Former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft is weighing in on the major shakeup of the flagship newsmagazine.
In a Wednesday interview with PBS News’ Geoff Bennett, Kroft was asked his thoughts on recent events, including Scott Pelley’s firing, the dismissal of EP Tanya Simon, and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi also being let go.
“I think it’s been disastrous for the show, for the audience, which is not insubstantial,” he replied. “It’s been going on for a long time. It began, really, with an interview that Bill Whitaker had done with Kamala Harris in which CBS was sued for $17 million by the Trump administration for what they called an ‘illegal edit.’ The lawsuit had absolutely no merit, yet CBS, Paramount decided to settle the case for $17 million. And since then, it’s just been sort of one thing after another.”
Bennett also noted that recent shifts have arrived as Paramount is seeking approval by the Trump-backed FCC for its mega-merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. “I think that Paramount has just decided that was the only thing that was going to be important, and they were going to try and block anything that might get in the way of it,” Kroft said of getting the merger approved by the FCC.
The former 60 Minutes correspondent noted that Pelley said he asked Bari Weiss why EP Tanya Simon was fired, and “she refused to answer the questions, which leaves you with what’s been said by the president and by his staff and the chairman of the FCC, that they don’t like the way CBS has been operated. They don’t like the fact that [60 Minutes] is on the air, they’d like to see it taken off the air, they’ve said that a number of times, they’d like to see people fired, and that’s what’s happening.”
Pelley was fired on Tuesday after an intense meeting with 60 Minutes‘ new executive producer, Nick Bilton, on Monday. In that meeting, Pelley argued that CBS News editor-in-chief Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
Bennett asked Kroft where the line between business decisions and journalistic interference lands in this case, to which Kroft said he believed the overhaul is the latter.
“I think that this is journalistic interference. It makes no business sense whatsoever. [60 Minutes] is still doing very well; it’s the highest-rated news program on television, and it has been that way for more than 50 years,” he said. “The audience was up about nine percent last year. And why would you mess with that?”
Kroft, who spent 30 seasons at 60 Minutes, recently opened up about his time working on the newsmagazine, admitting that he “hated” the job.
“60 Minutes was really appealing, and I thought, I wasn’t really sure I was ever going to get there. I didn’t really seriously think about it. When I did, there’s so many things that, first of all, the job is just 24 hours a day,” he said of his experience working on the show. “I mean, you may get a couple hours of bad sleep. Beepers going off, getting on jets, going here and there, the whole thing, then coming back and spending, you know, three or four days writing the script, and then going to the screenings and then getting on, starting it all over again.”
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