Hewitt spent his
career at CBS News and directed programs of early TV news giants Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. With the debut of "60 Minutes" in 1968, Hewitt merged elements of news and entertainment and
shattered the traditional view that news divisions were run as a public trust with little concern for income. His key insight was to combine the prestige surrounding the network's documentary unit
with the editorial and visual pacing of an entertainment show.
Hewitt also was a central voice in the 1990s debates over corporate censorship in journalism when network executives
interfered with a "60 Minutes" segment on a tobacco industry whistleblower. Hewitt's impact on television was almost unparalleled, says Marvin Kalb, founding director of Harvard University's
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a former news reporter for CBS.
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