Don Hewitt, who died this week, changed my life. Last year, I finally got to tell him that face-to-face.

In 1996, “60 Minutes” – the program that Hewitt originated and produced – did a segment called “You Arrogant Journalists.” Mike Wallace and his crew covered a hearing before the Minnesota News Council on a major complaint by Northwest Airlines against WCCO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. The council upheld the complaint, agreeing that WCCO practiced shoddy journalism.

I missed it when it aired, but a friend of mine gave me a videotape and said: “Why don’t we have a news council in Washington state?” I was a media critic at the time and thought having a news council here was a good idea. An organizing committee formed, and we launched the Washington News Council in the summer of 1998.

We showed the “60 Minutes” segment at our kick-off event on Sept. 14, 1998. I introduced it by imitating the “60 Minutes” stopwatch lead-in: “Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick….”

Mike Wallace said on camera that he was a public supporter of state news councils. Seeing Minnesota’s in action convinced him they could help journalism by holding the media publicly accountable. It was a powerful testimonial.

After that event, we expanded the WNC with the strong support of many people statewide – including Bill Gates Sr., who gave us a generous start-up grant from the Gates Foundation.

“Fast Forward” a decade to April 1, 2008. Don Hewitt was in Seattle on his way to Washington State University in Pullman, where he was to receive the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism. I proposed to WSU that we co-sponsor a lunch at The Rainier Club. We called it “An Hour with Don Hewitt of 60 Minutes.” Our media sponsors were The Seattle Times and KIRO7 Eyewitness News.

In introductory remarks, I described how that 1996 “60 Minutes” segment inspired creation of the Washington News Council: “So Mr. Hewitt, we owe you a special tribute today. The Washington News Council’s very existence can be blamed on you and Mike Wallace!” He laughed and seemed slightly bemused.

Interviewed onstage by Steve Raible, KIRO7 anchor, Hewitt was in fine form. He told amazing anecdotes: The time Frank Sinatra had threatened to kill him. The time he and his CBS crew stole an NBC van and hid it in a cornfield. The time he chartered a boat filled with journalists and ordered all the others off, so CBS had an exclusive.

He had the audience roaring with laughter for most of the hour. And he stayed around afterward, answering questions and signing autographs. He was warm, charming and gracious. People talked about that lunch for months. (See www.tvw.org archives to watch it.)

And yet, as the years have gone by I’ve come to wonder if Hewitt and “60 Minutes” had a less-than-positive influence on the news media – especially local television news.

The “60 Minutes” format of tough “investigative” journalism – including hidden cameras and “ambush” interviews where crews surprise their targets in public, put a camera in their face and demand answers – certainly exposed many miscreants, got some deservedly fired (or jailed) and produced a few changes in laws. Not to mention won a lot of journalism prizes – which is all too often part of the motive.

But that approach to journalism inspired countless “60 Minutes Wannabes” at stations all over the country. Sometimes the targets turn out to be not as guilty or evil as the scandal-mongering, prize-seeking reporters seek to portray them. The “60 Minutes”format widely imitated by other networks and stations demands a black-and-white, good guy vs. bad guy view of the world. That often makes compelling TV, but it isn’t always true, fair, balanced or ethical journalism.

Two cases in point: KIRO7 Eyewitness News has been the subject of two major complaints to the Washington News Council in recent years from those who contended that broadcasts were inaccurate and unfair.

One complaint, from the Washington Beef Commission and the Washington State Dairy Products Commission, was upheld by the News Council in 2003. A series of KIRO stories (aired during “sweeps week”) turned out to be full of inaccurate and misleading information, the council concluded after a three-hour hearing.

Another complaint last year from Secretary of State Sam Reed concerned two KIRO stories about the state’s election system. Reed made a convincing case that the broadcasts were factually wrong and full of statistical errors. In lieu of a hearing, the WNC put both stories on our website, along with Reed’s complaint, and let the public vote in a “virtual hearing.” KIRO got hammered for poor journalism.

(For details on both these complaints, see www.wanewscouncil.org)

Unfortunately, such “gotcha” stories are among Don Hewitt’s legacies. He transformed television by merging news and entertainment.

“I consider myself a guy who married ‘show biz’ and ‘news biz,’ ” he once said. Sometimes to the detriment of the latter.

While “60 Minutes” usually has the professionalism to get the story right, that’s not always true of its local imitators. Sometimes victims of shoddy journalism need some recourse; that’s why the WNC exists.

May Don Hewitt, who changed my life and TV news, rest in peace.

John Hamer, executive director of the Washington News Council, was on The Seattle Times’ editorial board and later co-wrote a media-critique newsletter, CounterPoint, and the “Watchdogs” column in Seattle Weekly.