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L.A. contractors razed a native plant garden for kids. What happens now?

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L.A. contractors razed a native plant garden for kids. What happens now?

For more than a decade, visitors say the Children’s Garden at Elysian Park was a shady showcase for indigenous plants, with dense stands of mature native trees and shrubs lining the paths of the grounds just west of Grace E. Simon Lodge and creating a cool, restful places to walk, play and learn.

Then, in late June, all that lush undergrowth was leveled by a contractor hired by Los Angeles’ Department of Recreation and Parks to conform with the Los Angeles Fire Department’s brush clearance requirements. Since then, finger pointing and cries of “Ecocide” have reverberated on social media and during city meetings.

Update:

2:00 p.m. Aug. 9, 2024This story has been updated to include additional information provided by a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson.

“It was a magical environment,” said Shari Lee, a nearby resident who’s been walking the site for years. “Now it just seems sort of … blank.”

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The Children’s Garden in Elysian Park after the brush clearance.

(Shari Lee)

These heated exchanges are all part of an ongoing and often contentious discussion about how a city like Los Angeles should manage urban wild lands with native plants. No one questions the need to remove such fast-growing invasives as black mustard, which becomes kindling for wildfires once it dries out in the summer.

But should green native shrubs like toyons and lemonade berry be treated the same way? Native plant enthusiasts say those plants control erosion, provide shade and habitat for wildlife and pose little fire danger.

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Critics say that before the work was done, the city should have notified stakeholders, such as the Northeast LA Forest School, which pays to use the Children’s Garden (also known as the Children’s Arboretum) year round for outdoor instruction. They also believe there should have been an environmental evaluation of the site before Mariposa Landscapes Inc. of Irwindale did the work.

The trees and shrubs had been planted more than a decade earlier by the urban forestry nonprofit North East Trees, a project that included signage to identify the many native species added to the site, such as California buckeye, California black walnut and oaks.

Stones and trees surround a wet dirt path on a rainy day
A few trees and rocks at a no longer shady site

The Children’s Garden in Elysian Park on a rainy day in February, 2024 (top) and after the brush clearance on June 27, 2024. (Becca Hackett-Levy)

Today, the area looks denuded. The remaining trees have been trimmed so their limbs are at least 6 feet above the ground per fire prevention rules, some of the plant identification markers have been upturned and the dry, loose soil is covered with leaf debris.

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Both Mariposa and North East Trees contract with the city on other projects. Neither was willing to be interviewed for this story.

The brush clearing was required by the Los Angeles Fire Department to protect a metal shed where the parks department stores fuel for lawn mowers, said Leon Boroditsky, principal ground maintenance supervisor for the forestry division of Recreation and Parks.

While fire inspectors issued a brush violation around the shed at the Children’s Garden in March, they would not have required those mature native shrubs to have been removed, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Karla Tovar said Friday. Typically Recreation and Parks officials consult with fire inspectors about how the trimming should be conducted, Tovar said, but that didn’t happen this time.

LAFD is “saddened by the approach that was taken with this brush clearance,” Tovar said. “We look forward to collaborating with [Recreation and Parks] in future endeavors to make sure something like this doesn’t occur again.”

Boroditsky didn’t order the clearing; he was away when the project was contracted. He said that he didn’t know how long the shed had been at the site but that this appeared to be the first year the LAFD felt the building needed to be considered a structure under the brush-clearing rules.

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The city is also trying to find out how and why North East Trees installed the native plant garden at the park in the first place. It happened about 20 years ago, said Rose Watson, public information director for Recreation and Parks, but the department can’t find any documents outlining the project or what plants were added to the site.

There are lots of unanswered questions, Boroditsky said, and the clearance has created so much uproar that the city plans to bring in an independent third-party “arboreal expert” to do their own evaluation.

“There have been a lot of knee-jerk reactions and inflammatory rhetoric happening,” Boroditsky said. The city doesn’t even have photos of what the area looked like before the clearing, he added, “which is why I’m saying they don’t have evidence to make some of those claims.”

The site is in what the fire department classifies as a “very high fire hazard severity zone,” Boroditsky said, and the rules for clearance in such spots are strict. For instance, in “areas within 200 feet of structures and/or 10 feet of roadside surfaces or combustible fence: Grass shall be cut to 3 inches in height. Native brush shall be reduced in quantity to three inches in height. This does not apply to individual native shrubs spaced a minimum of 18 feet apart, provided such shrubs are trimmed up from the ground to 1/3 of their height with all dead material being removed ….”

A tiny green plant surrounded with shade cloth and chicken wire for protection.

Volunteers located tiny native plants like this toyon that survived the brush clearing, wrapping them in shade cloth to protect them from the scorching sun.

(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)

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So basically, the city paid $12,500 for brush clearance to protect a metal storage shed. Critics question whether it would have been simpler and cheaper to just move the shed, say to the adjacent Grace E. Simon Lodge enclosure? “That’s really not something I can clarify now,” Boroditsky said. “That’s something we’re evaluating now.”

Becca Hackett-Levy, director of the Northeast LA Forest School, said the shed was at the Children’s Garden before she began using the location nearly eight years ago. She added that she was on maternity leave after the birth of her second child when she got panicked calls from parents saying the space she had paid the city to use for her year-round outdoor classroom had been devastated.

A metal storage shed barely visible at the edge of the Children's Garden in Elysian Park.

A storage shed at the edge of the Children’s Garden in Elysian Park reportedly triggered the brush clearance around the site. The Grace E. Simon Lodge is behind the fence to the left.

(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)

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After weeks of uncertainty, Hackett-Levy said she got a call from parks officials Tuesday who told her that they’d found some areas she might be able to use nearby. “They found some good spots in the area, and they’re even changing their mowing schedule to accommodate the school,” she said Wednesday. “I’m just so thankful and shocked, frankly.”

The other concerns won’t be so easily resolved.

An open space with sparse trees and dirt that was once the Children's Garden.

The Elysian Park Children’s Garden on Aug. 1, about a month after the brush clearance.

(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)

Native plant supporters mobilized within hours of the clearing to locate and try to protect surviving baby native shrubs, dotting the area with small red and yellow flags to indicate their locations. Without shelter from the larger shrubs, they were vulnerable during the severe heat, said Brenda Contreras, director of the native plant and wildlife support group Coyotl wan Macehualli. So volunteers wrapped many of the plants in chicken wire and shade cloth for protection and carried in water to irrigate the survivors.

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Elizabeth Birkenbuel, who lives above the site on Park Drive, was so distressed by volunteers lugging large containers of water on the slippery hill that she encouraged them to hook up hoses to her outdoor faucet so they could more easily fill their buckets.

The city typically does brush clearance in the area to remove invasive and highly flammable black mustard and castor bean plants, Birkenbuel said, “but it was really aggressively cleared this time, in a way I’ve never seen it done before. I was very shocked. I usually end my walks there in the summer because it was very shaded, lush and cool, but it’s vastly different now.”

Trees and brush shade the Children's Garden.

The Children’s Garden in Elysian Park, before the clearance of plants.

(Shari Lee)

Birkenbuel said she can’t afford to keep sharing her water; she’s hoping the city will provide an alternative source. That’s another thing Recreation and Parks is researching right now, Boroditsky said, along with why stakeholders weren’t given advance notice about the work, per usual, and whether the department needs to change its protocols for when it requires environmental review of a site before brush clearance can occur.

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However, native plant advocates are still going to city meetings and onto social media to accuse the city of deception and “ecocide” by killing protected plants like California black walnut.

Boroditsky, a certified arborist, said the site still has lots of native trees, like buckeyes, walnut and oaks, that may have been trimmed to conform to clearance rules but that were not removed. “There is no evidence that protected trees were removed,” he said. Although he added that that’s partly because he didn’t have any photographs of the site before the clearance to confirm what plants were no longer there.

He accused community activists of guerrilla gardening in the area by planting more native plants before the city had time to assess what happened and what needed to change. Adding more plants before the city has a plan is a problem, he said, because similar brush clearing might have to be repeated in the future.

An empty space where the shady garden once stood.

The Children’s Garden in Elysian Park on Aug. 1, about a month after the brush was cleared.

(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)

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However, Contreras and Flink say no one is putting new plants into the ground, especially in the heat of summer, when they would have little chance of surviving. All they’re doing, Contreras said, is trying to identify the plants that survived the clearance and keep them alive until the rains come this winter, which, they worry, could result in problematic erosion in that stripped area.

Meanwhile, Mason Flink and Max Kanter, co-founders of Garden City LA, are trying to build awareness of land management at the park by leading free, hour-long tours on the West Loop Trail from Aug. 10 through Sept. 1 to demonstrate the ways public lands can be managed and how the public can get involved. The tour includes the cleared Children’s Garden and the thriving native plant Test Plot gardens they help tend near the Marian Harlow Grove.

Three preschoolers racing up a path toward thick shrubs in the Childrens Garden in Elysian Park

Preschoolers from the Northeast LA Forest School race up a path last fall toward the native shrubs in the Children’s Garden at Elysian Park.

(Becca Hackett-Levy)

“Before they cleared out all the native plants, our point of going through the Children’s Garden was to show how all this life was flourishing,” Flink said. “Now it will offer a stark visual contrast to the Test Plot native plant gardens to spark conversations among the participants.”

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Los Angeles City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose district includes that part of Elysian Park, has taken the role of mediator and hopes to bring everyone together to discuss what happened and how to avoid problems going forward.

The city “made a big mistake in not communicating with the community groups” who frequent that space, Soto-Martinez said in an interview. But Recreation and Parks “gave the correct instruction for the brush clearance,” he added, “because we don’t want a brush fire in that area with so many homes nearby.”

As for the storage shed that apparently triggered the $12,500 upset: “That’s one of the first things we thought about … couldn’t we have just moved it?” Soto-Martinez said. “I think that’s a very simple question to ask and a fair thing to keep asking.”

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How having zero points in tennis — or ‘love’ — came to sound so sweet

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How having zero points in tennis — or ‘love’ — came to sound so sweet

The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.

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Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.

As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.

“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?

It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.

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But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.

“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.

The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.

Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.

The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.

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It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.

“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.

To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.

Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.

But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.

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“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.

“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere

Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.

“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”

There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.

Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.

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But “love” still prevails.

“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”

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With Highway 1 open, Big Sur braces for its busiest summer in years

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With Highway 1 open, Big Sur braces for its busiest summer in years

On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.

The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.

Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.

People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.

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Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.

Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.

“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”

As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.

For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?

So far, the latter answer is winning big.

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Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.

Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.

“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”

But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.

Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.

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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.

The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.

At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.

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A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.

A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.

Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.

To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”

At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.

Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”

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Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.

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A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.

A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.

Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.

Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.

Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.

Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.

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During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.

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Firings at CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump

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Firings at CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump

Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.

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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.

The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.

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The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.

And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.

That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.

A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars

CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

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But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.

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The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.

Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.

With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.

Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.

Notably, he has no experience in television news.

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Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.

She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.

A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures

The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.

The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.

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Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.

Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.

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In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”

In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”

The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.

Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.

After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”

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“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”

Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)

Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now

In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference. 

Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.

The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.

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Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.

Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)

David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS' parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.

David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.

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The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.

The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.

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But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.

When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.

David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.

Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.

The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.

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Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.

The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.

As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.

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