60 Minutes, one of the most storied news programs in American history, has been consumed by controversy over the past few weeks amid a wave of high-profile firings and accusations of politically motivated meddling by management.
Things came to a head last week, when longtime correspondent Scott Pelley berated the show’s new executive producer during a staff meeting that was recorded and leaked to the New York Times. Pelley was fired the next day. In a lengthy interview following his dismissal, Pelley accused CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss of attempting to alter one of his stories in a way that he said would have made it more favorable to President Trump.
“There was a thumb on the scale for the president’s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News,” he told the Times. The network denied his characterization of events.
Pelley’s firing and its aftermath are the latest in a string of disputes between rank-and-file journalists at CBS News and the network’s leadership during Trump’s second term.
Here’s a rundown of what’s happened, what’s fueling the controversy and why several former CBS News staffers are questioning management’s commitment to fair and independent journalism.
What’s happening at CBS News?
The short version is that the company has new leadership that is running things in a way some longstanding employees have disagreed with. Many high-profile figures, including popular anchors and top executives, have either left or been fired. Some of the former staff members have accused their new bosses of interfering in editorial decisions to make stories align more with the Trump administration’s portrayal of events.
Who is in charge of CBS News now?
The news operation is being run by Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist who founded the news commentary website the Free Press. CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Skydance, bought the Free Press for $150 million in October. Weiss was named editor in chief of CBS News as part of that deal.
Weiss was an unconventional choice to take the reins of a large legacy media outlet like CBS News. She had spent most of her career working at newspapers, with limited experience in broadcast journalism. She had also spent most of her career in opinion writing, rather than the more traditional, straight news that is at the core of CBS News programming.
Bari Weiss interviews Senator Ted Cruz on January 18, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Leigh Vogel via Getty Images)
The hiring also raised eyebrows because of the ideological bent that Weiss had shown throughout her career. She has described herself as a “radical centrist” and a “center-left-on-most-things-person,” but she has often taken positions that align with conservatives in her work. Those have included persistent criticism of “woke” culture, a distrust of mainstream media and staunch support for Israel. Under her leadership, the Free Press has also published stories critical of elite colleges and transgender activism and gender identity policies, while also framing Republicans like reality TV personality Spencer Pratt in a favorable light.
Since August 2025, Paramount Skydance has been run by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison. Trump has described David as a “great person” whom he knows “very well,” but has also criticized him over the coverage he’s received from the network. David Ellison threw a lavish party “honoring the Trump White House” in April.
What happened with Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News?
In the early months of Trump’s second term, well before Weiss was hired, tensions flared within CBS News over a lawsuit the president had filed against the network. Trump sued CBS for $20 billion, alleging that 60 Minutes had deceptively edited answers from then-Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview that aired during the 2024 presidential race. In the suit, he accused CBS of “news distortion” that constituted “election and voter interference.”
During the same period, Paramount was in the process of trying to merge with Skydance Media and needed the Trump administration’s approval to close the deal. Journalists at CBS News widely viewed the lawsuit as baseless, and reportedly urged the company not to settle, arguing that doing so would leave a “shameful stain and undermine the First Amendment.”
CBS ultimately agreed to pay $16 million to settle the suit. The Trump administration announced its approval of the merger three weeks later.
Paramount’s co-CEO George Cheeks reportedly told shareholders that the settlement would allow the company to focus on its core goals “rather than being mired in uncertainty and distraction.”
Rome Hartman, a producer of the Harris interview that sparked the suit, called the decision a “cowardly capitulation” by the company’s leaders and a “fundamental betrayal” of CBS News.
Pelley described the settlement last week as a “multi-million-dollar bribe to the president to settle this frivolous, ridiculous lawsuit.”
Paramount Skydance is now pursuing a $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would include the acquisition of CNN. That transaction will also need to be approved by several federal agencies under the Trump administration.
Who has resigned or been fired?
The first major departures happened while the lawsuit was still ongoing. Within a span of a few weeks, CBS News President Wendy McMahon and longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned. Both cited disagreements with management over the direction of the network’s news coverage when explaining their decisions to leave.
In October, less than a month after Weiss became editor in chief, roughly 100 CBS News employees, including eight on-air personalities, were laid off on what she reportedly described as an “enormously difficult day” in a call with staffers.
In February, longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper announced he would be leaving the show after 20 years. While signing off for the last time a few months later, Cooper touted the program’s “independence” in comments that were widely interpreted as a quiet critique of the network’s leadership.
Then came the day two weeks ago that 60 Minutes staffers are calling “Black Thursday.” The show’s two top producers, Tanya Simon and Draggan Mihailovich, were fired. Two on-air correspondents, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, were also let go.
Alfonsi was at the center of one of the biggest controversies of Weiss’s tenure. She was the lead correspondent on a segment about a notorious Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration had been sending deported migrants. Weiss made the rare decision to take the segment out of the show, hours before it was set to air, saying it “wasn’t ready” despite having gone through what staff said was a thorough and lengthy editing process. In an email to colleagues, Alfonsi described the choice to pull the segment as “political.”
After she was let go, Alfonsi told the New York Times that she believed her firing was a way to “penalize” her for refusing to “sanitize accurate reporting.”
Vega accused management of trying to “insert political bias” into news stories in a social media message announcing her departure.
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship,” she wrote.
The “Black Thursday” firings helped fuel a heated exchange between Pelley and new 60 Minutes lead producer Nick Bilton earlier this month. Pelley reportedly accused Weiss of “murdering” the show and claimed that neither Bilton nor Weiss were qualified for their jobs.
Scott Pelley, correspondent on 60 Minutes in 2025.
(Michele Crowe/CBS News via Getty Images)
Pelley was fired the next day, with Bilton writing that he had “no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.”
Weiss placed the blame on Pelley as well.
“Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately, we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways,” she said during a staff call that was leaked to the New York Times. “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.”
Pelley ramped up his criticisms in his first interview after being fired, telling the Times last week that he felt leadership was inserting “political bias” into the show’s coverage and railing against what he described as “incompetence” from the people running the network.
Will the other 60 Minutes correspondents also be leaving?
The three remaining full-time correspondents on 60 Minutes — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — have decided to stay on the show.
“We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure. That is simply, categorically not the case,” they reportedly wrote in a memo to CBS News staff after Pelley’s firing. “Here’s why [we’re] staying: We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”
Stahl told the media news site Puck on Sunday that the saga has been “the hardest chapter of my career” and said she seriously wrestled with whether to quit as well before deciding to stay on.
Was all of this connected to the decision to cancel ‘The Late Show’?
Not directly, though that move sparked many of the same criticisms that are being levied at the news division. CBS said its choice to end the show was “purely a financial decision” that was in no way inspired by host Stephen Colbert’s frequent criticisms of Trump. That proved unconvincing to many of Colbert’s defenders, including other late-night hosts, who argued that the cancellation reflected an effort by the network to avoid antagonizing the president.
Trump had long been vocally critical of Colbert and had called for CBS to terminate his contract. The administration’s decision to approve the merger between Paramount and Skydance came one week after Colbert announced his show would not be renewed.
