In the past two months, my previously limited store of knowledge of the golf world has substantially increased. Were you aware, for instance, that when Tiger Woods plays in a televised tournament, "television ratings soar"? Or that when Michelle Wie plays, "television ratings and ticket sales go up an average of 50 percent"? How about that when John Daly is on the tube, "television ratings soar"?
You could've learned all of these interesting little nuggets of information if, over the last eight weeks, you had been tuned into 60 Minutes, which ran three separate profiles of Tiger, he who can be mentioned without a last name; Wie, the 16-year-old wunderkind who recently became the highest paid female golfer in history by turning pro; and Daly, who, it appears, between drinking, gambling, and marital woes, is something of a bad boy on the links. Now, individually, all of these pieces may have been justifiable by their potential news value, but CBS happens to have a unique interest in seeing these athletes get prime publicity -- the network is one of several that airs PGA events. That fact renders the relatively high number of golfer profiles in recent weeks somewhat suspect, particularly since 60 Minutes is supposed to be a news show, and although they run fluffy, largely news-less profiles all the time, obliquely promoting sports events on their own network should still be beneath them. Indeed, at no point did any of these reports mention that CBS is presumably one of the networks whose ratings soar when Woods, Wie, or Daly are in contention.
As it turns out, the segments on the three golfers all suffered from notable flaws. Ed Bradley's piece on Woods -- which was technically two separate segments and ran an astounding 25 minutes long -- dealt mostly with well-known aspects of the golfer's rise to the top of the sport, while touching briefly on a children's center that he had opened. After the show aired, Richard Sandomir of the Times wrote that he "wondered if it was an infomercial or if Woods had paid a fee for these adoring 25 minutes." On CBS' Public Eye -- a blog that covers the internal workings of the network and media news more generally -- 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager shot back, "Should everybody who goes on '60 Minutes' get slammed? Is that how you see our job? Or is it OK to profile a superstar athlete even if we didn't uncover any dirt? Tiger Woods is someone who doesn't give interviews, so it's newsworthy to hear him talk." That may be true, but it wasn't a reason to give Woods such glowing, uncritical treatment. He has PR people to do his flacking, and it's the job of a news program to sort through the hype.
The piece on Wie, which was reported by Steve Kroft, was similarly obsequious. Kroft spent much of his time marveling over Wie's young age -- just as he had done two years earlier, in a piece he did when she was 14 -- asking her incisive questions on such hot topics as school, boys, and driving. The president of William Morris, the agency which represents Wie, was heard touting her appeal to men and women alike. At no point was it brought up that of the 33 professional golf tournaments in which Wie has competed so far, she has won exactly zero, a record that has led at least one commentator to observe that Wie is principally "
Morley Safer's piece on Daly was by far the most interesting of the three, though it too came up short. Daly's life is rife with material for a profile that could be both entertaining and informative -- he has had serious problems with gambling and drinking, and he is currently on his fourth marriage -- but although Safer did not exactly shy away from these topics, they were broached as part of a narrative portraying Daly as a beat-the-odds success story. Indeed, Safer barely batted an eye after Daly told Safer that, after all his troubles in the past, he had decided to stop going to rehab, abstaining from gambling, and taking his antidepressants. When Daly said, "I took myself off all this medication I was on, that doctors were putting me on. Prescribing, 'You gotta do this, you gotta do that,'" I expected a health professional (perhaps one of Daly's apparently numerous old doctors?) to make an appearance in order to weigh in on this self-diagnosis. Alas, no such luck; Safer just let it go. After Daly shortly thereafter admitted that he had lost millions of dollars in the 1990s due to his gambling, Safer observed, "No matter how much it has cost him, Daly claims he's not an alcoholic and he can still drink -- but only beer." Well that's good to know. No one ever got drunk off beer before.
So again, the question must be asked: Why has 60 Minutes been producing so many upbeat profiles of golf players? There's certainly no shortage of characters in the sports and entertainment industries whose egos can be inflated and whose publicity machines could use some greasing. It is highly likely, of course, that the demographic that watches golf on CBS is substantially similar to that which tunes in every week to 60 Minutes
Amidst these lingering questions, it's hard not to recall that, last October, then-President of CBS News Andrew Heyward was replaced by Sean McManus, who had been the head of CBS Sports since 1996. McManus, however, in a somewhat strange move, was to keep his job at the helm of CBS Sports while also running CBS News. Is it possible that the two divisions have become linked in a much more significant, tangible way? Surely there's a line between legitimate cross-promotion and a more peculiar and distasteful form of news-as-sportscast. Has it been crossed by one of the most venerable news shows to have ever existed? The facts so far concerning 60 Minutes' recently developed golf fetish suggest a highly unsettling answer to that question. PublicEye, there's an assignment for you.
UPDATE: That was quick - the Public Eye responds here.