CBS News decisively shut down a viral report Thursday that Bari Weiss is bringing Joe Rogan into the “60 Minutes” fold.
“False,” a spokesperson told TheWrap as a March report from gossip site RadarOnline picked up speed on X. The report appears to have gained traction Thursday after Austin daily newspaper the Austin American-Statesman wrote up the speculative story “Could Joe Rogan replace Anderson Cooper on ‘60 Minutes’? Here’s what we know” — perhaps as a bit of wish-casting for their local podcast celebrity.
People across a wide spectrum of opinions were quick to weigh in on the possibility of the incendiary Rogan stepping into the storied newsmagazine — and bets are now being taken on Polymarket over whether or not the news will come to fruition.
“‘60 Minutes’ would instantly lose all credibility,” one social media critic wrote.
“Can you even imagine? Anderson Cooper being replaced by Joe Rogan is PEAK Idiocracy!” wrote another.
Others were more measured in their response to the possibility, with one Rogan fan concluding that there’s “zero chance Joe is interested in that job.” Another weighed the business reasons why it’s a bad deal for both CBS News and Rogan.
“It’s not really a critique on Joe Rogan as to why this probably won’t work … It’s just that Joe Rogan listeners don’t care to see him on ‘60 Minutes’ and 50-year-old liberal women who watch every Sunday don’t want to watch him either.”
The Austin American-Statesman’s write-up of the matter came as “60 Minutes” and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss is under extreme scrutiny after a week of high-profile layoffs at the legacy program, including longtime executive producer Tanya Simon and more recently veteran newsman Scott Pelley.
Simon was replaced last week by Nick Bilton, a tech journalist with no prior experience in broadcast news — a decision that led to Pelley blasting Weiss for “murdering” the program at a Monday morning staff meeting. The conflict, which also saw Pelly ridiculing Bilton’s lack of experience to the EP’s face and later getting a round of applause from his “60 Minutes” colleagues, led to his dismissal Tuesday evening.
Weiss maintained that there was an effort to find common ground to keep Pelley on staff before his dismissal, while Pelley denied such efforts were made.
“In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial meeting,” he said earlier this week. “At no point did anyone in the Tuesday meeting suggest that there could be steps taken by either side that would lead to a resolution. Weiss and Tom Cibrowski were openly hostile from the start. ‘Firing’ was raised by Cibrowski in the first 15 seconds. No CBS executive, at any time, suggested ‘a way back.’ To say so now is disingenuous. And they know it.”
