Bari Weiss wants you to know that the decimation of the most trusted news source in America isn’t her fault.
The controversial editor-in-chief of CBS News is defending herself amid the firing of yet another 60 Minutes legend, Scott Pelley, who was shown the door on Tuesday after he confronted her and other executives over the network’s rightward turn.
Weiss, however, chalked up his firing to circumstances beyond her control.
“I know I speak for myself, and I hope I speak for everyone here when I say that I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect,” Weiss, 42, said during a Wednesday editorial call, according to Guardian reporter Jeremy Barr.
“We cannot do our work without it,” she went on. “That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways.”
Weiss’ newly installed tech bro-turned-60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, terminated Pelley’s contract in a letter that was quickly leaked.
In the letter, Bilton, who has no broadcast news experience, accused Pelley of putting on a “performative display of hostility” and said the news veteran had no interest in “contributing to the future success” of 60 Minutes.
Weiss, a former conservative blogger with no previous newsroom management experience, echoed that sentiment on Wednesday’s editorial call.
“We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose,” Weiss said of Pelley’s firing. “That unfortunate outcome does not discount from the amazing contributions and work that Scott Pelley has done for CBS and for 60 Minutes over the course of his career.”
But it did happen—just days after Weiss forced out most of 60 Minutes’ senior staff, including former executive producer Tanya Simon, whom Bilton replaced.
After Weiss’ remarks were leaked Wednesday morning, Pelley fired back, accusing his former boss of spreading blatant lies.
“Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true,” he bluntly wrote.
“In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial meeting. At no point did anyone in the Tuesday meeting suggest that there could be steps taken by either side that would lead to a resolution. Weiss and Tom Cibrowski were openly hostile from the start,” he said, referring to the president and executive editor of CBS News.
“‘Firing’ was raised by Cibrowski in the first 15 seconds. No CBS executive, at any time, suggested ‘a way back.’ To say so now is disingenuous.”
He added: “These executives cannot gain the trust of the staff with lies. This is antithetical to everything we stand for and reveals contempt for what journalists do.”
A representative for CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Pelley’s firing came after a fiery clash with executives on Monday morning, during which he blasted Weiss’ ouster of executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, and other senior 60 Minutes staff as “cold and callous” and without reason.
Later, Pelley issued a lengthy statement in which he addressed the elephant in the room: CBS’ Trumpy ties through Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.
“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,” Pelley wrote.
He accused new management of attempting 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,” Pelley added.
The journalist alleged that the most-watched news show in America had “lost its DNA” after the “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,” he said.
The same day Pelley was fired, President Donald Trump had a few choice words for the former correspondent.
“Soctt Pelley’s a stiff,” he said on Miranda Devine’s Pod Force One. “And he’s afraid. And he’s part of this gang of stupid, crooked people that don’t care about our country.”
