By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan– As everyone knows, Mike Wallace, son of Friedan Wallik, he of the Old Country, was a mensch. He was also a tough-talking TV reporter and an investigative sleuth who never gave up until he found what he wanted. The Brookline, Massachusetts boy who made good in America, died recently at the good old ripe age of 93 and what a life he led! You’ve read the obituaries about him, and you know what he achieved, even going so far as to make Barbra Streisand cry on TV once when he asked some tough love questions based on some inside dope he got from her mother.
But there’s another part of Mike Wallace’s life that needs examining and it has little to do with Mike, and much more to do with how in the Internet Age, false quotes spread like wildfire and become part of new urban legends, and in this case, a new urban newsroom legend.
And as this new urban newsroom legend has it, never fact-checked of course, which is par for the course, of course, beer magnate Joseph Coors reportedly originated the alleged maxim when he allegedly quipped, although there is no recording of him saying it: “The four most dreaded words in the English language –‘Mike Wallace is here.’ ”
Most likely, Coors never said that.
True, there was a newspaper ad that Coors took out in 1983 that used that line as part of the ad copy, but Mr Coors himself never quipped those exact words, never said those words, never uttered those words. They were put in his mouth by a savvy team of Madison Avenue copywriters. Welcome to another faux quote making the rounds of the Internet in this Age of UnFactCheckable/UnFactChecked Facts.
When I asked a top newspaper editor, whose newspaper had also used that faux quote, he wrote back to me in a very nice way and said: “The editorial about Mike Wallace and Joseph Coors in our newspaper did not report that Mr. Coors said it. It reported that “as legend has it,” he originated the phrase. We also were diligent to note that “regardless of whoever actually first uttered it” — clearly casting doubt on whether Coors was the first. So no, we didn’t “fall for it.””
But hundreds of newspapers and blogs and websites did fall for the faux Coors quote and it’s now part of urban newsroom legend, which no amount of digging or investigative legwork can undo. What’s done is done. Coors said it, make no mistake about it. Mike Wallace knows the truth, but he aint talking now. Gone with the wind, Mike took the truth with him.
A top newspaperman in New York, well placed to know what he is talking about, tells me: ”A copy of the 1983 ad was on the wall in Mike Wallace’s office. CBS aired another copy in its Wallace obituary on the evening news the other night.’
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com