Editor’s note: Welcome to a special edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” now a regular Contrarian Boston feature. Today, Emily and her brother, Brian Rooney, a longtime ABC News Correspondent who now writes The Rooney Report, look at how their father, the late Andy Rooney, would have dealt with the ham-handed efforts by the new management at CBS News to assert control over the proudly independent and top-rated news show. Rooney served as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes during World War II and decades later became a household name with his humorous closing segments on ‘60 Minutes,’ which poked fun at the absurdities of modern American life.
Emily Rooney: This is Emily Rooney of “Beat the Press” here with a special edition. I'm joined by my brother Brian Rooney, a longtime correspondent for ABC News who also did a short stint at CBS News and now writes The Rooney Report. We want to offer a personal take on what's happening at ‘60 Minutes’ since our Dad, Andy Rooney, worked at the show for 33 years until his death in 2011. For those who don't know, he did the closing segment, “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.”
Here's Scott Pelley introducing one: “And now, A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.” [00:00:45.21] -
Clip of Andy Rooney: There are a lot of know-nothing boobs who don't appreciate the modern art being put up in public places in all our cities. I know this is true because I'm one of those know-nothing boobs. When did bright-colored plastic cows, pigs, and rabbits get to be art? I don't like most of the stuff passing for art, and it's everywhere. [00:01:04.20] -
Emily Rooney: Brian, as you know, I'm titling this “What Would Andy Think?” But of course, we don't really know exactly what he would think. We just think we do because we spent so much time with him at the dinner table, learning how to swim with him, and in later years, of course, on the phone. You recently wrote an op-ed that hasn't been printed yet, but You described Dad in that op-ed. How would you describe him now? [00:01:29.05]
Brian Rooney: Irascible, difficult, bullheaded, and determined even in moments when he was wrong. [00:01:37.12] -
Emily Rooney: He had this idea, though, that there was an ultimate truth out there. And he used to always say, if everybody knew the whole truth about everybody else, we would be in a much better place. And he also believed that something was true, even if you didn't believe it. Like, he'd use the example of Wonder Bread. He'd say, just because you like it doesn't mean it's … [00:01:57.01] -
Brian Rooney: And he also, I mean, talking about this moment in time and CBS, and I think he would've been raising a ruckus back when Shari Redstone and Paramount paid the $16 million to Donald Trump. He would've thought that was a disgrace and would've been speaking up at that moment. And as you know, he would at times taunt them to fire him, you know, speak his mind. Another thing he used to say, uh, if you're afraid to say it, that's exactly why it needs to be said. [00:02:31.15] -
Emily Rooney: Or if you can't say it, if you can't write it, you can't say it, it's not a thought. [00:02:36.18]
Brian Rooney: Yes, it was that one. If you can't put it in words, it's not a thought. He would have been terribly distressed to see what is going on in ‘60 Minutes’ and all those good people being fired. And it's the cliché about firing, but, you know, oh, it's the way they were fired. But telling Tanya Simon, who had been there her entire adult life, be out of your office by 5 o'clock, is just a whole different measure of incivility and stupidity. [00:03:13.05] -
Emily Rooney: And I just want to use another example of the kind of work that Dad did, because I thought it was a little bit prescient on this one. And this was a piece he did about whether pennies were worth it. And here's a little clip of that. [00:03:25.07] -
Clip of Andy Rooney: There are 91 billion pennies in circulation, according to the US Mint. Stores don't think that's enough. I think it's too many. Trouble is, those pennies are not in circulation. Stores run out of pennies because the pennies are all home in jars in our kitchens Or in boxes in our bedrooms. Every night we empty our pockets of pennies. Next day we come home with more. Pennies are produced by sales taxes and by stores that charge $1.99 for things. [00:03:55.04]
Emily Rooney: So as you know, the penny has been put to rest this year. But you know, you brought up something a minute ago, Brian, about what he would be thinking about the way this was done. They let Anderson Cooper walk away quietly. Obviously, he did it because there was journalistic interference that he hadn’t really spoken in a great deal about. There was, as you mentioned, the firing of Tanya Simon, Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi. Would Dad have been fired, too, at this point? I mean, how would he have, for instance, responded to Nick Bilton's memo in the staff meeting where he's reading from his iPhone? Here's Scott describing for a second the memo that they all received. [00:04:36.04] -
Clip of Scott Pelley: He told us in that email that it wasn't 1968 anymore. And he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn't cost 32 cents anymore and suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air and that nothing had improved. [00:04:57.07] -
Emily Rooney: Brian, you made a note to me that day about just how insulting that memo was from the new EP, Nick Bilton.[00:05:11.22] -
Brian Rooney: On the very day that revered and treasured people were, were cleaning out their offices, he wrote a memo referring to “we at ‘60 Minutes’, and as if he was part of the we. And I think people outside of this, certainly outside of television news and outside of the culture at ‘60 Minutes’, have no idea how close-knit those people are, that they've gone through— they've gone to war together, they've gone through very difficult times together, they've battled it out between each other doing stories. And for somebody to walk in the door on such a horrible day and identify himself as part of that was just shocking to everybody who was there. And then the day last Monday when he called a meeting of the staff, and Scott Pelley was the only correspondent there. People were off shooting stories or starting their summer vacation. And, you know, they brought coffee and bagels, and then, he refused to answer questions about why people had been fired, and what was the plan was, and what he is doing here. And Pelley went off on him, justifiably so, in a way that has always happened at ‘60 Minutes’. [00:06:38.01]
Emily Rooney: Yeah, I recognize that. And you and I recognize that. I mean, they used to have knockdown drag-outs or slamming doors in each other's faces, like almost literally going for their throats. But this is a different culture, a new age, and that kind of behavior isn't tolerated anymore. And Tom Cibrowski and Bari Weiss said, "This is a fireable offense," when he was called into that second meeting, which only went like 8 or 10 minutes. And I think Scott was shocked because of that, Brian, because of this culture of ‘60 Minutes’ where, I mean, let's face it, the egos there are not to be rivaled anywhere. And no one, they had never reported to anyone other than themselves, their own EP. They didn't report to a news president or to a corporate ownership[00:07:20.01]
Brian Rooney: Well, this gets into the outsider culture. Tom Cibrowski came from ABC. I used to work with Tom when he was a young guy. And Bari Weiss, who came from outside of television news. And there's always been a little bit of tension that ‘60 Minutes’ operated as its own cell within CBS. They answered only to themselves. Barely to the management at CBS News. And these two people come in from the outside and obviously can't deal with somebody speaking back to them and resisting them. That's why Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi got fired, because they defended their work to the bosses across the street the same way they defended it in a screening meeting with the ‘60 Minutes’ staff. And these new people, they can't deal with it, and they refuse to deal with it. [00:08:18.05] -
Emily Rooney: All right, there might have been a little bit more to it because one of the things Scott mentioned in his interview with The New York Times was interference with reporting, trying that, that Bari Weiss was trying to put her thumb on the scale, to use his terms, to appease the Trump administration. She did it with Sharyn Alfonsi's story on CCOT, but Scott said she also tried to do it with one of his stories. It was about the ICE protests in Minneapolis, where two protesters were killed. Scott says they found video of the protesters acting really violently, and they went out of their way to find as much as they could, including Alex Pretti, one of the people who was killed, who is charging at somebody's car trying to slash tires or something like that. [00:08:56.17]
Brian Rooney: He kicked out a taillight or something. [00:08:59.04] -
Emily Rooney: That's where this goes. But Bari wanted more. So just hours before the piece was about to air, she sent an email to Scott, and here's what he says about that.
[00:09:09.22] - Clip of Scott Pelley: Bari Weiss, sends an email to my boss, Tonya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, "Can we make the protesters look more violent?" And the other thing was, "Renee Goode's car, you need to describe her as driving toward the officer."
Emily Rooney: Of course, as we know, Brian, that's what Trump was saying, not what the evidence showed. [00:09:38.04] - How would Bari Weiss or Nick Bilton's editing of these pieces, how would Dad have reacted to that? [00:09:43.17] -
Brian Rooney: That's where it's hard to decide: Would he have gotten involved in that argument in particular or in general what was happening? Because prior to, I think it was prior to Bari Weiss, the previous executive producer, Bill Owens, resigned. Because of this kind of interference, which was not terribly publicly known at the time. And then Tanya Simon was named to succeed him. I met with Bill Owens a year and a half ago, and we talked about this, and he, you know, he admitted that there was some danger there, and he wasn't sure what the future was going to be. [00:10:27.08]
Emily Rooney: I thought he made a big mistake resigning, Brian. I think quitting in protest doesn't work. Staying and fighting is the only way. I mean, I've got mixed feelings about what Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker are doing. But I don't think quitting is the answer. [00:10:44.17] -
Brian Rooney: No, I don't either. [00:10:45.10] -
Emily Rooney: I mean, Bill Owens had stayed a long time. [00:10:47.17]
Brian Rooney: I'm in favor of fighting and getting fired if you have to. And it's, it's, I kind of sympathize with, with the, the three remaining correspondents who say they, they don't want ‘60 Minutes’ as they know it to die. And if it really gets gutted editorially and they install flash and dash correspondents, those three may resign or hit the wall themselves. So it can go either way on that decision. It may happen yet. [00:11:24.02]
Emily Rooney: You know, Nick Bilton is a real mystery. I couldn't find any connection at all between Bari Weiss. Both were, you know, cultural reporters at the same time at the New York Times. They had opinion pieces, but they didn't seem to have a close working relationship. And I think more will come out about how she ended up choosing him. But one of his claims to fame, in addition to producing a documentary called Fake Fame, which was, you know, it was, I watched as much of it as I possibly could. There was no deep journalistic dive there, but he was also a writer on that show called “Ali G”, which you may remember, you know, Sacha Ali G. [00:11:58.15] - So he would go around interviewing famous people and really sandbagging them. Anyway, one of the people who fell for this in the beginning was Andy Rooney, and here's a clip of that show.
Clip from “Ali G” show with (Sacha Baron Cohen” Ali G. interviewing Andy Rooney:
[00:12:13.09] - (Sacha Baron Cohen) Ali G.: Does you think the media has changed since you first got in it? [00:12:17.13] - Andy Rooney: Does you think the media has changed? Do you think the media has changed? [00:12:22.18] - Ali G.: Whatever. [00:12:23.18] - Andy Rooney: Does— [00:12:24.07] - Andy Rooney: no, it's English. The English language would say, "Do you think the media has changed?" Not, "Does you think the media has changed?" Yes, I think the media has changed. [00:12:34.10] - Ali G: So what sort of things does you think the media should cover? [00:12:38.07] - Andy Rooney: Do you think the media? [00:12:43.06] - Ali G: Do you think the media? I think it's an English-American thing though, innit? [00:12:47.14] - Andy Rooney: No, no, no, no, that's English. The English language is very clear. I have 50 books on the English language if you'd like to borrow one of them. [00:12:54.18] - Ali G: Yo, for real. [00:12:55.11] - Andy Rooney: Okay, I think that's about it. I think— I don't think we need any more. Can't do this. Can't do this. [00:13:00.17] - Ali G: Why not? [00:13:01.10] - Andy Rooney: This is not— this is not going. I, I can't waste my time. [00:13:06.07] -
Emily Rooney: They ended up airing that piece, which only ran like 3 and a half minutes, and they were taking credit for sandbagging. Then he threw them out of the office. He was on to him instantly. [00:13:17.03] -
Brian Rooney: Yeah, you know, for I don't know what, how old Dad was when that happened. He might have been in his 80s. I'm not sure what he was. Definitely. But he was incredibly sharp and could smell something really off pretty quickly. [00:13:31.13] -
Emily Rooney: Should have known who Ali G was. [00:13:34.11] -
Brian Rooney: Yeah. Well, yeah, he should have. Who knows? Scott Pelley admitted not even knowing who Bari Weiss was until she was made his boss. But see, this is the thing you were talking about —Weiss appointing Nick Bilton. She seems to operate in this world of online people who do not have a big— certainly not a television profile. You see watching ‘60 Minutes’ now, or not ‘60 Minutes’, but CBS News, that suddenly this crop of new talking heads, you know, our national security expert, so-and-so, and it's somebody you've never heard of. And that's Bari Weiss bringing in people from this netherworld of theof the online, most of them sympathetic to Israel. [00:14:21.09] -
Emily Rooney: That's— she, she's tipped her hand on that to the point where it's ridiculous. I mean, she wants people who have sympathy to Israel. [00:14:29.11] -
Brian Rooney: Well, you barely— you barely— they, they, for instance, they fired Debora Patta, a South African correspondent who was just excellent covering Israel and covering war, and they're basically not covering it anymore. Israel is now doing in southern Lebanon and close to Beirut, uh, what they did, what they did in Gaza. They're leveling places and it's not being covered by CBS. Hmm. [00:14:54.15] -
Emily Rooney: So Bari Weiss says she's going to bring in new voices. One of the ones has been rumored is Tony Dokoupil, who's of course the anchor of the CBS Evening News, whose ratings have absolutely tanked if it was possible to go even lower than they were. But I mean, She's got to bring in a lot more, as you know, because they've lost 3, well, 4 correspondents and a bunch of producers. They travel all over the world all the time. Tony Dokoupil, can't be off the anchor desk to be, unless she's just going to have him read the words that some producer does in the field. So she's got to hire a lot of people. It's got to happen quickly because they start producing pieces pretty much now. I mean, they take vacations, and then they come back. [00:15:35.01] -
Brian Rooney: The show gets back on the air. [00:15:36.08] -
Emily Rooney: In September. [00:15:37.18] -
Brian Rooney: They've done this kind of promotional thing before where, like, say, um, Norah O'Donnell. And, you know, I was told she doesn't write her own stuff. Oh, really? Yeah. And, and, um, you know, they brought her in when she was, uh, sitting in the chair at the evening news, and they put her on ‘60 Minutes’. Um, I wouldn't be shocked if they bring in this guy Matt Gutman that I never knew him. [00:16:02.13] -
Emily Rooney: I know who he is. [00:16:03.16] -
Brian Rooney: But that's, that's a sign that as they are on the evening news, they are, they are leaning towards the tabloid with, you know, big gestures of hands and walking and talking and sentences that don't have a subject, a verb, and an object. Yeah. And if they put that in ‘60 Minutes’, that's a really bad sign. [00:16:25.06] -
Emily Rooney: So what would Dad say to John Wertheim, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, assuming he would have been fired himself if he had been in the room with Scott Pelley. I think he would have backed them up on every word he said. That's my guess.
What would he say to them now? [00:16:45.12]
Brian Rooney: He might just say, I hope it works, because he would want it, uh, to, uh, he would want it to continue. Getting, getting to the subject of firing him. As you know, that was his big power was his popularity. There were times when they wanted to fire him, that he made them suffer. [00:17:05.11] But, you know, they found out that an enormous proportion of people stayed until the end of ‘60 Minutes’ to hear our father, and then they passed along the audience to the evening entertainment. Division. [00:17:20.13] -
Emily Rooney:: Murder, She Wrote” [00:17:21.21]
Brian Rooney: And, and this, yes, and the same thing. ‘60 Minutes’ is still important that way. And if ‘60 Minutes’ loses a huge amount of audience, Sunday night entertainment will lose audience, and this is a huge disaster for the whole network. Um, so if our father were still there, he would be saying things and taunting them and just daring them to fire him. And I, I kind of think this current regime would. [00:17:50.22] -
Emily Rooney: I do too. [00:17:52.01] -
Brian Rooney: Uh, um, they, they would not stand for it. I think that, that says something about how much they know about what they're doing. You know, listen, listen, there were times when you and I wanted to fire him. [00:18:05.15]
Emily Rooney: Yeah, true. I mean, he did get laid off a few times or put on the bench for a couple things he said. [00:18:11.00] -
Brian Rooney: So he got suspended a couple of times. [00:18:12.14] -
Emily Rooney: He got suspended. So give me some final thoughts on how you think the season is going to look next year. I mean, you know, they're calling the show a dinosaur, they say it's like a melting ice cube. Are they going to use the tick tick tick of the ‘60 Minutes’ clock? Are they going to change that? Because it sounded like Nick Bilton thought, oh no, it's the same old show it's been since 1968. Will they make that much of a dramatic change? And will they have the long-form pieces? They usually do three pieces and some kind of an end piece. Will they bring in an Andy Rooney type, of which of course there is no such thing, but they're putting out mixed messages about, you know, he has said, yes, we're going to keep the same long-form thing. [00:18:50.22] -
Brian Rooney: And something else that, you know, both Bilton and Bari Weiss have talked about, you know, disruption. Disruption is coming, you know, one way or the other, and you better disrupt yourself before you get disrupted by something else. But that is terminology that comes out of the technical the world. That's about technology and the means of delivery, whether you're going to be over-the-air broadcasting, cable, internet streaming. And that's, you know, disruptions about technology. So it's a mystery to me why they chose to attack the content and the creators of the show rather than immediately do something and worry about how are we going to deliver it to the future audience, which, by the way, ‘60 Minutes’ was already doing very successfully. They had this whole online presence. They do. It was there. [00:19:45.08] -
Emily Rooney: Their archives are phenomenal. [00:19:46.23] -
Brian Rooney: Bill Clinton even knew it. [00:19:48.13] -
Emily Rooney: So he did— [00:19:50.02] -
Brian Rooney: I suspect the show, whether right at first or sometime within 6 weeks, is going to be different in the fall, and it will be a big turning point both for ‘60 Minutes’ and all of CBS News. [00:20:06.20]
Emily Rooney: All right, Brian, thanks for being with me. Special edition of “Beat the Press.” And by the way, you guys, you can catch this on The Rooney Report. You're going to embed it right in The Rooney Report, theroonireport.com, which comes out daily except Sunday. And Contrarian Boston, we're gonna, we're gonna publish it there too, and it'll be on YouTube as well. All right, thanks a lot. I'm Emily Rooney.
