Per Deadline, CBS’s editor-in-chief Bari Weiss handed out sweeping terminations removing several of 60 Minutes‘ top long-standing figures, including executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, alongside prominent correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Celia Vega. Anderson Cooper (Chappie, The 33) has also voluntarily walked away from the show after Weiss was hired to shake up the company and address allegations of bias.
The Los Angeles Times reports that after her removal, Vega released a scathing statement accusing the new leadership of injecting political bias into the long-running show. She claims that “in recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories… Let’s call this what it is: censorship.” Another outgoing producer, Bill Owens, also weighed in on the shake-up, claiming that “they are killing 60 Minutes.”
Bilton pushed back against the narrative that he was hired strictly for political reasons. According to The Guardian, he claims that his mandate is to implement a digital-first campaign to bring the network into the next generation. With his past work as a columnist at left-leaning outlets and in technology documentaries, his claims seem to carry weight. Bilton issued a statement that in part read, “The world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved. And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years. Evolving or dying isn’t a threat. It’s simple math.”
It’s the honor of my career to become the executive producer of 60 Minutes. I just shared the note below with the incredible staff and can’t wait to get started. pic.twitter.com/4PHmHJF3Bj
— Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) May 28, 2026
Bilton also took to X to celebrate this huge milestone in his career. He says that the reason he was selected is that the world has changed dramatically since the show began, and the studio needs to be honest about what exactly that entails. He says that “the world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved.”