Fired 60 Minutes managing editor gives his blunt assessment of new season under Bari Weiss
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A former 60 Minutes managing editor offered his frank assessment of the storied program’s revamp under the leadership of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss.
Guy Campanile, a 34-year network veteran, told The Hollywood Reporter that the 59th season of 60 Minutes — which premiered this month after a wave of staffing changes — has been broadly consistent with previous seasons. But he criticized several segments, including one on the Iran war and another on Patrick Clancy, which he called “a little tabloid-y.”
Campanile was pushed out in May along with several other staff members and journalists, including Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Anchor Anderson Cooper also departed the program that month, while correspondent Scott Pelley was fired in June after reportedly accusing Weiss of “murdering” the flagship news program. A slate of new talent has since been added.
The changes under Weiss — who joined CBS News last October following Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount — have drawn intense scrutiny. Critics have accused her of pushing a pro-Israel agenda and shaping coverage to favor the Trump administration.
Weiss has pushed back and told The Wall Street Journal in June: “What’s being called ‘editorial interference’ is in reality the job description of an editor in chief.”
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Campanile said the first two episodes of the new 60 Minutes season had changed little from prior seasons, despite Weiss’ call for a “new approach.”
“We kept hearing about a notebook full of ideas that the new executive producer had, and the broadcast had been described as a melting ice cube and that changes had to happen,” he told the outlet. “And the broadcast I’ve seen the first few weeks, in the broad strokes, in shape and form, not in content, does not look very different. So I’m trying to understand why it was all blown up.”
Campanile also criticized a segment in the season premiere featuring an interview with a U.S. Air Force officer whose plane was shot down over Iran. Although he said the interview was appropriate, he argued that the report should have examined the broader course of the war.
“Where I, as a viewer, got stuck is how do we have the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in that story,” he said, “and not ask about the conduct, the arc and the status of the war?”
Multiple polls have found that a majority of Americans oppose the Iran conflict, which has lasted nearly seven months with no clear end in sight.
Campanile also took issue with a segment on Patrick Clancy, ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman who killed her three young children. During the interview, Patrick Clancy said he speaks to his dead children “all the time.”
“I think it’s a high-interest story, just like the fighter pilot’s story was a high-interest story, but you have to bring more than just high interest, at least I believe that to be the case, because otherwise it feels a little tabloid-y,” Campanile said. “And I don’t think that’s what people want from 60 Minutes. I just don’t. I think they want something more thoughtful.”
60 Minutes opened its 59th season on September 13 with its smallest premiere audience in at least a quarter-century. About 7.9 million viewers watched the season premiere, down from roughly 10 million for last year’s opener, according to Nielsen data cited by The New York Times.
The network, citing Nielsen data, told The Independent at the time that the season premiere was the week’s number one “non-sports primetime program” among adult viewers and that the show reached some 116.7 million video views across all social platforms.
The Independent has contacted CBS News for comment.
