Fired 60 Minutes veteran Scott Pelley has fired back at CBS bosses after his unceremonious firing on Tuesday night, blasting the network and accusing its new bosses of pandering to President Donald Trump.
Newly installed 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, who has no previous TV news experience, terminated Pelley’s contract on Tuesday in a brutal leaked letter. Pelley has been at CBS since 1989 and has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since 2004.
Bilton, 49, accused Pelley, 68, of “misconduct” after a fiery Monday morning “ambush,” where the veteran questioned his qualifications and accused CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, 42, of “murdering” 60 Minutes.
In the termination letter, Bilton accused Pelley of putting on a “performative display of hostility,” and said he had no interest in “contributing to the future success” of 60 Minutes or accepting him as the new executive producer.
During an interview on Tuesday evening after the firing, Pelley said Bilton’s letter “betrays a complete misunderstanding of what we work for and what we live for at 60 Minutes.”
He also told the New York Times that Weiss declined to answer his questions about why 60 Minutes reporters Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon were fired.
Simon had worked on 60 Minutes for 30 years before being replaced by Bilton, a technology reporter-turned-screenwriter and documentary filmmaker.
Pelley also called Weiss’ behavior “cold and callous and beneath the dignity of CBS News.”
The 60 Minutes veteran then issued a lengthy statement, shared by Puck reporter Dylan Byers, in which he squarely took aim at CBS over its links to President Donald Trump via Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.
Highlighting the legacy of the program and a boost in 60 Minutes’ ratings this year, Pelley said, “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 said he believed 60 Minutes “lost its DNA” last month after the “entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause.”
The reporter seemed to be referring to the exit of Alfonsi and Vega, as well as Simon and Executive Editor Draggan Mihailovich.
“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 added.
The reporter also revealed the alleged interference he had faced under Weiss.
“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.”
Pelley even revealed that under Weiss’ reign, politicians had been invited to personally choose which reporter would interview them.
“Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done,” he said.
Despite still sharing passion for the show he was fired from, Pelley noted, “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.”
Sharing his gratitude for his CBS News workmates, Pelley said, “I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return."
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News for comment.
Pelley slammed Weiss during the Monday morning meeting that led to his exit. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that,” Pelley said of Weiss.
Pelley met with CBS News leaders, including Bilton and Weiss, on Tuesday afternoon, in an attempt to calm the waters, Puck’s Dylan Byers reports.
The correspondent had actually prepared a resignation letter, according to Status, ahead of being summoned to a meeting that also included CBS News President Tom Cibrowski at around 4:45 p.m. Tuesday.
The reporter returned to the 60 Minutes office and told staff he had asked the leaders about the firings, which they would not discuss, and said he expected to be fired because of the meeting’s dead-end status.
A source close to CBS News told Status there had been a “genuine effort” from leadership to keep Pelley on the show, but they believed he was not interested in working with them and had effectively dared them to fire him.
Tears flowed in the 60 Minutes office, according to Status, as Pelley awaited to hear any news, which was delivered not in person, but by email. “Staffers are apoplectic,” a source told the publication.
One 60 Minutes staffer told Status that Weiss has “managed to destroy 60 Minutes in three days. There should be some kind of medal for that.”
A television executive told the publication, “In the end, this is what Donald Trump wanted. The Ellisons and Bari Weiss have delivered to Trump exactly what he asked them for.”
“The CBS Evening News is weaker, CBS Mornings is weaker and 60 Minutes is essentially dead,” the executive added. “Good job, Bari.”
A different executive said there is a “tiny cadre of Bari loyalists without any TV experience,” at CBS, who are “trying to run an 800-person organization.”
Current and former 60 Minutes staffers also shared their outrage over Pelley’s firing to The Washington Post on Tuesday.
“The idea that Scott Pelley creates a hostile environment at that place is the most laughable idea I’ve ever heard,” one former staffer said.
“60 Minutes is full of jerks but he is the most calm, professional and polite correspondent I’ve ever worked for.”
Another staffer said the current feeling inside 60 Minutes was “like being awake during surgery.”
