CBS News announced Tuesday a slate of new contributors and correspondents for its flagship investigative news show “60 Minutes.” The new hires include Ross Douthat, the politically conservative commentator for The New York Times whose most recent book advocates for religious belief.
In a statement, executive producer Nick Bilton described Douthat as “one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy.”
Bilton cited interviews that Douthat has done, including those with Vice President JD Vance, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, as “expansive and probing and news making.”
Douthat, who has been featured on the Deseret Voices podcast with McKay Coppins, is most recently the author of “Believe,” described as a “blueprint for thinking one’s way from doubt to belief.”
In an interview last year with the Deseret News’s Mariya Manzhos, Douthat described his professional journey, from being the “token conservative columnist” at Harvard University’s student newspaper to being the youngest op-ed columnist working for The New York Times when he joined the publication at age 29.
And in his conversation with Coppins, Douthat explained that his arguments for religious faith are not because of the good that religion does for society, but because of the strong evidence that God exists.
“The ability of the human mind to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos is what you would expect in a world where, as the book of Genesis has it, human beings were made in some way in the image of the mind that created the whole system. It’s just much more likely under those conditions than under strictly materialist conditions, I think,” Douthat said.
Douthat will be a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” the network said.
Since joining CBS, Bari Weiss, who left The New York Times over what she said was the publication’s “hostility to free speech and open inquiry,” has angered many people within the news organization for changes she said are designed to make CBS more reflective of all of America.
In a memo to staff at the time, Weiss said that she holds to 10 core values about journalism, including journalism that “holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny,” that “embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate” and that “rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.”
One of her first moves was installing Tony Dokoupil as anchor of “CBS Evening News” and promoting principles that expressed respect for the viewers and love for America.
Hostility over changes at CBS, however, has spilled out into staff meetings, including one in which longtime correspondent Scott Pelley accused Weiss of “murdering” the flagship show “60 Minutes.” Pelley was fired the next day. Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega are also no longer with the show since Weiss took charge of CBS.
Tuesday’s announcement was the most visible statement about where “60 Minutes” is headed under Weiss, with the network also announcing the hiring of Sebastian Junger, Gianna Toboni and Trevor Phillips, and an expanded role for Norah O’Donnell, a contributing correspondent and veteran journalist, who Bilton called a “powerhouse.”
“You’ve seen her all over the network. She’s launched a new podcast. And you’ll see much more of her in our halls because Norah will be a correspondent on ’60 Minutes’,” Bilton wrote.
O’Donnell conducted an interview with President Donald Trump shortly after the April shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Junger, a documentary filmmaker and the author of “The Perfect Storm” and more recently “In My Time of Living: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of An Afterlife,” will become a “60 Minutes” contributor, the network said.
Gianna Toboni, who previously worked for VICE News and CNN, will also join “60 Minutes” as a contributor, as will Trevor Phillips, a Sky News presenter recently named senior global affairs correspondent for CBS.