60 Minutes chief urges staff to stop making leaks in memo that got leaked: report

“60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton reportedly gave staffers a stern talking-to about leaks – in a memo that itself got leaked – while incoming correspondent Sir Trevor Phillips warned that CBS News boss Bari Weiss might “crash and burn,” according to reports this week.Former tech journo Bilton, 49, has reportedly been openly griping about office politics as his tenure gets off to a bumpy start – and now he’s grown fed-up with the unrelenting leaks from network insiders.On Saturday, he reportedly sent the storied newsmagazine’s staffers a 734-word missive urging them to come to him with any questions about newsroom rumors – effectively asking them to stop speaking to the media, instead.“Since I started here there has been roughly a rumor a day,” Bilton griped in the memo, which was leaked to Status newsletter.“About me, about you, about what’s coming next – 95 percent of them are fabrications and blatantly incorrect.“I no longer have the time or the patience for them, and I’d rather we spend that energy on the stories,” Bilton continued.“If you hear something and it matters to you, come ask me and I’ll tell you what I know,” he added.

“Otherwise I’d like this place to be talked about for what we put on television.”Days later, Sir Trevor Phillips – one of the network’s newest hires, who will serve as senior global affairs correspondent for CBS News and an anchor on “60 Minutes” – gave a blunt assessment of Weiss, who took the helm at the network in October.“Bari and her team have a huge tanker of a network news organization to turn around, and they are assembling a little team on the bridge,” Phillips told the Daily Telegraph. “The great thing about her is that she’s one of those people who will either change the world or crash and burn.But when they crash and burn, it’s in technicolor.” Phillips – who previously hosted a morning news show on Sky News and in 2022 was knighted for his ...