Remembering Bob Simon

Last night veteran CBS news correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car accident in New York City. Simon is best known for his work on the network’s flagship news program 60 Minutes. Although I haven’t followed his work closely, I remember Simon for his bombshell 2012 report on Palestinian Christians which drew false charges of anti-Semitism and sent shockwaves to the top of the Israel government.

I remembered that piece this morning while listening to a remembrance of Simon on NPR’s Morning Edition. During that segment they played a clip from a speech Simon gave at a 2010 Emmy awards ceremony where he offered advice to news reporters:

There are not two sides to every story. There were not two sides to the stories in Sarajevo or Rwanda.

Whenever someone calls you by your first name when you’re interviewing them, as in “let me tell you what really happened Morley,” chances are he’s lying. Honest subjects addressed him as “Mr. Safer.” If you want to make sure you’re not being lied to, do what I’ve done over the last two and a half years, do animal stories.”

Simon’s “gotcha moment” in the Palestinian Christians story is when he challenged then Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over his attempts to kill the story by going to the head of CBS News. Not surprisingly, Oren calls Simon “Bob”:

According to Israeli government figures, tourism is a multi billion dollar business there. Most tourists are Christian. Many of them are American. That’s one reason why Israelis are very sensitive about their image in the United States. And that could be why Ambassador Oren phoned Jeff Fager, the head of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes, while we were still reporting the story, long before tonight’s broadcast. He said he had information our story was quote: “a hatchet job.”

Michael Oren: It seemed to me outrageous. Completely incomprehensible that at a time when these communities, Christian communities throughout the Middle East are being oppressed and massacred, when churches are being burnt, when one of the great stories in history is unfolding? I think it’s– I think it’s– I think you got me a little bit mystified.

Bob Simon: And it was a reason to call the president of– chairman of CBS News?

Michael Oren: Bob, I’m the ambassador of the State of Israel. I do that very, very infrequently as ambassador. It’s just– that’s an extraordinary move for me to complain about something. When I heard that you were going to do a story about Christians in the Holy Land and my assum– and– and had, I believe, information about the nature of it, and it’s been confirmed by this interview today.

Bob Simon: Nothing’s been confirmed by the interview, Mr. Ambassador, because you don’t know what’s going to be put on air.

Michael Oren: Okay. I don’t. True.

Bob Simon: Mr. Ambassador, I’ve been doing this a long time. And I’ve received lots of reactions from just about everyone I’ve done stories about. But I’ve never gotten a reaction before from a story that hasn’t been broadcast yet.

Michael Oren: Well, there’s a first time for everything, Bob.

That wasn’t the only time Simon weighed in on Israel/Palestine. In 2009 he told Charlie Rose the two-state solution is over and Israelis do not want a democracy with one man, one vote. This came after covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off and on throughout his career. According to CBS, Simon won a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards for his coverage of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, and won another Emmy for reporting on the Mossad’s failed attempts to avenge the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

In 2013 Simon put this question to Ehud Barak in a piece on the Iron Dome system, “While the Americans are helping you so much, Israel goes on building settlements, which is exactly what the Americans don’t want. How does that work?”

Barak stammered across a response, but at least he didn’t call Simon by his first name.