Unless you take the accusations of fascism seriously.

I can’t take the fascist accusation seriously, however there is a decidedly faint odour of Bonapartism wafting about Washington as of late. I suspect the stench will become stronger once the midterms are past and “His Exalted Loathsomeness” officially becomes a lame duck.

@Horace said:

The only objective thing will be the ratings. If you believe "reputation" is objectively measurable, then I'd be curious what 60 minutes' objective reputation is at this moment, and why you will find so many people who disagree that that is the objective reputation.

This is the only place I'm aware of that does regular bias and accuracy measurements for almost every program you've heard of.

Reliability = Higher is better.
Bias = 0 is neutral, negative number is liberal, positive number is conservative.

Current scores:

60 Minutes
Reliability: +35
Bias: -9
https://adfontesmedia.com/60-minutes-bias-and-reliability/

FOx News
Reliability: +28
Biast: +18
Source: https://adfontesmedia.com/fox-news-primetime-bias-and-reliability/

ChatGPT:
There is some evidence that 60 Minutes has leaned left in recent political coverage, but it is not as clean as “historically left-biased” in the simple partisan sense. The better claim is:

On culture-war and Trump-era political stories, 60 Minutes has often looked establishment-liberal / anti-Trump / institutionally Democratic in topic selection, framing, and editing choices. But it has also run stories damaging to Democrats or liberal institutions, so the evidence is uneven rather than dispositive.

The main evidence buckets:

1. Third-party bias ratings put 60 Minutes left of center

Ad Fontes rates CBS: 60 Minutes at Bias: -9.79, where negative means left and positive means right, with reliability 34.96. That is not “far left”; it is more like skewed left but still in mainstream news/analysis territory. Ad Fontes says it uses panels with left-, right-, and center-leaning analysts to review sample content. (Ad Fontes Media)

AllSides rates CBS News Online as Lean Left and reports that CBS’s audience is disproportionately left-of-center: about 39% left/left-of-center and 20% right/right-of-center, compared with 38% right/right-of-center in the general survey baseline. That is not 60 Minutes specifically, but it supports the broader CBS News environment critique. (AllSides)

2. The DeSantis / Publix vaccine segment is one of the strongest examples

In 2021, 60 Minutes ran a segment implying a possible pay-for-play relationship between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Publix over vaccine distribution. The criticism was that the show aired a compressed exchange and omitted context that made DeSantis’s answer look less responsive and more damning than the longer answer did.

The Florida governor’s office called the segment “false, defamatory and partisan,” accusing 60 Minutes of misrepresenting the vaccine rollout. (Florida Governor's Office) The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, not exactly a MAGA house organ, criticized the segment under the headline “60 Minutes embraces innuendo in Ron DeSantis story,” focusing on the editing and the insinuation. (The Washington Post)

That is probably the best concrete example of editing/framing that plausibly harmed a Republican politician through insinuation more than proof.

3. The Kamala Harris interview editing controversy gave critics a very concrete artifact

Trump sued CBS/Paramount over the editing of the 2024 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount later settled for $16 million, and as part of the resolution CBS agreed that 60 Minutes would release transcripts of future presidential-candidate interviews, subject to limited redactions. (PBS)

That does not prove CBS legally admitted deceptive editing. In fact, AP notes that 60 Minutes released the full unedited transcript in February 2025, and the settlement did not mean CBS admitted wrongdoing. (The Associated Press) But politically, the episode gave the right a simple, quantifiable accusation: the edited version seemed more favorable to Harris than the rawer answer critics thought viewers should have seen.

For “evidence of left bias,” this is less strong than the DeSantis example if you mean “proven journalistic misconduct,” but it is strong if you mean “why many people think the show protects Democrats from looking bad.”

4. The Hunter Biden laptop exchange aged badly

In Trump’s 2020 60 Minutes interview, Lesley Stahl pushed back on Trump’s Hunter Biden laptop claims as not verified at the time. Later, CBS itself reported in 2022 that a forensic review found data on a copy of the laptop appeared authentic and had no clear evidence of fabrication. (CBS News)

This is a classic example of what conservatives call liberal media bias by premature dismissal: treating a politically damaging Democratic scandal as too dubious to discuss, while treating less-certain allegations against Republicans as more newsworthy. To be fair, in October 2020 there really were provenance and disinformation concerns. But the asymmetry critique is not crazy.

5. Conservative media-watchdog studies argue the pattern is broader

The Media Research Center and Daily Signal have repeatedly argued that 60 Minutes favors liberal narratives and omits inconvenient facts. The Daily Signal’s 2025 critique specifically accused the show of “bias by omission” and framed the Harris editing controversy and other segments as evidence of liberal slant. (

I would treat MRC/Daily Signal as advocacy evidence, not neutral measurement. They are explicitly conservative institutions. But they are useful for identifying the bill of particulars: selective editing, story choice, hostile Republican interviews, softer Democratic treatment, and omission of facts that complicate liberal narratives.

6. But “historically left-biased” is complicated by counterexamples

The strongest counterexample is the 2013 Benghazi debacle. 60 Minutes aired a damaging story about the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi that later collapsed because a key source was unreliable. CBS apologized and faced calls for investigation. (The Guardian)

That was not left-biased; if anything, it helped a Republican line of attack against Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. So a blanket claim that 60 Minutes has always simply functioned as Democratic propaganda is too crude.

My read

The evidence supports this narrower claim:

In the Trump/DeSantis/Biden-Harris era, 60 Minutes has shown a measurable and observable left-of-center institutional bias, especially in framing, editing, story selection, and skepticism asymmetry.

The evidence does not fully support this stronger claim:

“60 Minutes has always been straightforwardly left-wing journalism.”

The strongest hard evidence is the Ad Fontes left-of-center rating, the DeSantis/Pulbix edit/framing controversy, the Harris interview editing settlement/transcript policy, and the Hunter Biden laptop skepticism that later looked overconfident. The best rebuttal is that 60 Minutes has also produced major stories damaging to Democrats and liberal institutions, sometimes disastrously so, as with Benghazi.

@89th said:

@Horace said:

Btw @89th do you have a particular reason for believing his bosses deserved that treatment, beyond a vague suspicion that they're Trumpy? I know Weiss doesn't hate Trump unconditionally, but she's hardly a fangirl. And I doubt you'll find any sound bites from Bilton that register as Trump affiliated.

I mean, all I know is Pelley has dedicated a few decades to the show, in warzones, and has stated (and I haven't seen evidence to the contrary) that him and leadership have pushed hard for journalism excellence over the years, perhaps not always succeeding but as I've watched 60 Minutes for years, compared to most other news programs, it is top tier. Then you have the show's producer removed, 4 on-air correspondents are gone in the last month, and Weiss brings in someone to oversee it with zero broadcast TV news experience. So yeah, I'd say Pelley is correct in that these moves are murdering 60 Minutes. I could be wrong, but my guess is the 60 Minutes we've known for decades will collapse into a streaming youtube series in a few years because....digitize!

This is just pure narrative. War correspondent idolatry, really? That's so 50 years ago. Pelley reads from a teleprompter as the great majority of his actual job. His pushback against these leadership changes is not about journalism quality, which, again, would have to be demonstrated. It is obviously about cultural tribalism, and obviously that's the same reason you're unequivocally on his side.

The idea that the show is being "murdered" would have to be demonstrated with viewership statistics. It's not as if shakeups in legacy media are necessarily motivated by anything but the marketplace. You being part of a marketplace fringe currently is neither here nor there in terms of what is or is not of high journalistic quality, or high ethical integrity. You have no reason to believe that Bilton will be more malleable in his journalistic integrity than the previous bosses, who did in fact get their hands caught in the cookie jar from time to time.

I asked ChatGPT.

is there any quantifiable impact on 60 minutes viewership numbers after CBS changed leadership?

ChatGPT:
Yes, but with a big caveat: the quantifiable effect so far is positive for the 2025–26 season, but it does not yet tell us what the newest CBS/60 Minutes shakeup will do.

The cleanest before/after numbers I found:

CBS/Paramount says 60 Minutes averaged 9.1 million viewers in Season 58, up 9% from Season 57, and was also up 5% in adults 25–54. (Paramount Press Express) The prior season’s comparable CBS figure was 8.32 million viewers. (Paramount Press Express)

But I would not interpret that as “the new leadership boosted the show.” It is only a correlation. 60 Minutes ratings are heavily affected by NFL lead-ins, big-news cycles, episode topics, scheduling, measurement changes, and the fact that the core brand is unusually strong.

The more recent and more dramatic change—Tanya Simon out, Nick Bilton in, Bari Weiss-led CBS News changes, major correspondent departures—has not really had enough aired episodes yet to measure cleanly. Reuters reported Bilton’s appointment only about a week ago, replacing Simon. (Reuters) The Guardian and others are reporting major staff upheaval now, but they frame the audience impact as an open question, not something already demonstrated in ratings. (The Guardian)

So the answer is:

Measured season-over-season: viewership is up about 9%.
Measured after the newest leadership purge: too soon; no reliable quantifiable audience effect yet.

A fairer test will be Season 59’s fall 2026 premiere and the first 6–8 regular episodes, preferably compared against similar fall weeks and adjusted for NFL lead-ins.

@NobodySock said:

When a politixal idealogy doesnt just border on insanity but gives new meaning to the word, how do you expect rational people to react? It’s not tribalism, it’s humanity talking back to selfishness, greed and pride.

It's not everybody, dude. Though it might be easy to assume a broader based hysteria, based on much of what goes on in this particular corner of the internet. And other corners, like Reddit or Bluesky.

Even the hollywood types are breaking ranks with hysterical hatred of all things directionally Trump. This guy is pretty famous, for instance. Go Spencer Pratt!

@Horace said:

Btw @89th do you have a particular reason for believing his bosses deserved that treatment, beyond a vague suspicion that they're Trumpy? I know Weiss doesn't hate Trump unconditionally, but she's hardly a fangirl. And I doubt you'll find any sound bites from Bilton that register as Trump affiliated.

I mean, all I know is Pelley has dedicated a few decades to the show, in warzones, and has stated (and I haven't seen evidence to the contrary) that him and leadership have pushed hard for journalism excellence over the years, perhaps not always succeeding but as I've watched 60 Minutes for years, compared to most other news programs, it is top tier. Then you have the show's producer removed, 4 on-air correspondents are gone in the last month, and Weiss brings in someone to oversee it with zero broadcast TV news experience. So yeah, I'd say Pelley is correct in that these moves are murdering 60 Minutes. I could be wrong, but my guess is the 60 Minutes we've known for decades will collapse into a streaming youtube series in a few years because....digitize!

@jon-nyc said:

89 has a thread on this. You should unblock him.

Lol.