Office Hours: The bizarre “60 Minutes” interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene

Should the show have given her a platform for her wacky and venomous views?

Friends,

On Sunday, CBS’s flagship news program “60 Minutes” gave Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a platform to label Democrats as pedophiles and float dangerous transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theories, without pushback or fact checks.

There are really two questions here.

First, should “60 Minutes” have interviewed Greene at all? Greene has attracted a lot of attention for her extreme views, and she has cozied up to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but she is not a major Republican lawmaker. Greene has openly supported violence and insurrection. She has boasted that if she had been in charge of the January 6 coup attempt, the insurrectionists “would have won,” and she allegedly sought a presidential pardon after participating in a December 2020 White House meeting about the effort to overturn the presidential election results. (She was in New York yesterday, rallying for Trump.) She had previously been stripped of committee assignment for expressing approval of social media posts calling for Democrats to be assassinated. Does being an unbiased news outlet require giving any notorious public figure a platform to air their views, regardless of how despicable?

The second question is, having decided to interview her, should “60 Minutes” have pushed back harder against her views? Lesley Stahl, the interviewer, introduced Greene as “smart and fearless” and then allowed Greene to spew her vitriol without stopping her or offering factual evidence contradicting her. When interviewing public figures who present bigoted and dangerous points of view, do journalists have an obligation to counter them, and, if so, how?

What do you think? I’ve included the interview below, should you wish to watch. (I’ll chime in with my views later today.)

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My two cents: First, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I feel privileged to share this page with so many insightful people.

As we all lament, the media — not just Fox News and its imitators but even the mainstream media — has become an entertainment business chasing advertising revenue. Those small oases of sane and thoughtful interviews and news, such as “60 Minutes” once represented, have been caught in the same ebbing tide as all else.

Still, I was shocked that the producers of “60 Minutes” thought Marjorie Taylor Greene sufficiently newsworthy as to give her among the network’s most valuable and prestigious real estate, and subject viewers to her bizarre views. I can almost hear the rationales coughed up among CBS executives — “the public should have an opportunity to see and hear how crazy she is,” “she may be bonkers but she’s become a force in American politics” etc. — but none of it is true. The American public doesn’t need to see and hear her to know she’s out of her mind. And she’s becoming a force in American politics only because the media is making her so.

There is simply no good excuse or justification for demeaning CBS News and its viewers, or dignifying this dreadful and brainless member of Congress, by giving Marjorie Taylor Greene such a platform. Shame on CBS News. When I think about the grand CBS News heritage of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, I feel sadness for yet another American institution that has been degraded in pursuit of money.

The best that can be said in defense of Lesley Stahl is that no interviewer could be prepared for what came out of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s mouth. It is impossible to respond to utter lunacy with rational thought. It is demeaning even to attempt to converse with someone lost in the malignant fog of a bigoted mind. Stahl should never have been put in this position. CBS News should not have staged this disaster.

What can you do? Write to CBS News: 524 West 57th St. New York, NY 10019. Or send an email to 60min@cbsnews.com. Or phone (212) 975-3247. They used to be a national treasure. We need them back.

RR