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Fired Scott Pelley Says '60 Minutes' Under Bari Weiss Wanted 'Falsehoods and Bias' Injected
"Incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc," said the veteran journalist as his 37-career with CBS News came to an end.
Jun 03, 2026
Fired by the network where he had worked for nearly four decades on Tuesday night, veteran "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley said in a statement that he had been directed by the new management team at CBS News, led by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, "to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story" and also "told to include assertions that are unverified" in his reporting.
What looks like the collapse of "60 Minutes" has played out both behind closed doors at the network in recent months and publicly, with a series of high-profile firings of other longtime journalists and producers at the show. Details of internal meetings have been leaked, revealing serious tension between veteran members of the nation's most-watched television news magazine and Weiss' new management team.
“The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable,” Pelley said in his statement, released just hours after Nick Bilton, the show's new executive producer appointed by Weiss last month, announced the firing. “The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well."
Bilton said in his statement that Pelley had been “terminated for cause effective immediately," following a contentious staff meeting on Monday in which Pelley accused Weiss, who was not at the meeting, of being "brought in to kill" the program, not save it.
Despite "repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend" and earlier on Tuesday, Bilton said, his efforts "to find common ground" with Pelley were not successful. "That was not the path Scott chose," he said.
Pelley's narrative of events was starkly different.
"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," Pelley said in a statement sent to several news outlets. "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," he continued, "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.”
Pelley concluded: “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.”
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CBS Firings Called 'Straight From an Authoritarian Handbook' and Preview of Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger
The pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger "represents an existential threat to the free press, independent media, and free speech in this country and beyond," warned several press freedom groups.
Jun 02, 2026
A coalition of nine press freedom groups on Tuesday warned that last week's firings of top journalists at CBS News' "60 Minutes" were a "grotesque effort taken straight from an authoritarian handbook"—but emphasized that the dismissal of reporters who had pushed back against the Trump administration signaled danger for journalists across the media, particularly as a pending merger would hand control of CNN to the same billionaire family that how runs CBS.
The Coalition for Women in Journalism, Common Cause, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders were among the groups that released a statement saying the firing of "60 Minutes" correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega—as well as two top executives—were meant to "appease a sitting president and dismantle one of the loudest voices in investigative journalism."
But the groups emphasized that "this is only the beginning," considering the fact that Warner Bros. Discovery recently voted in support of a $110 billion proposed merger with Paramount Skydance, owned by David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump megadonor Larry Ellison. The deal could be finalized as soon as July.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, and media critics have warned the network could be headed for the same loss of editorial independence that CBS has faced since right-wing former opinion columnist took the helm of the latter network last year following the Paramount Skydance merger.
Since then, newly appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has pulled from the air a "60 Minutes" segment that questioned the Trump administration's explanation for the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvador prison, personally booked guests for news programs, and called for programming that appeals to "centrist" viewers.
"Bari Weiss’ shameless actions fulfill the Ellisons’ commitment to President Trump to remake CBS to his liking," said the groups on Tuesday. "Larry Ellison has reportedly promised to do the same at CNN if allowed to take control through the pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Not because it makes any business sense, but because they seek to control the public discourse."
"We have to make the story heard. It’s what '60 Minutes' would have done; it’s what the Fourth Estate is tasked with doing; it’s what Trump and the Ellisons want to prevent. Don’t let them.”
The groups noted that the firings of Alfonsi, Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich came as more than 200 journalists and documentarians signed an open letter opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, citing concerns that the deal "would open the door to improper political meddling in journalists’ editorial decisions," and noting that according to The Wall Street Journal, David Ellison has "promised President Donald Trump 'sweeping changes' at Warner-owned CNN—a frequent target of Trump’s ire."
"Ellison will likely alter CNN’s editorial direction (not to mention meddle with HBO’s documentaries) to be more friendly to the administration, threatening press freedom," said the signatories, including Wajahat Ali, Mehdi Hasan, and Alfonsi.
A separate letter organized by Democracy Defenders Fund has garnered signatures from over 1,000 actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, and other entertainment professionals.
"This transaction would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries—and the audiences we serve—can least afford it," reads the letter, which calls for state attorneys general to block the merger. "The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world. Alarmingly, this merger would reduce the number of major US film studios to just four."
On Tuesday, the press freedom groups warned that the merger "represents an existential threat to the free press, independent media, and free speech in this country and beyond, and should not be allowed to move forward."
"We cannot let this blow to the bedrock of our democracy be lost in the constant barrage of scandal, corruption, and abuse of power," said the organizations. "We have to make the story heard. It’s what '60 Minutes' would have done; it’s what the Fourth Estate is tasked with doing; it’s what Trump and the Ellisons want to prevent. Don’t let them.”
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'She Was Brought in to Kill' 60 Minutes: Scott Pelley Unleashes on Bari Weiss at CBS Meeting
The journalist confronted newly installed executive editor Nick Bilton over the recent firings of two reporters and two top executives.
Jun 01, 2026
Veteran "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley took aim at the qualifications and intentions of CBS News' right-wing editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, on Monday at an explosive staff meeting that was meant to introduce employees of the 57-year-old news show to its newly appointed executive producer days after several journalists were fired in what Pelley referred to as "Black Thursday."
Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist who first gained notoriety for campaigning against pro-Palestinian professors at Columbia University and went on to rail against "woke" progressives and "cancel culture," appointed tech journalist Nick Bilton to lead the program last week after firing two executives and two top correspondents.
Bilton opened the meeting by reading some prepared remarks, but Pelley quickly cut in to tell the new producer that he had "many questions" about the dismissals of reporters Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich.
"I guess you wandered in expecting to read a statement off?" Pelley asked Bilton, his voice reportedly "shaking in anger" at times. "What was wrong with Sharyn Alfonsi?"
Alfonsi and Vega won a prestigious journalism award for a story on President Donald Trump's deal with El Salvador to send immigrants to the country's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the abuse detainees have suffered there, and the fact that many of those deported to the prison have not been convicted of crimes and have been falsely accused of being members of violent gangs.
The story was pulled from the air last December after Weiss complained that it hadn't covered the Trump administration's perspective, garnering accusations of censorship, and eventually aired with some editing.
Pelley suggested on Monday that such decisions revealed Weiss' intentions for the broadcast as a whole.
“She’s murdering ’60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that,” Pelley told Bilton. “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job."
"The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic," he added, "so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
'CBS Evening News' has had declining viewership, "often below 4 million viewers a night," according to NPR, with the broadcast "flagging" since Weiss installed Tony Dokoupil as anchor.
Media critics have warned that Weiss appears to be "running the Trump playbook" at CBS, as Sophia Tesfaye wrote at Salon last week: "Take an institution that still commands public trust, install loyalists with no relevant experience in positions of authority, fire the people who push back, dress the whole operation in the language of reform—fairness, innovation, a new direction—and you dare anyone to prove that what you’re really doing is building a protection racket."
Weiss took the helm of CBS after parent company Paramount's merger with Skydance, owned by the son of tech billionaire and Trump backer Larry Ellison.
Charles Forelle, the managing editor of CBS News and a close associate of Weiss, repeatedly attempted to steer Monday's meeting away from Pelley's criticism of Bilton and the new direction "60 Minutes" appears to be taking, saying at one point that Pelley's line of questioning was "not actually productive."
"It's working for me," replied Pelley.
After Pelley said the network's leadership had been "cruel" in firing veteran journalists from the show, Forelle accused him of being "rude."
"I'm not being rude," he shot back. "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 5:00. Sending Draggon Mihailovich to HR to get fired, because no one could look him in the eye. Not talking about Sharyn Alfonsi's contract. Not talking about Cecilia Vega's contract. Just calling them up and telling them they were fired. That's rude."
"This is a conversation," Pelley added. "That is rude, and you were part of that."
Alfonsi's contract with "60 Minutes" was not renewed; Vega was dismissed despite her contract not being up until 2027. The two journalists spoke out about their firings, with Alfonsi saying, "Journalists willing to challenge authority are being pushed aside in favor of those who will not."
Vega said that "in recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories."
"60 Minutes" employees applauded Pelley on Monday after Bilton left the meeting, and observers praised the veteran journalist for defending the show and the work of its staffers.
"Scott Pelley told the truth today," said Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. "We need independent media the right wing can't buy."
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