CBS "60 MINUTES" JOURNALIST MIKE WALLACE DIES AT 93!

Mike Wallace, a game show host and tobacco pitchman who went on to personify the hard-nosed and often skeptical journalism of CBS's "60 Minutes," died last Saturday after a long illness. He was 93.

“Without Mike and his iconic style, there probably wouldn’t be a ’60 minutes’,” said CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager. “There simply hasn’t been another broadcast journalist with that much talent.”

He said CBS will devote next Sunday’s “60 Minutes” to a special program on Wallace.

Wallace built his reputation through sometimes contentious interviews with major and often controversial public figures like Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muammar Quaddafi, Richard Nixon, Ayotollah Khomeini, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Gen. Manuel Noriega and Gen. William Westmoreland.

Occasionally he became part of the controversy. In 1985 Westmoreland sued CBS News after Wallace interviewed him for a special that alleged the military falsified body counts during the Vietnam War. The case was settled during the trial when CBS apologized.

Wallace later said that lawsuit sent him into clinical depression. But he did not back away from the blunt verbal sparring that helped establish the no-nonsense reputation of "60 Minutes," where he and Harry Reasoner were the original coanchors on Sept. 24, 1968.

"I had the white hat and the black hat," said the late producer Don Hewitt, who created "60 Minutes." "Harry was the guy who came from the heartland and brought Iowa to New York, and Mike was the tough guy in the trench coat."

Wallace eventually became the show's lead correspondent, a position he held until he stepped down to part-time status in 2006.

Largely because of his work on "60 Minutes," Wallace was hailed by admirers as a successor to famed CBS journalists like Edward R. Murrow.

Critics faulted him for "ambush" interviews and showmanship, and in 1999 accused him of killing a story on deception in the tobacco industry by giving in to corporate pressure.

Conservative groups also called him a poster boy for slanted reporting, with the Media Research Council summarizing his career as "too many minutes of liberal bias."

Wallace dismissed this charge many times over the years. In a 2005 interview with his son Chris, a Fox News reporter, he called it "damn foolishness."

Many of his industry colleagues seemed to agree. Wallace won 20 Emmy awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. His numerous other awards included three Peabodys and three DuPonts.

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