Scott Pelley Fired From CBS News' 60 Minutes After Heated Meeting
By: Alex Weprin (The Hollywood Reporter)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Scott Pelley Michele Crowe/CBS News via Getty Images
In a stunning development, veteran CBS News60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley has been fired by the network after clashing with the show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, in a fiery meeting with the show's staff Monday.
Bilton informed Pelley of his termination Tuesday evening, writing in a note that his employment was "terminated for cause effective immediately." Pelley has been at CBS News for decades, and previously served as the anchor of the CBS Evening News.
In the meeting on June 1 with new 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, Pelley said that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is "murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that."
He also said that Bilton, a veteran technology journalist who previously worked at The New York Times and Vanity Fair, had "slender" qualifications for what is arguably the most important EP job in television news.
"You should hear this from me first. We have parted ways with Scott Pelley," Bilton wrote in a note to 60 Minutes staff Tuesday. "I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don't say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose."
In the note to Pelley, Bilton wrote: "Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort."
Weiss hired Bilton in a massive overhaul of the program last month, parting ways with EP Tanya Simon and some of her lieutenants, as well as correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. Anderson Cooper made the decision to leave the program after this season.
With Pelley's exit, the show is down to three correspondents: Lesley Stahl, 84; Bill Whitaker, 74; and Jon Wertheim, 55. His firing raises questions about all the other correspondents as well.
"I know from many conversations with colleagues that many producing teams and correspondents working on the show today have had to fight to maintain editorial independence with regularity," Vega said in a statement after her termination. "I am far from the only 60 Minutes correspondent who has asked herself, 'What is my personal red line? How much can I push back before I pay the price?'"
In an interview with THR, Bilton said that he wants to bring 60 Minutes into the 21st century and to a new digital platform, and suggested that new correspondents that he brings in would be specialists in different fields.
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Dont bother, your audience is gone.
And the Band marches on...
what CBS stands for now ...
Yeah, insult your boss publicly in a meeting and you get fired.
Ditching Colbert added 55 million to their bottom line. This won't help as much, but I would imagine they are celebrating at CBS.
I think they're bringing back Hee Haw for that time slot.
yeah, that's all there was to it ...
why can't maga comprehend even the 1st amendment to the US constitution?
That sounds less like long-term business judgment and more like the private-equity logic of asset stripping: cut the visible cost, extract the value, and leave the institution weaker than it was. That is the Trump way: Milk it till it's dry then throw it away.
Colbert was losing cbs 40 million a year. There’s no “long term business judgement” case for that. Unless it’s considered a bribe to the Democratic Party as a cost of doing business.
And that democrats, and only demcorats, are up in arms about losing their buddy polley makes the point. Pelley and 60 minutes operate as a PR machine for the left. That puts a cap on a prime time network show that wants to attract all viewers, and not just those in the progressive echo chamber.
You cannot “prove” credibility in the same way you prove a bank transfer or a signed contract. The same is true of trust. That does not make either one imaginary.
Trust is built over time through conduct, consistency, independence, and public confidence. It is also damaged through conduct. When a news organization removes or pushes out the journalists most associated with its credibility, especially under political and corporate pressure, people are allowed to notice what that does to the institution.
So the issue is not whether CBS can produce a spreadsheet justification for personnel changes. Of course it can. The issue is whether those changes damage the reputation and independence of CBS News. In my view, they plainly do.
And if the predictable result of those decisions is a weaker, more compliant, less trusted newsroom, then it is fair to ask whether that damage was a side effect or the actual point.
At this point, the motive question may be moot. CBS News has had a stake driven through its heart and is now on palliative care. Whatever continues under the CBS News name will be operating without the credibility that once made the institution worth defending.
The rest of the 60 Minutes crew should resign en masse rather than allow their names to be used to perfume the stench of institutional death.
Pelley, like Colbert, thought he was bullet proof and found he wasn’t. Boo hoo for you Scotty and the left whines about those consequences. SOSDD.