MEDIA MUTINY

MAGA-Curious CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ Boss’ Leak Crackdown Backfires

The flagship news show is leaking like a sieve.

The executive producer of 60 Minutes begged his staff to stop leaking word of turmoil on his watch—only for them to go ahead and leak that message to another outlet anyway.

TV news virgin Nick Bilton, 49, is the former New York Times tech columnist and filmmaker who had never worked in television at all before CBS’ MAGA-friendly new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, 42, handed him one of TV’s most prestigious jobs earlier this year.

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Weiss recruited Bilton after taking the helm at CBS last October after Trump ally David Ellison took control of the network’s parent company in a controversial merger. Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, is a Republican megadonor. Critics say Weiss has since carried out a conservative overhaul of the network and steered coverage away from anything critical of the Trump administration.

Her time in the top job so far has been a disaster. Staff, and in particular the team at 60 Minutes, roiled and bucked at her changes, with long-time host Anderson Cooper leaving the show. She responded by purging the program of veteran journalists like executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, senior producer Matthew Polevoy, and correspondent Cecilia Vega.

Those firings all landed on a single day in May, since dubbed “Black Thursday” by staff. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi left after her contract lapsed unrenewed the same week. Bilton, hired just days later to replace Simon, then fired 60 Minutes mainstay Scott Pelley after Pelley told him in front of the team that Weiss had been “murdering” the program.

Weiss and Bilton have since set out on a hiring blitz in a desperate scramble to fill the desks their firings have emptied. Critics have slammed many of those new recruits—among them right-wing opinion writer Ross Douthat and controversial U.K. broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips—as grossly underqualified compared to the caliber of journalists the program has historically attracted. Bilton has reportedly been using job interviews as “therapy sessions” to discuss with prospective hires just how tough he’s finding his role.

These and other shocking details of Weiss and Bilton’s stewardship at 60 Minutes have emerged because their staff cannot keep from talking about the turmoil with colleagues at other media organizations. Status has led much of the reporting on the chaos—and it was to Status that Bilton’s sprawling 734-word anti-leaking memo leaked on Tuesday.

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“In the memo, Bilton made clear he is frustrated by the unrelenting speculation regarding the show, along with the torrent of unauthorized information making its way into the press,” the outlet wrote. “While he didn’t mention this publication in particular, one imagines he isn’t especially thrilled when we end up informing his own staff about developments regarding their own program.”

Status adds that Bilton has told his employees that “since I started there has been roughly a rumor a day,” and that those rumors “about me, about you, about what’s coming next—95 percent of them are fabrications and blatantly incorrect.”

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“I no longer have the time or the patience for them, and I’d rather we spend that energy on the stories,” he went on. “If you hear something and it matters to you, come ask me and I’ll tell you what I know. Otherwise I’d like this place to be talked about for what we put on television.”

The Daily Beast has contacted CBS for comment on this story.

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