CBS's Kroft Whines Over Dick Cheney, Karl Rove Not Appearing on '60 Minutes'

While attending the Radio Television Digital News Association conference in Las Vegas on Monday, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft spoke to a crowd of young journalists [1] and claimed that his dream interview would be with Dick Cheney, but complained how the former vice president and Bush adviser Karl Rove simply "make hay" in criticizing 60 Minutes coverage, but would not go on the show.

If one looks at a recent history of 60 Minutes reporting, it's easy to see why Cheney and Rove would not be eager to appear on the CBS program. On the May 11, 2008 broadcast [2], correspondent Morley Safer conducted a fawning interview with left-wing actor Alec Baldwin and light-heartedly remarked: "Your eloquence, if that's the word, can get you into deep trouble....perhaps excessively eloquent, as in your description of Dick Cheney, who you said was a sociopath and a terrorist, and you later apologized by just calling him a 'lying, thieving, oil whore and a murderer of the US Constitution.'"

In the case of Karl Rove, on the February 24, 2008 broadcast [3], correspondent Scott Pelley actually gave credence to a bizarre conspiracy theory in which Rove was accused of being part of a "covert campaign to ruin" the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman. In a story that lacked any hard evidence, Pelley asked a highly questionable source: "Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman...In a compromising sexual position with one of his aides?"

Perhaps Cheney and Rove have reason to be wary of talking to anyone from 60 Minutes.

-Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here. [4]