There is no shortage of touching eulogies for Mike Wallace, the legendary CBS News correspondent, who died Saturday at the age of 93. Journalism colleagues, including the New Yorker's Ken Auletta, CBS News correspondent Bob Simon and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, remembered the brazen tactics Wallace would often employ to get the story first. Hersh recalled the day Wallace scooped him on a story by interviewing his traveling companion over the phone, as Hersh was taking the subject to New York. "Wallace had scooped me by interviewing [Charles] Radford while I was flying with him in tow," Hersch wrote in The New Yorker. "I was more embarrassed than angry. The Old Man had shown me his moves, and taken my candy away."
Wallace worked for nearly seven decades in the news business, and described himself as an "abrasive" reporter who cut his teeth on radio at the University of Michigan and became the Green Hornet's announcer. He came up in the tradition of newsmen like Edward R. Murrow, and like Murrow, Wallace always asked the hard question. His voice belonged to old-time radio and he spoke with a gravitas reserved for anchors.
To his critics, Wallace was accused of reporting with a liberal bias. And with his interview subjects, Wallace gained a reputation of being fearless and dogged. He challenged world leaders on their policy decisions and always asked the hard question. "We figured," Wallace once said, "let's ask the irreverent, the abrasive, the who-gives-a-damn question." Until the end of his career, Wallace took on big-name, tough interview subjects. His last interview was in January 2008 with Roger Clemens, the former baseball star and slugger about his alleged steroid use. "How do you prove your innocence?" Clemens asked, to which Wallace responded, "Apparently you haven't done it yet."
