By Edmund Lee, Helen Coster and Dawn Chmielewski
NEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) - When Nick Bilton, the new head of “60 Minutes,” showed up at his first staff meeting last week, the CBS newsmagazine was already in turmoil. His predecessor was fired days before and several correspondents had either left or were pushed out.
In the room with Bilton was Kelly Funke, a TV production consultant he hired to help manage his transition to the newsroom, according to three “60 Minutes” staff members who spoke anonymously
because they feared the loss of their jobs.
One staffer described Funke's role as someone brought in to “fix the trust” with staff. Another staffer said she has been operating as Bilton’s “chief of staff.” Her hiring has not previously been reported. She has worked in television production for more than a decade.
The appointment of Bilton is consistent with a broader shakeup at CBS News that began after David Ellison — the son of Larry Ellison, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump — acquired Paramount in August. He installed Bari Weiss, who founded a successful media startup but who has no broadcast journalism experience, to run CBS News. David Ellison could soon control CNN once his bid to buy that network's parent company Warner Bros Discovery passes regulatory review.
Bilton, Weiss, Funke and CBS News declined to comment.
Bringing aboard Funke, who a source said is on a 90-day contract with a renewal option, suggests Bilton anticipated some difficulty in managing a newsroom that has chafed under Weiss's leadership.
"I just think Nick vastly underestimated just how bad it was,” one of the staff members said.
Tensions boiled over in the June 1 meeting when correspondent Scott Pelley confronted Bilton. “I find it impossible to imagine that you would take this job knowing that you would never be welcome here,” Pelley said, according to that staffer, who attended the meeting.
The network fired Pelley after the staff meeting in which he also criticized leadership and accused Weiss of “murdering” the show.
Funke has arranged meetings for Bilton and “60 Minutes” personnel and met with assistants and producers to sort the newsroom’s structure, another one of those people said.
Some staffers have questioned Funke’s credentials, citing her lack of journalism experience, that person said. Even so, she has made efforts to learn the newsroom, one of the other current staffers said.
Another Bilton hire is Nick De Lucca, 24, who has described himself to staff as “Nick 2.0,” according to a fourth person familiar with the matter. De Lucca was given the title “operations manager,” a significant role typically focused on logistics, according to the person. According to his LinkedIn bio, he has worked as an associate producer at Bilton’s production company since 2024.
De Lucca did not respond to a request for comment.
MANAGEMENT SHAKEUP
Funke is shadowing Bilton — a former Vanity Fair contributor and documentary filmmaker who is the first person from outside traditional television news to lead “60 Minutes" — at an unsettling moment for the show’s staff. On May 28, CBS ousted executive producer Tanya Simon, longtime producer Draggan Mihailovich, and correspondent Cecilia Vega. A day earlier, it had declined to renew the contract of Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who clashed with Weiss over a December report on a Salvadoran prison.
Network leadership did not provide an explanation for the firings. A CBS spokesperson said the network cannot discuss personnel matters for legal and other reasons. "60 Minutes" ended last season as the top-ranked news program, growing its TV audience 9% from the prior year, according to Nielsen.
Bilton told employees he made “repeated attempts” to have direct conversations with Pelley before he was fired and to “find common ground,” but Pelley chose otherwise, according to an email seen by Reuters.
In an interview with The New York Times following his departure, Pelley said Weiss was putting a “thumb on the scale” for Republican President Donald Trump’s version of news events.
The CBS spokesperson said Weiss’ feedback on the piece Pelley referenced in the Times “had no political motivation” and was “proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible.”
In an email to staff, Bilton assured them of the show’s “journalistic independence” — a message Ellison also conveyed in a private call to correspondent Lesley Stahl, according to the Times. The personal conversation spotlights the importance of "60 Minutes" in Ellison's vision for Paramount as well as the leadership challenges at the network.
Stahl told staff about the call at a Monday drinks gathering to boost morale, one of the current employees told Reuters. The person said there were mixed feelings about Ellison’s assurances, with several people citing the fact Ellison had visited “60 Minutes” after he acquired Paramount and had already made the same commitment.
Prior to its acquisition by Skydance Media, Paramount paid $16 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit Trump filed over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, which he said gave a distorted view of his rival for the White House.
The FCC has said the settlement and regulatory review of the deal were unrelated.
(Reporting by Helen Coster and Edmund Lee in New York and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
