Cecilia Vega of 60 Minutes says she felt pressure from CBS to add ‘political bias’ | US news
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega said Thursday that she felt pressure from CBS News executives to insert “political bias” into segments of her broadcast schedule.
Vega made the remarks during an onstage interview with ABC News correspondent John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual conference in New Orleans. His comments were first reported by Situation.
“I’ve been in this business going head-to-head with editors for 25 years,” Vega said. New York Times. “But never in my career so far have I felt like these regulations, these recommendations, are coming from misinformation or politics.”
Vega said that while completing a segment about deadly federal immigration operations in Minnesota, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot two American citizens, he was instructed to include footage of protesters attacking ICE agents. Now MS reported.
According to Vega, the images were not available.
He was also asked why he didn’t interview J.D. Vance for a segment about poverty in West Virginia. According to MS Now, this article focused on the Trump administration’s cuts to Snap benefits.
Vega also said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was asked to report on comments suggesting he wanted local police to fight federal immigration agents in the state, despite no evidence of such comments.
A CBS News spokesperson did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Vega’s remarks.
When Vega was fired from the network this spring, he expressed concerns about the future of the flagship Sunday newsmagazine, which has been in a leadership shakeup since Bari Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News by Trump ally Paramount CEO David Ellison last October. With no background in news broadcasting, Weiss founded the media outlet Free Press, which was acquired by Paramount, and is known for his criticism of liberal institutions and what he describes as “cancel culture.”
“In recent months, my production teams and I have experienced efforts to inject political bias into our stories. Reporting teams have held back from submitting story pitches on important news topics out of fear of internal repercussions,” Vega said in a statement in May. “What shall we call this: censorship, both imposed and self-directed. Dangerous for spectacle, and dangerous for democracy.”
“We respect Ms. Vega and her contributions, but her allegations are not based in reality,” a CBS spokesperson said at the time.
Weiss came under scrutiny late last year after delaying an episode about the federal government sending hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious El Salvador prison, citing the need for more reporting. The segment’s reporter, Sharyn Alfonsi, called the decision a “political decision.”
There has been a wave of layoffs at 60 Minutes since Weiss took over the network duties.
Veteran reporter Scott Pelley criticized the cuts at the channel, accusing Weiss, who held a tense meeting with 60 Minutes staff, of “murdering” the program. “He doesn’t like this place. He was brought here to kill and that’s exactly what he’s doing,” he said at the time. Following the shooting, Pelley was fired.
