Lesley Stahl and two other “60 Minutes” correspondents said on Friday that they would remain in their posts, ending days of speculation about whether a roiling crisis at the CBS News program would leave it entirely deprived of on-air stars.
In a joint email to the show’s staff, Ms. Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim said they would “stay and fight” in order to “repair and preserve” the reputation of the country’s top-rated news program.
“Here’s why we are staying: We don’t want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die,” they wrote.
But the correspondents also expressed deep frustration with the decision by Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor in chief, to fire Tanya Simon, the show’s executive producer, and several longstanding producers and correspondents, calling those exits “heartbreaking.” And they warned that if the program lost its editorial independence, “we leave.”
Ms. Weiss’s moves — including the appointment of Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker with no broadcast news experience, as the program’s new leader — shocked the “60 Minutes” newsroom. In a meeting on Monday, the longtime correspondent Scott Pelley assailed Mr. Bilton and accused Ms. Weiss of “murdering” the show; he was fired the next day.
In the days since, Mr. Bilton scrambled to persuade Ms. Stahl, Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Wertheim to remain. At a dinner with Ms. Stahl, Mr. Bilton offered assurances that he would preserve the show’s journalistic rigor; on Thursday, he emailed the staff promising that “60 Minutes” would stay editorially independent from its parent company, which is controlled by the tech scion David Ellison, who appointed Ms. Weiss.
CBS News said in a statement on Friday, “We’re excited for Season 59 with Lesley, Bill and Jon as star correspondents, and Nick at the helm.”
Ms. Stahl, in an interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she and her fellow correspondents had reached their decision after a marathon of calls and video chats across multiple continents. (Mr. Wertheim is in Paris, covering the French Open.)
Ms. Stahl said their decision to stay would be reversed if Mr. Bilton did not live up to his promises. “We’re more or less taking his word for it,” she said. “But if what he was talking about in his statement doesn’t work, we’re going to leave.”
For Ms. Weiss and CBS management, the correspondents’ decision will come as some relief. “60 Minutes” is set to begin its next season in September. The chaos affecting the news division’s most popular show had led some journalists there to worry that it might be difficult to prepare segments in time — particularly if the three remaining correspondents quit. (CBS News has said it plans to hire additional correspondents soon.)
Mr. Bilton, however, will still need to rally his new staff. “We are working to build trust with Nick,” the correspondents wrote.
But they also lamented the abrupt firings of their colleagues, whom they said “were treated so shabbily, with such indecency.” They added: “We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure. That is simply, categorically not the case.”
Ms. Stahl said that she remained confused about Ms. Weiss’s decision to fire Ms. Simon and her deputy, Draggan Mihailovich. Ms. Stahl said she received a call from Ms. Weiss shortly after Ms. Simon was fired, but that Ms. Weiss didn’t elaborate on her thinking about the decisions.
“She felt like she had to do these firings, but there was no explanation for why,” Ms. Stahl said. “Why Tanya? Why Draggan? What had they done? We’re baffled.”
In response to questions about the firings at “60 Minutes,” a CBS News spokesman said the company’s leaders felt they had explained their decisions in a memo last week about their “new approach” to the program.
In the interview, Ms. Stahl said that she, Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Wertheim had agreed to make a collective decision about whether to remain, saying they believed it was the best approach to accomplish their goal of preserving the program.
That was a departure from the competitive environment at “60 Minutes,” where correspondents can sometimes jockey for big interviews.
“We don’t really collaborate with each other much,” Ms. Stahl said. “This was unusual.”
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
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