{"id":929,"date":"2026-06-03T07:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=929"},"modified":"2026-06-03T07:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:37:22","slug":"the-real-story-behind-the-murder-of-60-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"The real story behind the ‘murder’ of 60 Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

CBS News\u2019s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, recently announced in an email to staff a major shakeup of the revered broadcast, starting with the removal of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer, Tanya Simon, for Nick Bilton, who has no experience producing a television news show. <\/p>\n

Read more Senator blasts Rubio for attending UFC \u2018party\u2019 as Iran negotiations collapsed<\/a><\/p>\n

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bilton said he was excited \u201cto take what I believe is largely an unutilized news brand and take it into the modern age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unutilized? Modern age? <\/p>\n

\u201c60 Minutes\u201d is the most successful television news broadcast in U.S. history. It has remained the #1 news program for 50 straight years and consistently ranks among the top 10 of all Nielsen-rated television programs. <\/p>\n

And it pulls in a fortune for CBS. \u201c60 Minutes\u201d is one of the most profitable programs in all of television, generating tens of millions in annual profit for CBS. In one recent year, its advertising revenues were $67.5 million. The network wholly owns the franchise, which makes it a gold mine. It\u2019s the most lucrative and prestigious journalism operation on the network.<\/p>\n

This goes beyond \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke \u2026.\u201d <\/p>\n

At a staff meeting yesterday, famed \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Scott Pelley accused Weiss of \u201cmurdering\u201d \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d according to an audio recording and a source who was in the room. Others at the meeting applauded. (Scott Pelley gets this week\u2019s Joseph N. Welch Award for truth-telling in the face of tyranny.)<\/p>\n

I could understand Weiss wanting to shake up, say, CBS\u2019s Sunday morning news program. But why in hell would Weiss want to shake up CBS\u2019s golden goose?<\/p>\n

One hint: Besides chucking its executive producer, Weiss has also cut ties with \u201c60 Minutes\u201d producers Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. <\/p>\n

In December, Alfonsi challenged Weiss\u2019s decision to hold a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment on an El Salvador maximum-security prison where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, including alleged gang members. Weiss had raised concerns about the comment-seeking process and determined that it needed additional reporting. Alfonsi termed the decision a political move. (The segment, called \u201cInside CECOT,\u201d eventually ran in January, with some additional material bookending the piece.)<\/p>\n

Alfonsi calls the network\u2019s decision now to allow her contract to expire \u201ca deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting\u201d that \u201csends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vega is no less blunt. \u201cIn recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cReporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions\u2026. Let\u2019s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course it\u2019s censorship, because CBS is now owned and controlled by Trump pals Larry and David Ellison, who kissed Trump\u2019s assets to get Trump\u2019s FCC chair Brendan Carr to approve their acquisition of CBS from Paramount. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u201cfingerprints and DNA are all over this,\u201d veteran \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Steve Croft says. \u201cHe\u2019s been making threats against \u201860 Minutes\u2019 and how he wanted it gone. And he finally got his wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Why Trump wins even if Republicans lose: GOP advisor<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump has fixated on \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d calling the show \u201ca dishonest Political Operative disguised as News.\u201d He sued CBS News over an interview of then presidential candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed had been edited in such a way as to hurt his presidential campaign. After \u201c60 Minutes\u201d aired a story about Ukraine and another about Greenland, Trump said CBS \u201cshould lose their license.\u201d<\/p>\n

This much is clear. CBS is being \u201cmurdered,\u201d as correspondent Scott Pelley calls what\u2019s happening, not<\/em> because of economics but because of politics. Economically, \u201c60 Minutes\u201d is a gold mine. Politically, Trump thinks it\u2019s dangerous as hell because it tells the truth about him and his regime, and wants it killed. <\/p>\n

Bari Weiss knows this. Larry and David Ellison know it. Nick Bilton knows it. Everyone who\u2019s been fired from \u201c60 Minutes\u201d knows this. Trump\u2019s lapdog at the FCC, Brendan Carr, knows this. <\/p>\n

You need to know this. <\/p>\n

\u201c60 Minutes\u201d \u2014 the most successful television news broadcast in U.S. history \u2014 is being dismantled because Trump doesn\u2019t want America to know the truth. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same reason CBS canned Stephen Colbert \u2014 because Trump hated Colbert\u2019s truth-telling humor about him. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to see all this as a systematic effort by Trump to silence the truth about what he\u2019s doing to America. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s increasingly corruption \u2014 rife with crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and payoffs to the powerful \u2014 is producing an increasingly corrupt economy in which everything depends on bribes and personal deals made by the biggest Republican loyalists and grifters, oligarchs and plutocrats, billionaires and multibillionaires, and monopolists.<\/p>\n

When political and economic deal-making become personal transactions \u2014 when greed and payoffs replace trust \u2014 what happens? Authoritarianism replaces democracy. And an economy collapses, as it did at the end of America\u2019s first Gilded Age, in the Great Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

One day we will look back on the murder of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d as one of the travesties of Trump\u2019s despicable reign. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, boycott CBS. <\/p>\n

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Ex-diplomat explains why Trump\u2019s \u2018enablers\u2019 are in grave legal peril<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBS News\u2019s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, recently announced in an email to staff a major shakeup of the revered broadcast, starting with the removal of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer, Tanya Simon, for Nick Bilton, who has no experience producing a television news show. In an interview with The W…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe real story behind the 'murder' of 60 Minutes - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=929\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The real story behind the 'murder' of 60 Minutes - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"CBS News\u2019s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, recently announced in an email to staff a major shakeup of the revered broadcast, starting with the removal of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer, Tanya Simon, for Nick Bilton, who has no experience producing a television news show. 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