Scott Pelley, a longtime employee of CBS News and a correspondent on the newsmagazine 60 Minutes, has been fired from the network following a confrontation Monday morning with Nick Bilton, the new Executive Producer of 60 Minutes.
During the regular Monday all-hands meeting with the staff of 60 Minutes, Pelley began questioning Bilton, who had just been named the new EP of the show. His hiring was preceded by last Thursday by the firing of several people on the show.
According to a report published by Guardian US reporter Jeremy Barr after the meeting, Pelley asked Bilton directly to explain the firings and expressed his disappointment with the way things had been handled on the show since Bari Weiss took over as the new head of CBS News:
Oliver Darcy at the Status newsletter was given access to audio from the meeting, which recounted a tense and often angry series of exchanges between Pelley and Bilton:
Bilton tried to move the meeting along, but Pelley pressed on, challenging the new executive producer’s references in interviews to “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt’s vision for the program as he outlined his plans.
“I have another question,” the veteran journalist said. “Did you at any point work with Don Hewitt, telling everybody about what Don Hewitt thought, and what his inspiration was? I worked for Don Hewitt from 1999 to 2004 and Lesley Stahl probably worked with him for 30 years. Just wondering how you have such deep insight?”
Bilton replied that he was simply quoting Hewitt’s own words from past interviews and asked Pelley whether he had any other questions. Pelley said that he did.
“I have many questions,” Pelley responded. “What was wrong with Sharyn Alfonsi?”
As Bilton started to say he would “defer,” Pelley interrupted: “This is not the crowd to dodge.”
Bilton insisted he was not dodging.
“Nobody talked to you about that?” Pelley continued, pressing him on the firing. “They’re taking one of your correspondents away and nobody mentioned to you what was wrong with Sharyn?”
Bilton acknowledged that he “had conversations with people.”
“And what came out of those conversations?” Pelley asked. “They are private conversations?”
Bilton reiterated that he “did not fire” Alfonsi or Vega. Pelley pointed out that Bilton had nonetheless discussed the matter with others. Charles Forelle, a top Weiss deputy and managing editor of CBS News, interjected, telling Pelley that he was being “rude.”
“This is not actually productive,” Forelle said. “This is not an interview.”
“It’s working for me,” Pelley replied.
On Tuesday, Pelley reportedly met with Weiss and Bilton – although it’s not clear if he met with them together or individually. But sources I spoke with told me Pelley was told by Weiss that he needed to write a letter of apology about his comments on Monday and warned him that he was creating a “hostile work environment.”
Then on Tuesday evening, Pelley received word that he had been fired via an email from Bilton, which several of the 60 Minute producers shared with me:
Dear. Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.
I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was to call you to talk and to invite you to dinner.
It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead.
Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.
Yesterday’s performative display of hostility – enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation – demonstrated that you have 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. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today, we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on the behalf of CBS News Inc. (“CBS) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes
UPDATE: I obtained a statement released to several members of the press by Scott Pelley, in which he claims he was asked to insert “falsehoods” into 60 Minutes stories last season.
Here are the complete contents of Pelley’s message:
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, 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.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our 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.
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. 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. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now 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.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—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. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
Scott Pelley
For more coverage on this story and other media industry news, you can also follow me at toomuchtv.beehiive.com.
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