Today’s Journalists Remember Mike Wallace

Hard-hitting reporter and longtime 60 Minutes co-anchor, Mike Wallace, died on Saturday at 93 years old. He leaves a legacy of work as a tough-as-nails interviewer, responsible for defining an age of broadcast news.

“For half a century, he took on corrupt politicians, scam artists and bureaucratic bumblers,” CBS News said on its website. “Wallace took to heart the old reporter’s pledge to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He characterized himself as ‘nosy and insistent.'”

Wallace engaged in relentless and informative confrontations with high profile celebrities, criminals, politicians and world leaders, including Malcolm X, Vladimir Putin, the Nixons, Ayatollah Khoumeini, and Yasser Arefat.

The LA Times reported that, in the early 1980s, Coors beer took out newspaper ads with the quip: “The Four Most Dreaded Words in the English Language: Mike Wallace Is Here.”

CBS News has posted a video compilation of some of Wallace’s toughest interview questions:

Today’s journalists take to Twitter to remember their forerunner:

Go back and watch Mike Wallace pieces on@60minutes for a master class on interviews and investigations https://cbsn.ws/HtTE2m

-Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) April 8, 2012

Tough questions are being asked in Heaven today. RIP Mike Wallace

-Ann Curry (@anncurry) April 8, 2012

5 Lessons from Mike Wallace for All of Us: “If you don’t wake up excited… you haven’t found your calling”https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/04/08/5-lessons-from-mike-wallaces-life-for-all-of-us/

-Eric Jackson (@ericjackson) April 9, 2012