CBS News Fires Scott Pelley Effective Immediately
CBS News announced tonight it had fired Scott Pelley effective immediately.
Puck, the digital news site, first broke the news citing a letter from 60 Minutes Executive Producer Nick Bilton to Pelley.
NOTE FROM TODD: Sadly, social media is throttling our content. To make sure you receive all of our news and content, be sure to get a free subscription to my newsletter. Click here.
Bilton wrote that he was profoundly disappointed in Pelley’s behavior and his refusal to sit down with executives.
“You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote. “I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.”
Bilton accused Pelley of a “performative display of hostility – enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation.”
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” he concluded. “I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately.”
Pelley, the longtime face of CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” had found himself at the center of a newsroom brawl after refusing to get on board with management’s push to make the once-powerful network more balanced and fact-based.
The clash erupted during a tense staff meeting with newly installed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton. According to Axios and the Los Angeles Times, Pelley unloaded on CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, accusing her of destroying the legendary newsmagazine.
“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” Pelley reportedly said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
Pelley also took aim at Bilton, telling him that Weiss “has no qualifications for her job” and that Bilton had “slender qualifications” for his new post. He added, “The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
But the internal revolt appears to be about far more than staff cuts or television résumés. It is a battle over whether CBS News will continue operating as a home for left-leaning legacy media elites — or whether its new ownership will drag the network toward something closer to fairness.
NPR reported last October that Weiss arrived at CBS with a mandate for “balanced and fact-based” news. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison said at the time, “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”
That message did not sit well with many inside CBS, where Trump-era reporting and left-wing newsroom orthodoxy have long dominated the culture. Pelley, who became a hero to the media resistance crowd after delivering anti-Trump warnings at Wake Forest University and on CNN, seemed unwilling to accept the new direction.
“At this moment our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack,” Pelley told Wake Forest graduates in 2025, warning of “the fear to speak in America.”
During a CNN interview, Pelley also warned that a possible settlement between CBS parent Paramount and President Trump would be “very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the reputation of those companies.”
Now the fight has come home to Black Rock. CBS management is trying to rebuild trust with viewers who abandoned the network years ago. Pelley and his allies appear to believe “60 Minutes” should remain untouched — even if millions of Americans see the program as another outpost of elite liberal journalism.
In the end, the Pelley blowup may prove exactly why CBS needed a course correction. A network that once claimed to speak for all Americans now seems furious that management wants it to speak to the rest of America, too.