#sixty-minutes — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sixty-minutes, aggregated by home.social.
-
5) There is something sadly sweet and naive about #ScottPelley’s interview with LGN 👇
The landscape in #NewsMedia has shifted and fidelity to the truth is being replaced by #billionaire “truths” dictated by #oligarchs
Connecting the dots, it seems, gov takeover approval of CBS News parent Paramount was conditioned on the destruction of #SixtyMinutes
https://youtu.be/ePqdmbgQ4BI?si=zFaXu8UqFgxZC6D5
#Corruption #UltraWealthy #democracy #fascism #Politics #investigativejournalism #oligarchy #journalism #USPol
-
5) There is something sadly sweet and naive about #ScottPelley’s interview with LGN 👇
The landscape in #NewsMedia has shifted and fidelity to the truth is being replaced by #billionaire “truths” dictated by #oligarchs
Connecting the dots, it seems, gov takeover approval of CBS News parent Paramount was conditioned on the destruction of #SixtyMinutes
https://youtu.be/ePqdmbgQ4BI?si=zFaXu8UqFgxZC6D5
#Corruption #UltraWealthy #democracy #fascism #Politics #investigativejournalism #oligarchy #journalism #USPol
-
@Starcade They also didn't "renew" the contract for Sharon Alfonsi.
https://www.evadaily.com/article/sharyn-alfonsi-60-minutes-cbs-contract-not-renewed
So there definitely is a shake up going on at #SixtyMinutes.
The new regime at 60 Minutes started with the hiring last year of #BariWeiss who has absolutely no experience & qualifications for the job of running #CBSNews
The quality of the reporting of the show is sure to suffer when it comes to politics but otherwise I think it will be largely unaffected.
#SundayMorning does not deal with "investigative reporting" so it should be entirely unaffected.
I pick & choose what segments that I want on 60 Minutes & on Sunday Morning which are two of my favorite news shows.
It remains to be seen how "watered down" 60 Minutes will become. 🤷♂️
-
If It Ain’t Broke…
The maxim reads, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Advice which generally means don’t try to fix something that works. The odds are you’ll mess it up. In the context of the CBS blockbuster newsmagazine Sixty Minutes, it seems to apply. Unless of course, fixing something broken is not the goal of the new owners of CBS.
Just to bring you up to date, take a deep breath here. Skydance Productions, founded and controlled by David Ellison with a big investment by his father, Oracle founder Larry, bought Paramount Global, parent of CBS, from Paramount’s controlling owner, Shari Redstone. Now breathe in.
As I’ve reported previously, Paramount needed antitrust clearances from several federal agencies to clear the $8 billion merger and observers thought that might be difficult to achieve because Donald Trump was a frequent critic of CBS News, which he had sued, and the CBS program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Redstone had tried to remain apolitical during her stewardship of Paramount and CBS but faced with the need to get a green light for the sale, she settled Trump’s lawsuit against the advice of most legal advisors, who thought the suit frivolous. The Skydance purchase was approved.
Just in case you have any doubt about the quid pro quo, the Federal Communications Commission, one of the agencies that had to sign off on the deal, released filings publicly on July 23, 2025, just one day before formally voting 2-1 to approve the acquisition. The filings were submitted by Skydance’s General Counsel, Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, and addressed directly to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. They served as a binding framework of concessions to secure regulatory approval.
The official filings outlined several explicit actions to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Dismantling DEI Infrastructure: the combined company would completely eliminate Paramount’s “Office of Global Inclusion” and dissolve any teams or individual job roles focused on DEI. Scrapping Hiring Goals: Skydance committed to ending all numerical and “aspirational goals” related to the race, ethnicity, sex, or gender of job applicants and employee hires in the United States. Scrubbing Public Messaging: The company promised to remove all references to DEI from its public messaging, websites, social media, internal training materials, and corporate messaging. Ideological Bias Mandate: In a related move to satisfy the Trump administration’s scrutiny of CBS News, the filings also committed to establishing a corporate “ombudsman” for at least two years to investigate internal and external complaints of ideological bias.
It should not surprise anyone that Skydance fell right in line with the Trump administration’s demands. Both Larry and David Ellison are widely considered to be closely aligned with Donald Trump and his political movement. Both have developed strong business and personal relationships with Trump. Larry Ellison is a major bankroller of Republican campaigns.
Davis Ellison proceeded to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the number one rated broadcast in late night. Trump cheered. He hired Bari Weiss, an opinion columnist who had started her own web site, to run CBS News as editor-in-chief. Wiess had no broadcast experience and proceeded with a wave of firings. She replaced co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil on the CBS Evening News, the house that Walter Cronkite built. Both Dickerson and DuBois quit. Dickerson had been with CBS 16 years. DuBois 21 years. She then shut down the entire CBS News Radio department, firing 90 staff members and leaving 700 affiliates without a source of network news. That was the 99-year-old house that Edward R. Murrow built.
Then she turned her aim on Sixty Minutes. For the other actions, Ellison and Weiss justified themselves on financial grounds. But they did not supply convincing evidence to show that they were eliminating losing positions. In the case of Sixty Minutes, they didn’t even try to make that argument. It would have been a lie.
The 2025-2026 season of 60 Minutes experienced a significant ratings increase, averaging 9.1 million viewers. This represents a +9% growth in linear viewership and a +5% increase in the key adults 25-54 demographic compared to the prior season. In fact, 60 Minutes ratings on television have exhibited a resilient and broadly upward trend, retaining its title as the #1 news program in America for 52 consecutive years.
And for those who argue the future for CBS is on the digital realm, note that the show’s total reach has been bolstered by significant multi-platform growth, expanding its audience beyond traditional TV broadcasts. Digital metrics reflect massive gains… 2.5 billion video views across major social networks (more than double the previous year), 85% year-over-year growth on TikTok. This is not a failure. It is instead proof of legacy media making the transition to the digital age.
CBS’s motivation for attacking Sixty Minutes is transparently clear. Donald Trump doesn’t like the program, so the new owners don’t like it either.
In short order Bari delayed the broadcast of a report by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan men to the maximum-security El Salvador prison known as CECOT. A new statement from the Trump administration was edited in. Alfonsi was public and vocal in her outrage, calling the decision “political, not editorial.” Correspondent Anderson Cooper announced he would leave the program after twenty years. He did not explain why. He will continue to anchor Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN.
After Sixty Minutes ended its season in May, Bari fired executive producer Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program, alongside executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Former CBS correspondent Steve Kroft and current correspondent Scott Pelley openly revolted.
Bari replaced Simon with Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker with no traditional TV broadcast news experience. At his first meeting with the Sixty Minutes staff, Bilton was confronted by an outraged Pelley. Pelley relentlessly grilled the newly installed executive producer and accused Weiss of “murdering ’60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” Leaked audio was obtained by media outlets, which they haven’t posted but are reporting extensively.
The next day Bilton ripped Pelley’s “performative display of hostility” in a letter to the journalist, firing him “for cause.”
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.
While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner.
It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.
I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path. Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.
I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 MinutesPelley released his own letter, repeating many of the arguments he reportedly made during the meeting.
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
Scott PelleyThe lawyers can battle over contracts and obligations. I’m sure Pelley, who is 68-years old and has been earning millions each year for decades considered his action before taking his very public step to confront his new bosses. When you do that to the boss there are consequences. A bigger question will be what becomes of the property that revolutionized news programs on television. And what will become of responsible journalism overall.
Sixty Minutes was not perfect. A product created by humans never is. But Sixty Minutes tried its best to adhere to a standard and it did so better than most. I find the allegations Pelley makes in his letter most disturbing.
The Society of Professional Journalists, to promote ethical journalism, emphasizes four principles. I teach these to students in my course on Media Law and Ethics. The first is, “Seek truth and report it.” If journalists are denied the right to do that. If they are required instead to report what their owners, publishers, or government tell them to report. We are lost.
#####
#BariWeiss #CBS #EthicalJournalism #ethics #journalism #Media #news #NickBilton #politics #ScottPelley #SixtyMinutes #Trump -
If It Ain’t Broke…
The maxim reads, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Advice which generally means don’t try to fix something that works. The odds are you’ll mess it up. In the context of the CBS blockbuster newsmagazine Sixty Minutes, it seems to apply. Unless of course, fixing something broken is not the goal of the new owners of CBS.
Just to bring you up to date, take a deep breath here. Skydance Productions, founded and controlled by David Ellison with a big investment by his father, Oracle founder Larry, bought Paramount Global, parent of CBS, from Paramount’s controlling owner, Shari Redstone. Now breathe in.
As I’ve reported previously, Paramount needed antitrust clearances from several federal agencies to clear the $8 billion merger and observers thought that might be difficult to achieve because Donald Trump was a frequent critic of CBS News, which he had sued, and the CBS program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Redstone had tried to remain apolitical during her stewardship of Paramount and CBS but faced with the need to get a green light for the sale, she settled Trump’s lawsuit against the advice of most legal advisors, who thought the suit frivolous. The Skydance purchase was approved.
Just in case you have any doubt about the quid pro quo, the Federal Communications Commission, one of the agencies that had to sign off on the deal, released filings publicly on July 23, 2025, just one day before formally voting 2-1 to approve the acquisition. The filings were submitted by Skydance’s General Counsel, Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, and addressed directly to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. They served as a binding framework of concessions to secure regulatory approval.
The official filings outlined several explicit actions to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Dismantling DEI Infrastructure: the combined company would completely eliminate Paramount’s “Office of Global Inclusion” and dissolve any teams or individual job roles focused on DEI. Scrapping Hiring Goals: Skydance committed to ending all numerical and “aspirational goals” related to the race, ethnicity, sex, or gender of job applicants and employee hires in the United States. Scrubbing Public Messaging: The company promised to remove all references to DEI from its public messaging, websites, social media, internal training materials, and corporate messaging. Ideological Bias Mandate: In a related move to satisfy the Trump administration’s scrutiny of CBS News, the filings also committed to establishing a corporate “ombudsman” for at least two years to investigate internal and external complaints of ideological bias.
It should not surprise anyone that Skydance fell right in line with the Trump administration’s demands. Both Larry and David Ellison are widely considered to be closely aligned with Donald Trump and his political movement. Both have developed strong business and personal relationships with Trump. Larry Ellison is a major bankroller of Republican campaigns.
Davis Ellison proceeded to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the number one rated broadcast in late night. Trump cheered. He hired Bari Weiss, an opinion columnist who had started her own web site, to run CBS News as editor-in-chief. Wiess had no broadcast experience and proceeded with a wave of firings. She replaced co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil on the CBS Evening News, the house that Walter Cronkite built. Both Dickerson and DuBois quit. Dickerson had been with CBS 16 years. DuBois 21 years. She then shut down the entire CBS News Radio department, firing 90 staff members and leaving 700 affiliates without a source of network news. That was the 99-year-old house that Edward R. Murrow built.
Then she turned her aim on Sixty Minutes. For the other actions, Ellison and Weiss justified themselves on financial grounds. But they did not supply convincing evidence to show that they were eliminating losing positions. In the case of Sixty Minutes, they didn’t even try to make that argument. It would have been a lie.
The 2025-2026 season of 60 Minutes experienced a significant ratings increase, averaging 9.1 million viewers. This represents a +9% growth in linear viewership and a +5% increase in the key adults 25-54 demographic compared to the prior season. In fact, 60 Minutes ratings on television have exhibited a resilient and broadly upward trend, retaining its title as the #1 news program in America for 52 consecutive years.
And for those who argue the future for CBS is on the digital realm, note that the show’s total reach has been bolstered by significant multi-platform growth, expanding its audience beyond traditional TV broadcasts. Digital metrics reflect massive gains… 2.5 billion video views across major social networks (more than double the previous year), 85% year-over-year growth on TikTok. This is not a failure. It is instead proof of legacy media making the transition to the digital age.
CBS’s motivation for attacking Sixty Minutes is transparently clear. Donald Trump doesn’t like the program, so the new owners don’t like it either.
In short order Bari delayed the broadcast of a report by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan men to the maximum-security El Salvador prison known as CECOT. A new statement from the Trump administration was edited in. Alfonsi was public and vocal in her outrage, calling the decision “political, not editorial.” Correspondent Anderson Cooper announced he would leave the program after twenty years. He did not explain why. He will continue to anchor Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN.
After Sixty Minutes ended its season in May, Bari fired executive producer Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program, alongside executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Former CBS correspondent Steve Kroft and current correspondent Scott Pelley openly revolted.
Bari replaced Simon with Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker with no traditional TV broadcast news experience. At his first meeting with the Sixty Minutes staff, Bilton was confronted by an outraged Pelley. Pelley relentlessly grilled the newly installed executive producer and accused Weiss of “murdering ’60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” Leaked audio was obtained by media outlets, which they haven’t posted but are reporting extensively.
The next day Bilton ripped Pelley’s “performative display of hostility” in a letter to the journalist, firing him “for cause.”
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.
While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner.
It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.
I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path. Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.
I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 MinutesPelley released his own letter, repeating many of the arguments he reportedly made during the meeting.
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
Scott PelleyThe lawyers can battle over contracts and obligations. I’m sure Pelley, who is 68-years old and has been earning millions each year for decades considered his action before taking his very public step to confront his new bosses. When you do that to the boss there are consequences. A bigger question will be what becomes of the property that revolutionized news programs on television. And what will become of responsible journalism overall.
Sixty Minutes was not perfect. A product created by humans never is. But Sixty Minutes tried its best to adhere to a standard and it did so better than most. I find the allegations Pelley makes in his letter most disturbing.
The Society of Professional Journalists, to promote ethical journalism, emphasizes four principles. I teach these to students in my course on Media Law and Ethics. The first is, “Seek truth and report it.” If journalists are denied the right to do that. If they are required instead to report what their owners, publishers, or government tell them to report. We are lost.
#####
#BariWeiss #CBS #EthicalJournalism #ethics #journalism #Media #news #NickBilton #politics #ScottPelley #SixtyMinutes #Trump -
@newsguyusa History repeats this time, not merely rhymes.
"60 Minutes was under incredible pressure from the [President]."
-
@newsguyusa History repeats this time, not merely rhymes.
"60 Minutes was under incredible pressure from the [President]."
-
The unredacted CECOT 60 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIm66Tsao8s
#news #canada #SixtyMinutes #CECOT #resist #censorship -
The unredacted CECOT 60 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIm66Tsao8s
#news #canada #SixtyMinutes #CECOT #resist #censorship -
Brown & Williamson
Bless your little heart if you still believed that CBS News was a source of journalistic integrity, rather than another casualty of shareholder fiduciary responsibility.
-
Brown & Williamson
Bless your little heart if you still believed that CBS News was a source of journalistic integrity, rather than another casualty of shareholder fiduciary responsibility.
-
The segment needs additional redacting... er, editing, I mean, editing... That's the ticket.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/22/cbs-news-delays-60-minutes-segment-featuring-investigation-into-cecot-megaprison
#news #SixtyMinutes #prison #deportation #StateRunMedia #MinistryOfTruth #propaganda #censorship -
The segment needs additional redacting... er, editing, I mean, editing... That's the ticket.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/22/cbs-news-delays-60-minutes-segment-featuring-investigation-into-cecot-megaprison
#news #SixtyMinutes #prison #deportation #StateRunMedia #MinistryOfTruth #propaganda #censorship -
Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It
“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)
I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.
I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.
I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.
This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”
Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.
And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.
By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.
But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.
They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.
NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.
NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–
NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.
Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.
`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long. Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.
We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.
If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.
Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.
It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’
Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.
I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:
- “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
- “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
- “Why won’t Putin end this war?
- “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
- “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”
Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?
But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.
At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).
But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.
There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:
- “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
- “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
- “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
- “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
- “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
- “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
- “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
- “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
- “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
- “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
- “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
- “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.
Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.
CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”
Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.
The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.
- He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
- He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
- He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
- He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
- He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
- He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).
And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it. I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.
The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.
At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post. “And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow! I’m old!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite
-
Is this story why CBS censored them so much that prominent producer quit because he no longer had freedom to make his own stories?
Is this what killed 60 Minutes?
#cbs #sixtyMinutes #60minutes #coup #Musk #trafficConeOfMadness
-
Is this story why CBS censored them so much that prominent producer quit because he no longer had freedom to make his own stories?
Is this what killed 60 Minutes?
#cbs #sixtyMinutes #60minutes #coup #Musk #trafficConeOfMadness
-
FCC’s Gomez (Correctly) Says Brendan Carr Is Abusing FCC Authority To ‘Censor And Control’ Journalists
-
FCC’s Gomez (Correctly) Says Brendan Carr Is Abusing FCC Authority To ‘Censor And Control’ Journalists
-
Reaction: Trump CRUSHED By 60 Minutes For Ducking Interview Before Kamala Makes Her Case - https://youtu.be/Sac2bfTj5xc?si=67CEB1u2wRgP3C50 #USPolitics #vote #vote2024 #2024vote #2024Election #election2024 #DumpTrump #podcast #podcasts #KamalaHarris #TimWalz #Harris_Walz2024 #HarrisWalz #HarrisWalz2024 #TheBulwark #BulwarkMedia #TimMiller #RepublicansAgainstTrump #RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump #60Minutes #SixtyMinutes #HarrisInterview
-
Reaction: Trump CRUSHED By 60 Minutes For Ducking Interview Before Kamala Makes Her Case - https://youtu.be/Sac2bfTj5xc?si=67CEB1u2wRgP3C50 #USPolitics #vote #vote2024 #2024vote #2024Election #election2024 #DumpTrump #podcast #podcasts #KamalaHarris #TimWalz #Harris_Walz2024 #HarrisWalz #HarrisWalz2024 #TheBulwark #BulwarkMedia #TimMiller #RepublicansAgainstTrump #RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump #60Minutes #SixtyMinutes #HarrisInterview
-
Rick Rubin on 60 Minutes, being interviewed by Anderson Cooper.
Anderson wants to know how Rick is successful at producing music...
RR: "The audience comes last."
AC: "How can that be?"
RR: "Well, the audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what's come before." -
Rick Rubin on 60 Minutes, being interviewed by Anderson Cooper.
Anderson wants to know how Rick is successful at producing music...
RR: "The audience comes last."
AC: "How can that be?"
RR: "Well, the audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what's come before."
