Reporting on an unsolved Mississippi murder
A special post from producer Sumi Aggarwal:
Like most American schoolchildren, I studied the civil rights movement. Years later, I only remembered the highlights: Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the bus boycotts and the images of police dogs and water cannons being used on demonstrators.
But in researching this story, I learned that the real ground battle was being fought by ordinary African-Americans in small towns all over the South. They tried to vote and stood up to local Klan leaders and many, like Louis Allen, paid for it with their lives.
Continue Reading »Kenan: The boy behind Global Medical Relief
On "60 Minutes" this week, Scott Pelley tells the story of Elissa Montanti and the global charity she runs out of a converted closet inside her tiny Staten Island home.
Montanti brings maimed children from war zones and disaster areas around the world to the United States for free medical treatment. She's helped over a hundred children so far, and it all started with a letter from a Bosnian boy named Kenan.
Continue Reading »Morley Safer's pick: Lenell Geter's in Jail
When we asked Morley Safer to choose a piece for our summer series of "Correspondent Favorites," he had a lot of options. After 41 years on "60 Minutes," Morley has a huge archive of stories.
Yet Morley didn't hesitate when he made his choice: a 1983 piece titled "Lenell Geter's in Jail." It was also a favorite of 60 Minutes' creator, Don Hewitt.
Continue Reading »Two legends on the road: Murrow and Armstrong
For this week's broadcast, the "60 Minutes" team of Morley Safer, David Browning, and Diane Beasley, followed jazz musician Wynton Marsalis to Havana, Cuba. As our producers tried to stay awake for the band's late-night jam sessions on the road, they talked of another reporter from another time: Edward R. Murrow. In 1955, Murrow followed jazz icon Louis Armstrong around the world, producing a remarkable record of Satchmo's stops in Europe and Africa.
Continue Reading »The hidden America
We sum up our economy with numbers: the Dow Jones Average, the unemployment rate, the price of a gallon of gas. During the country's recent recession, Scott Pelley and his "60 Minutes" team of producers and editors have worked to put faces in front of those numbers and tell the stories of the men, women, and children who have suffered in the economic decline.
Continue Reading »How the FBI helped "Whitey" Bulger
About six years after Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger disappeared, the bodies of his alleged victims started turning up all over Boston. As Ed Bradley reported in his 2001 "60 Minutes" story on Bulger, tips from former members of Bulger's gang led authorities to the bodies of at least six people Bulger himself allegedly tortured and killed.
Eddie Mackenzie, who once worked for Bulger, took "60 Minutes" to one of those grave sites, where he told Bradley that he believed Bulger killed many more than the 19 he's accused of. "You're talking 70, 80 easily," Mackenzie said.
Continue Reading »Bulger's love of killing
For more than 25 years, the Boston neighborhood known as Southie was ruled by mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger. At his right hand sat his most trusted lieutenant and enforcer, Kevin Weeks, who spent nearly every day with the now-captured crime boss.
In 2006, Weeks sat down with "60 Minutes'" Ed Bradley to talk about his former mentor. Weeks described Bulger as a "disciplined" man, who dedicated his waking hours to the pursuit of crime. He didn't enjoy alcohol, drugs, or gambling. According to Weeks, Bulger found enjoyment and "stress relief" in the act of killing:
Continue Reading »Boston's gangs: Interviewing "The Executioner"
James "Whitey" Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for his alleged role in 19 murders, was captured Wednesday near Los Angeles after living on the run for 16 years, law enforcement officials said.
In 2008, Steve Kroft interviewed John Martorano, a key player in Boston's Winter Hill Gang, which was run by Bulger. For more than a decade, Martorano was the gang's chief executioner and one of the most feared men in Boston.
Continue Reading »Lesley Stahl's Pick: Mammoni
By "60 Minutes" producer Shari Finkelstein
This week's piece in our summer series of "Correspondent Favorites" was born out of a vacation I spent in Italy years ago, where Italian friends of mine were teasing their older brother for living at home with his parents in his early 40s. I thought it was a little strange that this charming, smart, successful man was living at home, and I loved the word Italians had coined for men like him: "Mammoni." What I was shocked to learn, was that this older brother was no isolated case -- it was the norm in Italy.
Continue Reading »A statue of Mark Zuckerberg in Tunisia?
If any American reporter can give us perspective on the uprisings in the Arab world, it's Bob Simon, a "60 Minutes" correspondent who lived in the Middle East off and on for 30 years. In this video, Simon sits down with "Overtime" editor Ann Silvio and debriefs us on his reporting assignment to Tunisia.
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