A climate of fear is perceptible in the United States today, and it must be resisted no matter what, CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley says.
“People are silencing themselves for fear that the government will retaliate against them, and that’s not the America that we all love,” Pelley told Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview after CNN’s Saturday telecast of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
The Broadway play, which recounts CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s unflinching 1954 broadcasts about Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Cold War witch hunts, has stirred comparisons between McCarthyism and Trumpism, and between the CBS network then and now.
Fear and courage “are the two themes that run through both of these moments in American history,” Pelley told CNN’s Cooper.
“The most important thing is to have the courage to speak, to not let fear permeate the country so that everyone suddenly becomes silent,” the former “CBS Evening News” anchor added. “If you have the courage to speak, we are saved. If you fall silent, the country is doomed.”
Cooper asked Pelley, a nearly 40-year veteran of CBS: “Do you still believe in journalism? Do you still believe in the role of journalists?”
“It is the only thing that’s gonna save the country,” Pelley responded. “You cannot have democracy without journalism. It can’t be done.”
Cooper, who also works alongside Pelley as a correspondent on “60 Minutes,” anchored a discussion about the state of journalism after the Broadway telecast Saturday night.
One inescapable topic was President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against CBS News.
Trump filed a legally dubious lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris last fall.
CBS News journalists and executives have sought to fight the suit and its allegations of “election interference.” But lawyers at CBS parent Paramount Global have been trying to strike a settlement with Trump, perhaps believing that such a deal will help secure the Trump administration’s approval of Paramount’s pending deal to merge with Skydance Media.
The settlement could look like a payoff in exchange for government approval and would spark an outcry from CBS News journalists. At “60 Minutes,” “everyone thinks this lawsuit is an act of extortion, everyone,” a network correspondent recently told CNN.
When Cooper asked Pelley what Murrow would think of the state of play at CBS, Pelley said that “he would probably be waiting to see how this lawsuit from the president works out and how the Paramount Corporation deals.”
Murrow, he said, “would be for fighting,” not settling.
A settlement would be “very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the reputation of those companies,” Pelley added. “I think many of the law firms that made deals with the White House are at this very moment regretting it. That doesn’t look like their finest hour.”
When asked about the April resignation of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens, Pelley repeated what he told viewers — that Owens felt that he no longer had “the independence that honest journalism requires.”
At the time, the correspondents talked about leaving with him, but Lesley Stahl recently told The New Yorker that Owens “explicitly asked us not to resign.”
Pelley told Cooper that, on the one hand, “you really wish the company was behind you 100%, right?” On the other hand, “my work is getting on the air.” Paramount bosses have not killed any “60 Minutes” segments, even though the newsmagazine has aggressively covered the Trump administration.
“While I would like to have that public backing,” Pelley said, “maybe the more important thing is the work is still getting on the air.”
Pelley caused a stir with a commencement address at Wake Forest University last month. Many conservative media outlets said Pelley ripped Trump, though he never mentioned the president by name.
“Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power,” Pelley said in the speech. “First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists. For nothing.”
Pelley also talked in the speech about the Trump administration’s actions against major law firms and warned that people in power “can rewrite history.”
“With grotesque, false narratives, they can make heroes criminals and criminals heroes,” Pelley said. “And they can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. ‘Diversity’ is now described as ‘illegal.’ ‘Equity’ is to be shunned. ‘Inclusion’ is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.”
In the sit-down with Cooper, Pelley said he thought he was echoing the sentiments of Murrow in the 1950s, “that freedom of speech is what matters in this country.”
“You can agree with the government. You can disagree with the government. But you have the right to speak no matter what your opinion is. If the government begins to punish our citizens because of what they have to say, then our country’s gone terribly wrong.”
As for the furor over his commencement speech, Pelley remarked, “what does it say about our country when there’s hysteria about a speech that’s about freedom of speech?”
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