The hit on "60 Minutes"
There are many words that can be used to describe “60 Minutes:”
Venerable.
August.
Excellent.
Important.
Beloved.
But since the purchase of CBS News by the Ellison family, another word belongs on the list:
Sabotaged.
The most watched news program in America, which first aired on September 24, 1968, has been assaulted with malicious intent by new corporate leadership that appears determined to gut one of the last remaining institutions in American journalism in order to satisfy a corrupt political arrangement with Donald Trump.
The deal is obvious.
The price is shameful.
The victim is the American people.
The same fate awaits CNN.
The destruction isn’t accidental. It’s deliberate. It’s strategic. It’s ideological. It’s transactional.
It’s a deliberate and corrupt appeasement.
It is rank cowardice .
For generations of Americans, “60 Minutes” wasn’t merely a television show. It was a weekly civic ritual. It was a place where seriousness mattered. Reporting mattered. Facts mattered. Credibility mattered.
It was one of the last places in American life where the audience was treated like citizens instead of consumers.
That is what is being destroyed for no reason beyond the insatiability of Trump’s ego.
Scott Pelley represents the tradition that built the program.
He’s one of the finest journalists in the world, the best of the best.
He interviewed Senator John McCain repeatedly during the 2008 campaign for “60 Minutes,” so I got to know him during that time.
There was no performance. There was no ideological hysteria. There was no narcissism. There was no branding exercise. There was no desperate attempt to become the center of the story.
There was journalism.
There was rigor.
There was seriousness.
Honestly, you could hold a gun to my head and ask me to tell you Scott Pelley’s political views, and I wouldn’t be able to answer.
The same obviously can’t be said for Bari Weiss.
Her ideological agenda radiates from every pore of her public conduct. Her loyalties plainly do not include CBS News, “60 Minutes,” institutional integrity, or the preservation of a shared factual reality.
She’s not a steward.
She’s a vandal.
Additionally, she’s staggeringly incompetent.
In fact, she may be the single most incompetent leader of any major news organization during my lifetime, including Chris Licht.
That isn’t hyperbole.
It’s an achievement.
She combines arrogance, certitude, dishonesty, mediocrity, and incompetence in novel ways.
The full exchange between Scott Pelley and new executive producer Nick Bilton during a staff meeting yesterday, reported in Status, was shocking.
Humiliating, actually.
Humiliating for the Ellisons.
Humiliating for Bilton.
Humiliating for Bari Weiss.
Each appears more clownish than the next.
Here’s one brief exchange between them:
Bilton: “Bari loves this institution. She loves ‘60 Minutes.’”
Pelley: “She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that.”
What makes this entire spectacle so revolting is that millions of Americans genuinely love “60 Minutes.”
Some of us have watched it for decades.
Some of us have watched it our entire lives.
It occupies a place in American culture earned through excellence, not algorithms.
Through trust, not manipulation.
Through reporting, not branding.
And now Bari Weiss has effectively stolen something Americans love in order to help deliver profits to the son of one of the richest men in the world, while accommodating the demands of an American fascist who despises the First Amendment, and views journalism as an enemy to be subdued.
The corruption is total.
The indecency is staggering.
What’s happening at CBS News isn’t merely a business story.
It’s a warning story.
It’s a story about how institutions collapse.
Not all at once, but piece by piece.
Compromise by compromise.
Coward by coward.
Appeaser by appeaser.
Walter Cronkite understood something the new corporate barons and ideological arsonists don’t understand: trust, once destroyed, can’t simply be rebuilt with marketing campaigns and press releases.
It takes generations to build credibility.
It takes months to destroy it. Trust is earned in drops, and lost in buckets.
Which brings us to the central question: why are these people doing this?
The answer is simple: fear.
Donald Trump has created an atmosphere of intimidation in American corporate life where billionaires, media executives, law firms, universities, and CEOs increasingly behave like courtiers around a volatile monarch.
They calculate.
They appease.
They surrender.
They rationalize their surrender as pragmatism.
History has another word for it: cowardice.
There was once enormous prestige attached to working at CBS News. To say that you worked at “60 Minutes” meant something profound.
It meant you belonged to a tradition associated with Murrow, Cronkite, Wallace, Safer, Hewitt, Rooney, Rather, and generations of journalists who believed journalism mattered more than themselves.
Now the institution is being turned over to ideological opportunists and corporate vandals who appear incapable of recognizing the inheritance they were handed.
The tragedy is immense because once institutions like this are destroyed, they’re extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
America is living through a period during which many of its most important institutions are being hollowed out from within by weak people desperate for proximity to power, and terrified of losing money.
The corruption is spiritual before it’s financial.
And Americans should understand clearly: when journalism dies, corruption flourishes.
That’s why Trump wants scalp after scalp.
That’s why intimidation matters.
That’s why “60 Minutes” matters.
And that’s why what is happening right now at CBS News should outrage every American who still believes truth matters in a free society.
Every patriotic American should appreciate something about the journalists at “60 Minutes,” which include Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, and executive producer Tanya Simon. They’re on your side.
Donald Trump and his empire of lies aren’t.
When truth tellers are hunted in the open by demagogues and their henchmen we’re all in trouble.
I’ve written extensively about the fall of CBS News, including these pieces:
Bravo Steve! You, as usual, have well expressed why I now no longer watch anything on what was my favorite network (60 Minutes being my fav weekly broadcast) throughout my 76+ years of life! I believe that it’s critically important to not support institutions that are kneeling to Trump!
That said, my deep concern is that ‘We the People’ are in the age of Trump-ism (aka the MAGA Republican Party) not just Trump. Trump is doing their will ~ re. Project 2025!
Imho, America 🇺🇸 is very, very, very… ill 🤒, the only real question 🙋♂️ is whether it’s terminal. When Ben Franklin said upon the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention ~ Madam you have "A republic, if you can keep it", he was issuing a stark warning. He meant that the delegates had designed a government "by and for the people", but its survival ultimately depended on the active civic engagement, vigilance, and virtue of everyday citizens.
‘We the People’ certainly have been in very dire straits before in our 250 year history and were able to recover. I hope 🤞 and pray 🙏, as I’m sure do you, that we do so yet again.
I deeply believe that we need to find and elect a POTUS who both understands and has the political capabilities to address the societal issues of this AI Revolution 🤖 Age as FDR did those of the Industrial Revolution Age.
Wake up my fellow citizens and get out on this coming June 14th ~ the next ‘No Kings Day’!
🙏❤️🩹🇺🇸🌎🌍🌏
.....Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner are spinning in their graves.....