Bari Weiss begins overhaul at CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ with several firings
On May 17, “60 Minutes” wrapped its 58th season. Less than two weeks later, CBS’s top editor, Bari Weiss, has begun an overhaul.
On Thursday morning, CBS News fired veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who had feuded with Weiss over a delayed “60 Minutes” segment, and executive producer Tanya Simon, the daughter of legendary CBS correspondent Bob Simon, who died in 2015.
Weiss and CBS president and executive editor Tom Cibrowski tapped Nick Bilton, a longtime technology columnist and magazine writer, to replace Simon, bringing in a network outsider to helm the storied news show.
The changes were announced in an email to CBS News staffers reviewed by The Washington Post.
“Nick embodies the energy and ambition that animated the founders of the show,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote in the email. “We cannot imagine a better fit.”
They hailed Simon as leading the broadcast “during an extraordinarily challenging period with grace and steadiness.” Simon, who joined CBS in 1996, became executive producer of “60 Minutes” last year.
She was tapped for the role after the program’s longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, resigned as CBS’s then-parent company, Paramount Global, pursued a merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media. “Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it,” Owens wrote in a memo to staff announcing his decision to step aside. “To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”
The merger deal was approved last summer, and Weiss, who had founded the online publication Free Press, was installed as the editor in chief of CBS News.
Simon acknowledged her departure in a separate email to “60 Minutes” staff Thursday.
“While leadership has decided it is time for a new chapter — I want to be unequivocally clear about one thing: it has been an immense privilege to lead this broadcast, and I could not be prouder of what we have built, fought for, and delivered together over the last year,” Simon wrote in the email, which The Post obtained. “60 Minutes has always been more than just a broadcast: it is an institution built on independence, grit, and rigorous search for the truth.”
“60 Minutes is part of my DNA. I have been on staff for over 25 years, but the broadcast has been in my life for much longer, as has CBS News,” Simon added in the email.
Alfonsi and Simon weren’t the only dismissals Thursday. “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich were also fired, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Anderson Cooper recently left the show after two decades, citing his desire to spend more time with his family.
In a statement late Thursday, Vega said her contract wasn’t set to expire until March 2027 and that her firing comes after meddling by CBS management.
“In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories,” she wrote. “Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions. Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
She wrote that she is “far from the only 60 Minutes correspondent who has asked herself, ‘What is my personal red line? How much can I push back before I pay the price?’” CBS declined to comment on Vega’s statement.
Weiss has clashed with “60 Minutes” staff, including a high-profile feud in which she shelved a segment on El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison at the last minute. Regardless, “60 Minutes” has been a source of stability at CBS News; it brought in 9.1 million viewers on average this season, according to the network’s tally, making it one of the most-watched shows on broadcast television.
In a separate email to CBS News staff, also reviewed by The Post, Bilton said taking this job is the honor of his career — but signaled that “60 Minutes” needs to adapt to stay relevant.
“The world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved,” he wrote. “And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years. I want to do everything humanly possible to ensure that we are.”
Bilton has been a technology columnist at the New York Times and more recently a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. In 2021, he directed a documentary film called “Fake Famous” for HBO, but — like Weiss before her appointment — he does not have traditional broadcast television experience.