Mike Wallace, veteran ’60 Minutes’ correspondent, dies
(JTA) — Veteran journalist Mike Wallace, who appeared on the CBS news program "60 Minutes" from its first airing, has died.
Wallace died Saturday at 93 at a care facility in New Haven, Conn., where he had been living in recent years.
Known for his probing interviews, Wallace had retired from the highly rated "60 Minutes" in 2006 after 38 seasons, but continued to contribute to the program and other CBS news shows.
The watchdog group CAMERA had accused Wallace of having an Israel problem.
During a 1989 interview with Yasser Arafat, Wallace allowed the PLO leader to spout his anti-Israel views without questioning them. When he asked Arafat if he had renounced “military operations” inside Israel, Arafat responded, “Any people who are facing occupation or oppression have the right to use all methods.” Wallace did not probe this with a follow-up question, CAMERA pointed out in a 2006 report called "Mike Wallace’s Middle East Problem.
But in a 2007 interview with Arafat, Wallace accused the Palestinian leader of inciting violence and confronted him over anti-Semitic rhetoric on official Palestinian television.
Wallace grilled Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, telling him, "You don’t trust the media; you’ve said so. You don’t trust whites; you’ve said so. You don’t trust Jews; you’ve said so. Well, here I am.”
Wallace was awarded 21 Emmy Awards, five DuPont-Columbia journalism awards and five Peabody Awards during his career.
Born Myron Leon Wallace in Brookline, Mass., to Russian Jewish parents who had shortened their family name from Wallechinsky, he graduated from the University of Michigan, where he worked for the Michigan Daily student newspaper and was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.
Wallace hosted several game shows in the 1950s.
His son Chris is the host of Fox News Sunday for the Fox News network.
