Ex-60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega accuses CBS News chief Bari Weiss of political bias and story suppression

Ex-60 Minutes Journalist Exposes How Bari Weiss Tried to Help Trump

CBS News chief Bari Weiss has been so busy skewing the storied network's coverage that she's gotten basic facts wrong—including elementary details about America's leaders and where they're from.

Fired 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega revealed at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference in New Orleans Thursday that she had endured network pressure on a number of issues before she was dismissed, including one particularly stunning dispute over a story on SNAP benefit cuts in West Virginia.

While stopping short of referring to Weiss by name, Vega said her decision to tell the story strictly through the eyes of West Virginians had spurred backlash from CBS's "new" top brass because she had not interviewed Vice President JD Vance or referred to his decade-old memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

But Vance, as Vega pointed out, is from Ohio—not West Virginia.

Other arguments arose over the network's new intent to insert political bias into the famed news magazine's reporting, according to Vega. These included:

• Demands to include nonexistent footage: Network executives requested that she include footage of protesters attacking plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minnesota—footage that her team discovered did not exist.
• Scripted talking points: She was tasked with inserting a line into one of her scripts claiming that Iran was "totally outgunned" by U.S. and Israeli forces—a detail she noted was a copy-paste administration talking point.

Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist, was tapped to run CBS News late last year, despite having no experience in broadcast journalism, lacking traditional reporting experience, and never having run a major news operation.

Weiss's business decisions atop the news giant have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America's prestige news media circuit. What was once crowned the "gold standard" of broadcasting and the home of some of journalism's most venerable names—such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow—has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.

Under Weiss's stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on Vega's 60 Minutes segment investigating the results of Donald Trump's mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador's notoriously brutal CECOT megaprison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, ranging from Vega to 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and the program's de facto face, Scott Pelley.

Read more: CBS Takes Major Nosedive After Bari Weiss's 60 Minutes Purge

Senior Pentagon Official Suspended After Secret Recording

A senior Pentagon official has been suspended after he was secretly filmed calling President Donald Trump a "textbook narcissist" and criticizing changes at the Department of Defense.

Right-wing activist James O'Keefe—founder of the far-right Project Veritas, known for its videos capturing individuals disclosing information about their employers—published a hidden-camera sting Wednesday that showed Brandon Newsom, the director of business operations for the U.S. Navy, complaining about changes at the DOD.

Key details from the recording:

• Newsom said he hopes to "stay and stick it out" at the Pentagon, in the hopes that he can "undo whatever's been done [by the Trump administration]."
• Pressed on what exactly he would undo, Newsom appeared to say that his work "challenges [his] morals."
• When asked what he would change, Newsom said he did not think there should be "one specific prayer service," referring to the monthly Christian prayer services started by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The services have been widely criticized for violating the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a state religion.
• Newsom called Trump a "textbook narcissist" and described the Iran war as "completely stupid" and "driven by one man's ego."

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced Wednesday that Newsom had been placed on administrative leave.