News anchor Anderson Cooper is ending his tenure on the CBS investigative series 60 Minutes.
After appearing on the program for nearly two decades, Cooper said in a statement announcing his resignation that ultimately he found it impossible to juggle his role at CBS with his job at CNN and his family life.
“Being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the great honors of my career. I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors, and camera crews in the business,” Cooper wrote in a statement about his departure. “For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.”
Cooper is among the few high-profile journalists in broadcast television to hold lasting positions at two major networks at the same time. He joined 60 Minutes in 2007, while still maintaining his role as host of Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN.
Despite leaving CBS, Cooper will remain a host on CNN.
It is the latest in a series of shake-ups at the legacy news station since the arrival of Bari Weiss, who took over as editor-in-chief last October.
Under Weiss’s leadership, the company has conducted several rounds of layoffs and buy-outs as it attempts to restructure and pivot toward the political center.
ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE KILLS THREE JOURNALISTS IN GAZA, INCLUDING CBS FREELANCER
Weiss received internal pushback after choosing to hold a 60 Minutes program about conditions in El Salvador’s megaprison, CECOT, demanding that reporters get comments from a White House official for the show.
The segment, which detailed inmates’ accounts of “torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons,” eventually aired weeks later with few changes to its content.
