"Confrontation is not a dirty word. Sometimes it's the best kind of journalism as long you don't confront people just for the sake of a confrontation"
About this Quote
Confrontation, in Don Hewitt's hands, is less a barroom brawl than a production tool: a way to force reality to answer back. As the architect of 60 Minutes, he helped popularize a style of TV journalism built on the charged moment when a public figure can no longer hide behind prepared remarks. The line defends that instinct while quietly acknowledging the medium's worst impulses.
The first sentence is a preemptive strike against the etiquette police. By calling confrontation "not a dirty word", Hewitt reframes aggressiveness as civic hygiene: if power calcifies in silence, then friction becomes a public service. He's also speaking to a specific criticism of television news, especially in the post-Watergate era and into the ratings-driven decades that followed: that it confuses accountability with ambush. Hewitt knows the camera can turn moral inquiry into sport.
The second sentence is the ethical escape hatch, and it's doing more work than it admits. "Sometimes" is the limiter that makes the first claim defensible; it signals judgment rather than a blanket license. The real subtext is about motive. Confrontation earns its legitimacy when it's tethered to evidence, contradiction, and stakes. When it's "for the sake of confrontation", it's performance: the reporter as protagonist, the interviewee as prey, the audience trained to mistake heat for truth.
Hewitt is arguing for adversarial journalism without surrendering to its caricature. He treats confrontation as a means, not a brand - a reminder, from inside television's most influential newsroom, that the toughest questions still need a reason to exist.
The first sentence is a preemptive strike against the etiquette police. By calling confrontation "not a dirty word", Hewitt reframes aggressiveness as civic hygiene: if power calcifies in silence, then friction becomes a public service. He's also speaking to a specific criticism of television news, especially in the post-Watergate era and into the ratings-driven decades that followed: that it confuses accountability with ambush. Hewitt knows the camera can turn moral inquiry into sport.
The second sentence is the ethical escape hatch, and it's doing more work than it admits. "Sometimes" is the limiter that makes the first claim defensible; it signals judgment rather than a blanket license. The real subtext is about motive. Confrontation earns its legitimacy when it's tethered to evidence, contradiction, and stakes. When it's "for the sake of confrontation", it's performance: the reporter as protagonist, the interviewee as prey, the audience trained to mistake heat for truth.
Hewitt is arguing for adversarial journalism without surrendering to its caricature. He treats confrontation as a means, not a brand - a reminder, from inside television's most influential newsroom, that the toughest questions still need a reason to exist.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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