Longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft recently told Bill O’Reilly on his “We’ll Do It Live!” podcast that he “hated” his time on the CBS news show.
“’60 Minutes’ was really appealing, and I thought I wasn’t really sure I was ever going to get there. I didn’t really seriously think about it. When I did, there’s so many things that, first of all, the job is just 24 hours a day,” Kroft said. “I mean, you may get a couple hours of bad sleep. Beepers going off, getting on jets, going here and there, the whole thing, then coming back and spending, you know, three or four days writing the script, and then going to the screenings and then getting on, starting it all over again.”
Kroft explained that he was attracted to “60 Minutes” because the leadership appreciated “good stories.” He also said that it was “exhilarating” because of how much exposure, good or bad, his work got. After reporting on some particularly dangerous subjects, Kroft said he and the other journalists would be “excited about the fact that you’re alive.”
Kroft also recalled how competitive it was to join the “60 Minutes” newsroom, and how his fellow journalists were jealous after he landed the job.
“I can remember when I was tapped to go to ‘60 Minutes,’ I thought this was fantastic and I expected a lot of people would just come up and say, ‘That’s really great, I’m really happy for you,’” Kroft remembered. “And then you realize after a while that not everybody was happy that I got this job. There were other people that wanted it. And so then you’ve all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies… It’s a snake pit.”
After joining “60 Minutes” in 1989, Kroft retired from CBS in 2019 at age 73. After 30 seasons, he was the show’s longest tenured correspondent. Some of his career highlights include inteviewing Hilliary Clinton, who was then the spouse of future president Bill Clinton. When asked about rumors of an extramarital affair, Hillary Clinton infamously said, “I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him, and I respect him.” He also published a story on insider trading in the U.S. Congress that led to major reform and interviewed President Barack Obama 11 times.
