“The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable,” Scott Pelley said late Tuesday just hours after being fired from CBS News after almost 40 years at the network. “The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well,” the former CBS Evening News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent added in a scathing parting salvo to CBS News boss Bari Weiss, newly minted 60 EP Nick Bilton and Paramount CEO David Ellison.
As Ellison seeks full approval of his $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery from the federal government, a blunt Pelley accused CBS News of bending the knee to Donald Trump.
Revealing that “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley stated “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.” Throwing Free Press founder Weiss well under the bus in a chaotic news division now in open revolt I hear, Pelley continued: “In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”
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Read Scott Pelley’s full post-firing statement here:
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
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.At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
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.
Scott Pelley
Long simmering tensions at CBS News since Weiss’ appointment to the division’s top gig last October finally exploded earlier this week when Pelley confronted ex-New York Times reporter Bilton at the latter’s first meeting with 60 Minutes staff.
The 37-year CBS News veteran, who served as chief White House correspondent in the past, called out the absent Weiss and Bilton directly. “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job,” Pelley told Bilton in front of colleagues in person and remotely. “”The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
Bilton seemed stunned Monday and soon retreated under calls from other execs that Pelley was being “rude.”
Today Bilton ripped Pelley’s “performative display of hostility” in his letter to the journo pink slipping him “with cause.”
As Deadline exclusively reported tonight, Pelley and his team have had conversations with Hollywood litigator Bryan Freedman. The lawyer, best known of late for representing Justin Baldoni in his It Ends With Us battle with Blake Lively, had already been retained by ex-60 Minutes reporter Sharyn Alfonsi — who was cut in a purge at the news magazine over the past few days. Freedman was instrumental in big payouts to the likes of Megyn Kelly, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson in dust-ups and exits from their respective legacy media perches.
See ya in court, cause or not.