Cecilia Vega, the 60 Minutes correspondent fired as part of a dramatic overhaul of the CBS News show this spring, said it “hurts” to see what has happened to the storied newsmagazine and other segments of the network, and repeated allegations that she was told to insert “factually untrue” information into her work.
“It pains me. It hurts to watch, from afar. It hurts to talk to my colleagues who are still there. It hurts to see the ratings slump that is happening right now,” Vega said during a Thursday evening talk for students at American University in Washington DC.
Vega was among several correspondents and producers fired in May as part of a revamp of the show by CBS News’ editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who hired the tech journalist Nick Bilton as executive producer. Her contract as a 60 Minutes correspondent was not due to expire until March 2027, leading to – still unresolved – confusion about why she was targeted for termination.
“I still don’t know why I was fired,” she said. “I was not given a reason. I was fired without cause. I just find it exceptionally disturbing.”
CBS News management also parted ways with correspondent Scott Pelley “for cause”, after he clashed with Bilton, and declined to renew correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract. The show’s executive producer Tanya Simon was also fired, along with several other top producers.
Weiss opted to upend the show despite industry-leading ratings. The 58th season of the show averaged 9.1 million viewers, up 9% compared with the previous season. This season has seen softer ratings – the show’s most recent episode drew just 5.64 million viewers, the smallest audience this century for the sixth episode of a 60 Minutes season. Weiss said during an industry conference on Wednesday that she was not “focused” on the show’s ratings and was instead focused on building the network.
“I still don’t know why the overhaul, and it’s hard to watch,” Vega said. “It’s really hard to watch what’s happened.” As for the broader corporate strategy for the network, which is now owned by David Ellison’s Skydance, she said: “I don’t know what the endgame is. I think it’s a real mystery.”
During her talk, Vega repeated her contention that newsroom managers attempted to insert political bias into her stories for the show, efforts she resisted.
“I felt like people had to know what was happening in there, that the news that they are seeing, in my experience, had become compromised,” she said on Thursday. “Some of the stories I did, and some of the things that I was asked to do. I held the line, and Scott held the line, and Sharyn held the line, and I think people are still holding the line over there. But what they are having to go through, or what we had to go through, should never happen in a newsroom.”
Vega said she was “told to put information that is just factually untrue in a piece of journalism”, though she said she “can’t prescribe a motive” as to why she was told to do so.
CBS News has denied Vega’s claims of political bias, which she expressed during an appearance at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference & Expo this summer.
“We respect Ms Vega and her contributions, but her claims are not based in reality,” a network spokesperson said in late May.
Vega, who was wearing a shirt honoring the late labor leader Dolores Huerta, was interviewed by Antoine Sanfuentes, a former NBC News and CNN executive who serves as an adjunct professor at the university.
Vega was hired as a 60 Minutes correspondent in early 2023, after serving as chief White House correspondent and an anchor at ABC News. She was brought on by the show’s then-executive producer, Bill Owens, who resigned from CBS News in protest in April 2025. She was the show’s first Latina correspondent.
Pelley has continued to speak publicly about his time at 60 Minutes, asserting that political pressure was applied to make stories more palatable to the Trump administration.
“In my experience, and having talked to my colleagues as well, there was an imperative to move our coverage in the direction of the president. To put a thumb on the scale, if you will, in terms of the president’s viewpoint,” he said during a panel discussion on Wednesday.
“I had never seen anything like this. This was corporate influence coming into the news division saying, ‘We want you to report stories with this particular bent, in terms of politics.’ It was anathema to all of us who had worked at 60 Minutes for so many years, and we fought the battle against it. We pushed back against it.”
Like Pelley, Vega expressed concerns about what might happen to the journalists who work at CBS News and CNN now that they are owned by the same company – and could merge. “I’m fearful for job security. I’m fearful for editorial independence. I hope folks can hold the line, but I don’t have a crystal ball and I’m not going to predict what happens. It makes me nervous for sure.”
Speaking to a room of students, the 49-year-old Vega said she “has no idea” if she will join another legacy media outlet – or do something independently.
Acknowledging uncertainty in the media industry, she told the students: “I don’t know what it’s going to look like when you’re going to get a job. I don’t even know what it’s going to look like when I get a job. Hopefully.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
