The fight over ‘60 Minutes’ is a fight over journalism’s future

Suspicion and tension still permeate the Manhattan headquarters of the program, according to several current and former members of the program’s staff with whom I spoke at the end of last week. Since October, when Weiss was named as editor-in-chief of CBS News, with no prior broadcast experience, it has been a cauldron.

One fear is that Weiss will give the network’s programming a conservative tilt to gain favor with President Trump, who has demanded that the Federal Communications Commission revoke the licenses of all the networks except Fox. David Ellison needs the presidential seal of approval for his pending acquisition of Warner Bros., which owns CNN. Weiss founded The Free Press, a conservative-leaning digital news site, which Ellison bought for $150 million in 2025.

Another fear, revealed in my interviews last week, has already proven true. “60 Minutes” has enjoyed unusual independence over the years.

“We never heard from the head of CBS News,” a former producer told me. Weiss has certainly been heard from, even ordering that a segment on a notorious prison in El Salvador that was ready to air be postponed because of her concern that the administration’s views weren’t adequately reflected.

Since the May departure of “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper, and then the noisy firing of Pelley and producers last week, hardly a day has passed without headlines about the staff uproar at the program. Is the story that important? Hard to say, because journalists always love stories about themselves, but CBS’s troubles do reveal endemic problems in the news industry more broadly. That merits the public’s concern.

The business model for all traditional news has been cratering for decades, with the near collapse of local newspapers and the future of radio and broadcast looking shaky, too. Even relatively new digital news sites, like BuzzFeed and Vice, have slipped into oblivion. Along with the shaky state of network news, the stakes for democracy are high. So, attention must be paid.

Weiss and Bilton have another challenging mandate: to cultivate a younger audience while retaining the quality for which CBS News, once home to legends like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, is famous.

While “60 Minutes” has long been the top-rated news program, its audience is aging, as is the audience for broadcast and cable news across the board, where viewers are in their 60s. The sweet spot for the advertisers who pay for the news is age 18 to 55.

New and younger viewers, who prefer to consume news on their phones, are desperately needed. The correspondents at “60 Minutes” were all over 50 themselves. Stahl is 84 but still a superb journalist.

The relative youth of the network’s leaders — Weiss is 42 and Bilton 49 — may have been more important to Ellison than their politics. Weiss is a digital native and Bilton is a well-known tech journalist (we worked together at The New York Times). What they lack in broadcast experience they could make up for with digital and AI skills and knowledge.

With his new team, currently unpopular within CBS News according to insiders, Ellison seems to be looking to the future of an industry that hasn’t yet figured out how to navigate untraditional and ever-changing forms or how to stem audience fragmentation in news.

What looks like an unsuccessful mission now might turn around. But the number of clumsy blunders made by Weiss indicate that her sell-by date may be approaching. By coaxing the three remaining “60 Minutes” correspondents to stay, Bilton may have bought himself time.

Because Ellison wants to be the owner of CNN, too, his footprint in news will probably grow alongside the scrutiny of what’s happening at “60 Minutes.” The fate of CBS News under his ownership is important.

It is very difficult to manage the transformation of any big institution that cherishes its traditional ways. I lived through a very bumpy period of change at The New York Times, from 2003 to 2014, when I was the paper’s managing and executive editor.

Shortly after I won the top job in the paper’s news division in 2011, a new CEO, Mark Thompson, was hired. He had been head of the BBC and did not have experience in the newspaper world. Some of the Times’s senior staff, including me, were resistant to some of the changes he was demanding.

There were some parallels with the current situation at CBS, including an aging subscriber base. By adding products like games and a cooking app to the core news bundle, Thompson succeeded in adding readers and returning the Times to profitability. It now has more than 13 million digital and print subscribers. It has maintained its quality and standards while attracting a younger audience.

One big difference: Having led the BBC, Thompson came to the Times, and then went to CNN, as a far more seasoned journalist than Weiss or Bilton.

I also mention Thompson, because he could very well be appointed by Ellison to supervise the combined CBS and CNN news operations if Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros. is approved, according to people I interviewed.

This would be a bitter pill for Weiss and Bilton to swallow, but having adult supervision seems exactly what CBS News needs right now.

Because the survival of facts and truth is crucial to democracy itself, this is mortal combat.

Jill Abramson, a former executive editor of The New York Times, teaches journalism at Northeastern University and is a contributing Globe Opinion writer.