How Cecilia Vega’s life flipped in one minute and 48 seconds

Cecilia Vega was in a tracking booth recording audio for a piece that was scheduled to air on “60 Minutes” when she received an email asking her to jump on a Zoom call.

“They told me I was fired and they gave me no explanation,” Vega said before a packed ballroom filled with Latino journalists.

When Vega was hired by the TV news magazine in 2023, she became the first Latina correspondent in the show’s history. But this year, she was among several news correspondents fired, despite winning awards for her work on the show.

It has been two months, and she still feels devastated, she said. And confused.

At the 2026 National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference in New Orleans this week, Vega shared her story at a fireside chat hosted by veteran broadcast journalist and personal friend John Quiñones. 

Vega told Quiñones that things changed at 60 Minutes after the company hired new network leadership, including Bari Weiss as news editor-in-chief, in October of last year. 

There was a noticeable shift away from the show’s rigorous standards and interference from the studio in the reporting, she said, adding that CBS tried to have her include “talking points” from President Donald Trump’s administration on several of her stories.

She wasn’t the only one feeling the shift. Scott Pelley, a 22-year-veteran of the show, was among the those fired, while several others left on their own.

Vega said Pelley was “brave” for speaking out publicly against Weiss and CBS’s decision to pull the 60 Minutes segment on the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where Venezuelan immigrants deported by the Trump administration were sent.

Pelley, she said, was asked to find footage of protesters acting “more aggressive than the footage actually existed” in recent demonstrations against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s crackdown in Minneapolis, Minn.

“The implication in that was to paint the protesters a certain way that was from the viewpoint that did not align with the facts that they had seen on the ground,” she said.

Vega said she and her colleagues “still don’t understand” why they were fired, despite the program’s ratings and journalistic accolades. 

A statement by CBS in response to Vega’s allegations against the company said that “her claims are not based in reality,” as reported by Variety Magazine.

“Things were said about what should be in pieces and ways that my team and I would defend our recording based on what we had seen in the field,” Vega said. “I had started to get a sense […] perhaps they’re not liking this back and forth.”

Vega told the Latino Reporter that her firing from 60 Minutes was a “unique” experience and not reflective of the journalism industry as a whole.

But, she said, it is a “depressing” time in the industry due to staff cuts and newsroom contractions happening across the nation. Still, she said, she remains hopeful about the future of journalism. 

“No other job is gonna pay you to see the world, to ask the questions that need to be asked, to get a front row seat to history,” Vega said.

The Bay Area native started her career as a print reporter for the San Bernardino Sun before going on to work for The San Francisco Chronicle. At the end of her tenure with The Chronicle, she said, she saw the newspaper industry shift away from thoughtful, in-depth stories and move towards quick-hitters that placed a premium on web traffic.

So, she said, she decided to pivot to TV news — previously an unimaginable career track for her. 

During her time at the NAHJ conference this week, Vega walked the career fair and expo and visited the Latino Reporter’s student newsroom. She said it reminded her of the winding journey her career has taken. From hiking Mount Everest to covering war and conflict abroad to venturing to the bottom of the Alaskan sea in a submarine, Vega said, journalism has given her some of the most memorable moments of her life. 

While she awaits the next phase of her career to begin, she said, Vega plans on taking a break to rest. And to let some fresh wounds begin to heal.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated how long ago Cecilia Vega was fired from CBS. She lost her job in May.

Ivan Saravia is a fifth-year student at Laney College in Oakland, California. Ivan served as co-editor in chief at The Peralta Citizen, where he covered local government and authored enterprise and investigative. He aspires to be an investigative reporter in the Bay Area, his hometown. Reach out to him at saraviaivan2005 [at] gmail [dot] com.