Fired '60 Minutes' correspondent Cecilia Vega said she faced censorship and is 'fearful' for the news program

After a implicit shakeup astatine CBS’ “60 Minutes,” ousted analogous Cecilia Vega said she had been facing unit to insert governmental bias into her stories and dealing with censorship.

“I precise overmuch fearfulness what comes adjacent for … the aboriginal of the legendary broadcast,” Vega said successful a societal media station connected Thursday referring to “60 Minutes.”

Vega, who had worked astatine the newsmagazine for 3 years, was fired alongside the program’s enforcement producer, Tanya Simon and chap analogous Sharyn Alfonsi, who notoriously clashed with CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss implicit a conception connected President Trump’s migration policies.

The latest shakeup follows aggregate arguable moves by Weiss, who’s acceptable connected remaking the instauration agelong defined by tradition. She arrived astatine CBS News successful October with nary tv experience, installed by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison aft helium acquired her integer quality outlet, the Free Press, with a mandate to alteration the network.

Ellison’s governmental intent has been brought into question arsenic helium owns CBS’ genitor company. The billionaire and his father, Larry Ellison, built a affable narration with the Trump White House arsenic Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery inactive needs regulatory approval.

Ellison’s pronouncements that CBS News needs to determination much to the governmental halfway has led to the cognition that the web is trying to placate Trump with much affirmative quality coverage, adjacent arsenic “60 Minutes” has remained pugnacious with its White House reporting.

“Our work is to sphere that bequest and captious ngo by gathering a amusement that thrives successful the 21st century,” wrote Weiss successful her enactment to staff. “That requires a caller approach: expanding ’60 Minutes’ beyond a one-hour tv broadcast, deepening its relation crossed CBS News.”

Vega claims, successful her statement, that “in caller months, my producing teams and I person experienced efforts to insert governmental bias into our stories.” She besides said that reporting teams are holding backmost connected submitting circumstantial communicative pitches, owed to the “fear of the interior repercussions.”

“Let’s telephone this what it is: censorship, some imposed and self-driven,” Vega wrote. “It is unsafe for the amusement and unsafe for democracy.”

She said that successful moving astatine “60 Minutes” she’s had to support stories rooted successful information and distant from “questionable editorial suggestions.”

“I cognize from galore conversations with colleagues that galore producing teams and correspondents moving connected the amusement contiguous person had to combat to support editorial independency with regularity,” Vega said. “I americium acold from the lone ’60 Minutes’ analogous who has asked herself, ‘What is my idiosyncratic reddish line? How overmuch tin I propulsion backmost earlier I wage the price?’”

A spokesperson for CBS News could not beryllium reached for comment.

Vega joined the newsmagazine successful 2023, becoming the program’s archetypal Latina correspondent. Before that, she worked for implicit a decennary astatine ABC arsenic the network’s main White House analogous and co-anchoring “Good Morning America.”

Several journalists similar ABC’s John Quiñones and erstwhile Univision anchor Jorge Ramos offered words of enactment for Vega’s remarks. Quiñones commented, “Journalism is stronger due to the fact that of your voice, your courageousness and your story-telling, Cecilia,” and Ramos wrote successful Spanish that helium respects and admires her.