Scott Pelley says CBS management ‘instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias’ after his firing from 60 Minutes

Scott Pelley is officially out at 60 Minutes. The longtime correspondent was fired after a period of serious conflict with the network’s new leaders. The split followed weeks of growing friction inside the newsroom over the program’s direction.

His exit comes right after a tense meeting on Monday. During that meeting, Pelley openly questioned whether the incoming executive producer, Nick Bilton, was qualified for the job. He also criticized the way editor-in-chief Bari Weiss runs things.

In a long statement he put out after being fired, Pelley did not hold back. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he claimed that the current management at CBS News is marked by “incompetence and unprofessionalism” that has “wreaked havoc” on the newsroom. He went further, saying that Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place; she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”

Bilton accuses Pelley of disrupting his first staff meeting

The tension reached a breaking point during the Monday staff meeting. In a note sent to the 60 Minutes team, Bilton spoke about what happened directly. He reportedly wrote, “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.”

Bilton also said that he tried to find common ground with Pelley over the weekend. But he added that this “was not the path Scott chose.” The most serious parts of Pelley’s statement involve his claims about editorial honesty. He alleges that management “instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”

He said he was told to include claims that were not checked or proven. However, he says he managed to ignore or refuse those instructions. His concerns echo those of another 60 Minutes journalist who lost her CBS deal after a segment was pulled off air.

Pelley also said he was frustrated with how editorial decisions were being made. He stated that “politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast.” He added that “giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done.” That comment appears to point to reports about an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pelley’s criticism reaches beyond these specific issues to the wider direction of the network. He believes the new owners are throwing away the legacy of the program. He said this is being done “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.” Tensions between CBS and the Trump administration have surfaced before, including in a CBS interview where Jill Biden defended Hunter’s pardon.

He described the current situation as one where the “collapse of values at the top has become untenable.” He also said the leadership is “no longer recognizable.” According to Pelley, things got so bad that at one point a story he was working on brought the entire program to within 19 minutes of not airing at all.

Pelley has been at the network for 37 years. Even so, he says the change in principles left him with no choice but to leave. While he thanked his colleagues, he ended his statement by saying, “The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”