By Bill Grueskin

About the author: Bill Grueskin is on the faculty of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He has served as a senior editor at The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Miami Herald.

In the news business, there's the world that most of us journalists aspire to live in -- the one that has our audience eagerly clamoring for more of our serious accountability reporting. Then there's the real world -- the one where readers and viewers lap up celebrity updates, clickbait headlines, and bleed-and-lead news segments.

And then there's the world that 60 Minutes has managed to carve out for itself over nearly six decades, one that combines outstanding journalism and massive numbers.

The weekly CBS newsmagazine made its bones with its investigative journalism, delving into how the tobacco industry manipulated nicotine levels, or revealing fatal flaws in the U.S. military's MV-22 Osprey aircraft. The program was also known for its penetrating interviews, such as a fateful 1992 sit-down with the Clintons in the wake of an emerging sex scandal.

The program has also been a commercial hit. It turns out that people will tune into investigative stories, if you make them compelling and relevant enough. In its most recent season, 60 Minutes attracted an average of more than 9 million viewers per show, an anomaly in today's atomized media environment. The latest season's numbers were 9% higher than a year ago, while its footprint beyond broadcast has more than doubled year-on-year to 2.5 billion video views on digital and social media. Those figures are a remarkable contrast to the drooping ratings for CBS's other mainstay news programs in the morning and evening.

And that, above all, is why so many of us in the media are bewildered by the moves that CBS News' new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, made over the last few days. She ended her network's relationship with two of 60 Minutes' younger correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. More devastatingly, she fired Tanya Simon, the executive producer who oversaw the journalists (and the egos) who generated those huge ratings. She also gave the heave-ho to Executive Editor Draggan Mihailovich. And there was no rationale -- stated or leaked -- that made any sense of the moves.

The fallout has been catastrophic. Scott Pelley, a longtime 60 Minutes correspondent and former managing editor and anchor of CBS Evening News, openly challenged Weiss's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, in an all-hands meeting this week, according to a leaked recording of the meeting. Weiss, Bilton, and their boss, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, reportedly fired Pelley for insubordination the next day, with Bilton pushing out a petulant "You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me" manifesto shortly thereafter. Other veteran 60 Minutes correspondents, including Lesley Stahl and Bill Whitaker, are said to be contemplating their exits. Meanwhile, the new season, which requires vast amounts of planning and reporting, is just three months away.

The question is, why? Yes, 60 Minutes has had its missteps, such as a Covid-era story, anchored by Alfonsi, that purported (and failed) to prove that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had steered precious vaccines to a political donor. But overall, the staff has been churning out great stories and great ratings.

A common theory boils down to money and influence. Paramount is seeking government approval for its $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Some say Weiss has dismantled the staff because she and Ellison are catering to President Donald Trump, as a way to smooth the WBD purchase. There's evidence to support that M.O., ranging from CBS's cowardly $16 million settlement with Trump last year over a meritless lawsuit, to Ellison sponsoring a dinner this April in Washington with the president for the purpose of "honoring the Trump White House."

Staying in Trump's good graces to seal the WBD deal is vital. Paramount, which currently accounts for just 2.2% of total TV viewing, needs the boost if it wants to compete with Netflix.

But there's also a simpler explanation.

Weiss came into her CBS job without having done significant investigative or beat reporting, such as covering a legislature, a courthouse, or a battlefield. Nor has she spent much time editing reporters who do that kind of meat-and-potatoes journalism. Yes, she demonstrated savvy entrepreneurial instincts by starting a website, the Free Press, which made its reputation on attention-grabbing first-person hit pieces, and on op-eds that adhered to her anti-woke mantra. Weiss did this while surrounding herself with acolytes like her wife and sister, who are both Free Press writers. She then sold the Free Press to Ellison's Paramount for $150 million. In the bargain, she got the top job at CBS.

If you've ever had the misfortune of being assigned an inexperienced, overconfident boss, you know what happens next. As he or she is surrounded by staffers with expertise, the boss's insecurity can lead to a series of impetuous decisions. The new boss will want to make a mark -- almost any mark will do -- to intimidate top performers and encourage sycophants. The boss will often adopt the guise that Weiss does, saying that the business needs to adapt to changing times, while offering little detail about what that means or what the new strategy looks like. Preservation of the manager's job, or at least their ego, becomes the top priority.

"She is murdering '60 Minutes,'" Pelley said of Weiss at the staff meeting with Bilton. "She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she's been doing exactly that."

That might be true. Or it might simply be that Weiss was given a job that she isn't prepared to do, and she's responding in one of the worst ways imaginable.

It's possible that CBS will calm down, and that Bilton will prove himself to be an independent editor able to attract talent and cultivate great journalism. I hope that's the case. But if so, it will happen only after Weiss realizes she has pushed too many good people out and that she should leave the journalism part of her job to people who actually know how to do it.

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June 05, 2026 09:01 ET (13:01 GMT)

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