Cecilia Vega, one of the “60 Minutes” correspondents ousted in Thursday’s reorganization of the CBS News magazine, says she’s worried about the future of the program and where it may be headed under the management installed by parent company Paramount Skydance.
“I have the utmost respect and admiration for my colleagues at ’60 Minutes’ and the stories that air every Sunday. But I very much fear what comes next for and the future of the legendary broadcast,” Vega said in a statement. “In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories. Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions. Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
CBS News on Thursday said it had hired Nick Bilton, a former technology journalist and investigative reporter who has logged stints at The New York Times and Vanity Fair and who has recently worked in documentaries. Bilton told Variety in an interview Thursday that he is eager to find ways to put “60 Minutes” journalism in front of digital audience and to make the show more relevant other than its traditional TV appearances on Sunday evening.
