Veteran journalist’s dismissal comes after he reportedly accused administration of ‘murdering’ influential information programme.
Printed On 3 Jun 2026
US broadcaster CBS has fired Scott Pelley, a longtime correspondent for its 60 Minutes programme, after he reportedly mentioned Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was “murdering the present” and accused its new producer of getting “slender {qualifications}” for the job.
The firing on Tuesday deepened the turmoil on the most influential TV information programme within the US, days after a management overhaul.
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Pelley, 68, criticised administration on Monday throughout a fiery employees assembly with Nick Bilton, the programme’s new government producer put in by Weiss final week, in keeping with a report on the Standing web site.
In a termination discover obtained Tuesday evening by The Related Press information company, Bilton, a know-how journalist and filmmaker with no conventional broadcast information expertise, accused Pelley of finishing up an “ambush” towards him.
“Yesterday, you hijacked my first assembly with employees to disparage me, my {qualifications}, and my intentions with exceptional incivility and contempt,” the letter mentioned.
Pelley mentioned in a press release that 60 Minutes has misplaced its DNA underneath new administration. He accused managers of asking him to “inject falsehoods and bias” into his work with out sharing particular particulars.
“Now, the brand new proprietor of our community is casting this legend apart, apparently to curry a second of favor with the Trump administration,” he mentioned within the assertion.
Standing, which mentioned it had a recording of Monday’s assembly, reported that Pelley had mentioned Weiss was introduced in to kill the information outlet “and he or she’s doing precisely that.”
Weiss was not current on the assembly.
Pelley reportedly grilled Bilton concerning the firings final week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Alfonsi had criticised Weiss final yr for suspending a section about deportees despatched to the Terrorism Confinement Middle, additionally recognized by its Spanish acronym CECOT, a most safety jail in El Salvador, as a part of US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Pelley joins greater than half a dozen individuals who have departed the Sunday information journal, which is the longest-running prime-time present within the US, in latest weeks.
Skydance Media – run by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, a cofounder of Oracle and a longtime supporter of Trump – acquired CBS proprietor Paramount in August and put in Weiss in October.
David Ellison helped safe regulatory approval for the deal, which created Paramount Skydance, with the promise that the CBS community would replicate the “diverse ideological views” of American viewers.
Earlier than the deal, Paramount paid $16m to settle a 2024 lawsuit that Trump filed over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. He charged that the modifying of one in all her remarks gave a distorted view of his rival for the White Home, however authorized consultants mentioned his case was with out advantage.
