Two months after she was fired from “60 Minutes,” Cecilia Vega is sharing details about the troubling editorial pressures she said she faced after Bari Weiss was placed in charge of CBS News.

The East Bay-raised former Chronicle and ABC7 News correspondent opened up about her final few months at the newsmagazine during the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference & Expo in New Orleans on Thursday, July 23, when she appeared in a conversation with John Quiñones, her former colleague while she was the senior White House correspondent at ABC News.

Vega, 49, said she was particularly disturbed by attempts by CBS News executives to shape her coverage after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis in January, alleging she was pressured to include events that “never happened” and slant stories toward Trump administration talking points.

In one example, Vega said she was asked to include a comment by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in which he purportedly asked city Police Chief Brian O’Hara to order his officers to confront and fight ICE agents. But Vega said she and her production team scoured “every frame” of Frey’s news conference and found no evidence of that statement.

“That never happened,” Vegas told Quiñones. “We could not find any instance of the mayor saying something like that.”

Vega added she was asked to include video footage of protesters attacking people they believed were undercover ICE agents even though Vega and her team found “no credible examples” of such incidents.

Weiss was hired by Paramount CEO David Ellison to be editor in chief of CBS News in October, despite having never worked in television. She had worked in the opinion departments of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times before co-founding the conservative-leaning media company the Free Press with her wife, Nellie Bowles, a San Francisco native who previously worked for the Chronicle.

In May, at the end of its 58th season, “60 Minutes” underwent a series of major changes. Vega, the first Latina correspondent at the oldest and most-watched newsmagazine on television when she was hired in January 2023, was fired along with fellow correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and senior executive producers Tanya Simon and Draggan Mihailovich.

Correspondent Anderson Cooper also resigned, and in early June correspondent and former CBS News anchor Scott Pelley was fired.

Since then, Vega admitted that she has been reluctant to discuss her firing.

Earlier this month, she declined an interview with the Chronicle, though she shared that “I don’t know what’s next. … For now I’m going to stay on the sidelines for the most part as I explore opportunities.”

“It’s not that I just lost a job,” she told Quiñones. “There is a lot at stake. Sometimes you’ve got to be scared and do it still.”

In her remarks Thursday, which were first reported by Status, Vega said she was never asked to change her reporting by Weiss directly, but rather by the “new administration at CBS News.”

Soon after Weiss took charge of “60 Minutes,” new executives began attending screenings while stories were in progress to give extensive feedback.

“Never in my career until now have I felt that those edits, those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics,” Vega said. “That’s the difference.”

Vega cited other examples of CBS News’ attempts to shape her stories. She said she was told to open a piece about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran with, “Who is winning the war? Iran is totally outgunned by the United States and Israel.”

Vega said that proposed language sounded like a Trump “administration talking point.”

In a story about residents in West Virginia who were affected by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit cuts in the state, Vega recalled being asked why she had not sought an interview with Vice President JD Vance or referenced his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” about his Ohio upbringing in a culture of poverty and addiction. Her explanation: She wanted to report the story “through the voices of strictly residents.”

Vega said Thursday she was proud that she resisted what Quiñones called “meddling.”

“If you watch my pieces, you’d see those examples did not make it in,” said Vega to loud applause from the audience.