Former CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega, one of several prominent journalists fired from the network’s signature broadcast this spring, said she was pressured by the news division’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, and other executives to include misinformation and political bias in reporting that aired this year.
Vega’s account of Weiss interfering with independent reporting is similar to those of two other veteran “60 Minutes” correspondents, Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi, who were fired after David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, appointed Weiss to her position last year. Alfonsi’s contract expired after she criticized Weiss for pulling her segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons from the air. Pelley was fired a day after he reportedly excoriated Weiss and the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, over what he called their lack of journalistic qualifications in an early-June staff meeting.
Vega said during an event Thursday in New Orleans that the “new administration,” meaning Weiss and the executives hired under her purview, asked her to report on events that “never happened.”
Speaking to ABC News correspondent John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference and Expo, Vega recounted pressure to include what she said was nonexistent footage of protesters assaulting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into a segment about the the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega told Quiñones. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
In a segment about President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, Vega said, she was asked to include an “administration talking point” in the form of a line claiming Iran had been outgunned by the U.S. and Israeli military forces. In another segment, focused on the impact of the Trump administration’s sweeping SNAP benefit cuts on West Virginia residents, Vega said she was pressed over why she hadn’t interviewed Vice President JD Vance for the piece, or made reference in it to his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which focuses on his childhood growing up impoverished in Ohio.
Vega, the first Latina correspondent to have worked on “60 Minutes,” was fired in May but until Thursday refrained from speaking publicly about the circumstances surrounding her departure.
Skydance Media bought Paramount, CBS News’ parent company, last year after CEO David Ellison received financial backing from his father, Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle and a personal friend of Trump’s. David Ellison then appointed Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief, which launched an exodus of career journalists from the network, some of whom cited ideological differences and a culture of fear under the new leadership.
David Ellison is in the process of purchasing Warner Bros., which had been put up for auction last year as part of a strategy to manage its $35 billion debt load. The merger, if approved, would put the Ellisons in control of CNN, a news organization the president frequently decries with no evidence as “fake news.” Trump publicly involved himself in competing Warner Bros. bids last year, saying that it was “imperative” CNN be sold and that its current ownership not be in charge of the company. The president has since downplayed his personal role in the merger, but concerns about what the deal could mean for the future of CNN loom large.
The $81 billion Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery was approved last month by Trump’s Justice Department, but is hung up in the courts amid a lawsuit seeking to stop the sale from a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general.
On Friday, Paramount agreed to delay closing its acquisition of Warner Bros. into next summer as the lawsuit plays out.
The post Fired ‘60 Minutes’ journalist says she was pressured to report on events that ‘never happened’ appeared first on MS NOW.
