Washington The death of CBS News' pitbull reporter Mike Wallace marks not only the passing of a broadcast lion but, in many ways, also the brand of journalism that he helped to define.
Wallace, 93, died late Saturday at a care centre in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he had been staying for the last few years. CBS plans a tribute to Wallace and his career on 60 Minutes next Sunday.
In announcing his death, CBS lauded the brazen tactics that it said had made Wallace a household name "synonymous with the tough interview — a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago."
"All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes owe so much to Mike," Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and a longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes, said in a statement released on Sunday.
His most memorable interviews often made headlines and stirred controversy. During the Watergate years, he interrogated such Nixon associates as John Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy and H.R. Haldeman.
Libel suit
Wallace was at the centre of one of the biggest libel suits ever for his 1982 CBS Reports investigation that alleged that General William Westmoreland, who commanded the US military in Vietnam, had deceived the public by undercounting the enemy.
In 1995, Wallace interviewed Jeffrey Wigand, a high-ranking tobacco executive turned whistle-blower, who said the industry long had known that tobacco caused cancer. CBS initially sat on the explosive story, but Wallace's interview aired on 60 Minutes in 1996. (The flap became the subject of the movie The Insider.)
In 1998, Wallace's interview with Dr Jack Kevorkian sparked another controversy because it included video of Kevorkian lethally injecting an ill patient.
Wallace's tenacious spirit and blistering questions helped build 60 Minutes into a ratings juggernaut as well as establish the programme as the gold standard for broadcast journalism.
