Mike Wallace Dies: '60 Minutes' Correspondent Was 93 - ABC News: Veteran broadcast journalist Mike Wallace has died, according to CBS News.
He was 93 years old and had been in declining health in recent years. A cause of death has not been released yet.
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Interviews from the _Mike Wallace Interview_ program of 1957-58 can be viewed online:
http://solstice.ischool.utexas.edu/tmwi/index.php/The_Mike_Wallace_Interview
He was looking pretty old and tired the last few times I saw him on 60 Minutes. They may do something on tonight's show.
I never learned anything I didn't already know, or strongly suspect, from his "expose'" interviews and I didn't care for his political slant, but he was a genuine "reporter maverick" and performed his work according to his own lights! I respect that. R.I.P., Mr. Wallace.
Back in the days when he was Myron Wallace, and breaking into radio and TV he was variously a staff announcer (listen for him on radio episodes of "You Bet Your Life" doing commercials for Elgin watches), game show host, talk show host (with his second wife Buff Cobb), and even an actor on a short-lived drama for ABC-TV in 1949 called "Stand By For Crime."
Mike Wallace spanned an era between the dawn of TV news and today's incessant, politically colored 24/7 yammering. Not quite a Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Munrow, he could be legitimately criticized for his political ideology, but he remained essentially honest.
But we can trace today's penchant for "gotcha" journalism directly through Wallace - imitation is not only flattery, but requires exaggeration.
Perhaps, the best accolade is that Wallace is infinitely preferable to today's crop of Limbaugh, Beck, Maddow and Olbermann.
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