Anderson Cooper, who has reported for CBS’s “60 Minutes” for the past twenty years and also hosts a nightly CNN news program, announced on Monday that he will leave CBS to spend more time with his family.
Cooper appeared on Sunday night’s broadcast to present a brief segment about filmmaker Ken Burns. It is unlikely that this will be his last show, as the current broadcast season is slated to wrap up in May.
“Being a correspondent for ’60 Minutes’ has been one of the greatest honors of my career,” Cooper said in a statement. “I’ve had the chance to tell incredible stories and work with some of the industry’s best producers, editors, and camera crews. For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my work at CNN and CBS, but now I have young children and want to spend as much time with them as possible while they still want to spend time with me.”
Cooper’s departure from what remains television’s most prestigious news program will certainly raise questions about whether it had anything to do with Bari Weiss’s leadership, CBS News’s editorial director since late last year. A spokesman for Cooper said on Monday that he had no further comment.
Cooper has contributed reports to “60 Minutes” since the 2006-07 television season, in a unique joint-coverage arrangement with CNN. His news program “Anderson Cooper 360°” has aired in prime time since 2003.
CBS News issued a statement praising Cooper for two decades of work.
“We are grateful that he has dedicated so much of his life to this program and understand the importance of spending more time with family,” CBS said. “‘60 Minutes’ will be here if he ever wants to return.”
His exit comes amid a period of turbulence for the Sunday night program.
Under Weiss’s direction, the program canceled at the last minute a report by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi on the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Weiss explained that more effort was needed to secure interviews with government officials, while Alfonsi privately complained that the decision was political in nature. The story aired a month later with additional government comments, but without on-camera interviews.
President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against “60 Minutes” over how it handled an interview with his rival in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris. To the consternation of much of the program’s staff, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, reached an out-of-court settlement with Trump.
The Breaker news portal was the first outlet to report on Cooper’s departure from CBS.
