CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has fired a trio of top women at 60 Minutes, including its executive producer and a star reporter who accused her of “choosing access journalism over accountability.”
Puck reports that correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were fired on Thursday. Also reportedly axed was its executive producer, Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program who is being replaced by a man who has never worked in TV news.
Alfonsi, 53, first clashed with the MAGA-curious Weiss, 42, over an El Salvador jail report that painted the Trump administration in a negative light. Alfonsi worked for CBS for nearly 20 years, half of that as a correspondent at 60 Minutes.
Alfonsi’s dismissal comes five days after her contract expired—and one day after she slammed Weiss in a fiery statement and dared her to fire her.
“This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting,” Alfonsi said in her statement. “It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.”
In the statement, she claimed CBS leadership is now “choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.”
She added in an interview with The New York Times, “I’m not resigning. If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”
CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Word of Alfonsi’s axing came shortly before the Times revealed that Nick Bilton, a veteran tech reporter at the paper who has been described as an “outsider,” was hired by Weiss to be the next executive producer at 60 Minutes.
The Times noted that Bilton, 49, has never worked in traditional broadcast news. Neither had Weiss prior to her being hired by the MAGA tech scion David Ellison to lead the network’s news division.
Others on the show to be pink-slipped on Thursday are its executive editor, Draggan Mihailovich, and its senior producer, Matthew Polvoy, according to Puck.
Their forced departures come shortly after star correspondent Anderson Cooper declined to renew his contract with the network after he clashed with Weiss over “abnormal” edits to one of his last segments, according to Status.
There has been no shortage of drama at CBS since Weiss took over its news division. That tension is sure to continue into the second half of 2026 as the Times reports that Weiss is readying 60 Minutes for a “significant shake-up” that may include her favored anchors, such as CBS Evening News host Tony Dokoupil, making cameos on the program.
Bilton claims that his status as an outsider will be an asset to 60 Minutes.
“When you take an insider, and you put them inside a company, nothing changes,” he told the Times. “I’m not saying that we’re going to change the show completely and drastically. I’m saying that there are all these approaches and ideas that we can do that I couldn’t be more excited to jump into. And I think you need that outside vision to be able to do that.”
Among the other slated changes, according to the Times, are introducing “a raft of new contributing journalists,” “shorter digital segments,” and “launching in-person events where fans of the show can interact with 60 Minutes stars.”
Variety reports that veteran correspondents Scott Pelley and Bill Whitaker have time remaining on their contracts. It adds that Whitaker, who has been with CBS since 1984, has no interest in retiring even amid the significant turmoil within CBS’s news division.
Legendary 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, 84, has also not indicated that she plans to retire—though Status reported last month that she was angered by Weiss offering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the opportunity to be interviewed by a different CBS journalist.
