Jun 11, 2026 7:00am PT
Former ‘60 Minutes’ Staffers Unload on Bari Weiss: ‘Everything She’s Touched Has Turned to S—’
As Bari Weiss lays waste to “60 Minutes,” six former staffers sound off on the damage she’s inflicted upon the crown jewel of CBS News.
By Marlow Stern
Staffers have taken to calling it “Black Thursday.”
On May 28, a half-dozen senior producers and correspondents at “60 Minutes,” the longest-running and highest-rated news program in the country, were unceremoniously shown the door. Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, were among them.
The firings were carried out by Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, who’d clashed with Alfonsi in December over her “60 Minutes” report “Inside CECOT,” which told the stories of Venezuelan migrants who’d suffered horrific abuse at an El Salvadoran prison after being deported there by the Trump administration.
Weiss pulled the piece hours before it was set to air, demanding it include the perspective of Stephen Miller or another high-ranking Trump official. In an email to her colleagues, Alfonsi said she’d already made multiple requests to officials for comment, and that Weiss’ move was “not an editorial decision, it was a political one.” She added, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
Also on May 28, Weiss installed Nick Bilton, a tech columnist and reporter with no broadcast journalism experience, as Simon’s successor at the helm of “60 Minutes.” Weiss and Bilton had grown fond of each other while collaborating on numerous documentary projects for Netflix that never saw the light of day.
Then, on June 1, Scott Pelley, a 37-year CBS newsman and the de facto face of the network, attended an all-hands meeting with Bilton and the rest of the news magazine’s staff (Weiss was noticeably absent). Frustrated by the firings and the lack of any explanation to staff — particularly about the ouster of Simon, the daughter of legendary “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon — Pelley questioned Bilton’s credentials and accused Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ ”
The following day, Pelley was fired in a scathing letter from Bilton accusing him of “remarkable incivility and contempt.” That left “60 Minutes” with only three correspondents (down from seven) following the resignation of Anderson Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the program, in February. (A CBS News spokesperson says, “CBS News is not able to say why we parted ways with any one person due to HR and legal considerations.”)
I spoke with six former “60 Minutes” staffers, including award-winning correspondents, producers and executives, about the chaos that’s unfolded there under Weiss, a former op-ed columnist and founder of The Free Press who had no broadcast journalism — and scant investigative reporting — experience prior to being given the keys to CBS News.
“We have to acknowledge that ‘60 Minutes’ needed a bit of a facelift, and there were potentially positive ways to improve the program, but it’s the way they have gone about it,” a former “60 Minutes” staffer says. “You don’t give a facelift with a fucking machete.”
The opening salvo came on July 1, 2025. On that day, CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Global, chose to settle what critics call a baseless $16 million lawsuit brought by President Trump against “60 Minutes” over an October 2024 interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris that was lightly edited for broadcast. (Trump broke with decades-long tradition and refused to sit down for his own “60 Minutes” interview during the campaign.)
The timing was curious, to say the least. Paramount had an $8 billion merger pending with David Ellison’s Skydance Media that required FCC approval, and FCC chairman Brendan Carr, an outspoken Trump loyalist, had opened up a “news distortion” inquiry into “60 Minutes” over the Harris interview.
Six days after the Trump settlement, the Paramount-Skydance merger was complete, and Ellison, a Trump ally, was in charge of CBS. One of his first big moves there was choosing not to renew the contract of “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, three days after Colbert called the Trump settlement “a big fat bribe”; the second was appointing Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump adviser and chair at the conservative think tank Hudson Institute, as CBS News’ ombudsman.
“Trump filed a lawsuit that everybody laughed at — about editing — and you’d never think he could win that lawsuit in court, but he basically makes your lawyers impotent,” explains Lowell Bergman, the celebrated former “60 Minutes” producer. “He has a habit of filing lawsuits that he can’t win, and now that he’s the president of the United States, he has a lever and can win, so it’s a form of extortion.”
Bergman joined “60 Minutes” in 1983 and, working with correspondent Mike Wallace, produced dozens of high-impact stories over his 14-year tenure — including an interview with tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand that was dramatized in the 1999 film “The Insider.” (Bergman was played by Al Pacino.) He won a Pulitzer Prize with The New York Times in 2004 and teaches journalism at UC Berkeley.
In a bizarre twist, Chris Wallace, the former Fox News anchor and son of Mike Wallace, is a senior adviser to RedBird Capital Partners, which provided $2 billion in financial backing for Skydance’s Paramount takeover. He declined to comment on the state of “60 Minutes,” writing, “As an adviser at RedBird Capital, which has an interest in Paramount, I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that.” When I mention this to Bergman, he laughs and says, “Sounds about right to me.”
Bergman has a history with Trump too. Though he didn’t produce the segment, Bergman was there when Wallace conducted a sit-down interview with Trump on “60 Minutes” in 1985, which served as the real estate scion’s big coming-out party.
He recalls trying to give Wallace a tip about an alleged criminal complaint concerning Trump, Roy Cohn, the Genovese crime family and the delivery of cement during the construction of Trump Tower. While Bergman was talking to Wallace, he claims, a producer intervened and told him, “We’re not doing that kind of story.”
“[Trump] has always wanted to be a celebrity. He is a celebrity. And he’s living in a world that we all now know is that of a reality-TV star who’s constantly trying to rescript things that he’s said, or go backwards,” says Bergman. “The issue here is the open attempt by the president and the White House to destroy parts of the media that disagree with him. This has never happened before.”
Steve Kroft, who was a “60 Minutes” correspondent for 30 years until retiring in 2019, echoes Bergman’s assessment. He believes that Trump has had it out for the news magazine since the Harris piece, and that Ellison and Weiss haven’t demonstrated a desire to stand up to him.
Ellison is, after all, still seeking FCC approval of Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Continue/Read Original Article: https://variety.com/2026/tv/features/60-minutes-staffers-bari-weiss-scott-pelley-trump-1236771125/
Discover more from DrWeb's Domain
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
