blog report

“60 Minutes”: In the Crosshairs Again

Last night on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Bob Simon interviewed Elian Gonzalez, who is now 11 years old and living in Cuba. Predictably, the interview touched off a minor “El Nino” event in far-reaching corners of the blogosphere. “Did you see last night’s shameless ’60 Minutes’ interview of Elian Gonzalez, five years later?” asks Debbie Schlussel […]

October 3, 2005

Last night on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Bob Simon interviewed Elian Gonzalez, who is now 11 years old and living in Cuba. Predictably, the interview touched off a minor “El Nino” event in far-reaching corners of the blogosphere.

“Did you see last night’s shameless ’60 Minutes’ interview of Elian Gonzalez, five years later?” asks Debbie Schlussel on debbieschlussel.com. “Clearly, the boy has been brainwashed to the nth degree. You’d have to be brainwashed to call Fidel Castro your ‘friend’ and ‘father.’

“I blame CBS, ’60 Minutes,’ and left-wing reporter Bob Simon for helping perpetrate this farce of an interview/’report,'” continues Schlussel. “Simon let Elian go on and on about how he missed his father when he was in Miami. Reality Check: Elian’s parents were divorced, his mother was his sole caretaker, and he barely ever saw or even knew his father. Where was Bob Simon on this point?”

Others simply felt bad for Elian. “I feel so horribly for this boy,” writes Merchants And Thieves. “He is being brainwashed by both the Americans and the Cubans, caught in a crossfire, being made an archetype, a symbolic figure, communism against democracy.”

Sympathy aside, KillCastro sees the interview as just another example of CBS’s longstanding romance with the Cuban leader, referring to the station as the “Communist Broadcast Service.”

“Today’s broadcast of CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ Bob Simon ‘interview’ with Elian Gonzalez is the worst kind of exploitation,” writes KillCastro, who seems to have trouble distinguishing between reporting and endorsing. “Using an indoctrinated child as a mouthpiece for a murdering dictator’s propaganda … Of course Mr. Simon won’t ask him any hard questions. For decades, CBS has worshiped at the bearded dictator’s feet and licked his putrid ass.”

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KillCastro then documents CBS’s coverage of Castro through the decades, touching on interviews by Robert Taber, Edward R. Murrow, Bill Moyers and Walter Cronkite. Eventually, KillCastro gets around to the inevitable Rather bashing. (Somehow you knew that, didn’t you?)

“CBS’s Dan Rather, who holds the record for the most [Castro] interviews, led the media-manipulated return of Elian to the dictator,” writes KillCastro. “Castro wanted Elian back, and Rather happily played his part in the disgraceful deceit that delivered the goods. Don’t doubt Rather’s intentions, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Marxist propaganda cabal whose goal is a totalitarian Socialist world government in which our country would be submerged.

“There are, of course, many Americans, including some in the news media, who have no romantic illusions about Fidel Castro and who could question him at least as sharply as the White House press corps questions any American president,” concludes KillCastro. “But Castro, unlike such foreign targets of our media’s scorn [such] as Pinochet, does not permit just any journalist to enter his domain, much less interview him.”

But who needs actual interviews when you have bloggers to rehash the scene? “This all goes to show that ’60 Minutes” Elian show was nothing more than a propaganda effort for the Castro regime,” claims Babalu Blog, who also published a guest post titled “’60 Minutes’: Pimp my Child!” “Some media will do anything, compromise any journalistic standard to get the interview. When the truth comes out about this, it’ll be another blow to this news organization’s already tattered reputation.”

Who will defend CBS? Perhaps CBS’s own Public Eye? Alas, so far today, the Eye has yet to weigh in on said tatters.

Elsewhere, a blogger in Michigan thinks that Elian will eventually bounce back. “He seems like a normal child in most every way, except he has Fidel Castro claiming him as a friend,” writes News From Davison, Michigan. “Castro is using him as a political tool, a symbol of their small victory over the ‘evil imperialists’ … Elian is shown at a rally alongside Fidel, giving a speech, presumably singing the praises of their leader. Kids are pretty resilient, and are pretty good at detecting b.s.”

In his interview last night, Elian told Bob Simon that he wanted to be a computer scientist someday. Perhaps he’ll pick up blogging as a hobby.

–Felix Gillette

Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.