Calling for ‘new approach,’ CBS News leader Bari Weiss replaces executive producer at ’60 Minutes’

Saying it was time for a new approach and a new chapter, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has replaced the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” naming outsider Nick Bilton, a longtime technology journalist and documentarian, as the show’s new leader.

Executive producer Tanya Simon will be leaving about a year after being named to the job following 30 years at the venerable Sunday evening program. The moves cap a period of turmoil for the venerable newsmagazine that premiered in 1968 and is known for its ticking stopwatch.

In a memo to staff Thursday, Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said their goal was “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”

“That requires a new approach,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote, defining it as “expanding ‘60 Minutes’ beyond a one-hour television broadcast, deepening its role across CBS News, and holding everything we produce to the ambition, fairness, and fearlessness that have defined ‘60 Minutes’ at its best.”

Bilton, they said, “embodies the energy and ambition that animated the founders of the show. We cannot imagine a better fit.” Bilton is also a former New York Times technology columnist.

Others let go as well

Also let go, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on anonymity: correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment about Trump administration deportees in a Salvadoran prison was abruptly pulled by Weiss, running a month later; and Cecilia Vega.

Sweeping actions like those announced Thursday had been widely expected from Weiss, founder of the Free Press website. Since she was hired in October by CBS parent company Paramount Global’s new management, she has fast become a headline-maker and polarizing figure in journalism.

In his own lengthy memo to staff, Bilton, who comes to his new post without traditional broadcast experience, said “60 Minutes” was “without exaggeration, the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.”

“The fact that this show has remained a fixed point in a culture is part of why this show still matters as much as it does,” he wrote. “I don’t want to lose that. But the world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved. And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years. I want to do everything humanly possible to ensure that we are.”

As for Alfonsi specifically, the veteran journalist — who has been publicly at odds with Weiss for months over a 60 Minutes segment critical of the Trump administration that was pulled at the last minute last year — may not be leaving quietly.

A few weeks ago, Alfonsi hired high-powered litigator Bryan Freedman. With Freedman now behind her, signs suggest that a legal battle may already be taking shape — perhaps behind closed doors, perhaps not.

Because Alfonsi’s freelance-style contract was not renewed, the battleground will likely shift to how she was treated at CBS News under Weiss’ less-than-one-year-old regime. Specifically, the dispute could center on the way Alfonsi’s work and objectivity were publicly undermined when her CECOT report was pulled from the broadcast schedule. In addition, the very public way Alfonsi was left exposed late last year may strengthen any potential claims of mistreatment, a toxic workplace, or a failure of leadership at CBS News if she decides to pursue that path.

And that is exactly why someone hires a lawyer like Bryan Freedman.

Freedman has recently become widely known for his role in the high-profile dispute between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, which has now been partly settled. He also built his reputation representing figures such as Megyn Kelly, Chris Cuomo, and Tucker Carlson, helping their forced exits — to put it politely — from their respective networks end in financially favorable outcomes for the hosts. Whether CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, now owned by David Ellison, is willing to fight Alfonsi all the way remains to be seen — or perhaps it will write a large check in the hope that Alfonsi and Freedman go away without taking the matter to court.

Either way, sources say Alfonsi and Freedman are preparing for a range of scenarios based on how her not entirely surprising exit from CBS News unfolded.

Freedman himself did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on his representation of Alfonsi. CBS News also had nothing to say about Alfonsi being outright fired, other than directing Deadline to the press release announcing Bilton’s hiring.

Recently, Alfonsi had half-joked at events about whether she would still have a job. Clearly, she had already figured out which way the wind was blowing — and she has shown no fear in standing her ground, especially this week.

“Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes,” Alfonsi said Wednesday after her contract with the program was not renewed. She called the decision not to renew it “a deliberate choice to punish a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.”

That chill began in December 2025, when a planned and promoted 60 Minutes segment fronted by Alfonsi, about the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to violent and brutal prisons in El Salvador, was pulled from the Sunday newsmagazine just hours before it was supposed to air.

At the time, Weiss said the long-vetted report was not balanced enough for primetime. The founder of The Free Press told colleagues that she felt the Trump side had not been given enough of a forum or sufficient time to respond. That triggered internal tensions, because Alfonsi’s report had been thoroughly researched, she had reached out to the administration, and the piece had already been vetted and cleared to air — until Weiss stepped in.

Although the segment eventually aired several weeks later, the stain on 60 Minutes and CBS News has not gone away.

On May 27, Alfonsi declared: “The wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down. Journalists willing to challenge authority are being pushed aside in favor of those who will not. If this continues, the result will be a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but lacks the courage and character to produce journalism that matters.”

Those words now carry even more weight — both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion.

A bumpy period for ‘60 Minutes’

In July of last year, to the dismay of many at the show, Paramount settled with President Donald Trump out-of-court after he sued “60 Minutes” for how it had handled an interview with Kamala Harris, his 2024 election opponent.

In December, the show, at Weiss’ direction, held off at the last minute showing Alfonsi’s report about the deportees, saying greater effort was needed to secure an interview with administration officials. Alfonsi complained privately that the decision was political. The story aired a month later with additional administration comments, but no on-camera interviews with officials.

The episode, and others, has had critics watching to see if Weiss is moving the network in a Trump-friendly direction. Since her appointment, Trump administration officials have been more visible on CBS News, in interviews that she sometimes helped arrange. The president himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” on Nov. 2.

In February, Anderson Cooper exited the show, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, but raising questions about whether it had anything to do with Weiss’s leadership. Cooper had contributed stories to “60 Minutes” as part of a job-sharing arrangement with CNN, where his prime-time “Anderson Cooper 360” has aired since 2003.