One recurring charge leveled by ousted 60 Minutes correspondents is that the Bari Weiss-led regime at CBS News has tried to inject political bias into their coverage. Cecilia Vega, who was fired on May 28, along with Sharyn Alfonsi and the show’s senior leadership team, in a purge known as “Black Thursday,” said in a farewell note that “my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.” Alfonsi, who accused management in December of “political” interference after Weiss abruptly pulled her “Inside CECOT” story hours before air, said she was being penalized “for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting,” and that that management “is abandoning” the show’s commitment to “fearless independent journalism.”
Pelley, who was fired last Tuesday, said on the way out that management had instructed him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” including “assertions that are unverified.” In his first post-firing sitdown, on New York Times podcast The Daily, Pelley elaborated on that accusation of bias, telling host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that the incident in question stemmed from his February reporting on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where federal officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Pelley said he believed his team had “done a really good job” in producing a balanced account, which included images of protesters acting aggressively and confrontationally.
