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It’s amusing to see the legacy media react when a conservative gets hired for a prestigious role, such as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. This was the case with the recent hiring of Ross Douthat, formerly of the New York Times.
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Poynter‘s Tom Jones wrote that the move “fuels concerns … for those who fear Weiss will push CBS News and even the irreproachable 60 Minutes to the Right.”
Whose concerns and fears, exactly?
Weiss also announced that, in addition to Douthat, Norah O’Donnell was also getting a promotion on the news magazine that will launch its 59th season next month. The one-time MSNBC anchor comes from the Left, as most notably evidenced by her co-moderation of the lone vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz in 2024.
At one point, when Vance challenged an incorrect fact-check by O’Donnell and co-moderator Margaret Brennan, they proceeded to cut off the microphones to avoid being embarrassed by the future vice president any further.
And earlier this year, O’Donnell decided to read a portion of a deranged manifesto written by Cole Allen to President Donald Trump, who had been charged with attempting to assassinate him at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April.
“Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people,” Trump answered. “Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
“Do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell followed.
“I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all … stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably…’ I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
Apparently, if O’Donnell is promoted by CBS, it’s not controversial at all. But if Douthat is hired, that shows Bari Weiss is trying to turn her news division into a far-Right outlet.
The Douthat hire is either “an inspired, out-of-the-box great hire meant to shake life into a long-running news show,” Poynter‘s Jones writes, or it’s “just further proof of a network desperately pushing to the right, even if it means remodeling a show that was already perfectly built.”
Perfectly built?
This is the same 60 Minutes that infamously edited an interview with Kamala Harris shortly before the 2024 election that showed a rambling word salad as one answer and a relatively more coherent response as a second answer to the same question. CBS, pre-Weiss, then refused to release the full transcript of the interview. Trump sued, citing attempted election interference. CBS eventually settled for $15 million.
This is also the same 60 Minutes that insisted the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop shortly before the 2020 presidential election could not be verified and likely was the product of Russian misinformation.
Other publications also took umbrage with the Douthat hiring, including the Daily Beast with this doozy of a headline:
“Religious zealot unveiled as new star of ’60 Minutes'”
These moves came as the program had been reduced to three correspondents. After Weiss was hired by CBS News, Anderson Cooper announced he was leaving the program while remaining on CNN. Scott Pelley was outright fired for accusing his new boss, executive producer Nick Bilton, of “murdering the show” while openly questioning his qualifications for the job in a staff meeting.
According to several reports of the clash. Pelley told Bilton that Weiss “does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that” while alleging she “has no qualifications for her job,” and calling Bilton’s resume “slender.”
When asked by the New York Times after his firing how he was feeling, Pelley bizarrely compared himself to a member of the U.S. military while lambasting Trump.
“I’ve never worn the uniform, but I’ve been in combat for this country. In Afghanistan, and Iraq, Kuwait. Been shot at. Spent nights in foxholes filling up with water in the desert,” he said, fighting back tears. “I’m not aware that the president has ever done any of those things for his country. You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment, you love the country. While all the other descriptions the president used about me might be applicable, not that one.”
Does that sound like an objective arbiter of news to you?
Weiss, despite being heavily criticized by the Left for having the audacity to think outside the box while attempting to bring CBS back to the center, has seen 60 Minutes‘ ratings improve markedly since signing on. Overall, the program averaged 9.1 million viewers throughout the 2025-2026 season — a nearly 10% increase from the previous season. And in the key 25-54 demographic that advertisers covet most, the show saw a 5% jump.
Overall, Weiss took over a third-place news division in a three-horse race when competing against ABC and NBC. Like any last-place team, maintaining the status quo could no longer be an option.
Changes had to be made.
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And yes, hiring one conservative for its top news program that had been drifting too far to the Left is the type of unique thinking that may be high risk, but also high reward.
Ross Douthat is a 60 Minutes correspondent. Deal with it.
