60 Minutes wasn't actually sued, they were THREATENED to be sued by Brown & Williamson for airing the Jeffrey Wigand interviewed, and chose to initially block it. ABC WAS sued by Philip Morris for reports on Day One about nicotine manipulation (and sued for libel, unlike Food Lion, who sued for fraud and trespass), and initially moved to…
60 Minutes wasn't actually sued, they were THREATENED to be sued by Brown & Williamson for airing the Jeffrey Wigand interviewed, and chose to initially block it. ABC WAS sued by Philip Morris for reports on Day One about nicotine manipulation (and sued for libel, unlike Food Lion, who sued for fraud and trespass), and initially moved to fight it, but then settled, very shortly after Disney announced its purchase of the network. CBS preemptively moved to censor itself, but the continual howls of derision about that decision, as well as leaks of the contents of Wigand's interview as well as his Mississippi deposition, made CBS reverse course.
You are right that CBS didn’t actually get sued, they just dropped the piece after their lawyers said it could lead to CBS being sued for inducing Wigand to break his confidentiality agreement. Both Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace said publicly that just the threat of a lawsuit and the fact that ABC had not only settled their lawsuit by apologizing to Phillip Morris and had paid their legal fees had had a chilling effect on reporting about that industry because management had been scared off doing tough investigative reports.
I had forgotten about the tobacco suit again ABC. I was thinking about the Food Lion suit against them.
60 Minutes wasn't actually sued, they were THREATENED to be sued by Brown & Williamson for airing the Jeffrey Wigand interviewed, and chose to initially block it. ABC WAS sued by Philip Morris for reports on Day One about nicotine manipulation (and sued for libel, unlike Food Lion, who sued for fraud and trespass), and initially moved to fight it, but then settled, very shortly after Disney announced its purchase of the network. CBS preemptively moved to censor itself, but the continual howls of derision about that decision, as well as leaks of the contents of Wigand's interview as well as his Mississippi deposition, made CBS reverse course.
You are right that CBS didn’t actually get sued, they just dropped the piece after their lawyers said it could lead to CBS being sued for inducing Wigand to break his confidentiality agreement. Both Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace said publicly that just the threat of a lawsuit and the fact that ABC had not only settled their lawsuit by apologizing to Phillip Morris and had paid their legal fees had had a chilling effect on reporting about that industry because management had been scared off doing tough investigative reports.
I had forgotten about the tobacco suit again ABC. I was thinking about the Food Lion suit against them.