Did “60 Minutes” Cause The Death Of Nick Berg?
No, the al Qaeda terrorists did. But “60 Minutes” and CBS do bear some responsibility for his death by making it more likely. To understand that, let me begin with a less gruesome example. Several years ago, I wrote to Randy Cohen, who calls himself the “Ethicist” and writes a weekly column for the New York Times magazine. (Here’s his latest, if you are curious.) I asked Cohen whether, in 1992, the journalists who knew about Bill Clinton’s flagrant promiscuity but refused to tell the public, had behaved ethically. Joe Klein, who later wrote an anonymous novel describing Clinton’s reckless womanizing, would be one of many offenders. Perhaps the worst was Don Hewitt of “60 Minutes”, who did not just ignore the subject, but put on a show that he and everyone at “60 Minutes” knew was false, implying that Clinton’s marital problems were in the past. Cohen agreed that it was an interesting ethical problem. For some reason — just possibly the fact that he works for journalists — he never trea
