Jimmy Kimmel accused CBS of firing one of their most respected journalists for standing up to his new right-leaning bosses.
Veteran reporter Scott Pelley was fired on Tuesday after he fiercely criticized CBS’s new editor in chief, Bari Weiss. Weiss had been hired despite having zero experience running a broadcast news network, and she has since been reshaping the network in a Trump-friendly direction.
“She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that,” Pelley said about Weiss in a meeting with Nick Bilton on Monday. Bilton had just been hired as the new executive producer of 60 Minutes despite he too having no prior TV experience.
Jimmy Kimmel ripped into the “Trump suck-ups” at CBS in his monologue Wednesday.
“CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at 60 Minutes," Kimmel said, “because he stood up for truth and integrity at a show that’s been the gold standard for broadcast journalism for 57 years.”
Kimmel noted that the “clowns” at CBS had previously fired reporters Sharon Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, along with executive producer Tanya Simon.
In an interview with the New York Times, Pelley had described those three firings as “cold and callous and beneath the dignity of CBS News.”
“That was it for Scott Pelley,” Kimmel explained. “He said, ‘the collapse of values at the top has become untenable,’ and he let [Bilton] have it in a staff meeting, right to the new guy’s face. So last night, they fired him.”
Kimmel joked, “60 Minutes will be replaced by new episodes of Reporters Unleashed.“
After Pelley was fired, he released a statement shared by Puck reporter Dylan Byers, which sharply criticized the network.
“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley revealed. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”
Pelley declared that “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc” on 60 Minutes.
Kimmel, who has criticized CBS for canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, called the network’s firing of Pelley a “cowardly decision.”
Kimmel argued it was no surprise that President Trump “applauded” Pelley’s departure. He referred to Trump’s Tuesday appearance on the right-wing Pod Force One podcast, where Trump accused Pelley of being “part of a gang of crooked, stupid people.”
Kimmel joked that Pelley’s gang was at least “different from the gang of crooked, stupid people [Trump’s] a part of.”
