The suspicious look Bette Davis gave Wallace in the image IMDb uses for this documentary drives it home. In the early days of television, Mike Wallace was a provocateur, always asking the questions that other formally trained journalists like Cronkite and Murrow (labeled "Ivy League journalists" in the film) would not ask. And in the early days of TV, right up to the mid 1990s (before gossip, sensationalism, and then the Telecom Act of 1996 would forever change the landscape of "news networks"), Americans had a hunger for the truth. And 60 Minutes was at its best setting its sites on corrupt businesses, real estate deals, environmental destruction, and even American warmongering and its blunders, particularly in Vietnam. All of this made 60 Minutes the top rated show in the country week after week during the 1970s and to the mid '80s.
Then the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine came along in 1987, and news made a hard turn. News had to be sensationalistic, entertaining, and as "payback" for Watergate, bring down Democrats whenever possible. And all of this should be done with loud voices. And here we are now. The son of Mike Wallace is the occasional voice of reason on a network that is so right wing it doesn't even claim to be "fair and balanced" anymore.
The documentary opens with Bill O'Reilly interviewing Wallace. O'Reilly admits that Wallace was his inspiration to become a "journalist," and he simply upped the ante that Wallace started with his shouting "oh shut up!" over guests on his old show. O'Reilly isn't wrong. He's just delivering what nearly half of the American population wants--porn for audiences conditioned for decades into believing the "old" news media was, as the elder Wallace says to his own son during an interview, "socialist" and "liberal."
The documentary delves into the loss of Wallace's son Peter, his struggle with depression, the lawsuit General Westmoreland brought against CBS (stemming from his interview with Wallace), the Jeffrey Wigand saga (the story that was depicted in the 1999 film The Insider). Clips of many of his interviews are shown, and in most cases, the interviewees look nervous and even spiteful. Exposing the truth hurts.
It's a sad time in 2021 when there are no legitimate news outlets out there to do this, because doing so would upset the corporations and special interest groups which own and control all major antenna, and cable, networks. Heck, even PBS and NPR now tip toe around their quests for the truth, worried that their corporate-controlled counterparts will tag them as "socialist," or even "communist." Storming the U. S. Capitol to overturn the results of a fair election? "Just patriotic Americans tired of their votes being stolen from them" (actually, no....more like those Americans can't bear the thought that more Americans voted against their candidate in 2020). But Occupy Wall Street protests? "Rapists and murderers!" (as even CNN speculated).
Wallace saw all of this coming, and it's conveyed in this fine, but too short, documentary.
Then the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine came along in 1987, and news made a hard turn. News had to be sensationalistic, entertaining, and as "payback" for Watergate, bring down Democrats whenever possible. And all of this should be done with loud voices. And here we are now. The son of Mike Wallace is the occasional voice of reason on a network that is so right wing it doesn't even claim to be "fair and balanced" anymore.
The documentary opens with Bill O'Reilly interviewing Wallace. O'Reilly admits that Wallace was his inspiration to become a "journalist," and he simply upped the ante that Wallace started with his shouting "oh shut up!" over guests on his old show. O'Reilly isn't wrong. He's just delivering what nearly half of the American population wants--porn for audiences conditioned for decades into believing the "old" news media was, as the elder Wallace says to his own son during an interview, "socialist" and "liberal."
The documentary delves into the loss of Wallace's son Peter, his struggle with depression, the lawsuit General Westmoreland brought against CBS (stemming from his interview with Wallace), the Jeffrey Wigand saga (the story that was depicted in the 1999 film The Insider). Clips of many of his interviews are shown, and in most cases, the interviewees look nervous and even spiteful. Exposing the truth hurts.
It's a sad time in 2021 when there are no legitimate news outlets out there to do this, because doing so would upset the corporations and special interest groups which own and control all major antenna, and cable, networks. Heck, even PBS and NPR now tip toe around their quests for the truth, worried that their corporate-controlled counterparts will tag them as "socialist," or even "communist." Storming the U. S. Capitol to overturn the results of a fair election? "Just patriotic Americans tired of their votes being stolen from them" (actually, no....more like those Americans can't bear the thought that more Americans voted against their candidate in 2020). But Occupy Wall Street protests? "Rapists and murderers!" (as even CNN speculated).
Wallace saw all of this coming, and it's conveyed in this fine, but too short, documentary.