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Santiago Campos, a student journalist and recipient of a scholarship named in honor of former “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace, called out CBS in a powerful speech at the annual News and Documentary Emmys on Wednesday.
“While I want to thank CBS News for funding this generous gift toward my education, I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship,” Campos said to cheers and applause.
“As corporate elites take hold over the very pipes through which our information flows, journalism that serves people becomes increasingly harder to come by, yet ever more crucial,” he added.
Campos made his comments just hours after news broke that CBS had declined to renew the contract of “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. Late last year, Alfonsi criticized CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss after the latter initially pulled a segment focused on CECOT, the Salvadoran mega-prison where the Trump administration sent dozens of immigrants. CBS eventually aired that episode weeks later.
Watch Campos’ remarks here:
Campos wrote on Instagram that his remarks were meant to draw attention to the news industry’s biggest threat: “capital and power.”
“I believe in a media landscape that serves the masses, not the elites,” Campos wrote Wednesday on Instagram. “For me, that starts with having the audacity and integrity to call out the same organization funding my award. Because if we can’t trust journalists to have that same audacity and integrity, how can we trust them at all?”
Since Weiss has taken over CBS News, several journalists have left the station or spoken out against it, including Anderson Cooper, who announced a few weeks ago he was leaving “60 Minutes” as a correspondent to spend more time with his sons. Bill Owens, one of the show’s top producers, resigned in 2025 for what he called lack of journalistic independence, and Wendy McMahon, CEO of CBS News, also resigned amid CBS’s lawsuit with President Donald Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” segment with Kamala Harris.
On Thursday, “60 Minutes” had another shake-up when it announced that senior executive producers Tanya Simon and Draggan Mihailoivich were out, as well as correspondent Cecilia Vega. Nick Bilton, a former technology columnist at The New York Times, was named the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” even though he reportedly has little broadcast experience.
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