The Watchdog with David Bozell

For nearly six decades, 60 Minutes has opened with the same stopwatch.

The ticking is not the problem. What comes after it usually is.

For conservatives, the show has too often been less “America’s premier newsmagazine” and more a weekly exercise in discovering which Republican, Trump official, or conservative cause needs to be put under the interrogation lamp next.

Absurd bias will do that to a reputation.

This Sunday, 60 Minutes returns under new leadership. Bari Weiss, hired last fall as editor-in-chief, brought in Nick Bilton as executive producer, part of a shake-up that preceded the departures of Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

So Season 59 arrives with a very simple question: does the new team keep running the old playbook, or does 60 Minutes finally move closer to the objective center?

Before the stopwatch starts again, it is worth knowing what the new leadership inherited.

MRC researchers dug through our 1.1 million-hour archive and found that over the past six seasons, the program aired 78 liberal political stories compared with just 16 conservative ones, nearly a five-to-one margin.

Election years widened the gap. Season 53, covering 2020 and 2021, aired 17 liberal stories, dominated by anti-Trump pieces and favorable profiles of Biden officials. Season 57, covering 2024 and 2025, featured 20 liberal stories and only three conservative ones.

Season 53 opened with Pelley coaxing Bob Woodward to call Trump “the wrong man for the job.” Season 57 began with “The Prosecution of January 6th.” Alfonsi later returned to the Trump-era family-separation story at the border. Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg was presented as a Rhodes-scholar crisis manager, Janet Yellen as one of the few people who “understand this moment,” and Liz Cheney as the Republican “daring” to defy Trump.

Pelley, Vega and Alfonsi accounted for 75 percent of the liberal stories during the 2024 election and Trump transition.

That is the inheritance.

On Sunday, the stopwatch starts again.

New leadership. New season.

Now we find out whether anything besides the names on the masthead has changed.

Take it easy,David Bozell
President