A former '60 Minutes' correspondent pushed out in this spring's shakeup is opening up about what has become of the show.
Cecilia Vega told a room of American University students that it "hurts to watch" her old show's ratings slide under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, The Guardian reported on Friday.
"It pains me. It hurts to watch, from afar. It hurts to talk to my colleagues who are still there. It hurts to see the ratings slump that is happening right now," Vega said during the talk in Washington.
Vega was one of several correspondents and producers let go in May when Weiss remade the program and installed tech journalist Nick Bilton as executive producer. Her contract was not set to run out until March 2027, and the reason she was cut remains unclear.
"I still don't know why I was fired," she said. "I was not given a reason. I was fired without cause. I just find it exceptionally disturbing."
The network also dropped correspondent Scott Pelley "for cause" after he clashed with Bilton, passed on renewing Sharyn Alfonsi's contract and fired executive producer Tanya Simon along with other senior producers.
The shakeup came even though '60 Minutes' led the industry in ratings. Its 58th season averaged 9.1 million viewers, a 9 percent jump over the season before, but its latest episode pulled in only 5.64 million, the smallest audience for a season's sixth episode this century, The Guardian noted. Weiss told an industry conference on Wednesday that she was not "focused" on the show's ratings and was concentrating on building the network instead.
Vega also repeated her claim that newsroom managers tried to inject political bias into her stories, saying she was "told to put information that is just factually untrue in a piece of journalism." She said she "can't prescribe a motive" but that she "held the line," as did Pelley and Alfonsi.
CBS News has rejected her accusations, with a spokesperson saying in May that her claims were "not based in reality."
Pelley said at a panel on Wednesday that there was "an imperative to move our coverage in the direction of the president" during his time at the show.
Vega also voiced worry about the future of CBS News and CNN now that both sit under the same corporate owner and could be merged. "I'm fearful for job security. I'm fearful for editorial independence," she said.