“60 Minutes” initiated a bout of staffing shake-ups this week that began Wednesday with the firing of correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi — and Katie Couric and Jim Acosta took it as writing on the wall.
In an Instagram Live reacting in real-time to the news Wednesday, Acosta joined Couric to analyze the network’s choice to not renew Alfonsi’s “60 Minutes” contract following her hotly contested “Inside CECOT” segment and reflected on its larger ramifications against the brand.
“The wheels have come off over at CBS and Bari Weiss only has herself to blame,” Acosta said. Both veteran journalists, who now operate independently, surmised that pushing out a journalist like Alfonsi is meant to appease the Trump administration in preparation for Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
“They are doing this as this merger is under the approval process, it’s going through the approval process with the Trump administration, and they don’t care how bad this looks,” Acosta continued. “They’re just, ‘Well, we’re still going to push her out. Because we know we’re going to get this deal, we’re going to get what we want.’ That should worry a lot of people I think.”
The former CNN anchor additionally said of Weiss that she failed to send “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil to Beijing to cover President Trump’s China visit last week, further illustrating that she’s in over her head as David Ellison’s editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“So the network news division is not even able to functionally operate anymore if they can’t get an anchor to a major news event like that when the other networks can,” he said.
“I think part of the problem was that Bari Weiss has never run a network news division,” Couric said of the embattled news executive. “She is woefully unprepared for this job.”
Couric and Acosta’s takedown of the swiftly changing news network came one day before Weiss tapped outsider tech journalist Nick Bilton to lead “60 Minutes” as executive producer, ousting Tanya Simon after 30 years. Correspondent Cecilia Vega was also fired from the program Thursday.
“My contract as a correspondent for ‘60 Minutes’ was not set to expire until March 2027,” Vega wrote in a fiery exit note via The New York Times. “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.”
To the news of those additional exits from “60 Minutes” on Thursday, Acosta simply tweeted, “WTF.”
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 28, 2026
