Longtime CBS News journalist Scott Pelley, who has contributed to “60 Minutes” since 2004, has been terminated from the newsmagazine effective immediately, TVLine has confirmed.
Pelley’s firing comes just one day after reports of a heated clash between him and recently installed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton. TVLine has acquired the termination letter sent to Pelley by Bilton, which reads as follows:
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. While I’m new to ’60 Minutes,’ I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. 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 call you to talk and 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 of viewpoints 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 behalf of CBS News, Inc. to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately.
Following Pelley’s firing, Bilton broke the news in a memo to “60 Minutes” staffers, maintaining that he “tried to find common ground” with Pelley, but “[t]hat was not the path Scott chose.”
More on the 60 Minutes controversy
Nick Bilton, a journalist and author, was named the new executive producer of “60 Minutes” in late May. He was appointed by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, whose hiring in that role has been controversial in its own right, due to Weiss’ lack of broadcast journalism experience and much-maligned relationship to President Donald Trump.
During the aforementioned meeting between Bilton and “60 Minutes” staffers this week, Scott Pelley reportedly claimed Weiss was “murdering ’60 Minutes'” and questioned Bilton’s own qualifications for his new position.
Pelley’s subsequent ouster is the latest in a string of recent “60 Minutes” exits. After Anderson Cooper announced his departure in February, Weiss further overhauled the show in May via the dismissals of correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich.
Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and L. Jon Wertheim currently remain as the “60 Minutes” contributors that will return for Season 59, premiering this fall.
