00:00Steve, thank you so much. I don't know what I pictured today as, but I didn't expect to have my name on the marquee of the Pantages Theater.
00:10It's kind of surreal. I want to begin by getting back at my two celebrity guests.
00:18Arnold is exactly right. When I asked him to do an interview, his producer, Daniel, said,
00:24well, that's fine, but the first part of the interview has to be done at Gold's Gym in Venice.
00:29Now, to look at me, I'm sure all of you think I spent a great deal of time at Gold's Gym somewhere working out.
00:38So I was nervous as a cat when I had to go, thank you, go to the gym and work out with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
00:46And he certainly made it as pleasant as it could be. He kept telling me, I think I was lifting 10 pounds.
00:54You're using your full form. You're completing the action. And never once did he say, Chris, you are a girly man.
01:04So I was very happy about that.
01:06As far as Jay is concerned, we asked him for several months to do an interview, and we were about to come out to California to do it, and he set himself on fire.
01:20And then we had it rescheduled, and he was riding a motorcycle, and he didn't see a chain across a parking lot, which knocked him off his motorcycle and almost garroted him.
01:34So I said to Jay, look, you can just say you don't want to do the interview.
01:39Nobody went to so much trouble not to do an interview.
01:42It was worth it.
01:43But you finally caved and did the interview.
01:49I'm so excited to get this award, and particularly to be, you can't really see it, but you see ACE there is Mike Wallace.
02:01And the Chamber of Commerce was so nice to accommodate my request that I have my star next to my father.
02:10You know, it's an interesting thing, because when, as Jay mentioned, growing up as the son of somebody famous is not an unalloyed blessing.
02:22There are some aspects to it that are difficult.
02:26You know, you're living in the shadow.
02:28Did you get this job on your own?
02:30And it was something that I had to deal with.
02:34But by the end of his life, we had become best friends, and now I find that whenever his name is mentioned, instead of it having mixed feelings,
02:47I actually feel delighted that people still remember my father, which is just an indication that 25 years of intense therapy actually is not a waste of time and money.
03:01The star is a big honor, but as Steve mentioned, the real honor and the real joy for me is a half a century as a journalist.
03:15I have gone from covering the Boston City Council to six years covering Ronald Reagan and the White House.
03:22I've interviewed saints.
03:23I spent a week in 1979 with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, just after she had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
03:33I spent a very long hour with Vladimir Putin in 2018, right after the Trump summit, interviewing him and asking him,
03:47why is it that so many of the people that oppose you end up dead, which was an interesting moment,
03:54and then took my wife on a trip to Russia, which probably was foolish, but it worked out okay.
04:01I want to, Steve mentioned this is an interesting time for the news business,
04:05and I want to just briefly deliver a sermon about this business,
04:10because I do get a lot of compliments, even coming out on this trip, that I play it straight, that I'm fair.
04:19And while I like compliments as much as the next person,
04:24the fact that this is an object of praise is, to me, profoundly depressing.
04:29When I started in the news business at the Boston Globe, 56 years ago, being honest, playing it straight,
04:40having integrity, wasn't a subject of praise.
04:44It was what kept you from getting fired, like being accurate.
04:48And the fact that it is now something that stands out, I think, is a sad commentary about the news business.
04:54And I hope that people will remember that our job isn't to take sides, isn't to get down onto the playing field.
05:03It's to call balls and strikes and be as honest and as fair and call strikes on both sides as you can possibly be.
05:13I think sometimes in the modern news business, some of my colleagues have forgotten that.
05:19Finally, I just want to say thank you.
05:22Thank you to Jay and to Arnold for coming today.
05:28I'm sure this was just the most exciting thing in the world for you to come to it.
05:33A Walk of Star presentation.
05:35I want to say thank you to my friends, some of whom flew all the way from the East Coast.
05:40I want to say thank you to my work family, some of my former colleagues from Fox,
05:46some of my former colleagues from CNN, my new family, Redbird.
05:51Some of them are here.
05:54And most of all, I want to say thank you to my real family.
06:00Three of my children are here.
06:02My beloved wife, Lorraine, is here to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, to Jay and Arnold, to my work colleagues, to my friends, to my family.
06:17My heart is filled with gratitude today, and I couldn't be more thankful to all of you.
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