Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega is speaking out about the events that led up to her firing from the flagship news program earlier this year.

On Thursday, Status published a report on Vega’s appearance at the 2026 National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference & Expo, which is taking place this week in New Orleans. According to the article, Vega spoke at length about her dismissal during an onstage interview with ABC News’ John Quiñones.

She also shared instances in which she says executives at CBS News ― the parent company of “60 Minutes” ― attempted to interfere with her reporting in order to grant more favorable coverage to conservative views and members of President Donald Trump’s administration.

One such instance, Vega said, took place in January, as she was covering the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis. She said executives urged her to include footage of protesters assaulting people they believed were undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, but ultimately, she found “no credible examples” of such altercations.

Vega also said she was asked to include an excerpt of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey proclaiming he wanted law enforcement to target ICE officers who were enforcing Trump’s immigration policies. “That never happened,” she told Quiñones on Thursday. “We could not find any instance of the mayor saying something like that.”

And, later, she recalled being told to open a “60 Minutes” segment on the ongoing conflict with Iran with a statement about the nation being “totally outgunned by the United States and Israel,” a line that felt like an “administration talking point.”

Notably, Vega said the directives came from the “new administration at CBS News,” but she did not single out CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. The journalist, who worked at the San Francisco Chronicle and ABC News prior to her stint at “60 Minutes,” noted she was used to clashing with editors who provided critical feedback on her work, but added: “Never in my career until now have I felt that those edits, those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics. That’s the difference.”

The proposed changes, she said, did not make it into her final stories.

Though Vega’s NAHJ chat appears to be the first time she’s addressed her departure from “60 Minutes” publicly, she shared similar sentiments in a note posted to Instagram in May, immediately following her dismissal. In it, she said she and her producing teams had recently “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”

“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy,” she wrote, before going on to note: “Today I lost an amazing job. But I still have my integrity.”

When reached by HuffPost on Friday for comment on Vega’s recent remarks, a CBS News spokesperson reshared a statement that the company issued in May in response to her Instagram note.

“We respect Ms. Vega and her contributions, but her claims are not based in reality,” the statement read.

The spokesperson also pointed to an interview Weiss gave to The Wall Street Journal in June, in which she pushed back on the characterization of her work as being politically motivated.

“What’s being called ‘editorial interference’ is in reality the job description of an editor in chief,” she told the outlet.

Vega, who joined “60 Minutes” in 2023, was among a number of high-profile staff members who were ousted from their roles in May. Others included fellow correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and executive producers Draggan Mihailovich and Tanya Simon.

The shake-up followed CBS News’ hiring of Weiss, who had no prior broadcast experience, in October of last year. Before joining CBS, Weiss had publicly railed against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, claimed the Me Too movement had gone too far, and conducted a friendly interview with former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, a longtime Trump supporter, on her podcast.

In her NAHJ chat, Vega said she still had “not been given a reason” for her firing and remains fearful for the future of her former employer.

“It’s not that I just lost a job,” she told Quiñones. “There is a lot at stake.”

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