CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss lost her initial battle against the staff of 60 Minutes. That was back in December, when she blocked the airing of a segment that highlighted the inhumane treatment at an El Salvador prison of Venezuelan men who had been deported from the United States and sent there. Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who reported the segment, wrote an email blasting Weiss’s decision that ended up being leaked and published widely. Weiss was criticized heavily in media and political circles. The segment aired a few weeks later with few changes. While Weiss was rapidly changing other parts of CBS News and shifting the network’s coverage to the right, it seemed she would not control the venerated 60 Minutes.
But Weiss was undaunted. Last week, CBS fired executive producer Tanya Simon, two other top editors of the show, Alfonsi, and Cecilia Vega, who was the show’s first Latina correspondent but also had tangled with Weiss. The editor in chief appointed Nick Bilton, a writer and documentary filmmaker with no experience in television news, as the program’s new executive producer.
That’s why longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley went scorched earth. In a staff meeting on Monday, Pelley said Weiss and her team were “murdering” 60 Minutes and mocked Bilton for his lack of experience. CBS unsurprisingly fired Pelley.
I am not sure if Pelley meant to be fired. But I’m quite sure he meant to create a firestorm and focus the nation on what’s happening: Bari Weiss, a center-right activist more concerned by Donald Trump’s critics than the authoritarian president himself, has now consolidated power at one of America’s three broadcast networks and taken control of perhaps the nation’s most reputable and prestigious news program.
60 Minutes isn’t one of the nightly news programs that’s declining in ratings and relevance, or a morning show that alternates between hard news and cooking segments. Its ratings are strong. Its reporting is compelling. American presidents and other heads of states consider the program serious and important enough to spend extensive time in interviews with its correspondents.
That’s why Weiss wants to put her people on the show’s staff. Being the editor in chief of CBS News but having little control over 60 Minutes is an important job. But being the editor in chief of CBS News and also shaping 60 Minutes makes you one of the most powerful figures in U.S. media.
Or it used to, at least. Pelley, Vega, and Alfonsi have all stated publicly that Weiss and her aides at CBS are aggressively intervening in editorial decisions. The three correspondents are nonpartisan, nonideological reporters. But they are hinting (and the Venezuelan story confirms it) that Weiss is trying to censor or change coverage that she deems too critical of Trump, the Israeli government, and other political causes that she is tied to. The message from Pelley, Vega, and Alfonsi is that 60 Minutes as we know it is gone, that it should no longer be accorded respect or credibility as in the past. Weiss has taken it over. 60 Minutes’ values now aren’t those of traditional journalists, but those of Weiss and the Ellison family, which acquired CBS last year.
I support the journalists at 60 Minutes, many of whom I suspect want to leave but don’t have the lifetime earnings of Pelley, but I no longer will take their reporting too seriously. And you shouldn’t, either. What Weiss and the Ellisons want to do is use the lofty brand of 60 Minutes to legitimize their Trump-friendly, anti-left vision for news.
We can’t let them. It’s critical that other journalists, pro-democracy groups, and even Democratic politicians start treating CBS News as a more polite version of Fox News. That’s what it is. There will be accurate and at times even strong reporting at CBS. Many of the journalists who remain there, including at 60 Minutes, are excellent. But everyone at CBS is now working under a leadership that values anti-left, reactionary ideology over accuracy, democracy, and fairness. Watch accordingly. (Or better yet, watch something else.)
My fear is that Pelley’s message will be unheeded. I speak from some experience. The Washington Post last year replaced its very credentialed editorial page editor with a young, inexperienced figure whose views are similar to Weiss’s. The paper also signaled that it wanted to move its opinion pages to the right, resulting in more liberal and even central staffers leaving, myself included. The Post’s editorials now often defend even Trump’s most stupid decisions. But liberals still take the Post editorial page seriously, while also complaining it’s too conservative. The correct reaction to a news organization (or department, in the case of the Post opinion page) openly announcing that it is tilting its coverage more favorably to an antidemocratic president and dismissing staffers who disagree is to stop consuming news from that organization, not to hope that coverage will get better.
For pro-democracy Americans, the Post opinion page and now 60 Minutes have been lost, captured by the right. We have to accept those setbacks and embrace the wide swath of news media (ProPublica, Democracy Docket, The Bulwark, The New Republic) that are rising to this moment. Hopefully, some of those news organizations and others will hire excellent journalists like Pelley, Vega, and others at CBS who don’t want to participate in Weiss’s project.
What Pelley and Vega are experiencing isn’t unique. A common tactic of authoritarians is to use government power to steer the ownership of news organizations to companies or leaders who are favorable to that leader. That’s what Trump has done. He’s not telling 60 Minutes what to air, but he has ensured the network is run by someone who will do his bidding. And it’s likely that CNN will also soon be owned by David Ellison’s Skydance Media and run by Weiss or someone like her.
We can’t take 60 Minutes back from Bari Weiss. All we can do is scream and yell that an unqualified right-wing hack is in charge of 60 Minutes now. That’s what Scott Pelley is doing. The rest of us should heed and then repeat his words.