Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” let fly with a startling admission last week: The reason President Obama agrees to appear on his CBS program so frequently is that “he knows that we’re not going to play ‘gotcha’ with him.”
Indeed, Kroft admitted, “we’re not going to go out of our way to make him look bad or stupid.”
By going out of their way, Kroft might have been referring to the way Dan Rather and “60 Minutes” used phony documents in 2004 to “prove” that George W. Bush had lied about his 1970s military record.
And then aired the segment only a few weeks before the presidential election. Or the way “60 Minutes” pressed presidential contender Mitt Romney on his own lack of military service, and that of his sons, or asked him on camera whether he and his wife had had premarital sex.
There was a time when “60 Minutes” — arguably the father of “gotcha” TV journalism — was an equal-opportunity offender.
These days, alas, the program has a more selective standard when it comes to deciding which presidents, or which prospective presidents, get the edgy questions.
Of course, that’s making it increasingly hard to distinguish Obama’s appearances on “60 Minutes” with, say, his discussions of Libya policy on Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show” or Kim Kardashian’s marriage on “The View.”
No wonder the president has launched such a heated offensive against Fox News (whose parent company, News Corp, owns The Post). This is a man who has come to expect adulation from the world of television — and Fox doesn’t play that game.
Apparently “60 Minutes” does.