I read with some small amusement Jeff Fager’s defense of the recent “60 Minutes” segment on Tiger Woods.

Should everybody who goes on '60 Minutes' get slammed? Is that how you see our job? Or is it OK to profile a superstar athlete even if we didn't uncover any dirt? Tiger Woods is someone who doesn't give interviews, so it's newsworthy to hear him talk.

Fager was the executive producer of the segment that has come under some scathing criticism as being little more than a puff piece for the golfer.

The “60 Minutes” folks might have asked Woods about the predatory and anti-First Amendment practices of his marketing company. Several years ago, ETW Corportation sued sports artist Rick Rush when Rush painted and published a print that contained three images of Woods. Rush argued, rightly I think, that what he did was no different from a newspaper photographer who had taken a picture of Woods and then published it is a newspaper which was sold to the public. In other words he had a First Amendment right to do what he did. (A number of news organizations, including the New York Times, agreed and filed briefs supporting Rush’s position.)

But the First Amendment didn’t seem to matter to Woods and his lawyers. Their suit was constructed not just to stop the distribution of the print but also to bankrupt the artist and the marketing company, Jirah Publishing (run by his brother), that handled the print. Fortunately, a Federal judge eventually dismissed the suit but only after the Rush brothers had spent considerable money defending themselves.

(Disclosure: I was an expert witness, unpaid, on the side of the Rushes in one part of the case.)

CBS News has a reputation as a defender of the First Amendment. But Fager says “. . . we didn’t uncover any dirt.” This wasn’t dirt. It was a full blown legal case that Woods initiated. One wonders how Fager and his researchers missed it or why they chose not to ask Woods about it.

Jim Stovall (Posted April 4, 2006)

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