Former ‘60 Minutes’ Staffers Unload on Bari Weiss: ‘Everything She’s Touched Has Turned to S—’ - Variety

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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.

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 newsmagazine'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.