Former 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega said she was pressured by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and other executives to include misinformation and political bias in reports that aired this year. Vega made the comments during a public event on Thursday in New Orleans. She was one of several well-known journalists who left the show this spring.
Vega spoke with ABC News correspondent John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference and Expo. According to Vega, the “new administration” at CBS, meaning Weiss and executives brought in under her leadership, asked her to report on events that she said “never happened.”
Vega was fired from 60 Minutes in May, according to the report, but she had not spoken publicly about her departure until Thursday’s event. She is reportedly the first Latina correspondent to have worked on the program.
Other correspondents have made similar claims about newsroom pressure
Vega’s account is similar to statements reportedly made by two other former 60 Minutes correspondents, Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi, according to MS NOW. Both were said to have left the network after David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, appointed Weiss to her position last year.
Alfonsi’s contract reportedly expired after she criticized Weiss for pulling her segment on alleged torture in Salvadoran prisons before it aired. Pelley was reportedly fired a day after he criticized Weiss and the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, during a staff meeting in early June.
According to the report, Pelley questioned their journalistic qualifications during that meeting. Pelley has separately described being told to inject falsehoods and bias into his reporting after his firing.
During her appearance with Quiñones, Vega described being pressured to include footage she said did not exist. This alleged footage was said to show protesters assaulting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Vega said this request came in connection with a segment about the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota. Pelley reportedly faced a similar request, saying CBS leadership asked him to portray protesters as more violent in a story he declined to alter before his firing.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega told Quiñones, according to the report. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
Vega also said she was asked to include what she described as an “administration talking point” in a segment about President Donald Trump’s conflict with Iran. According to Vega, this involved a line claiming that Iran had been outgunned by U.S. and Israeli military forces.
In a separate segment about the impact of the Trump administration’s SNAP benefit cuts on West Virginia residents, Vega said she was questioned about why she had not interviewed Vice President JD Vance or referenced his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book focuses on his childhood growing up in Ohio.
Skydance Media purchased Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, last year. According to the report, David Ellison received financial backing for the deal from his father, Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, who is described as a personal friend of Trump’s. David Ellison subsequently appointed Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief.
That appointment reportedly prompted a number of career journalists to leave the network. Some departing staff members cited ideological differences and what they described as a culture of fear under the new leadership, according to the report.
David Ellison is also reportedly in the process of purchasing Warner Bros., which had been put up for sale last year as part of an effort to manage the company’s $35 billion debt load. If approved, the merger would reportedly put the Ellison family in control of CNN, a network Trump has repeatedly and without evidence called “fake news.”
According to the report, Trump publicly involved himself in competing bids for Warner Bros. last year, saying it was “imperative” that CNN be sold and that its ownership at the time not remain in charge of the company. The report states that Trump has since downplayed his personal role in the merger, though concerns about its potential effect on CNN reportedly remain.
The $81 billion Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery was approved last month by the Justice Department under the Trump administration, according to the report. The deal is reportedly held up in court because of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general seeking to block the sale.
Published: Jul 25, 2026 08:00 am