Scott Pelley is speaking out.
The 68-year-old journalist gave his first interview since being fired from 60 Minutes, and called for the removal of controversial editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
During the discussion with the New York Times, Scott addressed what led up to his hiring, including multiple people being fired from the show which he referred to as “the Black Thursday massacre,” including executive producer Tanya Simon, with tech journalist Nick Bilton being made her replacement.
“Within hours, all of those people have been wiped out, and one-third of our correspondents have been fired. At the same moment, we are informed of our new executive producer. His name is Nick Bilton. I’m sure he must be a wonderful man, but no one had ever heard of him. He has zero experience in television news and no experience in management. So imagine how we feel when someone like that comes into a shop like 60 Minutes,” he explained, adding that he felt “shock, dismay, impossible to believe, searching desperately for an explanation, knowing that an explanation would be forthcoming and then not seeing that.”
Scott said that there was going to be a staff meeting the following Monday, so he canceled a trip to the Canadian Rockies with his wife.
“I wasn’t going to be able to be at the meeting and she and I talked about it, realized that this was an existential moment for 60 Minutes and canceled the vacation so I could be there,” he said.
Scott Pelley describes the “jaw-dropping” series of events
He added that he met Nick in that meeting, and Bari never showed up, which he found shocking.
“As we’re standing in there, Nick makes his way to the front of the room and does something absolutely jaw-dropping to me. He pulls out his phone and begins reading a statement off his phone in a room full of 50 heartbroken people. The callousness, the tone deafness of that, you could hear the groan in the room. They put out a big spread of bagels like we were all going to feel better,” he went on to explain, noting that Nick also sent an “insulting” email to staff about the show.
Scott then accused Bari of trying to kill the show.
Later, he was taken into a meeting with CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, who accused him of physically abusing Nick.
“This is a lie. I didn’t come within 10 feet of Nick Bilton. In my life, I have never put my hands on anyone in anger. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, OK, I take that back. And I said, great.”
“Cibrowski tells me, you’ll have our answer in a few minutes,” Scott recalled to the NYT, saying he returned to his office and waited for four hours before leaving and getting an email saying he was fired.
He thinks Bari Weiss needs to be removed
As for whether Bari needs to be removed, he said: “Oh, gosh, yes. Look, she’s a lovely person. And her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful. But television’s not her thing. This is like somebody walking up to me and saying, ‘There’s a 747, there are 400 people on it, we need you to fly it to Paris.’ I’m going to decline because I don’t have a clue. And it would have been so much better if Bari Weiss had been offered this job and said, ‘Oh, that’s not for me, I don’t know how to do that.’”
“We have broadcasts that almost don’t get on the air. We have respected journalists saying that there is a thumb on the scale for one political party over another. We have a broadcast that is among the most important in America. The most successful in the history of all television. It was doing great, so why are we making these changes?” hecontinued.
“We need adult supervision and at the moment we don’t have it. We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who through no fault of their own have no experience in television. They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at 60 Minutes before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity. We can save this. It’s possible to land this plane. But right now, CBS News is on fire.”
Tony Dokoupil is responding to the shocking news of his firing as well.
Posted To:Bari Weiss CBS CBS News Scott Pelley
