Top 60 Minutes Correspondent Reportedly Heading For the Exit, Lawyering Up to Take on CBS Leadership

Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi will reportedly end her decade-long run at the top-rated news magazine program at the end of the month after publicly slamming what she sees as “corporate meddling” at CBS News.

Page Six Hollywood’s Tatiana Siegel reported on Friday that sources in the know say CBS will not be renewing Alfonsi’s contract, which expires at the end of the month. Siegel also added that her sources say Alfonsi has hired high-powered media lawyer Bryan Freedman – who famously scored Megyn Kelly as $69 million settlement from NBC News in 2019. Neither CBS nor Freedman did not reply to Siegel’s request for comment on her reporting.

Puck’s Dylan Byers reported earlier in the week that Alfonsi’s exit appeared all but certain after she heavily hinted during an award speech she was going to follow in the footsteps of Bill Owens – the former 60 Minutes executive producer who quit in protest of Shari Redstone’s efforts to appease the Trump administration to smooth over her sale to David Ellison.

“I always said I would follow Bill Owens over a cliff,” she joked while picking up the Ridenhour Prize last week, adding, “and I guess I finally did.”

During her speech, Alfonsi mentioned the headline-grabbing 60 Minutes piece on El Salvador’s CECOT Prison, which was the center of controversy after CBS News editor in chief Bari Wiess pulled it at the last minute, arguing the White House’s response wasn’t well enough included.

“Thank you for this award. I didn’t know that the theme was hope. My hope recently has been that I still have a job,” she said. “And every morning I wake up to another headline that says I’ve been fired.”

“I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents,” Alfonsi continued. “It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear. It’s hard to watch.”

Alfonsi’s CECOT story did eventually air with few changes, given the Trump administration’s unwillingness to respond.

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