The CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes isn’t simply tv’s longest frequently working primetime collection — it has additionally been the highest U.S. information program for greater than 50 years and gained extra Emmy Awards than another primetime collection, as its community touts.
That legacy isn’t with out controversy, nevertheless. Many occasions in its five-plus-decade historical past, this system has gone from reporting the information to changing into the information. Listed below are our picks for the ten greatest 60 Minutes controversies…
10. Racial bias story
A 2021 60 Minutes section coated how facial recognition applied sciences had led to the wrongful arrests of Black males, however producers solely gave airtime to white consultants, The Washington Submit reported. In a petition concerning the section, the Algorithmic Justice League stated the piece “intentionally excluded the groundbreaking and award-winning work of outstanding Black girls AI researchers Pleasure Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and Inioluwa Deborah Raji.”
Buolamwini stated she spent hours engaged on the section with 60 Minutes producers. “In virtually each aspect of our lives, from expertise to authorities and social actions, Black girls are sometimes assumed to be obtainable and greatest outfitted to do the arduous work of shifting a problem ahead, and on the identical time will not be given the popularity for doing so,” Buolamwini instructed the Submit.
An editor’s notice from CBS Information claimed 60 Minutes instructed the story “clearly and pretty” and stated the information group was “very grateful to the handfuls of sources — on and off digital camera — who helped us develop and focus this section however weren’t talked about by title.”
9. Werner Erhard allegations
A 1991 section about Werner Erhard was dangerous press for the so-called “father of self-help”: Because the present reported, Erhard’s daughter Celeste had accused him of molestation, and the IRS had accused him of tax fraud. Afterward, Celeste stated she’d been supplied a monetary incentive to make the allegations, and the IRS retracted its declare and in the end paid Erhard $200,000 after he filed go well with, in response to The Believer.
“My fame was destroyed by 60 Minutes,” Erhard instructed The New York Instances in 2015.
Moreover, The Believer reported, the section had so many factual discrepancies, CBS changed the transcript of the section with a disclaimer stating the section “has been deleted on the request of CBS Information for authorized or copyright causes.”
When you or somebody is the sufferer of kid abuse, contact the Childhelp Nationwide Baby Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Baby (1-800-422-4453). When you or a cherished one are in instant hazard, name 911.
8. Cast U.S. Customs memo
In 1998, 60 Minutes issued a mea culpa a couple of 1997 section concerning the smuggling of unlawful medication throughout the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, California. The section featured a memo purportedly written by Rudy Camacho, a San Diego district director of the U.S. Customs Service, instructing brokers to expedite the processing of vans owned by an organization related to Mexican drug cartels, per The Washington Submit.
Nonetheless, the Customs Service in Washington D.C. decided the memo to be pretend. One-time U.S. Customs officer Mike Horner admitted he had solid it, per the San Diego Reader, and a lawsuit filed by Camacho resulted in a settlement that mandated 60 Minutes’ on-air apology. “We now have concluded that we had been deceived, and in the end so had been you, our viewers,” 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl stated on this system in 1998.
7. Jeep and Audi security considerations
A 1980 60 Minutes section reported that Jeep’s CJ-5 had a excessive rollover danger, with footage from rollover exams of the automobile. In fact, testers solely logged eight rollovers out of 435 runs and had hung weights on the perimeters of the Jeep, not seen on digital camera, per the Nationwide Assessment.
Then, in 1986, a 60 Minutes section coated allegations that Audi’s 5000 sedan was susceptible to all of a sudden speed up — and that report included footage of the five hundred doing simply that. Some Audi 5000 homeowners had sued the corporate, and finally, a advisor for plaintiffs’ attorneys disclosed he had fiddled with the sedan’s transmission for the 60 Minutes footage, per The Wall Road Journal. Moreover, a 1989 authorities research discovered the accelerations had been largely driver error. Even so, Audi’s U.S. gross sales took 15 years to get well, in response to the newspaper.
6. Timothy McVeigh interview
In 2000, Ed Bradley interviewed convicted Oklahoma Metropolis bomber Timothy McVeigh on dying row for a 60 Minutes interview that proved polarizing. “I feel there have been individuals who wrote in and stated, ‘How are you going to give this man a platform, to spew that venom?’And to only sit there, the best way you’ll interview another person,’” Bradley later instructed Larry King.
“After which, there was different mail — together with mail from individuals who misplaced family members, household, associates, within the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing — who stated, ‘Thanks for serving to to provide us some closure in seeing who this man is, how he thinks, and the way he talks as a result of they didn’t actually [see that] on the trial.’”
5. Benghazi report
60 Minutes needed to discredit its personal reporting in 2013 following a section specializing in the account of an ex-security officer named Dylan Davies, who claimed to have raced to the scene and engaged attackers through the assault on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, by which a U.S. ambassador and three different People useless. Davies gave a distinct account to the FBI, and CBS Information needed to concern a retraction.
The chief director of requirements and practices at CBS Information declared the 60 Minutes staff had not vetted Davies’ account of his actions and whereabouts adequately. One other concern was that Davies was writing a e-book for Simon & Schuster, which was a subsidiary of the CBS Company on the time. Lara Logan, who offered the section on 60 Minutes, apologized on CBS This Morning for the errors, and he or she and a section producer had been requested to take leaves of absence.
4. Sexual misconduct scandals
In a 2018 report, investigators employed by the CBS Company’s board of administrators decided that 60 Minutes didn’t cease inappropriate conduct by creator Don Hewitt or successor Jeff Fager, in response to The New York Instances.
Fager had lately been fired from his put up as 60 Minutes govt producer after sending a threatening textual content to a CBS reporter inquiring about allegations of inappropriate conduct towards him. The board’s investigators decided Fager’s firing was justified, specifying that he “engaged in sure acts of sexual misconduct” with colleagues and did not cease different colleagues’ misbehavior.
The investigators additionally discovered that CBS was nonetheless paying out a settlement to a girl who had alleged that Hewitt repeatedly assaulted her and that he destroyed her profession. The community agreed to pay her greater than $5 million.
When you or somebody is the sufferer of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest Nationwide Community‘s Nationwide Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). When you or a cherished one are in instant hazard, name 911.
3. Killian paperwork
4 CBS Information staff misplaced their jobs in 2005 after an unbiased panel concluded the information group did not comply with primary journalistic rules for a 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday section about then-President George W. Bush’s Nationwide Guard service, as CBS Information reported on the time.
That section offered paperwork purportedly written by the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, one among Bush’s Texas Air Nationwide Guard commanders within the early Nineteen Seventies, saying that the eventual president disobeyed an order to undergo a bodily examination and that associates of his household tried to sugarcoat his service within the Nationwide Guard.
The authenticity of the paperwork got here into query — with suspicion they had been ready on a contemporary phrase processor — and the panel concluded that CBS Information didn’t adequately authenticate the paperwork or examine their supply. Dan Somewhat, who reported the story for 60 Minutes Wednesday, quickly stepped down from anchoring the CBS Night Information.
2. Trump lawsuit and fallout
In 2024, Donald Trump sued 60 Minutes for $20 billion, alleging that the information program had edited an interview with Democratic challenger Kamala Harris to provide her an edge, in response to the Related Press. CBS Information denied the allegations and launched the complete transcript of the interview with Harris, who ended up dropping the 2024 presidential election to Trump. However Paramount World, CBS’s father or mother firm, reportedly sought to settle the lawsuit forward of a merger with Skydance Media that would want federal approval, the AP added.
In April 2025, 60 Minutes govt producer Invoice Owens introduced his resignation from this system. “It has change into clear that I might not be allowed to run the present as I’ve at all times run it, to make unbiased selections based mostly on what was proper for 60 Minutes, proper for the viewers,” he instructed staffers in a memo.
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley talked about the off-screen shake-up on air days later. “Our father or mother firm, Paramount, is attempting to finish a merger. The Trump administration should approve it,” he stated. “Paramount started to oversee our content material in new methods. None of our tales has been blocked, however Invoice felt he misplaced the independence that trustworthy journalism requires. Nobody right here is pleased about it.”
And in a CNN interview this month, Pelley stated a settlement between Paramount and Trump and an apology from Paramount would “be very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the fame of these firms.”
1. Brown & Williamson story
As retold within the Academy Award-nominated movie The Insider, 60 Minutes put the brakes on a 1995 section about Jeffrey Wigand, former director of analysis for Brown & Williamson, which was then america’ third-largest tobacco firm. Wigand instructed 60 Minutes B&W knew its product was addictive, despite the fact that the corporate’s chief govt had stated in any other case in Congress testimony. “We’re a nicotine supply enterprise,” Wigand instructed interviewer Mike Wallace.
The difficulty, as CBS Information later reported, was that CBS attorneys feared the section would set off a multibillion-dollar lawsuit since Wigand had a confidentiality settlement with B&W — and, as The New York Instances reported in an opinion, CBS was navigating a $5.4 billion merger take care of the Westinghouse Electrical Company. CBS ordered 60 Minutes to not run the story, and the community solely aired the interview the next 12 months after The Wall Road Journal ran a front-page story on Wigand.
“The story itself was one of the crucial — in all probability crucial story that was ever reported by 60 Minutes. It was simply mishandled,” Fager later stated. “It was a low level in our historical past, and it wasn’t, I feel, anyone’s fault on the broadcast. 60 Minutes was underneath unbelievable stress from the company.”
The Instances opinion added, “This act of self-censorship by the nation’s strongest and aggressive tv information program sends a chilling message to journalists investigating business practices in all places.”