“60 Minutes” has survived wars, political attacks, a pandemic, and the unyielding disruption of the media business. But the seismic upheaval over the last week has posed the question: Can the storied newsmagazine survive the turbulent tenure of Bari Weiss, with David Ellison’s $110 billion corporate merger hanging in the background?
Some veterans of the CBS News institution have pronounced it dead. But, on Friday, the remaining three correspondents dissented, acknowledging the show has been badly wounded, but announcing they would remain and continue fighting for the soul of the broadcast—at least, for now.
After Scott Pelley chose to publicly confront management at the Bari Weiss-led CBS News over the firing of several colleagues and cite ideologically motivated changes that threatened to compromise the show’s integrity, correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim released a statement saying that they intended to stay. Not because they disputed Pelley’s characterization of events, but rather because, as they succinctly put it, “We don’t want to see ’60 Minutes’ die.”
The decision might appear to stabilize a situation that risked seeing the entire franchise implode, or at a minimum, struggle to deliver enough stories to populate a 59th season when the program returns from its annual summer hiatus in September. But inside the "60 Minutes" team, Status has learned…
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