'60 Minutes' Producer Jeff Fager Leaves CBS Amid Allegations of Misconduct

Jeff Fager's time as the executive producer for acclaimed newsmagazine '60 Minutes' has run out. 

In a memo issued to staffers Wednesday, CBS News president David Rhodes said that '60 Minutes' executive producer Jeff Fager was leaving the company. 

"Jeff Fager is leaving the company effective immediately," the memo read.

Rhodes says Fager's longtime second-in-command, Bill Owens, will continue to manage the acclaimed newsmagazine while a search is conducted for his replacement. 

According to the memo, Rhodes told staffers that "this action today is not directly related to the allegations surfaced in press reports, which continue to be investigated independently. However, he violated company policy and it is our commitment to uphold those policies at every level."

CBS News did not elaborate on what "company policy" Fager is said to have violated. 

In a statement provided to CNN, Fager said CBS terminated his contract because he sent a text message to one of the network's reporters demanding that "she be fair in covering his story."

"My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it," he said in the statement. "One such note should not result in termination after 36 years, but it did."

Allegations against Fager came to light after an investigative report by Ronan Farrow appeared in The New Yorker. In the article published in June, Farrow wrote that six former employees complained about Fager's behavior, saying that the former executive producer would get drunk at company parties, and "touch employees in ways that made them uncomfortable." 

Farrow's report cited at least nineteen other current and former employees who said Fager allowed "harassment in the division."

When Farrow's article initially came out, Fager dismissed the allegations at the time, calling them "a few people," with "an axe to grind." 

Fager's departure comes a few days after longtime CBS CEO Les Moonves was forced to resign from the network after several women also accused him of sexual misconduct in the same article.


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