Ariel Zilber writes for the New York Post about an interesting assessment of one of the political left’s favorites television news programs.
A veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent ripped the famed CBS programming as a “snake pit” plagued by “no civility.”
Steve Kroft, who spent 30 years as one of the mainstay journalists on “60 Minutes,” told podcaster Bill O’Reilly that if he were offered the chance to do it again, he would respond: “No, I probably wouldn’t do it again…I hated it.”
The 80-year-old former correspondent described the prestigious newsmagazine not as a dream job, but as a brutal grind and psychological battlefield that wore him down over time.
Kroft said the job was a relentless, all-consuming slog — “24 hours a day” — with constant travel, writing, editing and screenings that never seemed to stop. …
… But it was the culture inside the newsroom that drew Kroft’s most scathing criticism.
Before joining 60 Minutes, Kroft said he got a stark warning from Dan Rather about the show’s cutthroat culture — recalling that Rather told him the newsroom was filled with “big cats” who could take you down with a single swipe, leaving you “limping for six months.”
Kroft said the warning proved accurate once he arrived.
“There was no civility at 60 Minutes,” Kroft told O’Reilly, describing a workplace where basic decency was absent and suspicion was constant.
“If there was civility… you better check your wallet,” he added, suggesting even friendliness came with ulterior motives.
The environment, he said, quickly turned colleagues into adversaries.
“When I was tapped to go to 60 Minutes… not everybody was happy… you’ve all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies,” Kroft said.
“It’s just… a snake pit.”
That hostility fueled a constant sense of paranoia inside the newsroom, where journalists were driven by competition for status and airtime, the ex-correspondent said.
“Everybody knows the environment… they think that somebody is behind them… going to put a shiv in their back,” Kroft said.
