60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley has been fired by the show and CBS News following an alleged verbal confrontation with new executive producer Nick Bilton.
Multiple outlets reported on Tuesday, June 2, that Bilton, who was confirmed in the top role last week, informed Pelley, 68, of his termination that evening.
The Hollywood Reporter quoted a note written to 60 Minutes staff that was allegedly distributed on Tuesday that alerted them to the news. “You should hear this from me first. We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” the note read. “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.”
Us Weekly has reached out to CBS News for comment.
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The report comes one day after The New York Times revealed audio of Pelley at a staff gathering that criticized CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and questioned Bilton’s qualifications amid his new appointment.
According to The New York Times, Pelley, who has worked for CBS News in various roles for almost 40 years, said to Bilton in the meeting, “You have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s [Weiss] made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
The report also stated that the meeting saw Pelley express that he believed Weiss, 42, who was not in attendance, was “murdering 60 Minutes” through her work.
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“She does not love this place,” Pelley reportedly commented in the meeting. “She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
To alert him to his termination, Bilton sent Pelley a letter on Tuesday, detailing his “disappointment” over the longtime correspondent’s reported behavior.
“One of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner,” the letter read. “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.”
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Bilton reportedly labeled Pelley’s behavior as a “performative display of hostility” that could have been addressed in a more private setting. “You have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress,” the letter read. “I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama.”
