CBS News head Bari Weiss — who has no experience in TV journalism — fired Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” because he refused to obey her pro-Trump agenda, reports the New York Times and because he questioned Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, despite his lack of experience:
Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents…
Mr. Pelley, asked about the letter in the interview on Tuesday evening, said Mr. Bilton’s missive “betrays a complete misunderstanding of what we work for and what we live for at ‘60 Minutes.’”
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Pelley sent a statement to The Times that assailed the new leadership of CBS News, writing that “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc” at the network.” He added, “The collapse of values at the top has become untenable.”
Mr. Pelley also wrote that senior managers at CBS News had pressured him to insert bias into stories for “60 Minutes” this past season, though he did not provide details about specific segments.
Pelley issued a formal statement Tuesday night detailing what he says drove him out and the allegations are specific:
“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley wrote. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.”
Pelley said the demands didn’t stop there. Politicians, he wrote, had been invited to select which correspondents would conduct their interviews — a practice he called incompatible with basic journalistic standards.
And he revealed that mismanagement had nearly killed an episode outright: the broadcast came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
The statement named a culprit. The new owner of CBS, Pelley wrote, was dismantling the most successful program in television history “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
Former CNN and CBS reporter Jim Acosta defended Pelley on Facebook.
(Sources: New York Times, Jim Acosta)