‘60 Minutes’ is back — and so is ‘Beat the Press.’ We were watching, and here’s what we thought.

“60 Minutes” made its fall debut on Sunday, and so did “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.” We watched to see what clues we could discern over how executive producer Nick Bilton and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss would remake the venerable newsmagazine program, which first slipped into view 58 years ago.

I don’t want to speak for my fellow panelists, but I thought it was solid if unspectacular. The first segment, on the secretive rescue of an American pilot from Iran, couldn’t have happened without the active cooperation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But since when have the networks not engaged in access journalism? The story, hosted by Norah O’Donnell, was harrowing, even if my friend Danny Schechter would have derided it as “militainment” if he were still with us.

After that came a report on the Trump administration’s pay-to-play pardon scandal, reported by Lesley Stahl. The story may have surprised skeptics who believed the new leadership at CBS would demand that its journalists go easy on Trump. Though more could have been done to tie Trump directly to the payments (which fall into the category of “if not illegal then they should be”), it was, overall, a fine piece of accountability journalism — even with the unnecessary and gratuitous hidden camera.

The third piece was a gushy profile of the coach of the Los Angeles Rams. I fell into a catatonic stupor, and I’m too lazy to look up his name. Fortunately, I woke up in time to see a truly weird closing segment with former New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. He brought up AI, and I thought, oh, good, some comments on AI during a week when everyone is freaking out about it. But no, he didn’t do that; instead, he told us to stay tuned, because “60 Minutes” will be looking at AI in the coming weeks.

It will, of course, be interesting to see what the ratings are. For all the Sturm und Drang over Weiss’ wilding spree last spring, marked by resignations and the firing of outspoken correspondent Scott Pelley, “60 Minutes” had a successful year in 2025-26. Sunday’s remade show looked an awful lot like its predecessor. It would be a shame of Weiss and her overlords, David and Larry Ellison, tanked the ratings over so little.

In other “Beat the Press” topics, we take a look at the latest on Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist who was fired over a few provocative Bluesky posts after the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, and who was recently ordered reinstated. Will she go back, or is she just saying she will as a way of forcing the Post to pay a higher settlement? If she does return, will she be free to express herself as she sees fit?

We also consider the departure of Fox News talk-show host Maria Bartiromo from Fox News. She says she wasn’t fired, but she sure is off the air. Her long reign of error was brought to a close recently after she reportedly shared with Donald Trump lieutenant Peter Navarro an internal memo ordering on-air personalities not to talk about a falsehood-filled speech by Trump about election fraud. Fox executives, you may recall, have 787.5 million reasons to stay silent.

As always, we close with our panel’s Rants & Raves. Emily is in the moderator’s seat, joined by our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.