CBS News has fired high-profile “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley amid debate about the direction of the show, which has been a mainstay of the network’s television lineup for decades.
“Your employment with CBS News is terminated for cause effective immediately,” Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” wrote to Pelley in a letter seen by CNBC. It was not immediately clear when the letter was sent.
Pelley had previously said that Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, was “murdering” “60 Minutes,” according to NBC News.
In a statement obtained by MS Now, Pelley said the network is attempting to “curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
“The waste is heartbreaking,” Pelley wrote.
Skydance and Paramount merged last year, putting new leadership in charge of CBS and other Paramount properties including the storied film studio and more nascent streaming business. Paramount Skydance Chief Executive Officer David Ellison is now trying to merge Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery, and he needs the Trump administration’s regulatory approval to complete the deal.
In 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump sued “60 Minutes,” alleging the program deceptively edited an interview with his opponent, Kamala Harris. Paramount settled the lawsuit for $16 million, which irked some veteran “60 Minutes” employees, including Pelley. Another notable anchor, Anderson Cooper, announced he was leaving the show earlier this month.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley said in his statement. “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.”
During a meeting on Monday, Pelley told Bilton he has “slender qualifications” for the role of executive producer of newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” according to the NBC News report.
Bilton is a former New York Times technology columnist and has made several documentaries for HBO and Netflix. Bilton replaced Tanya Simon as the show’s executive producer. Simon had spent more than two decades at “60 Minutes” before being ousted last week. In contrast, Bilton has no experience running a TV news show.
“The leadership of ’60 Minutes’ is no longer recognizable,” Pelley said in his statement. “The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”
During an interview on May 28, Bilton told CNBC that he’s committed to demonstrating his hiring isn’t a political maneuver.
“I will prove it with the work,” Bilton said. “I’m dedicated to holding people in power to account.”
In a Tuesday editorial call with CBS, Weiss told staffers she is “only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect,” according to a transcript of the call obtained by CNBC.
“That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways,” Weiss said. “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path he chose.”
CBS News President Tom Cibrowski added on the call that the organization “will miss Scott very much.”
In a subsequent statement obtained by MS Now, Pelley disputed Weiss’ account of the situation and said “no constructive dialogue was allowed by the CBS executives at any point.”
Read the full statement from Pelley on his firing:
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 58th season, 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
—CNBC’s Alex Sherman and Ryan Ruggiero contributed to this report.
