{"id":677181,"date":"2026-05-18T09:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/677181\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T09:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:23:08","slug":"anderson-cooper-bids-farewell-to-60-minutes-with-plea-for-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/677181\/","title":{"rendered":"Anderson Cooper Bids Farewell to 60 Minutes With Plea for Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAnderson Cooper<\/a> bid farewell to CBS News<\/a>\u2018 60 Minutes<\/a> on Sunday night after 20 years on the newsmagazine by praising the show\u2019s \u201cindependence\u201d and \u201ctrust it has with viewers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes,\u201d he said in an interview on 60 Minutes Overtime. \u201cThere\u2019s very few things that have been around for as long as 60 Minutes has and maintain the quality that it has, and things can always evolve and change, and I think that\u2019s awesome, and things should evolve and change, but I hope the core of what 60 Minutes is always remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t60 Minutes has been making headlines recently under its new ownership of David Ellison<\/a> and Ellison\u2019s hiring of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss<\/a>. In December, Weiss pulled a segment <\/a>on the \u201cbrutal and torturous conditions\u201d at the El Salvador prison where the Trump Administration sent deportees. An official statement said the story \u201cneeded additional reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t60 Minutes has also faced criticism for reportedly sidelining legendary correspondent Lesley Stahl<\/a> and drafting in Major Garrett to interview Benjamin Netanyahu, after negotiations between Weiss and the Israeli prime minister.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd President Trump won a victory after suing the company over the editing of a\u00a060 Minutes\u00a0interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate\u00a0Kamala Harris. The lawsuit resulted in parent company Paramount<\/a> Global\u00a0settling<\/a>\u00a0in a $16 million\u00a0payout. Part of the settlement agreement included stipulations for Paramount to release\u00a060\u00a0Minutes\u00a0transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates post-air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the independence of 60 Minutes has been critical,\u201d Cooper continued on Overtime. \u201cI think also the variety of stories. When you see a 60 Minutes story and you\u2019re like, \u2018That was a really good story,\u2019 it was a good story because it requires time, it requires patience, it requires money. \u2026 I hope 60 Minutes is around for when my kids grow up and have kids of their own and they can watch it with their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCooper said a couple of factors led to his decision to depart the show.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe whole time I\u2019ve done pieces at 60 Minutes, my full-time job has been over at CNN and still is, and it\u2019s been really challenging to do the kind of work you need to do to,\u201d he said, sharing that he\u2019s worked on his 60 Minutes stories mostly while using his vacation time from CNN. \u201cI\u2019ve loved it, but it\u2019s been tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second reason? His kids.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve got a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, and I want to spend as much time with them as I can while they still want to spend time with me, and on those days, that clock is ticking,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think the reality has really hit me that I\u2019m not gonna be doing this any longer, you know, to give up something you\u2019ve watched since you were a kid, yeah, I will miss this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCooper also delved more into his passion for 60 Minutes as a child.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was a weird little kid,\u201d he said. \u201cI liked watching news. After my dad died there was a lot of silence in my house and we would watch the news over dinner, you know something like the old-time CBS correspondents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe then praised legendary 60 Minutes correspondents including Morley Safer, Mike Wallace and Bob Simon, marveling he got the latter\u2019s office when Simon died.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c60 Minutes has always been a place, at least for me, that you get to step into somebody else\u2019s shoes,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cYou get to see things through their eyes and see what their struggles are and what\u00a0 they are facing, and you learn from that. \u2026 You never knew what you were going to get, but you were willing to go for the ride because you trusted the people on it that it was going to be a good story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said doing a story for 60 Minutes feels \u201clike you\u2019re stepping into people\u2019s lives and you\u2019re invited into people\u2019s homes. You\u2019re invited into their struggles. You\u2019re invited into whatever it is that has brought them to be on 60 Minutes. \u2026 Sometimes it\u2019s something wonderful they\u2019ve done, sometimes something terrible that\u2019s happened to them. \u2026 It feels like making a human connection with somebody, being able to ask somebody, you know, deeply personal questions and having conversations with people. It\u2019s a privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Overtime segment featured clips of Cooper\u2019s interviews with Donald Sutherland, Dave Grohl, Adele, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss and more, along with clips where Cooper got to take part in some high-adventure activities, from scuba diving to find Nile crocodiles to jet skiing the big waves of Nazar\u00e9, Portugal, with legendary surfer Garrett McNamara \u2014\u00a0which resulted in him burning his corneas from the UV reflection off the water.<\/p>\n

\n\tCooper also mentioned how high the bar is at 60 Minutes to get a story on air, noting that everyone who works on the show is the \u201cbest\u201d in their field.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the end of the segment, Cooper got emotional when saying the correspondents\u2019 signature intro \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m Anderson Cooper\u201d \u2014 for the last time. Watch it below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anderson Cooper bid farewell to CBS News\u2018 60 Minutes on Sunday night after 20 years on the newsmagazine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[18026,47632,135126,49,48,30878,361,18027,75,9489,862],"class_list":["post-677181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-60-minutes","tag-anderson-cooper","tag-bari-weiss","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cbs-news","tag-celebrities","tag-david-ellison","tag-entertainment","tag-paramount","tag-president-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}