CBS News will cut ties with “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi after her contract ends at the end of May, according to Page Six, following a dispute last year with Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss over a segment critical of the Trump administration.
Alfonsi, who remains employed this month, has also “engaged” with top Hollywood litigator Bryan Freedman, who has helped negotiate exits for TV news stars Megyn Kelly, Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson, according to Page Six.
A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment on Friday. Alfonsi and Freedman did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.
The report comes as Weiss is expected to make significant changes to the highly rated newsmagazine once its current season ends this month.
Alfonsi, who has been with the newsmagazine since 2015, criticized Weiss’ decision to temporarily hold a segment focused on the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a megaprison in El Salvador — hours before it was set to air — as “not an editorial decision” but “a political one.”
“If the standard for airing a story is that ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the ’60 Minutes’ broadcast,” Alfonsi told her colleagues in December. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
Weiss contended that the “Inside CECOT” segment was held due to a lack of on-record administration responses that advanced the story, though the move spurred fears that it was held to protect parent company Paramount as it sought to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery. Weiss later admitted she should not have pulled the segment just before it aired, though she maintained her position that it needed more work.
While the segment eventually aired the following month, reports emerged of contention between Alfonsi and Weiss over the episode. Alfonsi, who picked up the Ridenhour Courage Prize at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., last week, said during the eventshe found the “CECOT” incident less of an “isolated editorial argument” but “the result of a more aggressive contagion: the toxic spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear.”
Still, she quipped, “My hope recently has been that I still have a job.”
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