Last week while reporting on the retirement of former CBS correspondent Morley Safer we referenced his famous report on the burning of the village of Cam Ne in Vietnam in 1965.
Safer’s reporting from Vietnam outraged the Johnson administration and the president himself reportedly pressured CBS to silence Safer. CBS did not and in fact produced a CBS Reports documentary titled “Morley Safer’s Vietnam.”
According to former channel 3 news director Dick Ahles(who was the station’s public relations director at the time), station ownership(at the time Travelers Insurance Company) agreed with Johnson and refused to carry the Safer documentary locally. The decision led to protests outside Hartford’s iconic Broadcast House by demonstrators upset by the censorship.
There was even an attempt, according to Ahles, to stop the practice of including CBS Reports in printed station schedules sent to newspapers until each program was screened for content. Amid internal protests(which included Ahles), the policy was never implemented. Ahles tells The Laurel however that he believes controversy over news coverage decisions led the Travelers to eventually decide it did not want to be anywhere near the news business and the company sold channel 3 to Post-Newsweek in the early 1970’s.
As another famous broadcaster would say – …”and now you know…the rest of the story.”
H/T – Dick Ahles
