Longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager out after sexual misconduct allegat

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Fager, who has led 60 Minutes since 2004 and who was CBS News chairman from 2011 to 2015, is exiting CBS News, effective immediately, following reports accusing him of sexual misconduct and promoting an abusive workplace. Fager, 63, has been with CBS News since 1982 and was the second leader of 60 Minutes, succeeding the legendary Don Hewitt. Fager's exit comes three days after Ronan Farrow reported on a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Fager in The New Yorker. A former CBS News producer, Sarah Johansen, told Farrow he groped her when she was an intern. "This action today is not directly related to the allegations surfaced in press reports, which continue to be investigated independently," said CBS News president David Rhodes. "However, he violated company policy and it is our commitment to uphold those policies at every level." Fager will be replaced on an interim basis by 60 Minutes executive editor Bill Owens. Fager released a statement responding to his ouster: "The company’s decision had nothing to do with the false allegations printed in The New Yorker. Instead, they terminated my contract early because I sent a text message to one of our own CBS reporters demanding that she be fair in covering the story. My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it. One such note should not result in termination after 36 years, but it did.”

60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager was fired for sending a threatening text to a CBS News reporter
SOURCE: CBS NEWS

CBS News reporter Jericka Duncan said on CBS Evening News that it was a text Fager sent to her that got him relieved of his duties today. Duncan said when she reached out to Fager on Sunday to comment on Ronan Farrow's New Yorker story accusing him of groping an intern, she was met with threatening text messages. “If you repeat these false accusations without any of your own reporting to back them up you will be responsible for harming me,” Fager texted, according to Duncan. “Be careful. There are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me and if you pass on these damaging claims without your own reporting to back them up that will become a serious problem.” CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor told Duncan that Fager's text was "unacceptable." CBS News president David Rhodes said in a statement that Fager's the threatening message violated company policy. Fager had earlier released a statement saying CBS "terminated my contract early because I sent a text message to one of our own CBS reporters demanding that she be fair in covering the story. My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it. One such note should not result in termination after 36 years, but it did.” Meanwhile, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said CBS News was wrong to fire Fager. “I think it’s a terrible day for CBS News,” she told The New York Times. “I think it is awful. I don’t understand how you get fired over a text message.” But longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft appeared to agree with Fager's punishment. "The text to Jericka Duncan was threatening and inappropriate," he said. "It’s unfortunate and everything about this situation saddens me.”

60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager was fired for sending a threatening text to a CBS News reporter

CBS News reporter Jericka Duncan said on CBS Evening News that it was a text Fager sent to her that got him relieved of his duties today. Duncan said when she reached out to Fager on Sunday to comment on Ronan Farrow's New Yorker story accusing him of groping an intern, she was met with threatening text messages. “If you repeat these false accusations without any of your own reporting to back them up you will be responsible for harming me,” Fager texted, according to Duncan. “Be careful. There are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me and if you pass on these damaging claims without your own reporting to back them up that will become a serious problem.” CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor told Duncan that Fager's text was "unacceptable." CBS News president David Rhodes said in a statement that Fager's the threatening message violated company policy. Fager had earlier released a statement saying CBS "terminated my contract early because I sent a text message to one of our own CBS reporters demanding that she be fair in covering the story. My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it. One such note should not result in termination after 36 years, but it did.” Meanwhile, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said CBS News was wrong to fire Fager. “I think it’s a terrible day for CBS News,” she told The New York Times. “I think it is awful. I don’t understand how you get fired over a text message.” But longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft appeared to agree with Fager's punishment. "The text to Jericka Duncan was threatening and inappropriate," he said. "It’s unfortunate and everything about this situation saddens me.”

Jeff Fager's ouster puts a spotlight on the divide between 60 Minutes and CBS News
Many 60 Minutes staffers fear that Fager's exit will result in the folding of the newsrooms of CBS News with the iconic newsmagazine, which operate out of separate buildings. 60 Minutes servers are inaccessible to CBS News staffers, who must ask permission and use the show's watermark if they wants to show its footage -- "as it if it were a rival station," reports The New York Times' John Koblin and Michael M. Grynbaum. "In its half-century on the air," they report, "60 Minutes has never been at home within the larger CBS News family," As former CBS News president Andrew Heyward explains, "the people at 60 Minutes were paid more, they had longer time to work on stories, they got incredible recognition in terms of ratings and prestige, so naturally the people in the trenches would sometimes be resentful of that. It was like a hit TV show that happened to be at CBS News.” 60 Minutes staffers fear that CBS News president David Rhodes -- whom Fager hired from Bloomberg News in 2011 -- would dismantle what they consider an institution. "Mr. Rhodes so rarely visits the 60 Minutes office that one staff member likened his appearance there on Wednesday, to discuss Mr. Fager’s firing, to the sighting of a unicorn," reports The Times. "Likewise, 60 Minutes officials are infrequent attendees at Mr. Rhodes’s editorial meetings for senior producers every Monday morning. So when he did show up, many staff members reacted in anger." ALSO: 60 Minutes staffers coined "Fager World" to describe Fager's happy bubble.