BEHIND THE LINES: CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM: HALDEMAN ON CBS (TV)
Summary
One in this weekly public affairs series that deals with the role of the media in American society. In this program, Harrison Salisbury discusses the concept of checkbook television -- when a network buys a news story or pays for an interview -- with the following people: CBS news correspondent Mike Wallace; the editor of the New York Times' Op Ed page, Charlotte Curtis; senior vice president of CBS News, Bill Leonard; and Richard Clurman, the former chief of correspondents for Time/Life magazines. Checkbook television is discussed in relation to a recent interview on CBS for which convicted felon H.R. Haldeman was paid $25,000 for talking with Mike Wallace about the Watergate affair. The panelists then discuss the following topics, among others: whether or not it is ethical to pay for news; why this specific act of checkbook journalism has caused so much commotion; the idea of people involved in the Watergate affair now profiting from Watergate; acts of checkbook journalism in the past, including interviews with NASA astronauts and President Lyndon B. Johnson; the BBC's rules concerning checkbook journalism; an interview with convicted felon John Erlichman; the policy of CBS News in relation to checkbook journalism; the interview with Haldeman; the practice of paying for news abroad; and the possibility of paying for an interview with ex-President Richard M. Nixon.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
- DATE: April 2, 1975 8:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:28:52
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:37781
- GENRE: Talk/Interviews; Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Ethics; Journalism; Television broadcasting of news
- SERIES RUN: WNET (New York, NY) - TV series, 1971-1976
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Philip Curtis … Producer
- Alan Goldberg … Coordinating Producer
- Mara Posner … Associate Producer
- Duke Struck … Director
- Harrison E. Salisbury … Host, Interviewer
- Richard Clurman … Guest
- Charlotte Curtis … Guest
- Bill Leonard … Guest
- Mike Wallace … Guest
- John Erlichman
- H.R. Halderman