Cecilia Vega, one of the “60 Minutes” correspondents let go earlier this year, said in an interview that executives at CBS — post-Paramount takeover — asked her to insert “political bias” into the news segments she was assigned to.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega told an interviewer for ABC during the recent National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual conference in New Orleans. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
One example came during coverage of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) shootings in Minnesota that left two Americans dead. She was told to include footage of protestors attacking ICE agents, but there was no such footage, she said. She was also asked to include comments from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey about his wanting police to combat ICE agents, but she claims she could find no evidence of such a request.
CBS in general and “60 Minutes” in particular have been undergoing substantive changes since Bari Weiss took control of CBS editorial operations. Weiss was appointed by Trump ally David Ellison when Paramount, which Ellison heads, took over CBS.
Vega’s comments seem to indicate that Weiss and company are now politicizing coverage, though anyone who has watched “60 Minutes” pre-takeover can certainly detect a leftward tilt in news selection and news coverage.
Now, the prism is either swinging back toward a better balance, or in Vega’s viewpoint, toward a conservative bias. Does she honestly expect us to believe that executives before Weiss came along never asked for specific footage or topics to be included in a segment she was doing?
