{"id":854971,"date":"2026-06-09T11:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/854971\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:38:17","slug":"takeaways-from-pelley-interview-about-firing-from-cbs-and-60-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/854971\/","title":{"rendered":"Takeaways from Pelley interview about firing from CBS and ’60 Minutes’"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 When CBS News President Tom Cibrowski asked Scott Pelley if he could come by for a meeting last Tuesday, the longtime \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent booked about an hour on his calendar, he says. He assumed he\u2019d be having an extensive discussion about issues that led to his tense confrontation a day earlier<\/a> with his new boss, Nick Bilton.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know Bari Weiss, the news division\u2019s editor in chief, would be there. But his initial reaction to seeing her was \u201cThis is terrific of her,\u201d he told The New York Times in a wide-ranging podcast interview.<\/a> He figured he\u2019d able to ask questions, and she\u2019d explain her sweeping changes of the previous week, in which she\u2019d replaced the executive producer, Tanya Simon, and let go two correspondents, along with other key staffers.<\/p>\n

The last thing from his mind? That he himself was about to be fired, after a meeting that he says lasted about 10 minutes. \u201cI just didn\u2019t connect the dots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a raw and emotional interview with the Times\u2019 Lulu Garcia-Navarro, released Sunday, Pelley, who had been at CBS for 37 years, told his side of the story. Several times, he teared up. He said the whole affair felt \u201clike your spouse was murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are some takeaways from the interview.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t see \u2018Black Thursday\u2019 coming<\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: Five days before he was fired, on the previous Thursday, the stunning changes were announced. In Simon\u2019s place Weiss had installed Bilton, a former tech columnist at the Times and a documentarian with no TV broadcast experience. Though Weiss, who had quickly become a polarizing figure in the industry, had been widely expected to make changes, Pelley says that what he calls \u201cBlack Thursday\u201d came as a shock.<\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cNo one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming. This is our entire senior staff. Tanya Simon, our boss, she\u2019s the first woman ever to be executive producer of \u201860 Minutes.\u2019 And she concluded this season with a growth in our audience of nine percent, which is unheard-of in broadcast television.\u201d<\/p>\n

His emotions are close to the surface<\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: The correspondent teared up several times when describing how close-knit relationships were at the show.<\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cThat\u2019s a family at \u201860 Minutes\u2019. My colleagues and I have worked together 10, 20, 30 years. We travel together. We dine together. We go into literal combat together. My former boss and former producer Bill Owens saved my life in a firefight in Iraq. So, Lulu, these bonds are pretty tight, and when somebody wipes out, murders, a large number of your family members, people are hurt, and shocked, in disbelief and just desperate for some explanation. And as you and I sit here today, there still has been none.\u201d<\/p>\n

The staff meeting with the new boss was preceded by an \u2018insulting\u2019 email <\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: Bilton had written an introductory email to the staff<\/a>. Pelley didn\u2019t appreciate it. <\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cIt was so insulting … He told us that it wasn\u2019t 1968 anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn\u2019t cost 32 cents anymore, and suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the meeting, a \u2018tone-deaf\u2019 boss read from his phone <\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: Pelley set a scene of a roomful of people \u201cwho have devoted their lives to \u201860 Minutes\u201d\u2019 and had received no explanation of what was going on. He says they were waiting for Weiss to elucidate. She didn\u2019t attend. Instead, Bilton took out his phone and started reading from it. <\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cNick 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. … I felt that somebody had to stand up, not just for the broadcast, but for the people. There are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

He never expected to be fired<\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: What happened at the meeting is now widely known, with Pelley challenging Bilton about his qualifications for the job and saying Weiss was \u201cmurdering\u201d the show, among other things. Still, he did not think his job was on the line.<\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cOh gosh, furthest thing from my mind. \u2026Some reporter I turned out to be. I just didn\u2019t connect the dots. I mean, was this meeting (on Monday) contentious? Yes, but \u201860 Minutes\u2019\u201d is known for two things: a ticking stopwatch and hard questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says leadership advocated \u2018falsehoods and bias\u2019<\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: In the story about the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in confrontations with federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this year, Pelley says that he and colleagues made efforts, on their own, to show examples of how protesters had been aggressive. But Weiss asked for more that he says he could not give. Ultimately, Pelley simply resisted the changes and the piece went forward. <\/p>\n

Asked about the accusation, CBS News responded: \u201cIn an email, Bari made four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible. As is frequently the case in any newsroom that operates with collaboration, not everything she raised made it into the final piece.\u201d <\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cWe get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, \u2018Can we make the protesters look more violent?\u2019 Now, I\u2019m paraphrasing. I don\u2019t have the quote, but that\u2019s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good\u2019s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer \u2026 This is not what you see on the video.. But that\u2019s how that happened. There was a thumb on the scale for the president\u2019s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has not spoken to three fellow correspondents who stayed<\/p>\n

THE BACKGROUND: Pelley says in the interview he has not spoken to Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker, who have said they decided to stay for now, based on assurances that they can work without interference. But he says he doesn\u2019t think those assurances can be trusted. He also suggests that Anderson Cooper, who did not renew his contract for what he said were family reasons, actually was leaving because of the new leadership. <\/p>\n

THE QUOTE: \u201cI haven\u2019t talked to them. …. we have had conversations before this about staying to maintain the principles of the broadcast. If we leave, we can\u2019t help. There have been other times \u2014 when Anderson left, when others were fired \u2014 that we could have stormed into a meeting and quit, but those very distinguished correspondents and myself did have conversations about this and decided that we were better working on the inside, and that we could influence things for the better. And we did. And it was my intention to stay and do exactly that. … (Now) I would venture to say that trust is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 When CBS News President Tom Cibrowski asked Scott Pelley if he could come by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":841079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[238640,27602,27597,27594,64,185,171,57,287086,76470,27596,349077,398,17635,340205,5158,402,225146,27598,340204,145626,61,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-854971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alex-pretti","tag-anderson-cooper","tag-bill-owens","tag-bill-whitaker","tag-business","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-jocelyn-noveck","tag-jon-wertheim","tag-lesley-stahl","tag-lulu-garcia-navarro","tag-media","tag-minneapolis","tag-nick-bilton","tag-podcasts","tag-protests-and-demonstrations","tag-renee-good","tag-scott-pelley","tag-tanya-simon","tag-tom-cibrowski","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116719957782198674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}