UPDATED: Anderson Cooper is exiting as a correspondent for 60 Minutes after nearly two decades with the CBS News newsmagazine.
Cooper has reported for the show while anchoring full time on CNN, under an agreement between the network and CBS. But he decided not to renew to remain on the top-rated Sunday program, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Cooper said in a statement, “Being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the great honors of my career. I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors, and camera crews in the business. For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.”
Breaker first reported on his departure and his final segment, a story on Ken Burns that aired Sunday.
Cooper signed a new deal with CNN late last year, as his presence on the network has included not just his primetime show but also hosting the Sunday newsmagazine The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper and the podcast and streaming series All There Is.
Cooper started on 60 Minutes during the 2006-2007 season. His exit follows the tumult in the network news division, as 60 Minutes found itself at the center of Paramount Global’s efforts to complete its sale to Skydance last year.
Donald Trump sued 60 Minutes in October 2024 over the edits that the show made to an interview with Kamala Harris. Although CBS News attorneys deemed Trump’s lawsuit baseless, Paramount eventually settled with the president for $16 million, as the litigation was viewed as an impediment to securing Trump administration regulatory approval. As Paramount engaged in settlement talks with the president’s team, the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, resigned, and later the head of the news division, Wendy McMahon, also departed.
More recently, a segment on the Trump administration’s deportations of detainees to El Salvador was pulled, even after it had been promoted. The correspondent on the segment, Sharyn Alfonsi, wrote a memo to colleagues blasted the decision to pull it, saying that it was not an editorial move but a “political” one and amounted to corporate interference.
Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, defended the move, saying that the segment was not ready and needed to get principals “on the record and on camera,” she said, apparently referring to a Trump administration official who could address the deportations. The segment aired four weeks later, with no changes to the report itself but an extensive new introduction and postscript. No Trump administration official appeared.
Cooper’s segments for 60 Minutes have won multiple Emmys, including a profile of a jazz prodigy Joey Alexander and a story about African prison inmates whose music won a Grammy.
