“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things—not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” When John F. Kennedy stood at Rice University in 1962 and said those words, he was not merely talking about rockets, astronauts, or beating the Soviets into space. He was speaking to something larger in the American...

As our nation nears its 250th anniversary, an uneasy emotional connection to the past has returned—one rooted in fear, and the question of who gets to define the “real” America. Reading The Murrow Boys, by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson—which traces Edward R. Murrow’s journalistic coverage from World War II through the Red Scare of the 1950s—it’s hard not to...

During a contentious staff meeting at 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley spoke out sharply, criticizing the judgment and decision-making of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss and newly appointed executive producer Nick Bilton — the meeting I wrote about yesterday in “The Clock Is Still Ticking… ” After that meeting, in a letter addressed to Pelley, obtained by NBC News,...

I began watching 60 Minutes when it premiered on September 24, 1968, when Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace introduced a new kind of television journalism: “a magazine for television,” flexible enough to go wherever the stories — and the facts — led. What followed was more than a CBS program. For me, it became a Sunday night institution. Under Don...

There are moments when events reveal more than they intend. What unfolded Saturday at the Washington Hilton was not simply an isolated act. It was what happens when something deeper begins to intersect—when grievance meets amplification, when suspicion hardens into certainty, and when language that once stopped short of harm no longer does. We often look for a single cause....

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that if forced to choose between “a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,” he would prefer the latter. The statement was not an attack on government; it was a recognition that transparency is the lifeblood of liberty. In a democracy, the press asks questions. The government answers them. And the public, armed with facts,...

There are moments when a single arrest tells us more about the state of the country than a thousand speeches. The recent detention of Don Lemon while covering a protest inside a church is one of those moments—not because of who he is, but because of what it signals. “I was walking up to the room, and I pressed the...

First an update: Not long ago, 60 Minutes, the CBS news program, pulled a segment a few hours before it was set to air. The report, by veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, examined conditions inside CECOT—the massive maximum-security prison in El Salvador. The story was vetted by executives and attorneys. And then, without public explanation, it was removed from the broadcast...

For nearly sixty years, the CBS News program 60 Minutes has stood as one of the few remaining institutions in American journalism recognized as serious, independent, and unafraid of difficult subjects. Its authority was never theatrical. It came from persistence, restraint, and the belief that citizens deserve to see uncomfortable facts and decide for themselves what they mean. That legacy...

A national media organization has recognized the seriousness of our political division and offered something we’ve been missing… A REAL beginning toward ending the death spiral the country has been living in. With the launch of NBC’s initiative, “Finding Common Ground,” the organization is making a deliberate investment in something we’ve been losing: civic dialogue grounded in respect, clarity, and...