“I made a living for 34 years second-guessing everything I see or hear, so you have to take that into consideration.”
That’s one of the first things that Guy Campanile, the famously exacting former managing editor of 60 Minutes and a 34-year veteran to CBS News, says to The Hollywood Reporter as he settles into an interview. At CBS News he was known for being ultra-frank even in a workplace that culturally encouraged vigorous debate as part of its story-honing process. (“It’s no secret at CBS News that I do not hold back. Many colleagues appreciated my directness. Some did not,” he wrote in an email to THR.)
So he urges THR to take that into account as he offers his thoughts on the 59th season of 60 Minutes so far. His critiques are less stinging than one might assume given his previous assessment of why he and colleagues were fired from the program in May (that they refused to be “accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news program on American television”). Overall, Campanile echoes what at least a couple critics have said about the first episode of the 59th season: It didn’t seem much different than recent seasons of the program.
“We kept hearing about a notebook full of ideas that the new executive producer had, and the broadcast had been described as a melting ice cube and that changes had to happen,” he says, adding that 60 Minutes also increased its viewership nine percent in the previous season. “And the broadcast I’ve seen the first few weeks, in the broad strokes, in shape and form, not in content, does not look very different. So I’m trying to understand why it was all blown up.”
In May, Campanile’s time at CBS came to an abrupt end as he and multiple other staffers — including correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and senior program leaders Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich and Matthew Polevoy — were ousted from the program. Correspondent Scott Pelley was also fired after a tense confrontation with an incoming leader about changes under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
The departures drew intense scrutiny as Weiss, who came up as an opinion journalist without traditional broadcast experience, was early in her tenure and some dismissed staffers alleged that under her leadership execs had attempted to interfere in their coverage for political reasons.
Within this context, Campanile’s biggest critique surrounds the marquee segment of the premiere, an interview with one of the U.S. Air Force officers shot down in Iran and rescued in a daring mission by the U.S. military. The segment struck Campanile as a fitting curtain-raiser to the new season, but the report also raised questions for him. “Where I, as a viewer, got stuck is how do we have the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in that story and not ask about the conduct, the arc and the status of the war?”
Campanile notes Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, both interviewed in the piece, aren’t doing regular briefings on the status of the broadly unpopular war in Iran or many interviews with news outlets.
“That made me go, huh, because among some viewers, they may see that as, boy, I guess they didn’t want to ask about the war because they wanted to get this interview with the [officer],” says Campanile. (He says that, during his time at the programs, conditions were never set by subjects for interviews at 60 Minutes; correspondents could always ask what they wanted.)
But CBS did air clips of correspondent Norah O’Donnell asking Hegseth what victory would look like in Iran and querying Caine on Iran’s missile capabilities on CBS Mornings. Her question to Caine about his concern over a munitions shortage also aired on Face the Nation — just not on 60 Minutes.
Another Campanile critique: In its second episode of the season, 60 Minutes aired the first TV interview with Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who murdered her three children. Clancy’s trial over the summer, which ended in a mistrial, captured global media attention and sparked conversation around postpartum mental illness, making the interview a huge get for 60 Minutes.
But watching the segment, Campanile wondered what the larger purpose of the interview was. “I think it’s a high-interest story, just like the fighter pilot’s story was a high-interest story, but you have to bring more than just high interest, at least I believe that to be the case, because otherwise it feels a little tabloid-y,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s what people want from 60 Minutes. I just don’t. I think they want something more thoughtful.”
The changes taking place at 60 Minutes and CBS News at large are all the more consequential now that the owner that ushered them in — Paramount Skydance — has settled a lawsuit with 12 state attorneys general to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD owns CNN, which if the transaction goes through could soon also be owned by Paramount Skydance.
Campanile says he has “lots of concerns” about that prospect: “Chief among them is who is running this operation? Is it going to be Mark Thompson or is it going to be Bari Weiss?” He adds that it remains unclear to him how the editorial oversight board required by the settlement would work, given that specifics on the body haven’t been provided. “Much was made of the CBS News ombudsman. That guy’s been missing for a year,” Campanile says.
Campanile is continuing to work in journalism, having just launched a media consultancy, FFWD Media Mentor, tailored to early-career and student journalists. The consultancy is geared toward professionals who aren’t receiving much guidance on the job; participants will likely receive some of that no-nonsense feedback Campanile was known for at 60 Minutes.
When it comes to his former workplace, the former managing editor says he’s interested to see what the program does in the weeks ahead. “Maybe, maybe there is a secret sauce we didn’t understand, some kind of equation that we never contemplated,” he says of 60 Minutes. “And we’ll all find out together. The viewer has the final vote in all of this. I have said over and over again, you are what the scoreboard says you are… So let’s see where we are in April and March and May, and then the final verdict will come down.”
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