Fired ‘60 Minutes’ Reporter Cecilia Vega Was Preparing Cozy Profile of UN’s ‘Racist Antisemite’ Francesca Albanese When She Was Axed: Vega Also Fronted 2025 ‘Disgraceful Hitjob on Israel’

Recently axed 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega was cooperating with the virulently anti-Israel United Nations official Francesca Albanese—who's been accused by the United States of "malignant anti-Semitism"—on a profile for the flagship news program, and was preparing to fly to Tunis to interview her on camera, when Vega was suddenly fired, according to a new report from Zeteo, which spoke to Albanese.

60 Minutes producers had already been filming on location with Albanese, who is under formal sanctions imposed by the U.S. government. Albanese is accused of using multiple antisemitic tropes, minimizing the violence of Oct. 7, and comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto and Israel to the Third Reich, an antisemitic device known as Holocaust inversion. Last July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Albanese "spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West."

Vega—who helmed an incendiary January 2025 60 Minutes piece that featured ex-Biden administration officials denouncing American support for Israel's war against Hamas—had already met twice with Albanese, Zeteo reported, to lay the groundwork for a profile showcasing her work as the U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, a position that has enabled Albanese to travel the globe accusing Israel of genocide.

Vega's cooperation with a woman the Biden and Trump administrations have condemned as one of the West's most toxic antisemites—and her association with the January 2025 60 Minutes Gaza segment that Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) called "a disgraceful hit job against Israel"—may have caused internal friction at CBS News, which is under new management after facing persistent criticism for anti-Israel bias. It could also offer an explanation for Vega's termination after only three years as a 60 Minutes correspondent, a coveted job that journalists typically only leave when they retire or, in several cases, die.

"Yes, she was working on a profile of me for '60 Minutes,'" Albanese told Zeteo about Vega. "In May, her crew traveled to two different locations to follow my work, and we had two additional segments planned: an interview in Tunis, where I live, and another piece before I present my report to the U.N. General Assembly."

60 Minutes "production staff and writers" had already begun working with Albanese on the piece and met her to film background footage for it, Zeteo reported, noting that the segment was now "postponed indefinitely." Vega was reportedly interested in "exploring with Albanese how the U.S. sanctions have impacted her and her family's lives," according to Zeteo.

Those sanctions were imposed by the Trump administration in July 2025, as Albanese was petitioning the controversial International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against Israel, the United States, and some international businesses. Less than a month before the formal sanctions designation, the Washington Free Beacon first reported that the administration had quietly petitioned the United Nations to fire Albanese over her "virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism."

Albanese—who the United States charges is not even a qualified lawyer (she has a law degree from an Italian law school but never took the Italian bar exam and is not certified to practice law anywhere in the world)—is one of the international community's most vocal Israel critics, blaming the Jewish state for Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree and even comparing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. She used her prominent role at the United Nations to pen "threatening letters" to companies across the globe, warning them to cut business ties with Israel or face "potential criminal liability," the Free Beacon reported at the time.

When the administration slapped Albanese and her family with sanctions, Rubio said that she "directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries." Albanese's husband, World Bank economist Massimiliano Cali, was caught on video last year accusing Israel of "genocide" during an event at the Italian parliament that featured his wife.

"We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty," Rubio said. "The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare, to check and prevent illegitimate ICC overreach and abuse of power, and to protect our sovereignty and that of our allies."

Albanese is also being sued in U.S. federal court for waging a "defamatory, derogatory, and hateful" legal campaign against two pro-Israel nonprofit groups, the Free Beacon reported in September 2025. The case directly challenges Albanese's diplomatic immunity under U.S. law and could open the door to further lawsuits.

"If a racist anti-Semite gains a position of power and proceeds to abuse the public platform she enjoys to perpetuate lies about American religious organizations for their compassion toward and allyship with the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel by smearing them as genocide-enablers, and calling for them to be blacklisted and sanctioned, she can and should be held liable for defamation," Rachel Sebbag, litigation counsel with the National Jewish Advocacy Center—an organization representing the plaintiffs—told the Free Beacon at the time.

Based on how 60 Minutes has handled profiles where the subject cooperates over weeks and months, Vega's segment would likely have been a sympathetic portrayal of Albanese's efforts in U.S. courts to overturn the sanctions, and of her legal bid to charge Israel with genocide in international courts.

Vega, in a social media post shortly after she was canned, accused CBS News's new management of "censorship" and trying to insert "political bias" into her stories, though she did not reveal which stories she was referring to.

Skydance Media, which acquired CBS's parent company, Paramount Global, in August of last year, promised the FCC in writing that CBS News would ensure that its reporting "embodies a diversity of viewpoints." This came after CBS News's management took heavy fire for reprimanding host Tony Dokoupil—on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel—for his tone during a mildly combative CBS Mornings interview with the anti-Israel writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. It later came out that CBS News's editorial standards department had told staff not to use the word "terrorists" to describe Hamas and not to refer to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Vega's 2025 piece on the anti-Israel dissenters who left the Biden administration in protest—which also aired before Skydance took over—drew intense scrutiny for all but ignoring the Israeli victims of Hamas's attack and minimizing the plight of hostages taken by the terror outfit. The American Jewish Committee said her piece was "shockingly one-sided, lacked factual accuracy, and relied heavily on misguided information." The Anti-Defamation League said that Vega's piece "only serves to fuel hate. It's like a blood libel."

Hala Rharrit, one of the Biden State Department dissidents who was interviewed by Vega for the Gaza piece, took to Instagram after Vega's firing to denounce CBS.

"Cecilia Vega interviewed me on @60minutes to expose the truth," Rharrit wrote. "Cecilia was there. She was willing to expose the truth. She knew it was a threat to her career, but refused to allow self-censorship to take hold. She is on the right side of history."

But Vega's Gaza piece, when it aired, reportedly deeply upset outgoing Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone, who told the New York Times that CBS News's Israel coverage "needed more balance" and lamented that she'd been unable to get the anti-Israel bias under control. Amid the uproar over Vega's Gaza piece, CBS management installed a longtime CBS News executive, Susan Zirinsky, as executive editor in charge of standards. According to the Times, "Her job included reviewing the journalism produced by '60 Minutes,' which until then had always vetted its own material for accuracy and fairness. Ms. Redstone applauded the move. Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer, felt that Ms. Zirinsky's arrival undermined his autonomy, and he and CBS began negotiating his exit."

After the Skydance acquisition of Paramount closed, Skydance CEO David Ellison installed the journalist Bari Weiss, a supporter of Israel, as editor in chief of CBS News in October 2025. Vega was axed on May 28 as part of a shakeup at 60 Minutes that saw the program's entire management depart, as well as correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who had publicly clashed with Weiss.

Vega's termination was a surprise, since, unlike Alfonsi, she was not lobbing insults at Weiss in the press and still had a year left on her contract. But with Vega's exit, the principals associated with the January 2025 Gaza piece are now gone from the network. Executive producer Bill Owens had been forced out in April 2025. His deputy, Tanya Simon, who succeeded Owens in the top producer job, was fired in the May 28, 2026, culling.

Simon, the daughter of legendary CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, would have personally approved Vega's Albanese profile, as 60 Minutes has a rigorous story pitching and approval process. Bob Simon, who lived in and reported from Israel for some of his career, was revered in many quarters of broadcasting, but also came under criticism from Israel supporters for what they called biased coverage. Bob Simon died in a car wreck on New York City's West Side Highway in 2015.

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