Vega made remarks to ABC’s John Quiñones at National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference
Uwa Ede-Osifo at The Guardian:
Cecilia Vega, the former 60 Minutes correspondent, said on Thursday she felt pressured by CBS News’s executives to incorporate “political bias” into segments for the broadcast program. Vega made the remarks during an onstage interview with John Quiñones, the ABC News correspondent, at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual conference in New Orleans. Her comments were first reported by Status. “I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega said, according to the New York Times. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
As she was wrapping up a segment on the deadly federal immigration operations in Minnesota, during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot two American citizens, Vega said, she was instructed to include footage of protesters attacking ICE agents, MS Now reported. The footage did not exist, according to Vega. She also was questioned on why she did not interview JD Vance for a segment on poverty in West Virginia. The piece was centered on the Trump administration’s slashes to Snap benefits, according to MS Now. Vega also said she was asked to report on comments from the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, suggesting he wanted local police to fight federal immigration agents in the state, despite no evidence of such comments.
Former 60 Minutes journalist Cecilia Vega revealed to ABC’s John Quiñones at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists gathering that she was pressured by Bari Weiss to put in stories that have a clear political bias in favor of Weiss’s vision for CBS News.
