1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The dismantling of 60 Minutes is a political hit job, and Congress needs to investigate it. Bari Weiss, a Trump-aligned opinion columnist with no broadcast news background, was installed at CBS News and promptly fired two top executives and two correspondents — including Cecilia Vega, the first Latina correspondent in the show's history. Vega's own statement after her firing alleged that "efforts to insert political bias into our stories" had occurred and that staff were holding back pitches out of fear. She called it "censorship, both imposed and self-driven" that is "dangerous for democracy." This isn't about performance. 60 Minutes just finished its 58th season with 9.1 million average weekly viewers, a 9% increase over the prior season, Emmy wins, and 2.5 billion social media views. The real story is that Paramount's CEO David Ellison needs Trump's approval for a $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. — and Ellison recently hosted Trump at a Washington dinner that Weiss also attended. That's not coincidence. That's a quid pro quo playing out in public. If this merger is approved without scrutiny, CNN could be next. I want you to call for congressional hearings on political interference in broadcast journalism and demand that any merger approval be conditioned on editorial independence protections. A free press isn't a partisan issue. It's the foundation everything else depends on.