A veteran "60 Minutes" journalist fired in May said unqualified online personalities have taken over CBS News, and that he was pushed out for refusing White House talking points.
Guy Campanile, who was managing editor of "60 Minutes" until his dismissal in May, made the accusations in a statement he posted to his Facebook page.
Media reporter Justin Baragona published the full text on X on Tuesday, five days before the newsmagazine begins its 59th season under new management.
Campanile said he had stayed quiet for months because it is wise to remain silent when emotions are raw, and that after reflection he was prepared to describe what he experienced during his final year at the program, according to the statement.
In the statement, Campanile named six colleagues who lost their jobs alongside him, including correspondent Scott Pelley and executive producer Tanya Simon.
"Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, Matthew Polevoy, Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and I refused to be accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news program on American television," Campanile wrote.
Campanile described the specific editorial demands he says the group resisted, including instructions about which sources to interview.
"We would not compromise our principles or reputations by jamming unverifiable notions or White House talking points into our reporting. We objected when told to conduct interviews arranged by the administration," he wrote.
"To be clear - we were told to leave because we insisted on doing our jobs," Campanile added.
Campanile wrote that the firings were part of a wider collapse he traced to commercial and political pressure on newsrooms rather than to any single decision at his former program.
"What has happened recently at 60 Minutes – where I believe editorial independence has become a casualty of corporate priorities and ideological intrusion – was tragic," he wrote.
Campanile reserved his sharpest language for the people he says are now making programming decisions at major news organizations, according to the statement.
"Making matters worse is the cadre of self-described influencers and online opinionists who market themselves as 'journalists'. Some have been given control of our most precious reporting institutions — including CBS News," he wrote.
"Many of these newsroom managers have never been exposed to the depths of poverty, the ravages of war or the heartbreak of disaster. Yet these dilettantes and their enablers make critical programming decisions based on what might trend online over the next few hours," Campanile continued.
Campanile wrote that he spent two-thirds of his life at CBS and left the company's West 57th Street offices with his head held high and his integrity intact.
"I cannot remain silent as trust built over decades by my colleagues and mentors is wrecked. The audience deserves so much better," he wrote.
Campanile closed by quoting Thomas Jefferson on press freedom, saying it is dangerous to ignore the warning, and then addressed the colleagues he left behind.
"Hold the line. Don't give an inch because they will keep scraping away until there's nothing left worth a damn," he wrote.
The firings Campanile describes took place on the last Thursday of May and became known inside the company as Black Thursday, according to New York magazine, which reported the day in detail last month.
Simon had led the program for a year and was called into an early meeting with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, where she was fired instead of reviewing the season as she expected, the magazine reported. Her deputy Draggan Mihailovich, producers Campanile and Matthew Polevoy, and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were dismissed the same day.
Campanile learned of his own dismissal on a Zoom call as he was scheduled to leave for the airport to report a story with correspondent Lesley Stahl in Spain, according to the magazine. Charles Forelle, one of Weiss's deputies, told him he could still shoot the segment even though he was no longer on the program, and Campanile declined.
Pelley was fired the next day after telling an all-staff meeting that Weiss was "murdering 60 Minutes," the magazine reported.
Weiss had arrived at CBS News in October 2025, hired by Paramount owner David Ellison into the newly created position of editor-in-chief, according to New York magazine.
In December, Weiss pulled a story by Alfonsi on the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison and asked producers to add an interview with White House adviser Stephen Miller or another Trump official, the magazine reported. Alfonsi wrote to colleagues that Weiss "spiked" the story "for political optics," and the piece eventually aired on Jan. 18 with no significant changes.
Pelley later alleged that Weiss urged him to inject "falsehoods and bias" into a segment on the killings of two protesters by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, according to the magazine. Vega said executives asked her to add footage showing protesters attacking people who had been incorrectly identified as agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that she found "no credible examples" of such behavior.
CBS News disputed both accounts, the magazine reported, and people who defend Weiss have said her conflict with the staff was about management rather than politics.
Weiss also involved herself in booking guests, an unusual role for a senior network executive, according to New York magazine. She personally arranged interviews with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and traveled to Mar-a-Lago to observe Norah O'Donnell's interview with President Donald Trump.
In March, Weiss booked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and assigned the interview to chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, who was not on the program's roster, the magazine reported. She did the same with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May, even though Stahl had spent months pursuing that interview.
The pressure on the program began before Weiss arrived. Paramount agreed in July 2025 to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, according to CBS News. The money went to Trump's future presidential library; the agreement included no apology, and the program agreed to release transcripts of future interviews with presidential candidates.
Campanile raised the settlement with Weiss during her first two weeks on the job, asking for her view, and she declined to answer, saying her response could leak, according to New York magazine. A former staffer told the magazine that she failed the test from the start.
The corporate stakes have grown since. Trump told reporters in December that CNN should be sold as part of any deal for its parent company, saying the people who have run the network are "a disgrace", the Washington Post reported.
In April, David Ellison hosted a dinner in Washington honoring Trump and the First Amendment, attended by CBS News executives and journalists, including Weiss, according to Variety.
A Paramount shareholder sued the Ellisons this summer, alleging they cut an illegal deal with Trump to win government approval of their bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Variety reported. The suit claims they offered the president a chance to improperly funnel cash to him by settling his legal claims against CNN, and promised that CNN anchors he dislikes would be fired after a takeover.
"This lawsuit recycles allegations that have already been reported and already addressed," a Paramount spokesperson said in a statement to Variety, adding that "no commitments from either David or Larry Ellison have been made to any government body, State AG, or federal agency regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism."
"Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause," David Ellison wrote in a New York Times opinion piece quoted by Variety, in which he said the real question being litigated is whether he can be trusted as a steward of CNN.
The Department of Justice signed off on the $111 billion merger in June without requiring Paramount to sell any assets or accept any conditions, CNN reported.
The merger has not closed. A 12-state antitrust lawsuit led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, is holding up the deal and is set for trial in March 2027 unless the two sides settle, Variety reported. Ellison has threatened to move Paramount out of California if the transaction is not completed by Oct. 1, when the company begins owing Warner Bros. investors $7 million a day.
The new season begins Sunday with a segment by O'Donnell featuring interviews with Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, and Adm. Brad Cooper, the operational commander of the war with Iran, according to Deadline.
