Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley confronted his new boss over the ouster of his executive producer and other colleagues in a fiery meeting Monday morning.
Pelley and other 60 Minutes staffers met with new executive producer Nick Bilton in a heated closed-door exchange, Guardian journalist Jeremy Barr reported. Naturally, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was a hot topic.
“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley, who has been with the show since 2004, said of Weiss, who wasn’t even at the meeting. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
Pelley, according to Status, told Bilton that he has “slender qualifications” for his new job, and that Weiss has “no qualifications” for hers. Weiss, he added, has made “catastrophic” changes to 60 Minutes.
The clash came after a bloodbath at 60 Minutes last week. Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were fired on Thursday, along with executive producer Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program who is being replaced by Bilton, a man who has never worked in TV news.
Pelley pressed Bilton: “What was wrong with Sharyn Alfonsi?”
When Bilton said he would “defer” from answering, Pelley told him, “This is not the crowd to dodge.”
“Nobody talked to you about that?” Pelley went on. “They’re taking one of your correspondents away, and nobody mentioned to you what was wrong with Sharyn?”
Bilton said he had had “conversations with people,” at which point Pelley asked what came out of them, or whether they would remain private.
Bilton then told Pelley that it wasn’t he who fired Alfonsi or Vega. When Pelley noted that Bilton had still discussed it, CBS News managing editor Charles Forelle, a top deputy to Weiss, chastised Pelley for being “rude.”
“This is not actually productive,” Forelle said. “This is not an interview.”
Pelley shot back: “It’s working for me.”
Forelle reportedly went on to call Pelley “rude” twice more.
“I’m not being rude,” Pelley finally said. “You know what was rude? Black Thursday. That was the absolute definition of rudeness. Telling Tanya Simon she had to be out of here at five o’clock. Sending [executive editor] Draggan Mihailovich to HR to get fired, because nobody could look him in the eye. Not talking about Tanya’s contract. Not talking about Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract. Not talking about Cecilia Vega’s contract. Just calling them up and telling they were fired. That’s rude. This is a conversation. That is rude, and you were part of that.”
Bilton tried to move the meeting along, suggesting that Pelley and others go to Weiss for answers because he did “not feel comfortable” responding to some of their questions.
Toward the end of the meeting, Pelley wondered why Bilton would take the role, “knowing that you would never be welcomed here.”
Bilton predicted that that would not happen.
“I am not intimidated by—I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I have sat and talked with incredibly powerful people like you have,” Bilton continued. “None of it intimidates me, OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.”
Bilton closed by saying he cared “deeply” about 60 Minutes, adding, “I want to ensure that what happened to TIME magazine and all of these other institutions does not happen here.”
Before getting up and leaving the room after 15 minutes, Bilton reportedly told the group, “Enjoy the bagels.”
After Bilton had left, the room “erupted” into applause within earshot of him, a source told the New York Post.
CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pelley is not alone in his outrage. CBS News staffers are up in arms over Weiss’ plans to overhaul 60 Minutes and are petitioning their billionaire boss to rein her in.
Breaker Media founder Lachlan Cartwright told MS NOW on Sunday night that journalists at CBS are at their wits’ end about Weiss’ changes, which they believe are skewing the network’s coverage in favor of the Trump administration.
“I was made aware of a letter that will go out tomorrow to [Paramount CEO] David Ellison from CBS News staffers,” he said. “They are asking David Ellison to respect editorial values and independent journalism.”
Cartwright said the firings were the last straw for news staff, who have been concerned about the network’s journalistic direction under Weiss for some time.
“There was a letter meant to go out last year, they decided at that point not to do it. But this letter is going to go out tomorrow to David Ellison from these staffers because people I speak to within CBS are absolutely distraught about what’s going on here.”
He said staff at the network are sure the changes at 60 Minutes are the result of President Donald Trump’s ire at the program.
“While there’s no smoking gun, Trump’s DNA is all over this,” he said.
“Donald Trump has always raged against 60 Minutes,” Cartwright said, pointing out that the president sued the program for millions.
The changes at 60 Minutes come as the show is performing strongly in the ratings, and has a respected reputation.
“If it ain’t broke, why are you fixing it?” Cartwright asked. “They are going to blow up the most respected program.
He speculated that Bilton got the job because he “probably met Bari Weiss at a dinner party in L.A. and they got along.”
Cartwright, who worked with Bilton at Vanity Fair, said he had no television or managerial experience and was a lazy and opportunistic journalist who is “the type that looks at a story and he looks to monetize it.”
He said there was no reason to fire Simon, except to completely change the editorial direction.
“If you want to dismantle the program... you have to bring in an outsider to really blow it up,” Cartwright said.
Paramount CEO Ellison, son of Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison, is one of the many billionaires who have courted the Trump administration, cozying up to the 79-year-old president and doing his bidding at CBS.
Installing Weiss at CBS News and firing Stephen Colbert are two of the highest-profile appeasements he has made so far.
