Anderson Cooper announces exit from 60 Minutes amid CBS News shakeup
Journalist Anderson Cooper recently revealed that he will not be returning to the show 60 Minutes as the network CBS News deals with internal drama.
New York, New York – Award-winning journalist Anderson Cooper recently announced that he will not be returning as a correspondent for 60 Minutes as the shows parent network CBS News continues to deal with internal drama.
According to The New York Times, Cooper shared a statement on Monday evening, praising his time with the show as “one of the great honors of my career” as he has gotten to tell “amazing stories” while working alongside some of the best in the industry.
“For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me,” Cooper added.
Cooper has been a correspondent for the show since its 2006-2007 season as part of a deal between CBS News and CNN.
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He will continue working with CNN, where he hosts his own show, a weekly news magazine, and a podcast.
In a statement, CBS News said they were “grateful” to Cooper for “dedicating so much of his life to this broadcast,” adding that “60 Minutes will be here if he ever wants to return.”
The MAGA-fication of CBS News
In February 2025, CBS News was hit with a massive $10 billion lawsuit from President Donald Trump.
In it, he claimed that a 60 Minutes segment featuring Kamala Harris – his Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential race – was edited to make one of her responses to a question appear stronger than her initial answer.
By July, CBS News’ parent company Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle with Trump, despite the fact that legal experts argued the lawsuit was baseless and would have been an easy legal victory for CBS if it ever went to court.
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Many critics believed that Paramount caved to Trump in an attempt to win him over, as the company was in the middle of a massive merger deal that required approval from the president’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The merger was eventually approved and completed in July, leading to massive shakeups at CBS News, including the appointment of political commentator Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief of the network.
The network has since faced heavy criticism for its ties to the Trump administration, and while Cooper did not mention the issues in his statement, many critics speculate that the shakeup influenced his exit. In December, the Paramount X account was hacked to display the description, “Proud arm of the fascist regime.”
Weiss recently faced backlash after she blocked CBS News from airing a 60 Minutes segment on a notorious Salvadoran prison where President Trump has been deporting immigrants.
