60 Minutes in the age of Trump 2.0

[HanSolo 467]

They won’t lose affiliates over it. It’s horrifically bad for anyone who values ethical journalism. But boards like this blow things out of proportion as the general public, writ large, sees and reacts to such things. 
 

Setting aside contractual terms as its own thorny issue, this will become background noise to the large chunk of the populace that’s not deeply engaged. That’s even more magnified during the busy holiday period when attention, already at a premium, is stretched to the breaking point. 
 

So much (bleep) comes at us so fast over the past year that before long, this will be a forgotten blip. I hate that. I do. But it’s reality. We need to understand how much of an ironclad grip this administration and its allies has on society. There is no Murrow, no Cronkite who will start the downfall. And it’s not going to be a spiked segment on the pre-Christmas 60 Minutes that breaks that grip. 
 

The list of times the resistance has hoped “this will be the thing” is long. And every single time, the result has been the same. 
 

The gravity of our situation can’t be overstated. 

[abric 227]

This is a bit of a rant. You've been warned.

 

True journalism was adversarial by nature. It made enemies. It embarrassed people with power. It survived complaints, lawsuits, and angry phone calls because that’s the cost of doing the job. When journalism started optimizing for comfort—of executives, donors, politicians, or audiences—it stopped being journalism and became content moderation for adults.

 

And yes, we the public helped kill it too. As we trained newsrooms to fear us. We punished nuance, rewarded outrage, and confused “this makes me uncomfortable” with “this must be false.” We demanded instant takes, moral certainty, and tribal loyalty. Then we act shocked when reporters stopped taking risks.

 

So now we have journalism that is:

• Carefully balanced to the point of meaninglessness

• Bravely critical only of people already out of favor

• Fearless about history, timid about the present

• “Investigative” as long as it doesn’t threaten access

The most damning part isn’t that a story like the CECOT piece can be pulled. It’s that almost no one (aka the higher ups) inside these organizations are surprised anymore. They sigh, shrug, and move on to the next safe segment. The newsroom rebels were replaced by compliance officers with journalism degrees.

 

We didn’t lose true journalism because the government banned it.
We lost it because everyone involved decided it was too inconvenient to keep.

 

And that, depressingly, is the most human outcome of all.

 

End of rant.

[Geoffrey 958]

Bari Weiss has really made a mess of herself in short time. No one believes she did this for journalistic reasons. I agree with Scott Pelley, as reported by the NYT:

 

Mr. Pelley said that if Ms. Weiss planned to be more involved with editing “60 Minutes” stories, she should attend the early screenings and communicate directly with correspondents. “She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously,” he said.

 

I also agree with this comment via Threads:

 

Remember when Bari Weiss was just an intellectually lazy columnist whom none of her colleagues at the New York Times respected?

 

[HanSolo 467]

Did she make a mess or did she do precisely what she was hired to do? Perhaps she should have spiked the story earlier but regardless, she wasn’t hired for her skill set in shepherding the legacy of CBS News into the future. She was hired to be a hatchet person to that legacy. 
 

The degree to which we (the collective societal “we”) simply disregard and outright ignore what is happening around us as society falls is staggering to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. What has come out in the Epstein files alone would have brought down any other president. Now, it’s not even a blip. Setting aside the veracity of each individual claim, that preponderance of association and cloud of suspicion being utterly ignored by mainstream media is terrifying.

 

Joe Biden slurred some words and the coverage was incessant. The current office holder rants incoherently, makes thinly veiled death threats against perceived enemies, wants to pull non-existent licenses from networks (and the president should

actually know how thIs works, but I digress), is linked time and time again to perhaps the worst sexual predators in our lifetime — and the news outlets bring us the latest viral video, cute squirrel story, Taylor Swift gossip or what have you.
 

Not a single one of the big three broadcast news operations is doing real journalism on a regular basis, and now the correspondent who did so has her story killed. Oh wait, I’m sorry, “postponed.” 
 

My time on this earth may not be all that much longer in the grand scheme of things. I look at the next generation in my extended family and fear for the world we’re leaving them. 

[AmericanErrorist 267]

As aired last night, exactly as posted by Global but with a new postscript:

 

https://youtube.com/3Y47dAQhGPo

Edited January 19 by AmericanErrorist

[Reweivvt88 173]

On 12/24/2025 at 9:54 AM, HanSolo said:

Did she make a mess or did she do precisely what she was hired to do? Perhaps she should have spiked the story earlier but regardless, she wasn’t hired for her skill set in shepherding the legacy of CBS News into the future. She was hired to be a hatchet person to that legacy. 
 

The degree to which we (the collective societal “we”) simply disregard and outright ignore what is happening around us as society falls is staggering to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. What has come out in the Epstein files alone would have brought down any other president. Now, it’s not even a blip. Setting aside the veracity of each individual claim, that preponderance of association and cloud of suspicion being utterly ignored by mainstream media is terrifying.

 

Joe Biden slurred some words and the coverage was incessant. The current office holder rants incoherently, makes thinly veiled death threats against perceived enemies, wants to pull non-existent licenses from networks (and the president should

actually know how thIs works, but I digress), is linked time and time again to perhaps the worst sexual predators in our lifetime — and the news outlets bring us the latest viral video, cute squirrel story, Taylor Swift gossip or what have you.
 

Not a single one of the big three broadcast news operations is doing real journalism on a regular basis, and now the correspondent who did so has her story killed. Oh wait, I’m sorry, “postponed.” 
 

 

Couldn't agree more. CBS is getting a lot of attention because of how just shameless they are making changes, but they are not the only one. The ONLY American television source for news that is actually covering the U.S. government in a proper journalistic way right now is MS NOW, and even their coverage is more muted than it should be considering how awful the U.S. gov is acting. I don't find the news programming on ABC, NBC, NewsNation, or CNN acceptable at all. It's either MAGA propaganda or at the very least normalizing or sane washing horrific behavior of the U.S. government. They have no problem covering authoritarian governments and evil actions by other countries but once America starts doing it they fail to cover it the same way. They clearly had no plan for when America became one of the bad guys. As I said before, if Canada's government was doing the same things as America the coverage would be drastically different from Canada's private broadcasters. History is going to remember all U.S. media outlets as a disgrace that normalized, downplayed and sane washed trump and the republican party. 

 

The crazy thing with trying to kill this 60 Minutes story is trump probably does not even care the story was broadcast. His base wants innocent people to be tortured. The fact that CBS had lawyers working around the clock through the holidays to make copyright takedowns of one of their own stories just shows how disgraced this company has become. 

Edited January 19 by Reweivvt88

[EVVTV12 204]

Anderson Cooper is leaving 60 Minutes: USA Today

[brianpr3 199]

Bari screwed Leslie!

https://nypost.com/2026/05/12/media/cbs-news-boss-bari-weiss-blindsides-lesley-stahl-over-netanyahu-interview-report/

 

[EVVTV12 204]

Sharyn Alfonsi is out at 60 Minutes  
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/cbs-news-declined-renew-contract-60-minutes-correspondent-who-clashed-with-bari-2026-05-27/

[Glimmer 340]

Also out are Cecilia Vega and EP Tanya Simon, among others, as Nick Bilton (a former NYT columnist with no experience in TV news) is named the new EP

[TVNewsLover 861]

On 5/28/2026 at 1:09 PM, Glimmer said:

Also out are Cecilia Vega and EP Tanya Simon, among others, as Nick Bilton (a former NYT columnist with no experience in TV news) is named the new EP

NBC would be wise to pick her up, or if ABC would consider it, bring her back. 

[TheRolyPoly 3509]

This would be a great opportunity for NBC or ABC to copy the 60 Minutes formula and hire some of those folks to do reporting there.

 

The way CBS is going could make this easy for NBC or ABC to do something like this, IF they want to.

[abric 227]

NBC already tried with Rock Center and that Megan Kelly mistake of a show. ABC would rather have Sundays be with AFV with people making fools of themselves than doing a newsmagazine with their "journalistic credibility". Besides they have their 20/20 True Crime franchise.

[Glimmer 340]

There is certainly a window for ABC to try something more serious, even if it’s just for Hulu and Disney+; on top of that it feels like we’re maybe a year or two away from Nightline being back at 11:35…the road is there if they want to take it.

 

But I definitely think ABC would take Vega back; by all accounts her exit was fairly amicable in a “who’s gonna turn down 60 Minutes?” way 

[Horizon 300]

It would be interesting if the networks copied 60 Minutes....except they already have it, and they turned it into true crime formats. The proper way to do it would be to unwind it and get back into hard form storytelling.

 

Second, we're in a world where there's a chance that those who were fired don't have to work at networks anymore. They can set up or join independent platforms. And the settlements at 60 Minutes and CBS is, it's dying, and they're prioritizing access more than getting the facts right without fear or censorship. If they feel the same about all the other legacy networks, then this may well be the current thinking for where these people will go next

Edited Saturday at 12:41 AM by Horizon

[Georgie56 3661]

Pelley ain't happy.

 

 

 

[MD TV 389]

I was about to post about that. It's as heated as you'd expect:

 

 

[nickp 393]

Good for Scott Pelley

[Geoffrey 958]

In a world of Bari Weisses, be a Scott Pelley or a Sharyn Alfonsi.

[Georgie56 3661]

It looks like Pelley may be on the way out.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:41 PM by Georgie56

[tyrannical bastard 4676]

At this point, I really hope 60 Minutes ends because nobody will want to do a show under Bari Weiss's control.

 

Let CBS burn if they are willing to go through all of this to appease dear leader.

[Georgie56 3661]

…and he’s fired.

 

 

[hfiles 105]

Lots of opportunities for someone to put together a program called "The Hour" on Sunday evenings with a rag-tag group of newly free agent journalists.

[AKA 70]

Kudos to Scott Pelley, a wonderful news reporter with impeccable integrity. Getting fired from the festering, anti-journalist and pro-fascism cesspool that CBS has become — and going down in such a blaze of glory — is a badge of honor.

 

Onward and upward.

Edited yesterday at 02:00 AM by AKA

[brianpr3 199]

27 minutes ago, Georgie56 said:

…and he’s fired.

 

 

WOW! that b***h is murdering 60 minutes! I hope that those who can walk out! WALK OUT! 

Edited yesterday at 02:06 AM by brianpr3