Columbia Broadcasting Company

CBS became a prominent participant in the public contest over the Memorial Medical Center deaths through its newsmagazine 60 Minutes. The program interviewed both surgeon Anna Pou and Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, but the preparations and broadcast produced sharply different expectations: Pou’s defense team sought to protect her words from later dispute, while Foti’s staff believed the report would present him favorably. When the segment aired on September 24, 2006, Pou’s appearance drew major attention and the questioning of Foti had proved critical.

The Interviews and Their Preparation

Pou was wary of the media, and her lawyer, Rick Simmons, guided her through the 60 Minutes interview process. The crew and producer came to film her twice; nervous, she changed her mind and declined to meet them on their first visit. Simmons arranged for the entire interview with correspondent Morley Safer to be recorded, so that its contents could be checked if the program were later subpoenaed in court.

Simmons expected the finished segment to show Pou in a favorable light. He also helped arrange public support from professional medical organizations for the days after the broadcast. He even objected to the American Medical Association’s proposed timing for a statement: it was due the day after the Sunday-night program, when a much-anticipated Monday Night Football broadcast marking the New Orleans Saints’ return to the restored Superdome might draw local attention away from the response.

Foti’s Office and the Reporter Change

Kris Wartelle, Foti’s public information director, separately helped arrange an interview with the attorney general. Wartelle expected a forceful investigative report that would nevertheless present Foti’s side fairly. Her expectations were shaped in part by her favorable impression of Ed Bradley’s work with her office on a separate story about Gretna police preventing New Orleans residents from crossing a bridge to safety after the storm.

Wartelle was surprised to learn that Safer, rather than Bradley, would report on Memorial after what she understood to have been an internal dispute. A young producer assured her that the story would still portray Foti as a hero. But just before the interview, the producer warned her that Safer was in a bad mood; once the questioning began under the studio lights, Wartelle recognized that the report was taking a critical direction.

A Contested Interview and Broadcast

After Foti’s interview, he was angry with Wartelle. She argued with Safer for about an hour and sent a scathing email to a senior CBS official, saying she felt she had been misled about the reporter’s intentions. The disagreement exposed the gap between the favorable presentation Foti’s office had anticipated and the harder scrutiny the interview delivered.

The segment aired on Sunday night, September 24, 2006. Pou’s appearance became a sensation. On camera, she denied being a murderer and described her actions as comfort care under dreadful conditions that she said followed the hospital’s abandonment. Asked whether she had lost hope, she answered by identifying herself as a cancer specialist and insisting that hope was part of her work. The broadcast gave her defense a highly visible platform, even as the program’s treatment of Foti frustrated his staff.

Place in the Media Aftermath

CBS’s report followed days of intense coverage of the case, after CNN had repeatedly revisited the allegations and other major networks had excerpted CNN’s reporting. The book presents the 60 Minutes segment not as a settled account of what happened at Memorial, but as a consequential stage in the struggle to define the events publicly: Simmons planned for the interview’s legal and reputational consequences, Pou became a national television presence, and Foti’s office confronted a report it had expected to be more supportive.