CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss says Scott Pelley's nearly four-decade run at CBS ended after he crossed a line during a single, explosive staff meeting. On a Wednesday morning call with CBS News staff, editor in chief Bari Weiss said the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent was fired because the "foundation" of "trust and mutual respect" in the newsroom "was broken" when he attacked network leadership earlier in the week. Weiss claimed she tried to "find a way back" with Pelley but they had to "part ways." "We did not want that to happen, but that's the path that he chose," she said, according to recordings of the call shared with the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Pelley says that's not how it went. In a statement, he said Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski were "openly hostile" from the start of a Tuesday meeting and there was "no effort of any kind" to reconcile. "No CBS executive, at any time, suggested 'a way back,'" he said. "To say so now is disingenuous. And they know it."
- The firing came a day after a Monday meeting where Pelley told incoming 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton that he had "slender qualifications" for the job would "never be welcome." He also reportedly accused Weiss, who was not present, of "murdering 60 Minutes."
- Bilton, who comes from tech journalism, fired back in a termination letter that Pelley spurned attempts to connect and instead "chose ambush."
- In a blistering statement Tuesday night, Pelley said 60 Minutes "lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause." "They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos," he said, per Rolling Stone.
- "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," Pelley said. "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."
- Pelley said the "collapse of values at the top" had made staying at 60 Minutes "untenable." "The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well." He said he was departing with "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" and he prays for "a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return."
- With three 60 Minutes correspondents now fired since Weiss took over and another, Anderson Cooper, gone voluntarily, only three regular correspondents remain, the Times reports. During the Wednesday call, Weiss told staff new hires are coming and that Bilton will steer season 59 starting in September "with the amazing team that's still there."
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