A veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent ripped the famed CBS programming as a “snake pit” plagued by “no civility.”
Steve Kroft, who spent 30 years as one of the mainstay journalists on “60 Minutes,” told podcaster Bill O’Reilly that if he were offered the chance to do it again, he would respond: “No, I probably wouldn’t do it again…I hated it.”
The 80-year-old former correspondent described the prestigious newsmagazine not as a dream job, but as a brutal grind and psychological battlefield that wore him down over time.
Kroft said the job was a relentless, all-consuming slog — “24 hours a day” — with constant travel, writing, editing and screenings that never seemed to stop.
“You may get a couple hours… then getting on jets… coming back and spending three or four days writing… then starting it all over again,” Kroft told O’Reilly’s “We’ll Do It Live” podcast on Thursday.
The pace left little room to breathe — a nonstop cycle that he said ultimately made the job miserable despite its prestige.
But it was the culture inside the newsroom that drew Kroft’s most scathing criticism.
Before joining 60 Minutes, Kroft said he got a stark warning from Dan Rather about the show’s cutthroat culture — recalling that Rather told him the newsroom was filled with “big cats” who could take you down with a single swipe, leaving you “limping for six months.”
Kroft said the warning proved accurate once he arrived.
“There was no civility at 60 Minutes,” Kroft told O’Reilly, describing a workplace where basic decency was absent and suspicion was constant.
“If there was civility… you better check your wallet,” he added, suggesting even friendliness came with ulterior motives.
The environment, he said, quickly turned colleagues into adversaries.
“When I was tapped to go to 60 Minutes… not everybody was happy… you’ve all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies,” Kroft said.
“It’s just… a snake pit.”
That hostility fueled a constant sense of paranoia inside the newsroom, where journalists were driven by competition for status and airtime, the ex-correspondent said.
“Everybody knows the environment… they think that somebody is behind them… going to put a shiv in their back,” Kroft said.
Kroft also recalled landing one of the most consequential interviews of his career — sitting down with Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton at the height of the 1992 campaign, as allegations about Clinton’s relationship with Gennifer Flowers exploded into the national spotlight.
The segment came together at the last minute after Clinton backed out of another TV appearance — with Kroft and his team scrambling to secure a coveted post-Super Bowl slot that guaranteed a massive audience.
The Clinton camp, however, misread the situation — expecting a routine campaign interview, not a deep dive into scandal.
Kroft opened with a deceptively simple question — “So tell me who is Gennifer Flowers and how do you know her?” — catching the candidate off guard as he denied the allegations while Hillary stood firmly by his side.
Hillary Clinton later blasted Kroft for lobbing what she called “mean questions,” triggering a public pushback from the show’s leadership and cementing the interview as a defining moment in the race.
Kroft said the interview ultimately shaped his view of Bill Clinton. He agreed with O’Reilly’s characterization of Clinton as “not a truthful man” — adding that during the scandal-plagued campaign, “if he was going to stay in this, he had to lie.”
Kroft left the show in 2019.
Bari Weiss, the newly installed editor-in-chief of CBS News, is planning a major overhaul of the show after the conclusion of this season, The Post reported earlier this week.
The shakeup follows the Paramount-Skydance merger and reflects a broader push by new leadership to refocus the program’s editorial direction.
The changes have rattled the newsroom, with internal clashes over editorial decisions, planned layoffs and uncertainty surrounding top talent —- as Weiss and executives eye a younger, retooled roster more aligned with the new vision.
The Post has sought comment from CBS News and the Clintons.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
