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CBS News has confirmed it fired veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley in the wake of a publicly disclosed clash with new executive producer Nick Bilton.
A letter sent from Bilton to Pelley that CBC News has seen stated the veteran correspondent had “hijacked” Bilton’s first meeting with staff a day earlier.
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you,” Bilton said in the letter, which informed Pelley that his employment is being terminated for cause “effective immediately.”
The meeting in question occurred Monday morning and details soon leaked to media.
During the meeting, Pelley said CBS News head Bari Weiss was “murdering the show” and accused Bilton of having “slender qualifications” for the job, according to reports.
Bilton’s appointment to the top job had only been announced last week.
Pelley, 68, said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press that 60 Minutes has lost its way under new management. He accused them of asking him to “inject falsehoods and bias” into his work, without sharing specific details.
“Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favour with the Trump administration,” he said in the statement.
Pelley joined CBS in 1989 and rose through the network’s ranks, serving as chief White House correspondent and as the network’s evening news anchor between 2011 and 2017. He had been a 60 Minutes correspondent since 2004.
Recent clashes on the show
The show debuted in 1968, and for a number of seasons was top ranked in U.S. television with its lineup of correspondents, including Mike Wallace and Canadian Morley Safer. But it has endured a tumultuous past two years.
CBS’s parent, Paramount, paid $16 million US to settle a lawsuit with U.S. President Donald Trump after he complained that a 60 Minutes interview with Democrat Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign was unfairly edited.
After Paramount was purchased by SkyDance, new owner David Ellison tapped Weiss, founder of the Free Press website, to lead CBS’s news division late last year.
Just weeks into her role, Weiss prevented a show segment on the Trump administration’s sending of deportees to a harsh El Salvador prison from airing in the U.S. The last-minute decision came after Global News had already obtained the original copy of the show. The segment aired in Canada.
CBS postponed the airing of a 60 Minutes piece about El Salvador’s CECOT prison, but the segment briefly appeared on Global TV’s free website and app. CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss caused controversy when she delayed the story just hours before it was set to air, looking to include more of the Trump administration’s perspective.
Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the El Salvador segment, complained publicly about what she viewed as unprecedented executive meddling into the network’s premier news shows. Weiss said the original segment didn’t have enough balance and Trump administration comment.
The segment aired several weeks later in the U.S..
Alfonsi and fellow correspondent Cecilia Vega were both let go from 60 Minutes in the past several days. Anderson Cooper, a show presence for two decades, announced last month he was leaving the show, citing a desire to spend more time with his children.
Bilton, like Weiss, was seen as an unconventional choice for their current role. He’d never worked at a news division, spending time as a print journalist for Vanity Fair and a producer of films and documentaries, including The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, about disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes.
Meanwhile, Trump has been interviewed on 60 Minutes twice since his lawsuit, with some critics arguing the editing of those segments was not substantially different in substance from what had occurred with Harris.
