s review of Dr. William Darrow’s cluster study of gay men in Los Angeles proves faulty, although mainstream journalism quickly goes with the “Patient Zero” concept and Shilts is quickly cast as a national expert on HIV-AIDS. Shilts unveils his “AIDS was allowed to happen” posit. A subsequent review of Shilts’s work is mostly critical, particularly from LGBT sources who fault Shilts for allegedly scapegoating Dugas.

Shilts begins work on And the Band Played On for St. Martin’s Press – despite an initial struggle to find a publisher for the work. Shilts tackles the complexity of writing about an ongoing infectious disease pandemic with an unknown ending. Shilts unveils his thesis that AIDS succeeded because of government neglect, gay leaders public relations concerns, and news media reluctance to cover gay-related issues. Shilts employs “new journalism” techniques to tell the story of AIDS including reconstructed dialogue and internal thoughts. Shilts learns of the existence of a gay man infected with HIV still sexually active. Shilts uncovers and misinterprets the first “cluster study” on KS victims in southern California. Initial criticism of Shilts for “Patient Zero” concept raised.