NEW YORK (AP) -- Once again this year, a prominent news outlet is saying it's sorry.
CBS's "60 Minutes" will deliver an unusual on-air apology Sunday for airing a story about heroin smuggling that a British panel has determined was a fake.The report was based on "The Connection," a British documentary that said Colombia's Cali drug cartel had opened a new heroin smuggling route to London. It aired on "60 Minutes" on June 1, 1997.
After the film's authenticity was challenged, an independent panel of lawyers and TV producers investigated and determined that producers had faked locations and paid actors to portray drug couriers.
"We got snowed," said Don Hewitt, executive producer of "60 Minutes," on Thursday.
The incident adds to the media's rough year. In July, CNN apologized and retracted a story alleging the U.S. military used nerve gas on Vietnam War defectors. "60 Minutes" also learned this summer that it and other media outlets were fooled by a convicted killer from Massachusetts who had won release from prison partly on false claims that he served in Vietnam.
Earlier this year, The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a front-page apology to Chiquita Brands International Inc. for a series of stories that were based on stolen voice mail. And two Boston Globe columnists lost their jobs when they were accused of fabricating facts.
Hewitt will read the apology Sunday, the first time he has appeared on cameras of the program he has produced since 1968.
"We, you and television viewers in 14 other countries were taken. To make amends, we felt obligated to lay it all out in detail and ask you to please accept our apology," Hewitt's statement reads.
The newsmagazine showed a film clip purporting to show a courier eluding authorities by swallowing fingers of a latex glove filled with heroin. But investigators found there was no evidence the person was carrying heroin "rather than sugar, flour or mints."