productive work and creative effort. Undoubtedly, the level of alcohol consumption that
you advocate promotes outright alcoholism. Yours has been a call based on
pseudo-science to abandon sobriety and embrace intoxication - hardly a direction that
American culture needs to be pushed in.
The French Paradox and The Ugly Face of Freedom were equally flawed. And to return to
the comparison of your 23Oct94 broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom to your 5Nov95
broadcast The French Paradox, I do see a striking parallel. In both cases, you didn't
know what you were talking about, but stepped forward and talked anyway. Given that you
had not studied the subjects to which you addressed yourself, given that you had not
thought about them, given that you were capable of nothing better than passing along the
most superficial, man-in-the-street, off-the-top-of-my-head conclusions, the truly
remarkable thing is that you would have the arrogance to think yourself worthy of
standing up in front of tens of millions of people and telling them what was your
opinion. Yet that is what you did, and in each case, you got it wrong. Your many
conclusions in these two broadcasts ranged from totally opposite to the truth to totally
unsupported by the evidence. The Ugly Face of Freedom for which you will always be
remembered in the Ukrainian community was wrong and destructive. The French Paradox
which judging from its Internet prominence appears to be your best-remembered broadcast
among your total audience - was also wrong, and also destructive.
A word concerning self-help. If you yourself subscribe to the prescription of drinking
three to five glasses of wine each day, then I would recommend that you attempt to break
yourself of the habit, and substitute for the many hours of inebriation thus avoided
some sober study. Had you substituted for many hours of inebriation the sober reading
of history, you might have spared yourself the fiasco of The Ugly Face of Freedom. Had
you substituted for many hours of inebriation the sober study of scientific method, you
might have spared yourself the fiasco of The French Paradox. Perhaps you have no more
than to look at these two pratfalls in your own career to see how damaging is the effect
of making a habit of indulging in alcohol.
Disclosure would be a step toward restoring professional credibility. As enthusiasm for
your French Paradox broadcasts seems to have its source in the wine industry, and as
your integrity has been brought into question on the matter of The Ugly Face of Freedom,
I wonder if your professional standing would not be enhanced by your assuring 60 Minutes
viewers that you have received no benefits from the wine industry in gratitude for the
increased sales that your French Paradox broadcasts have brought it. The absence of
such an assurance will invite some 60 Minutes viewers to construe your French Paradox
broadcasts more as infomercials than as investigative reporting.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike
Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 1553 hits since 26Apr99
Morley Safer Letter 8 26Apr99 One out of 40 escaped shooting
It looks very much, Mr. Safer, as if on your 60 Minutes broadcast of 23Oct94, The Ugly
Face of Freedom, your chief witness testifying to Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis
was himself a war criminal of substantial proportions, a former Gestapo agent with the
blood of many on his hands, perhaps much of it Jewish blood.
April 26, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street