CBS News declined to renew its contract with the “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, six months after her segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly by the news division’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
Ms. Alfonsi’s deal expired on Saturday. She said in a phone interview that her agent’s inquiries with CBS News over the past several weeks had been met with silence.
“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Ms. Alfonsi said. “I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”
Ms. Alfonsi remains employed at CBS, but with no contract in place, she said she had no expectation of returning to “60 Minutes.” “I’m not resigning,” she said. “If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”
CBS News declined to comment on Ms. Alfonsi’s remarks or her future at the network.
Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist whose tenure has drawn enormous scrutiny, is readying a significant shake-up at “60 Minutes,” her network’s flagship news series.
Among her ideas are introducing a raft of new contributing journalists, adding shorter digital segments and developing “60 Minutes”-themed live events, akin to The New Yorker Festival, where viewers could meet star correspondents like Lesley Stahl, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking.
The fate of Tanya Simon, the program’s executive producer, is also unclear. Ms. Weiss is considering hiring an outside journalist to oversee or work alongside Ms. Simon, the people said.
Ms. Alfonsi has contributed to “60 Minutes” since 2015. She was at the center of a firestorm in December after Ms. Weiss, who was appointed by CBS’s new owner, David Ellison, pulled a 13-minute segment that Ms. Alfonsi had reported on harsh conditions faced by Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration.
At the time, Ms. Alfonsi called the decision “political” in an email to colleagues. Ms. Weiss rejected that charge, saying that the reporting “was not ready”; she had suggested several last-minute editorial changes, including that the reporters seek an interview with Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s immigration policy.
The segment eventually aired in its entirety one month later, with additional comments from the Trump administration tacked on. Ms. Alfonsi continued to appear on “60 Minutes” through the end of this season, which concluded on May 17.
Any re-engineering at “60 Minutes” by Ms. Weiss would amount to both a pivotal moment of her tenure and a major gamble. The show, which debuted in 1968, is still the country’s highest-rated television newsweekly, and its viewership this season was up 9 percent from the year before, according to Nielsen.
Her other signature initiative, the remaking of “CBS Evening News,” has suffered from low viewership and some embarrassing errors. The network failed to secure a visa for the show’s anchor, Tony Dokoupil, to visit China for Mr. Trump’s recent diplomatic trip, which led to some mockery from the former CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert.
“60 Minutes” has a long tradition of autonomy within CBS News, a source of tension for generations of network executives. In the interview, Ms. Alfonsi said that she felt anxious about the program’s future. “For the last 60 years it’s been the same formula: tell the truth, hold the power accountable, don’t blink,” she said. “And it’s unclear what next season looks like.”
“There’s a feeling that the wall has come down between editorial independence and corporate interests,” she added. “The concern is we’re going to end up with a broadcast that looks like ‘60 Minutes’ but doesn’t have the courage or the character to produce ‘60 Minutes’ journalism that actually matters.”
The uproar over the Salvadoran prison segment came about in part because of Ms. Alfonsi’s email that criticized management, a rarity in the network news business. Some CBS executives privately described her actions as insubordinate. Ms. Alfonsi said that she did not regret sending the email. “I know they said that I was being difficult, but I believed I was doing my job,” she said.
Ms. Alfonsi would be the second “60 Minutes” correspondent to depart since Ms. Weiss joined CBS. Anderson Cooper said in February that he would leave the program after 20 years.
In a farewell appearance this month, Mr. Cooper told viewers that he hoped “‘60 Minutes’ remains ‘60 Minutes,’” and added, in comments that were perceived as a subtle dig at CBS: “The independence of ‘60 Minutes’ has been critical. The trust it has with viewers is critical to the success of ‘60 Minutes.’”
Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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