The dreaded celebrity interviews
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If you see some celebrity interviews on “60 Minutes,” the correspondents are probably holding their noses.
Morley Safer, Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl didn’t hide their distaste Wednesday for the hottest trend in their line of work. Celebrity chats are such winners for newsmagazines that NBC and ABC this summer arranged for help from entertainment news shows in landing them.
“This cloying by various television reporters for the right to interview the slut du jour just becomes kind of a silly joke, something out of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” Safer said at a panel discussion arranged by the National Television Academy in New York.
He acknowledged, though, that “60 Minutes” wasn’t immune to chasing after the big “gets,” a TV phrase that Safer detests.
Stahl and Kroft noted that entertainment celebrities are usually the most demanding interview subjects, in terms of what they will talk about and when they will appear -- usually to promote their latest projects.
“It’s made doing these interviews a little more distasteful for all of us,” Kroft said. “It’s turned us all into shills.”
From Associated Press
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