CBS News fires longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley
(CBS NEWS) – CBS News has fired longtime 60 Minutes correspondent and former “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley, one day after he had a tense and confrontational exchange with new 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton during a staff meeting.
Bilton informed Pelley of the termination in a letter on Tuesday evening.
“Yesterday’s performative display of hostility—enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress,” Bilton wrote.
Bilton wrote to Pelley that he “hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.”
In the letter, Bilton also indicated that the two men had met again privately on Tuesday, but Bilton wrote that Pelley had “made clear” in that second meeting he was “not interested” in “finding a path forward together.”
In a separate memo sent to 60 Minutes staff informing them that CBS News had “parted ways” with Pelley, Bilton wrote, “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.”
CBS News has not commented on the firing.
In a 60 Minutes all-staff introductory meeting on Monday with Bilton, Pelley accused CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of “murdering the show,” and accused Bilton of having “slender qualifications” for the job, according to multiple reports.
Bilton was named the new EP by Weiss last week.
Status, which specializes in media news and analysis and said it obtained a recording of the meeting, reported that Pelley began grilling Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Pelley also charged, according to Status, that Weiss herself had “no qualifications for her job,” and said the changes she had made to “CBS Evening News,” which Pelley once anchored, “have been catastrophic.”
It added that Bilton insisted that “Bari loves this institution” and “she loves 60 Minutes” — to which Pelley countered, “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and she’s doing exactly that.”
In a statement after his firing, Pelley said, “Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”
He added that, “I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion — a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”
A person close to CBS News leadership, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that both Weiss and Bilton had tried to reach out to Pelley late last week when the changes rocked the 57-year-old show to tell him that he was an integral part of 60 Minutes and wanted him to remain so.
The person said Weiss and Bilton felt it was disappointing that Pelley’s accusations were being aired publicly despite efforts to engage with him privately.
The New York Times, which also reported that it had obtained a recording of Monday’s meeting, noted that Pelley’s “newscaster’s baritone” was shaking during the exchange. The newspaper also quoted an unnamed executive at the meeting as saying Weiss had been prepared to come, but “we asked her not to.”
The Status report noted that Pelley was applauded multiple times by other staffers during the meeting. It said Pelley focused on the firings last week, calling them “cruel.”
Bilton reportedly replied that he was not intimidated.
“I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott,” he said.
Status quoted Bilton as saying, “I have sat and talked with incredibly powerful people like you have. None of it intimidates me, OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.”
Reports about the contentious meeting came four days after Weiss told staff in a memo that it was time for a “new approach” at the top-rated newsmagazine.
In the memo, Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski said their goal was “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”
“That requires a new approach,” they wrote, defining that approach as “expanding 60 Minutes beyond a one-hour television broadcast, deepening its role across CBS News, and holding everything we produce to the ambition, fairness, and fearlessness that have defined 60 Minutes at its best.”
