Lesley Stahl reportedly signed a new two-year contract to remain at “60 Minutes,” providing a vote of confidence in the newsmagazine after weeks of turmoil at the iconic broadcast.
Stahl, 84, finalized the deal in recent days, the Status newsletter reported late Wednesday.
The agreement came just days after she and fellow correspondents Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim announced in a joint memo that they would remain at “60 Minutes” despite expressing outrage over a recent purge that rocked the program.
The contract also marked a significant win for CBS News as it attempts to stabilize the show following a controversial overhaul headed by Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss.
The shakeup claimed executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, senior executive producer Draggan Mihailovich, veteran producer Guy Campanile and digital operations chief Matthew Polevoy.
Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley was fired after publicly confronting management over the dismissals.
According to Status, Stahl’s new deal was negotiated by powerhouse CAA chief Bryan Lourd.
The report said he worked primarily with CBS television chief George Cheeks and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski to finalize the agreement.
The contract caps one of the most turbulent periods in the nearly six-decade history of “60 Minutes” that began with Weiss’s intervention in a report by Alfonsi about El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
After Weiss yanked the piece just ahead of its originally scheduled broadcast, saying it needed additional reporting, Alfonsi accused CBS News leadership of attempting to “sanitize accurate reporting”
The report eventually aired with added comments from the Trump administration.
Questions about Weiss’s editorial approach intensified after her handling of other politically sensitive stories, including coverage involving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war in Gaza.
Current and former staffers increasingly voiced concerns that editorial decisions were being influenced by factors beyond traditional journalistic considerations, allegations that CBS News has repeatedly denied.
The situation came to a head last month when Weiss removed Simon, Mihailovich, Alfonsi, Vega, Campanile and Polevoy in a sweeping restructuring of the newsmagazine.
The firings triggered a revolt inside “60 Minutes,” with staffers demanding explanations for why some of the show’s most senior journalists and producers had been shown the door.
Days later, Weiss installed former New York Times columnist and filmmaker Nick Bilton as executive producer.
During his introductory meeting with staff, Pelley confronted Bilton and accused Weiss of “murdering” “60 Minutes,” claiming she had been “brought in to kill it.”
CBS News fired Pelley the next day.
Amid the tumult, Paramount CEO David Ellison personally called Stahl and promised to respect the editorial independence of “60 Minutes,” according to the New York Times.
Stahl later relayed the message to colleagues during a champagne toast at the show’s Manhattan offices, referring to herself and her remaining colleagues as “the survivors.”
“My toast was, ‘to us,’ meaning the survivors,” Stahl told the Times. “Maybe ‘us’ with a twinge of survivor’s guilt.”
Even after agreeing to remain with the program, Stahl has continued to criticize the handling of the shakeup.
In a recent interview with Puck, she called the firings “the hardest chapter of my career” and “by far the worst experience I’ve been involved in, or even witnessed.”
The Post has sought comment from CBS News and Paramount.
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