NEWS

Known for its hard-hitting investigative reporting, the TV magazine 'Dateline NBC' was more "closer to the news of the day." Neal Shapiro told 'Time' in 2001, "The rule used to be that when there was a big, breaking news story, if you didn't see it on the evening news, the next place to catch it was your local news, and then maybe 'Nightline'. We ('Dateline NBC') said, 'No. If it's a great story, we'll have it that night.'" 

At one time, 'Dateline NBC' could be seen on five nights a week. Stone Phillips observed, "Being on five nights a week is going to help us from the standpoint that we like to be the newsiest magazine." Jane Pauley celebrated her silver jubilee (25 years on the air) in the fall of 1997. Speaking to 'USA Weekend', Jane Pauley remarked, "I grew into middle age and recognized a confidence and strength that were unfamiliar to me, and I like them." 

In the world of "high-testosterone journalism", Neal Shapiro noted, "She doesn't do the investigative, breaking news stories. What Jane does best are the stories where she can really connect with people, real triumph over tragedy." Jane Pauley married cartoonist Garry Trudeau since 1980. "We both can be fairly judgmental. But it is based on an optimism of high expectations. The big difference between us professionally is that I am absolutely wedded to the concept of objectivity and fairness, and Garry will point out that, as a satirist, unfairness is his stock and trade." 

Connie Chung became a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center in 1997. In 1998, Connie Chung wrote the Discussion Paper "The Business of Getting 'The Get'" for Harvard University. In the 1970s, Connie Chung informed, "'60 Minutes' and '20/20' were the only news magazines and the only outlets for lengthy interviews. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the game changed. There was an explosion of television news magazines." 

William Small was quoted stating, "In the old days, there was a pecking order. If you represented 'The New York Times', doors flew open. If you were a crusader, you wanted to appear on '60 Minutes' (an American TV institution). If you had something to hide, you dreaded '60 Minutes'. If you were a celebrity, you wanted Barbara Walters to interview you. Now, TV has eclipsed most of print with all these magazine programs. There is competition for all these interviews like never before. It has created a fertile field for the handlers and spin doctors to manipulate the media." 

Connie Chung continued, "Prime time news magazines, with their high-profile anchors, big budgets, and big ratings, have changed the quest for the 'get'. More than any program or any trend, however, a television news pioneer named Barbara Walters has made it an art-form. She has interviewed just about every world leader in her time: China's Jiang Zemin, (the former) Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier, Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Libya's Muammar Qadaffi, and every American president since Richard Nixon. World leaders know her on a first name basis.

"That was then. Today, Walters says, 'viewers aren't interested in world leaders. They are not interested in foreign, hard news. They would not watch Sadat and Begin (former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) … In March (1997), CBS' king of 'gets' Mike Wallace interviewed Iranian leader Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"Barbara Walters noted that '60 Minutes' can interview 'a Rafsanjani' and survive because of the program's history, strength, and track record. She said she could not interview someone like Rafsanjani today on '20/20'. Wallace believes there are few world leaders anyone would want to 'get' today. As he put it, 'who would you like to see and hear that you're not hearing from?' 

"'60 Minutes' still airs more international stories than other television news magazines. But '20/20' and the others fight a fierce battle for ratings against entertainment programming. A 'get' brings viewers into the tent. As 'Dateline's' Executive Producer Neal Shapiro put it, 'You can't live on big 'gets' alone, but they are the bright neon sign that brings them (viewers) in.'" 

In 2009, viewers learnt about mind reading on '60 Minutes'. Lesley Stahl reported on functional MRI (or fMRI) which made it possible to see what was going on inside the brain. Neuroscientist Marcel Just told Lesley Stahl, he called it "thought identification." The story produced by Shari Finkelstein featured neuroscientist John Dylan-Haynes in Berlin at the Bernstein Center. "You might be able to tell if someone's been in an al Qaeda training camp before." As reported, "Haynes found he could read directly from the activity in a small part of the brain that controls intentions what they had decided to do."

Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, told Lesley Stahl, "I always tell my students that there is no science fiction anymore. All the science fiction I read in high school, we're doing. Throughout history, we could never actually coerce someone to reveal information. Torture doesn't work that well, persuasion doesn't work that well. The right to keep one's thoughts locked up in their brain is amongst the most fundamental rights of being human."

One of the pioneers in the field of "neuromarketing", neuroscientist Gemma Calvert, made known, "What we've seen is a sort of snowballing effect over the last few years. I think there are about 92 neuromarketing agencies worldwide." 

Lesley Stahl: Do you think one day, who knows how far into the future, there'll be a machine that'll be able to read very complex thought like 'I hate so-and-so'? Or you know, 'I love the ballet because…'? 

Marcel Just: Definitely. Definitely. And not in 20 years (possibly 2029). I think in three, five years (say around 2014). 

In 2010, time travel was discussed when Lelsey Stahl reported on superior autobiographical memory. The story featured violinist Louise Owen, "Right now (in 2010), I'm remembering the jogging class that I started that morning (on January 2, 1990 - over 20 years earlier). I can feel it. I can remember the coach saying, 'Keep going.'" Louise Owen told Lesley Stahl she could remember every day of her life since the age of 11. 

Dr. James McGaugh, a renowned expert on memory, was the first to discover and studied superior autobiographical memory. He told Lesley Stahl this type of memory was completely new to science, "These people remember things that you and I couldn't possibly remember and they're not memorizing. There's no trick? They can do with their memories what you and I can do about yesterday, but, they can do it every day. And when I ask, 'What goes on in your brain? What goes on in your mind,' they give the very unsatisfying response, 'I just see it. It's just there.'"

Louise Owen expressed, "Sometimes, having this sort of extreme memory can be a very isolating sort of thing. There are times when I feel like I'm fluent in a language that nobody else speaks. Or that I'm walking around and everybody else has amnesia." Lesley Stahl told viewers, "McGaugh is doing MRI scans of all the subjects, searching for clues that might be hidden in the structure of their brains. Beyond the fun of asking what happened on a specific date and knowing you'll actually get an answer, there is a lot at stake here. 

"The discovery of people with instant access to virtually every day of their lives could recast our whole understanding of how human memory works, and what is possible. And that has implications for all of us. Is it possible we all have memories of every day tucked away in our brains, but we just can't retrieve them? Could understanding these remarkable people someday help with Alzheimer's and other memory disorders?"

Back in 1996, Cher spoke to Jane Pauley on the 'Dateline NBC' program to promote her album 'It's A Man World'. Cher made the comment, "My mom said to me, 'You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man. I said, 'Mom, I am a rich man.' I've been notorious. I've been infamous. I've been famous for being famous and I've done some really good work. And it's all kind of thrown in there. I'm not … I'm very messy. I am a very messy icon. 

"It wasn't meant to be a compliment but I absolutely took it like this - after nuclear holocaust, there would be cockroaches and Cher. And so I feel that you know there is some validity to that. You know, fame is done with smoke and mirror. I'm the person that's when I'm hot, I'm the new improved Cher and when I'm not is the old and tired Cher. There are all kind of things about me that no one knows but go to make me who I am. 

"I have done this throughout my career. I am very, very visible and then I'm gone. And then I'm very, very visible and then I'm gone because it's too hot near the light sometimes. I'm different but I'm different to such a degree, someone, it makes people uncomfortable - including myself. I could do it a lot safer. I could do it a lot more planned but it's not me. You know, I mean, careful is to me, like way down on my list of things to be."

'People Weekly' 1988: When the stars want over-the-top, there's only one place to go: the Studio City fitting rooms of designer Bob Mackie. The client who brought Mackie the most visibility is Cher, whom he began dressing in 1971 for 'The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour'. 

Bob Mackie recounted, "She was never nervous about showing too much skin. She was size 8 in the shoulder and size 2 in the midriff. Everyone said she must have had her ribs removed. I put Goldie (Hawn) in a low-slung skirt and little bra thing for Las Vegas. Cher saw it and wanted the same one. I told her she couldn't have it, but I'd make her something similar. Of course, Cher ended up with a hundred versions of that outfit over the years, while Goldie only had one."

Cher continued in 1996, "My mother just said, 'You're not going to be the prettiest. You're not going to be the youngest. You're not going to be the most talented. But whatever you have, if you put those things together, you have something special." In September 1989, the song, 'If I Could Turn Back Time' written by Diane Warren peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 after spending 23 weeks on the chart. The music video was filmed on board the USS Missouri while it was stationed at the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard at Pier D along with the crew. 

'The Washington Post', January 1990:  If battleships could blush, the USS Missouri would be bright red. This proud World War II vessel that hosted the 1945 surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay has become the center of a battle over taste. Should the Navy have allowed Cher to film a video in which she pranced around the deck of the Missouri wearing a fishnet G-string?

"The video, 'If I Could Turn Back Time', was so risque that MTV - that arbiter of bad taste - doesn't show it until after 9 p.m. Now a few Navy officials are wishing they could turn back time. The military services get plenty of requests from Hollywood asking for their equipment, bases and people. Most of the projects are turned down. If they are approved, the producers must generally agree to accept suggestions from military critics.

"The conversion of bases, ships and planes to movie sets amounts to nothing more than taxpayer-subsidized giveaways. If the producers are charged a fee, it rarely covers the costs. The Pentagon justifies it by saying that the films are good recruiting tools. That was the thinking when Cher applied to use the Missouri, but now the Navy brass wonders if the recruiting benefit outweighs the criticism from veterans' groups.

"The Navy was at first thrilled with the publicity value of a Cher video. The video 'was an opportunity for us to get national exposure and reach the lucrative recruitable youth audience that watch MTV', one Navy official told us. The viewers would be subjected to the 'subliminal advertisement of the Navy seeing Cher aboard a battleship with sailors.'

"The Navy was right about the 'exposure' and 'subliminal' parts. Cher's producers initially approached the Navy with a modest little video about a sailor who gets a 'Dear John' letter aboard ship. But when Cher saw the massive guns on the Missouri, all modesty was thrown to the wind. Cher donned her mesh and leather strap outfit, and the controversy was on. Navy officials told us the costume was 'an unanticipated change during final stages of production. And it produced an unintended result, in retrospect.'"