Cecilia Vega and Bari Weiss Gregg DeGuire/Variety/Getty Images; Noam Galai/Getty Images Cecilia Vega, the former 60 Minutes correspondent who was fired in May, is reflecting on her time with the newsmagazine, alleging that she felt pressure to insert political bias into segments that did not make it to air.
In an interview with ABC News’ John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, Vega alleged that higher-ups requested specific changes to three of her segments from this year that she could did find evidence for, per The New York Times.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” she said at the Thursday conference. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
Per the Times, Vega said executives asked her to add video of protestors attacking citizens whom they thought were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a January segment about ICE; she was also asked to add video of a police chief rolling his eyes during a news conference. Vega did not find video of either incidents, she said.
The ex-60 Minutes correspondent also said in a February segment about West Virginia poverty, she was asked to mention Vice President JD Vance, as he’d previously written about poverty in Ohio. “She said the piece was not focused on politicians or political voices,” the Times notes.
The third requested changed, Vega said per the Times, was to include a line saying Iran was outgunned by the United States and Israel in another segment. Vega described it as “an administration talking point.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to CBS News for comment.
Vega previously claimed she had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories” in a statement after her firing. “Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions,” she wrote at the time.
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven,” Vega added. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.” At the time, a CBS News spokesperson said in response to her statement, “We respect Ms. Vega and her contributions, but her claims are not based in reality.”
Vega was fired from 60 Minutes as part of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss‘ major overhaul that also saw the dismissal of executive producer Tanya Simon, Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi. Pelley was fired after an intense meeting with 60 Minutes‘ new EP, Nick Bilton, where he claimed that Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” He also told Bilton that he had “slender qualifications” for the job, and suggested he was not welcome at the flagship newsmagazine.
After the news was announced that he was let go from 60 Minutes, Pelley released a statement where he accused Weiss of “incompetence and unprofessionalism,” and claimed that CBS News management “instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
Weiss pushed back against Pelley during a morning call with staff shortly after, arguing that he broke “trust and mutual respect.”
Status newsletter was the first to report on Vega’s remarks at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference.
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