Steve Kroft Reflects On Time At CBS’ ’60 Minutes’: ‘I Hated It’

Steve Kroft may have won numerous Emmys, Peabody Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award for his 30-year tenure as a 60 Minutes correspondent, but when asked by Bill O’Reilly if he would do it all over again, the since-retired journalist said he “probably wouldn’t.”

In a recent interview with the conservative commentator, Kroft — whose bonafides include reporting on the Gulf War and Chernobyl disaster and conducting 17 separate interviews with Barack Obama, as well as leading the infamous 1992 interview with Hillary and Bill Clinton — noted that he “hated” the competitive nature of the iconic TV program and its nonstop news cycle.

He noted that his colleagues were “so paranoid” about being backstabbed amid the cutthroat work environment. As such, Kroft said he favored his tenure as a London bureau correspondent at CBS as it gave him the chance to travel and constituted the “job I always wanted.”

“I can remember when I was tapped to go to 60 Minutes, I thought this was fantastic and I expected that a lot of people would just come up and say, ‘That’s really great, I’m really happy for you,’” Kroft recalled. “And then you realize after a while that not everybody was happy that I got this job. There were other people that wanted it. And so then you’ve all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies. It’s a snake pit.”

While he described the newsmagazine as “exhilarating” because of the ample room given to report “good stories,” Kroft conceded that working in dangerous conditions, such as amid the Vietnam War, perhaps added to the addictive thrill because “you get excited about the fact that you’re still alive.”

He concluded, “60 Minutes was really appealing, and I thought I wasn’t really sure I was ever going to get there. I didn’t really seriously think about it. And then, when I did, there’s so many things that, first of all, the job is just 24 hours a day. I mean, you may get a couple hours of bad sleep. Beepers going off, getting on jets, going here and there, the whole thing, then coming back and spending, you know, three or four days writing the script, and then going to the screenings and then getting on, starting it all over again.”