This research paper discusses the journalistic ethical issues associated with that portion of a broadcast by CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, November 22, 1998 which dealt with the topic of euthanasia or physician assisted suicide (PAS) of terminally ill patients and which included the replaying of portions of a videotape showing Dr. Jack Kevorkian injecting a lethal drug into a 52 year old man, Thomas Youk, who was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Basic Facts Concerning 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes is a television newsmagazine which is owned outright by CBS Inc., a publicly-owned corporation, and which has been presented on prime time since 1972. It has consistently been among the top ten in Nielsen ratings. Due to competition from cable television networks and perhaps a declining taste of the viewing public for hard news, the audience for the evening news broadcasts has declined from 37.3 percent of the home viewing public in 1988 to 24.3 percent in 1996-1997 (Hickey 33). 60 Minutes has assumed greater financial importance to CBS because CBS News as a whole loses money while 60 Minutes proved that "a news program could be a colossal money maker" (Hickey 33).
In recent decades, the increasing corporatization of the news media, concentration of ownership of news media in financial conglomerates and various competitive pressures have all led to strong pressures on news departments to improve their operating results. One result of these pressures has been the tabloidization of the news, de-emphasis on hard news programming in favor of life style and softer features, which McCartney calls "News Lite," (44). Former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite says "the networks now do news as entertainment" (McCartney 44).
60 Minutes has not been immune from these trends. According to Hickey, "the tabloidization of TV news magazines is strictly geared to ratings and profits" (30). 60 Minutes mixes hard news features, often...