Major Shakeup at 60 Minutes as Bari Weiss Fires EP Tanya Simon, Others

(Photo provided by CBS News)

Heads are rolling at 60 Minutes on Thursday as CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reportedly fired the show’s executive producer, Tanya Simon.

“Bari Weiss is preparing to announce broad-sweeping changes at 60 MINUTES *today*…,” Puck’s Dylan Byers posted Thursday on X.

Simon was named EP of the longtime news program in July 2025 after her predecessor, Bill Owens, resigned in protest amid the network’s legal battles with President Donald Trump.

Simon, daughter of the late 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon, began her CBS News tenure in 1996 in various roles for 48 Hours before moving on to 60 Minutes in 2000.

Her work with the program has earned her multiple Emmy Awards, a Peabody, and a DuPont-Columbia Award.

Also let go from 60 Minutes on Thursday was correspondent Cecilia Vega and members of the senior production staff, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.

The show also declined to renew the contract of correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who ran afoul of Weiss when the latter abruptly delayed Alfonsi’s report on migrants deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT mega-prison.

Alfonsi later trashed the decision as a “political one” which amounted to “corporate censorship” in a scathing internal memo to staff.

Earlier this week, Alfonsi went nuclear on CBS brass and Weiss, warning viewers in a lengthy statement not to be “misled” by “any attempts” from the network “to hide behind corporate euphemisms like ‘modernization’ and ‘restructuring’ to explain away my departure.”

“This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” she wrote in a statement published by Byers, adding: “Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes. Today, CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.”

Page Six Hollywood’s Tatiana Siegel later reported that Alfonsi has hired high-powered media lawyer Bryan Freedman – who famously scored Megyn Kelly a $69 million settlement from NBC News when she was fired from the network in 2019.

This is a developing story and has been updated.

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