Cecilia Vega, the former 60 Minutes correspondent who was fired in May, is reflecting on her time with the newsmagazine, alleging that she felt pressure to insert political bias into segments that did not make it to air.
In an interview with ABC News’ John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, Vega alleged that higher-ups requested specific changes to three of her segments from this year that she could did find evidence for, per The New York Times.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” she said at the Thursday conference. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
Per the Times, Vega said executives asked her to add video of protestors attacking citizens whom they thought were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a January segment about ICE; she was also asked to add video of a police chief rolling his eyes during a news conference. Vega did not find video of either incidents, she said.
The ex-60 Minutes correspondent also said in a February segment about West Virginia poverty, she was asked to mention Vice President JD Vance, as he’d previously written about poverty in Ohio. “She said the piece was not focused on politicians or political voices,” the Times notes.
