60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley is out in a shock move from CBS News. Now, the longtime reporter is ready to spill the truth about his situation.
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Multiple outlets have reported on Pelley being fired from CBS News this morning. But, in a statement he gave to Status News, the 60 Minutes correspondent criticized his former boss Bari Weiss for unethical reporting decisions from the very first moments of her tenure at the network.
Pelley said, “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.”
This all comes after a recent meeting with new 60 Minutes head producer Nick Bilton. Pelley asked questions about why the staff could trust Weiss’s hand-selected man for the job. And, it’s clear that management didn’t like his tone. But apparently, they’ve had their hands in the cookie jar a lot the past few months.
“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley continued. “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.”
This would all arguably fall into the lines of unethical reporting. In this case, you can pick any one of these different infractions and probably feel that way.
CBS News fires Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes
Puck News’ Dylan Byers obtained the actual letter Bilton sent to Pelley to fire the long-tenured correspondent. It’s basically unfathomable that this move would happen without Weiss’s sign-off.
Their outlet had reported that management had approached Pelley to apologize or try to mend fences after that fiery introductory meeting. But, when one of the faces of 60 Minutes put his foot down, CBS made their decision.
Now, instead of focusing on the show actually having good ratings in spite of all this executive meddling, CBS News will have to find a way to help restore some viewer trust. From the tenor of Pelley’s statement, it doesn’t seem likely!
Bilton wrote, “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility–enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation–demonstrated that You have no interest in contributing to the future of success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first in class news programming, not to make headlines about news newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.”
With that, Pelley is gone and the future of 60 Minutes is even more murky than it was earlier this week when multiple news outlets wondered about the programming moving forward. One of the factors that keeps readers and viewers coming back to outlets is trust in the people delivering the news.
Firing Pelley isn’t going to do much to woo back any of the viewers that the network has been bleeding overall with some of these changes. The horse has left the barn.
(featured image: Frazer Harrison/WireImage)
