Unprecedented curbs on editorial independence and firings have put the US’s top television news programme into turmoil.
The recent upheaval at 60 Minutes – the US’s longest-running news programme, which airs on Sunday evenings on CBS – amounts to a straightforward political story. In October 2024, Donald Trump, who had long characterised much of the mainstream media as an “enemy of the American people”, sued the network over a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris on the show that, he alleged, had been edited to make her look better. He demanded $10bn (€8.7bn) in damages and called for CBS to be stripped of its licence. In July 2025, in an attempt to appease the president and usher in new, deep-pocketed owners, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, agreed to a $16m (€14m) settlement. A new senior editorial team was installed soon afterwards. Helmed by columnist and TV news novice Bari Weiss, the change has steered 60 Minutes towards more White House-friendly territory.
Cue the unceremonious firing of long-serving senior staff; the decision to allow Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to cherry-pick his interviewer; and the showdown between incoming executive producer, Nick Bilton (also a TV newbie) and seasoned correspondent Scott Pelley, which led to the latter’s firing by email.
Yet this almost 60-year-old show, with a format hardly tinkered with until now, is still the most-watched news programme in the US. And its audience still seems to be growing. It has forged a reputation as television journalism’s north star for good reason. Within the parameters of its famous format – the motif of a ticking stop-clock, the scripted segment introductions – 60 Minutes has continued to reshape the idea of how to report the news on TV and which stories to tell. Nielsen, the ratings-tracking agency, reported that the number of viewers tuning in had increased by 9 per cent over the past year.
“It’s a very old-fashioned formula,” the programme’s then executive producer, Bill Owens, told me in Toronto in 2023. (Owens resigned in April 2025, citing concerns over editorial meddling in the output of 60 Minutes under Weiss’s stewardship of CBS News.) “It hasn’t changed at all over 55 years,” he added. “We’ve profiled everyone from Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen. Actors, thieves, poets – you name them. People scream and curse at us from the right and the left. We like it that way. That’s why we remain important in the lives of American news audiences. It’s part of the fabric.”
Well-established news formats have an advantage over newer ones when it comes to their relationships with audiences: trust. The assumption that a long-standing title, particularly if it’s still popular, must be reinvented just because it is old couldn’t be lazier. A newsroom is only as strong as its bond with its viewers. Once that’s lost, it’s difficult to get it back.
Yes, audiences are changing. Owens acknowledged this. “It’s challenging,” he said. “We’ve also lost share of the audience but that’s because the entire broadcast television audience has gotten smaller. Where we have seen dramatic gains are on our digital platform and our Youtube numbers have doubled this year. If people are still getting the quality journalism that 60 Minutes has been bringing people for more than five decades, they’ll continue to tune in.”
But changing tastes need to be catered to carefully, particularly in a news ecosystem where information, often of dubious origin, is more readily available than ever. Under its new management, the clock appears to be ticking on one of the US’s most successful and lucrative news formats. It would be a mistake to let it stop entirely.
Tomos Lewis is Monocle’s Toronto correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
