‘60 Minutes’ Star Scott Pelley FIRED From CBS News After Blasting Bari Weiss in Heated Showdown
By Alexandra Steigrad and Ariel Zilber
CBS News axed veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, a day after after the longtime network star blasted editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and challenged her newly installed leadership team in a heated confrontation that exposed the widening civil war inside the iconic news magazine.
In a letter obtained by The Post, newly appointed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton blasted Pelley in informing him he was fired “for cause effective immediately.”
“[Y]ou hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote, referring to Monday’s heated face-off between the journo and his boss.
Bilton further accused Pelley of staging a “performative display of hostility” and claimed he had “no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.”
“I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama,” Bilton wrote.
He went on to tell Pelley: “Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.”
At the meeting in question, Pelley told Bilton him he had “slender” qualifications for the job and that he would “never be welcome here,” sources previously told The Post.
Bilton fired back: “You are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.”
The correspondent also accused Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes’” and claimed she “was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that,” according to sources familiar with the exchange.
The clash lasted roughly 15 minutes before Bilton ended the meeting and walked out.
The confrontation divided staffers at CBS News, with some insiders branding his behavior as “bullying” and “grandstanding” — and yet another reckoning it was “a set up,” sources told The Post.
“What did he accomplish?” one CBS source said of Pelley’s explosive attack. “He embarrassed the company and the leadership.”
The insider added: “This was a set up. This was Scott going off for show. This was just a show. He wants to stand up for journalism and maybe get fired but what does it change?”
A second source agreed that Pelley’s tactics were “problematic,” noting that the correspondent should have met with Weiss or Bilton to at least to hear them out.
“That grandstanding thing is insane. It’s third-grade, playground bullying stuff,” the source said. “This is not the way you conduct yourself.”
“You’re not taking down a dictator or someone who has committed war crimes,” the source added. “You’re not interviewing Saddam Hussein. It was a little bit overkill.”
Pelley, a fixture at CBS News for nearly four decades and one of the most recognizable faces on “60 Minutes,” had become one of the most vocal internal critic of Weiss’s efforts to remake CBS News and modernize “60 Minutes” under new owner David Ellison.
In recent weeks, she has overseen a sweeping shakeup at the network that has claimed executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, senior executive producer Draggan Mihailovich, veteran producer Guy Campanile and digital chief Matthew Polevoy.
One CBS insider previously described the purge as “not surgical” but rather “a bloodbath.”
Pelley reportedly referred to the mass dismissals as “Black Thursday.”
The tensions stem in part from Weiss’s intervention in a controversial “60 Minutes” report on El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi later accused Weiss of attempting to “sanitize accurate reporting,” while Weiss argued the segment required additional reporting and more input from Trump administration officials before it aired.
The report ultimately ran unedited with additional comments from the administration.
Pelley joined CBS News in 1989 and has served as a “60 Minutes” correspondent since 2004. He also anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 2011 through 2017 and has been one of the network’s most prominent on-air personalities.
CBS News declined comment.
|
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐