'60 Minutes' producer Jeff Fager talks in Naples about free press, Trump

When Mike Trephan talked to his friend Peter Thomas, the late voice-over icon and World War II veteran, after Trephan put together the first Honor The Free Press Day more than a decade ago, Thomas gave his friend and fellow veteran kudos for having the inaugural event prominently displayed in the local newspaper.

"He said, 'You've really hit it big,' " Trephan, a retired Marine and businessman, told a crowded ballroom at the Naples Hilton on Wednesday. "I said, 'Peter, I know I'll hit it big when I get "60 Minutes." ' "

He finally hit it big Wednesday.

For the 13th annual Honor The Free Press Day, Trephan presented Jeff Fager, executive producer for the longstanding CBS news program, with the Peter A. Thomas Award, named after the World War II veteran.

The event, sponsored in part by the Naples Daily News, was created by Trephan in 2005 with the help of the Marine Corps League of Naples to honor Ernie Pyle, a World War II journalist known as "the voice of the GI," and to celebrate the First Amendment rights of the press.

Today, perhaps more than ever, said Trephan, 80, it is important to support a free news media.

"I travel all over the world, and I go to countries that didn't have a free press, and one of the biggest things they admire about the United States is free speech and free press," he said.

"I saw the very first '60 Minutes' program. It's always been one of my favorite programs, and I personally believe that it's the best investigative program on the air," Trephan said.

Fager, a 35-year veteran with the network, talked Wednesday about the program's storied history and held a question-and-answer session with the audience.

He said taking First Amendment rights for granted "is probably a much bigger threat to the free press than we realize."

"In Turkey today, if they write something about the president that doesn't go over well with the government, they're in jail," Fager, 62, told the attendees, many of them veterans. "That's not going to happen here.

"We have such protections that we should be very proud of, that we fought for over so many years, that the men in this room have fought for," he said.

Although politicians have long resorted to bashing the press, Fager said, some of President Donald Trump's recent comments caught him by surprise. In February, Trump characterized reporters as "the enemy of the people."

"I think this has energized the press," Fager said. "I actually think this is good for the free press. I mean, people are really digging in and trying to figure out how to cover this story, this administration, better and more diligently."

But what has troubled Fager more than comments by politicians, he said, has been the prevalence of shallow news coverage in recent years.

"So much of what we call news is really just masquerading as news," he said. "So much of what we've done, what has happened in the news media is cheap and tabloid and driven by celebrity, which has become so much a part of American news. And that's what I mean by taking it for granted."

Fager said he worried, too, about the proliferation of fake news, a topic "60 Minutes" will tackle Sunday.

"People start to wonder what's real and what isn't," he said. "There's a hunger in America for real news."

Given those challenges, Fager said, it is important for journalists to continue to work to uncover the truth.

"A huge part of our responsibility is to help people better understand the events of the world," he said. "It's not just to bore in and try to hold someone accountable all the time. We do that, too. But we're out there to help; that's our responsibility, help people better understand what's happening in the world. That's our job."

Trephan, the founder of the event, agreed.

"We're still protected by those few in the press who still have the professional pride to get the whole story — unbiased, without an opinion — to the public," he said before leading the crowd outside the hotel to pay tribute to fallen journalists.

"We must always remember that it's the free press that keeps this great country of ours free," Trephan said. "Hats off to those few remaining investigative journalists. May they always be there when we need them."