Veteran investigative journalist Steve Kroft, who has been a correspondent on CBS’s flagship news magazine 60 Minutes for over 30 years, shocked fans by saying he “hated” his time on the show. Kroft didn’t hold back when he was on Bill O’Reilly’s We’ll Do It Live! podcast recently. He said his job was “just 24 hours a day” and that he “probably wouldn’t” do it again.
Even though Kroft’s harsh words were not the only thing he said about the stories. He also called them “exhilarating,” which shows the conflict between the hard work of TV news and the excitement of hard-hitting journalism.
Steve Kroft worked for 60 Minutes from 1989 to 2019, when he retired after making almost 500 reports. He was the longest-serving correspondent in the show’s history. He won several Emmys and a Peabody Award for covering big political scandals, corporate crimes, and wars around the world.
Before he signed off for the last time, Kroft talked to his partner Lesley Stahl and said he wanted to leave while he was still at his best. He said he respected people who left their jobs “when they were on top.”
Kroft’s main complaint is that the show and CBS’s news cycle are always competitive. He said that the job took up all of his time and that he was always under pressure to file big stories, meet tight deadlines, and beat competitors both inside and outside the network.
Kroft said that while he liked the quality of many of the stories he worked on, the grind made the job feel less like a dream job and more like a tiring marathon he wouldn’t want to do again.
Kroft’s comments have sparked a new debate about the work culture in TV news. The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, and Yahoo News have all pointed out that his comments give a rare look at what it’s like to work at 60 Minutes.
