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Rose asked Assad what responsibility he felt about the death and destruction in his country. He asked him to respond to critics who called him a butcher and compared him to "some of the worst dictators to walk the face of the Earth." He also asked whether Assad wasn't following the example of his father, who also led Syria, in "ruthlessly" eliminating opponents. "Sometimes there's power in the questions themselves," Rose said. "It has an importance, regardless of whether or not the person answers." Rose said he prepared for two days and carefully mapped out the interview. It seems contradictory, but that actually makes room for spontaneity, he said. "It was as good an interview as I've ever seen in this kind of a situation," Fager said. CBS first aired portions of the Assad interview on "CBS This Morning" on Monday, continuing on Tuesday. Although it missed the deadline for "60 Minutes" last week, a story will air on the interview this weekend, Fager said. CBS found itself in an odd situation with its flagship "CBS Evening News" on Monday. It had an exclusive with the Assad interview, and anchor Scott Pelley was one of a handful of television journalists granted an interview with Obama on Monday. Yet the evening news was pre-empted on all but the West Coast by CBS Sports' telecast of the U.S. Open men's tennis finals. The network posted Pelley's interview online at 6 p.m. Eastern and cut into the tennis match for a two-minute report on the Obama interview. "That's just bad luck," Fager said. "It happens sometimes." Although CBS' first choice in these stories is still "60 Minutes," there were plenty of other ways for it to be seen, he said. "It stops really being about where it's going to air because the ability to see it out there online and the ability for people to watch it in so many ways has changed so dramatically," he said.
[Associated
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