Category: News

60 Minutes debuted its new season on Sunday with an exclusive sit down with an Air Force officer who told of his harrowing rescue in Iran. It featured a hideen camera segment on pardon brokers who collect hundreds of thousands or even millions to try to secure Trump’s clemency. And it profile the Los Angeles Rams and head coach Sean McVay.

Yet despite new graphics, the debut of new correspondent Ross Douthat for its one-minute ender, and an increased social media presence, the show had much the same look and feel of previous seasons. The story selection was in the realm of past seasons.

What is different, though, is the extra scrutiny the show is under, in the wake of the purge last spring of executive producer Tanya Simon and top producers, as well as correspondents Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley, each of whom has accused the executive higher ups of interference. Just this past week, the former managing editor called the show “a casualty of corporate priorities and ideological intrusion.” CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss pushed back on the claim in June, telling The Wall Street Journal, “What’s being called ‘editorial interference’ is in reality the job description of an editor in chief.” And shortly after he became the new executive producer, Nick Bilton told staffers that the show “will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on these stories.”

The corporate ownership has done plenty to raise suspicions, starting with the decision by the previous owners of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, to settle a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against the network for the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. Then, new owners Skydance have waged a not-so-subtle effort to woo Trump as it sought administration sign off for its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Interference or not, the risk that 60 Minutes faces is ratings, or losing the show’s position as the No. 1 news show on television.

The first segment was Norah O’Donnell’s exclusive sit down with an Air Force colonel whose plane was shot down over Iran, who relayed the story of his survival and then rescue, calling it a “modern day miracle.” The network had extensive cooperation from the Pentagon, with interviews with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as declassified footage of the operation.

The segment was narrowly focused on the rescue itself, as the officer described his free fall, major injuries and his ascent up a 7,000 foot ridgeline before being spotted two days later. The officer said at the end of the segment, “It’s a story of the teamwork, the training, of the faith, of the decisions and the leadership to do something that will live in history as an example of what America’s willing to do, in order to uphold our promise and leave no man behind.”

The sit down was one that all networks crave, and it is one that the Pentagon has been anxious to promote. There was a mention during the segment of the “costly and unpopular war that has taken the lives of 18 service members.” It remains to be seen how 60 Minutes will explore further aspects of the conflict, and if it will turn its attention to one of the more alarming stories circling in D.C.: Hegseth’s purge of top experienced generals.

The next segment put a spotlight on pardon brokers, with a hidden camera used to capture two of them, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, as they tried to entice Ammon Covino, a convicted felon, and his wife, Crystal, into spending $300,000 for their alleged ability to get a pardon request in front of Donald Trump.

The camera caught Burkman telling them, “You have to put pressure on the president from all directions in a consistent way to force his hand. We literally want to put the pen in his hand and get him to sign it because he’s tired of hearing about it.”

The show pointed out that Burkman and Wohl are well known for their political stunts, so their involvement in business of pardon brokering isn’t all that shocking. In the footage that aired, they didn’t seem all that rattled by the revelation of a hidden camera. They also tried to engage in a bit of relativism, i.e. that their activity was little different from what went on in the Biden and Obama administration.

That’s why the more telling moment of Lesley Stahl’s segment were the stats: About 70% of Trump’s clemencies in his second term have not gone through the standard channels the DOJ. If the president’s pardons of the January 6th rioters are included, the figure is 92%. And while the White House claimed that Trump was behaving in an “ethically sound manner,” the segment pointedly featured a college professor who said that, despite the proliferation of brokers charging ever higher fees, “in the end, it falls on the administration.”

Also important is that the show ran through some of the notables who did get pardons, including the CEO of Binance who “boosted a Trump family crypto venture, though both sides deny any connection to the pardon,” Stahl noted.

The third segment was devoted to the Los Angeles Rams, with 60 Minutes and Bill Wertheim getting access to its preseason practice, billing the team “as maybe the — premier NFL franchise: blue chip; gold standard.”

There wasn’t mention of the drubbing that the Rams took in its opener against the 49ers, but that was perhaps foreshadowed by McVay during his interview. He said, “Success is never linear, you know? It’s– it– it’s always up and down.” He also admitted that he was “not in a good place right now,” referring to the progress of practice.

Douthat appeared for the closing segment, The Last Minute, to talk about the latest warnings about AI, but he also made a pitch for the show’s future, with the drama of the last year left unsaid. “We may have a narrow window this year, not the next 10, to make artificial intelligence safe for humanity,” he said. “That clock is ticking, and so is ours. For almost 60 years, it has meant the same thing: Journalism you can trust. Where we’re headed, we’re going to need it.”

As Jimmy Kimmel‘s interview with James Talarico nears 7 million views on YouTube, FCC chairman Brendan Carr weighed in on Saturday evening, accusing the Texas U.S. Senate candidate of orchestrating a “hoax” to drive up “clicks and donations.”

Earlier this week, Kimmel told viewers that he would be sitting down with an interview with Talarico for his ABC late-night show, but that it would be posted to YouTube and not broadcast because of the FCC’s crackdown on its equal time rule.

In a post on X, Carr accused Talarico of “just running the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations — he’s banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings.”

He also posted a meme of Talarico riding on a bicycle on Kimmel’s back before Kimmel puts a stick in the spokes and it crashes to the ground.

A Talarico campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Kimmel interview had drawn 6.8 million views as of Saturday evening.

In February, Stephen Colbert posted an interview with Talarico to YouTube, telling viewers that he was warned by network executives about featuring the candidate on the broadcast. That interview generated 9.6 million views on YouTube. Like the Kimmel interview, the YouTube views were well over the average audience for the actual late-night broadcast.

In an interview this week, Talarico characterized the Kimmel incident as government censorship and a form of “cancel culture.” He also posted the interview to X, calling it “the interview Trump’s FCC doesn’t want you to see.”

For decades, daytime and late-night TV talk shows have operated on the assumption that they were exempt from the FCC’s equal time rule, which requires broadcasters who feature candidates to provide comparable time to their rivals, if it is requested. News coverage and news interviews have been exempt from the requirements, and the rule also does not apply cable or streaming, where the FCC’s authority is limited.

But in January, the FCC under Carr, appointed by Donald Trump, issued guidance to broadcasters that TV talk shows actually may not be exempt, a move that critics saw as a regulatory effort to crack down on daytime and late-night hosts the president does not like. Within weeks, the agency launched an investigation of ABC’s The View after it featured Talarico as a guest.

Until now, Carr had yet to weigh in on Kimmel’s latest criticisms and the decision to move the interview to YouTube. The late night host called the FCC’s equal time enforcement threats an effort to “make our editorial decisions for us, which of course we cannot accept.”

On Thursday, a White House spokesperson said that Kimmel was “play acting” to “create a false narrative,” and that Carr “has not threatened him regarding interviewing James Talarico, or any other candidate.”

Carr has denied that the FCC’s stricter enforcement of the equal time rule was an attempt to censor guests.

On X, Carr posted, “The Equal Time statute does not prohibit anyone from interviewing anyone on broadcast tv. It is about more speech, not less. Congress wanted to ensure that voters would decide elections, not media gatekeepers picking winners and losers by providing preferential airtime to some candidates and not others. Indeed, when the statute applies, it simply requires broadcast stations to offer comparable time and placement. And comparable does not necessarily mean an interview by the same person on the same program either.”

Carr’s comments were in response to a post from University of Texas Democrats, who noted the appearance of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on ESPN’s College GameDay on Saturday. The group posted on X, “So I can’t watch Talarico on Kimmel but I have to watch Ted Cruz on GameDay?”

The FCC chairman noted that the equal time rule would not apply to Cruz’s appearance because it was on a cable network and because the regulation covers only legal qualified candidates, or contenders who are in the midst of an election campaign. Cruz is not up for reelection this year; Talarico’s Republican rival is Ken Paxton.

ABC is challenging the FCC’s enforcement of the rule when it comes to The View, pointing out that the agency affirmed its exemption from the regulation in a 2002 letter.

The network also has sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds. It claims that the agency’s order that its eight owned stations submit to early license renewals is a form of regulatory retaliation, due to the Trump administration’s dislike of its news coverage and other content including The View and Kimmel.

In his post, Carr again defended the FCC’s regulatory efforts as within the bounds of the agency’s authority.

He wrote, “In exchange for that free and exclusive right to use spectrum, broadcasters made a deal with the American people. They agreed to operate, not in their own narrow interests, but in the public interest. There are various rules and policies that they must follow. This sets them apart from newspapers and cable shows and podcasts. But some broadcasters want to break their deal with the American people. They want to keep their free access to billions of dollars worth of spectrum, of course. They are less eager these days to abide by their public interest obligations.”

ABC’s legal team has argued that the FCC is engaging in selective enforcement, as its January guidance did not target conservative talk radio, and wrote that the equal time rule is unworkable for shows like The View as it puts network stations on the hook for time to potentially dozens of candidates on the ballot. Kimmel said this week that he would love to interview Paxton, but “our affiliates in Texas would have to give equal time to as many candidates as there are on the ballot. There’s about 10 candidates on the ballot.”