Scott Pelley is not looking to go quietly. The veteran 60 Minutes correspondent, and one time CBS Evening News anchor, hit back at CBS News for firing him on Tuesday. In a lengthy statement, Pelley accused CBS News management, led by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, of “incompetence and unprofessionalism” and made more damning accusations including that he was “instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
Incoming 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton fired Pelley on Tuesday, the day after a fiery meeting with the show’s staff, that saw Pelley call out Bilton’s lack of TV news experience and upbraid the management under Weiss. Pelley notably said that Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
“You should hear this from me first. We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Bilton wrote in a note to 60 Minutes staff Tuesday. “I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”
In the note to Pelley, Bilton wrote: “Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.”
