Huh. I remember seeing videos of Mike Wallace doing cigarette commercials.
That was before Wallace officially became a “newsman.” Back in the 50s, he was (among other things), a game show emcee, an actor who briefly appeared on Broadway, and the host of a talk program with then-wife Buff Cobb. Mike had no problem plugging sponsor’s products during those early TV appearances.
He joined CBS in 1964, after one of his sons was killed while hiking in Greece. As one of the conditions for joining the network, he bought out his contract with Parliament cigarettes, to avoid any conflict of interest. As you might expect, there was howls of protest from the journalism purists at CBS, and Wallace got mostly second-tier assignments until Don Hewitt decided to put him on a new program called “60 Minutes.”
Wallace got the last laugh. Walter Cronkite was forced out at 65 to make room for Dan Rather, but CBS decided to rescind its retirement policy for Wallace. The reason? 60 Minutes made much more money for the network than the “Evening News.”