... sometimes sad, often funny, always revealing portrait ... Rosen offers an engaging tutorial on how 60 Minutes' signature high-quality mini-documentaries are produced but perhaps the book’s most important contribution comes in ratifying the essential role of skilled, tenacious journalism in maintaining a democracy.
These nuggets have already drawn the interest of the tabloids. Indeed, some of what Rosen plucked from years as a journalist feels designed for them...The heart of the book, though, and its more compelling parts, involve his work with Wallace ... All this source-tending would be suitable material for a course in journalism ethics. But Rosen’s account leaves a reader with the feeling that such cozy relationships are a necessary part of success in big-time TV.
Rosen offers a mostly affectionate portrayal of Hewitt and does not mention the settlement. At the same time he questions his own reaction to the firing of Rosen ... Rosen’s backstage descriptions of the show are livelier than his sometimes plodding accounts of how he nailed stories of corrupt politicians and amoral executives. But how reliable a guide is he to 60 Minutes? Although he acknowledges the toxicity of its workplace, he devotes space late in the book to castigating journalists at The Washington Post who were reporting on sexual harassment at the show. And a reader may wonder what lessons he drew from his years in such an environment when he writes of the correspondent Ed Bradley that he 'liked his women and was a chick magnet' and says that Rose 'had always been a ladies’ man.' Those lines are among the book’s many groaners.
