'60 Minutes' veteran Steve Kroft 'hated' working at the CBS show

Brendan Morrow, USA TODAYSun, April 5, 2026 at 4:16 PM UTC

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Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft has revealed he "hated" working at the show.

The retired journalist, 80, sat down on Bill O'Reilly's "We'll Do It Live!" podcast for the April 2 episode to reflect on his CBS career, which included 30 seasons on "60 Minutes." When O'Reilly asked Kroft if he would work at "60 Minutes" again, he had a surprising answer: "No, I probably wouldn't do it again. I hated it."

The veteran broadcaster cited the exhausting and demanding nature of the job.

"The job is just 24 hours a day," he said. "I mean, you may get a couple of hours of bad sleep. Beepers going off, getting on jets, going here and there, the whole thing, then coming back and spending three or four days writing the script, and then going to the screenings, and then starting it all over again."

Steve Kroft attends CBS' upfront presentation to advertisers at The Plaza on May 18, 2016, in New York City.

While Kroft said it was "exhilarating," and it was rewarding to be able to tell "good stories," he agreed with O'Reilly's assessment that it is difficult to make friends in the television news industry.

"If people seem really friendly, you need to check your wallet," he quipped.

"Everybody is so paranoid," Kroft said, describing the cutthroat nature of the business. "Everybody knows the environment, and they think that somebody is behind them, going to put a shiv in their back."

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Kroft also said that when he was hired at "60 Minutes," he slowly began to realize that "not everybody was happy that I got this job" because "there were other people that wanted it." He added, "Then, you've all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies. It's a snake pit." Ultimately, Kroft said he preferred the job he held prior to "60 Minutes" as a correspondent at CBS' London bureau. "That was the job I always wanted."

Kroft announced his retirement from "60 Minutes" in 2019 after joining the long-running news magazine show in 1989. During his decades on "60 Minutes," the award-winning journalist conducted high-profile interviews with figures including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

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At the time, Kroft said leaving the show was a "difficult decision," but he noted he had considering retiring for the past few seasons.

"I want to leave while I still have all of my marbles, the energy to enjoy life, and the curiosity to pursue some different things," he said. "I've done nearly 500 stories for this broadcast, and that has taken up most of the past 30 years of my life."

In a "60 Minutes" segment in 2019, correspondent Lesley Stahl admitted she tried to Kroft out of leaving and remarked that "people do not walk away from this" job. Kroft, though, told his former colleague that he has always had a "great amount of respect for people who have left their professions when they were on top, and I felt that this was the time for me to go."

Other longtime "60 Minutes" correspondents who have similarly stepped away from their role include Anderson Cooper. In February, Cooper announced he would leave the show after almost 20 years, noting it had become difficult to balance the demanding job with his role at CNN while still having time to spend with his kids.

"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," he said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: '60 Minutes' correspondent Steve Kroft 'hated' job on CBS show

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