----- Original Message -----
From: "Norm Matloff" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Norm Matloff" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 4:53 PM
Subject: 60 Minutes scandal and H-1B


> To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter
>
> In the wake of the revelation that 60 Minutes broadcast a show critical
> of George Bush using fake documentation, there is speculation that Dan
> Rather may be forced to resign.  Well, I'd like to say that if Rather is
> forced to resign, then so should 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl.
>
> As many of you will recall, earlier this year 60 Minutes, with Stahl as
> the correspondent, ran an extremely biased piece on the Indian
> Institutes of Technology, a chain of highly selective technical
> universities.  The show was, to me, clearly part of the PR campaign
> underway at the time, called "Brand IIT," one of whose purposes was in
> my opinion to promote offshoring to India and raising of the H-1B visa
> cap.  The show was filled with outrageously false claims, not least of
> which was that the IITs were the best in the world.
>
> As I wrote at the time, at
>
>    http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/60Mins.txt
>    http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/60Mins2.txt
>
> India should indeed be proud of what is has accomplished with the IITs,
> and it was perfectly reasonable to do a 60 Minutes segment on that
> topic.  But it was NOT reasonable to run it as a PR puff piece.  The
> week before, 60 Minutes had run a segment on Stephen Hawkings, the
> severely disabled physicist, and yet in spite of Hawkings' enormous
> courage etc., 60 Minutes still felt it necessary to add "balance" by
> quoting a rival physicist who said that Hawkings' research work wasn't
> that great.  Yet 60 Minutes felt no need for balance in the IIT piece.
>
> Worse, in spite of viewer complaints, 60 Minutes never ran a single
> letter of dissent in its Letters segment of the show, even though they
> re-ran the show on several occasions.  One angry viewer contacted the
> producer, and eventually I was brought into their e-mail conversation.
> The producer made no concession whatsoever that the show may have been
> biased.
>
> Being the naive, trusting type that I am, I believe that 60 Minutes was
> duped into running that IIT piece, just as they now claim to have been
> duped in the Bush National Guard story.  Yet, even if they were duped,
> it certainly would show how badly CBS' standards have slipped.  60
> Minutes certainly should have sensed that the person who approached them
> had a political agenda, especially since Stahl visited the IIT
> anniversary celebration, where there was clearly a political air.  And
> even a high school sophomore writing a report for homework would know
> that claims made by IIT promoters that it is "the best engineering
> school in the world" ought to be checked out; even a cursory
> investigation would have shown that the IITs are NOT considered to be
> "the best engineering school in the world," or even the best in Asia.
>
> On the other hand, it could well be that 60 Minutes wasn't duped on the
> IIT issue at all.  We are increasingly seeing the major media being
> manipulated by corporate and political interests.  Reportedly Larry King
> has refused to have Kitty Kelley, author of the new salacious book on
> the Bush family, on his TV show, even though he's had her on the show
> for her previous books.  I have no idea whether Kelley's claims about
> the Bushes are valid or not, but it certainly is sad to see respected
> journalists turned into political operatives/pawns.
>
> Norm
>
>

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