CBS News defends authenticity of 60 Minutes season 59 promotional photo amid online allegations of digital manipulation

CBS News is pushing back against online claims that a promotional photograph for the upcoming 59th season of “60 Minutes” was digitally altered or artificially generated.

The image, captured by photographer Mark Seliger at Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar, features the program’s new lineup.

Following its publication, social media users highlighted several visual anomalies, drawing particular attention to reporter Lesley Stahl appearing to lean against empty space, overlapping feet that critics argued would compromise balance and an unclenched left hand gripping nothing.

“There’s a table behind her,” Jeremy Adler, the senior vice president of communications for CBS News, told The Daily Beast.

Seliger defended the portrait, noting the difficulty of getting a large group into a single frame.

“Bringing ten people together in one frame can be a challenge, but with this team there was an immediate chemistry and a real sense of connection,” Seliger said, according to CBS News. “You could feel the history of 60 Minutes, but also the energy of where it’s going. That’s what I hoped would come through in the photograph.”

The shoot location was intended as a tribute to network pioneers Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Douglas Edwards, who broadcast from Grand Central when CBS maintained studios in the terminal between 1939 and 1964. According to the network, the historic studio was situated directly above the Oyster Bar, though “60 Minutes” did not premiere until 1968.

The backlash comes as the program prepares for its first full season under the leadership of Bari Weiss, whose appointment following the May departure of longtime executive producer Tanya Simon has drawn continuous controversy.

Critics have accused Weiss of censorship and shifting the program’s editorial stance, while the upcoming season launch features an interview with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Many users on X tied the picture's apparent glitches directly to ongoing frustrations with the broadcast's direction, with one calling it a “fake or poorly AI’d photo.”

User Darin Yates labeled the program “Liberal Propaganda and Fake News,” adding that “even your photo is fake.”

Other accounts questioned the staging entirely.

X user David Andersen asked, “Do they dislike each other so much they won't take a group photo?”

Commenters also zeroed in on specific physical awkwardness in the portrait.

“Is that a fake photo?” one user asked. “Lesley Stahl don't look right. Why on Earth would you use a fake photo ever and especially why for this?”

The Independent has contacted CBS News for comment.