{"id":23571,"date":"2026-06-03T15:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/scott-pelley-fired-from-cbs-news-after-tense-60-minutes-meeting\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T15:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:22:08","slug":"scott-pelley-fired-from-cbs-news-after-tense-60-minutes-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/scott-pelley-fired-from-cbs-news-after-tense-60-minutes-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Pelley fired from CBS News after tense \u201860 Minutes\u2019 meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley has been fired from CBS News a day after he excoriated the show’s new executive producer and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in a staff meeting.<\/p>\n

The venerated show’s newly named executive producer, Nick Bilton, announced the network “parted ways” with Pelley in a Tuesday note to staff obtained by MS NOW.<\/p>\n

“I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly,” Bilton wrote. “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.”<\/p>\n

Pelley’s firing deepens a seismic shift for the network, which has seen an exodus of journalists<\/a> since David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, appointed Weiss as editor-in-chief last year. Last week, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract expired after<\/a> she criticized Weiss for pulling her segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons from the air. (Weiss maintained that the story was not ready. A revised version aired a month later.)<\/p>\n

Pelley has worked for the show<\/a> since 2004 and has won more than 50 Emmy Awards, according to his bio<\/a> on the network’s website, which also notes he won half of all major awards earned by “60 Minutes” during his tenure.<\/p>\n

In a staff meeting Monday, Pelley told Bilton — a journalist and filmmaker who has no prior experience in broadcast television — he had “slender” qualifications for the job, and that Weiss was “murdering” “60 Minutes,” according to The New York Times, which obtained a recording<\/a> of the meeting.<\/p>\n

“She does not love this place,” Pelley reportedly said of Weiss, according to the Times. “She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”<\/p>\n

The news of Pelley’s firing was first reported by<\/a> journalist Oliver Darcy, author of the newsletter Status. <\/p>\n

In the termination letter Bilton sent Pelley, which was also obtained by MS NOW, the new executive producer said the veteran correspondent “hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.”<\/p>\n

“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 success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress,” Bilton wrote. <\/p>\n

In a phone interview with the Times after news of his firing broke, Pelley said he devoted decades of his life to the network. <\/p>\n

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast,” he told the newspaper<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Weiss herself praised Pelley’s career even as she condemned his conduct in recent days.<\/p>\n

“Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so
we had to part ways,” Weiss said Wednesday morning at the top of the CBS News editorial call, according to remarks obtained by MS NOW.<\/p>\n

“That unfortunate outcome does not discount from the amazing contributions and work that Scott Pelley
has done for CBS and for ‘60 Minutes’ over the course of his career,” Weiss added, listing several major things Pelley covered in the show’s most recent season.<\/p>\n

“Those are unforgettable stories,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jun. 3, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley has been fired from CBS News a day after he excoriated the show’s new executive producer and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in a staff meeting. The venerated show’s newly named executive producer, Nick Bilton, announced the network “parted ways” with Pelley in a Tuesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}