Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft sounded the alarm over changes at the storied newsmagazine one day after Scott Pelley was fired from the program, arguing that the recent moves under Bari Weiss amount to “journalistic interference.”
“This is journalistic interference,” Steve Kroft told PBS “News Hour” co-anchor Geoff Bennett on Wednesday night’s edition of the program. “It makes no business sense whatsoever. It’s the highest rated news program on television, and it has been that way for more than 50 years. The audience was up about 9% last year. Why would you mess with that?”
NEW: Former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft calls the changes under Bari Weiss "disastrous." He adds: "This is journalistic interference. It makes no business sense whatsoever. It's the highest rated news program on television, and it has been that way for more than 50…
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) June 3, 2026
Kroft argued that the problems began when CBS parent company Paramount agreed to settle the Trump administration’s lawsuit over Bill Whitaker’s interview with Kamala Harris for $17 million, a case he insisted had no merit. According to Kroft, since then it has been “one thing after another.” He added that Trump “has made no secret of his hostility toward much of the mainstream press” and has repeatedly targeted “60 Minutes” and CBS News.
“I think it’s perfectly clear that for Paramount, the parent company, getting these deals done — first, the permission to merge the two companies from the FCC, and then now awaiting the decision on whether this is going to go through and be approved — I think Paramount has just decided that was the only thing that was important, and they were going to try and block anything that might get in the way of that,” he said.
He continued: “They don’t like the way CBS has been operated, they don’t like the fact that it’s on the air, they would like to see it taken off the air, they’ve said that a number of times, they would like to see people fired, and that’s what’s happened.”
This past week, the long-running newsmagazine parted ways with some of its most recognizable figures, including Pelley, Sharon Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and longtime producer Tanya Simon.
After her departure, Vega said in a statement that many at the program had begun feeling pressure to inject political bias into stories, creating a culture of fear around pitching certain ideas. Kroft said he never experienced anything like that during his time at the network.
Asked how such pressures could affect “60 Minutes,” Kroft argued that the consequences are already visible in the departures of several key journalists.
“All of these people are incredibly good journalists and the kind of people you would need if you wanted to continue to put a program like CBS ’60 Minutes’ on the air,” he concluded. “And now they are gone. I think it was a slap in the face to everybody who has worked there over a long period of time.”
Kroft has been extremely vocal about the dustup at CBS News and “60 Minutes” this last week. On Friday, the former correspondent spoke to the Status newsletter about the shakeups.
“Since I retired, I often wondered what would happen to ’60 Minutes,’” Kroft said. “But I never expected it would be executed by the president of the United States. There is no smoking gun. But [Trump’s] fingerprints and DNA are all over this. He’s been making threats against ’60 Minutes’ and how he wanted it gone. And he finally got his wish.”
In a call Wednesday morning to staffers, Weiss defended her decision to fire Pelley saying that he broke a foundation of “trust and mutual respect.”
“Before we get into it, I need to address what’s transpired in our newsroom over the past two days and what is making news,” Weiss told staffers at the beginning of the call, TheWrap learned. “I know I speak for myself, and I hope I speak for everyone here, when I say that I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect. We cannot do our work without it.”
She continued: “That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways.”
Pelley did not think Weiss was being completely honest about how their meeting went that led to his firing.
“I’m saddened to see the transcript of the CBS News morning editorial meeting. Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true,” he said in a statement. “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. 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.”
You can watch Kroft’s full PBS appearance in the video above.
