Scott Pelley fired by CBS after ‘60 Minutes’ clash with management

Media ethics expert Jane Kirtley says it is 'heartbreaking' to see the '60 Minutes' brand be 'degraded' under CBS' current management.

CBS News fired veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday, one day after he sharply criticized the newsmagazine’s new leadership in front of the staff.

CBS said Pelley was terminated for cause, and industry analysts immediately predicted that Pelley might take legal action against the network.

The firing is sure to trigger even more scrutiny of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and her controversial efforts to overhaul the network news division.

On Wednesday morning, Weiss told CBS staffers that “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.”

Pelley responded to Weiss through a statement to The New York Times.

He said, “Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true. In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial meeting. At no point did anyone in the Tuesday meeting suggest that there could be steps taken by either side that would lead to a resolution.”

In a Tuesday evening letter to Pelley that was shared by CBS, the program’s newly appointed executive producer, Nick Bilton, wrote to Pelley that his “antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you.”

Therefore, he wrote, “your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately.”

The letter referenced Pelley’s decision to pointedly question and criticize Bilton in a staff-wide meeting on Monday morning. Pelley’s scathing remarks immediately leaked to outside news outlets and ignited a crisis inside CBS.

In the meeting, Pelley pressed Bilton to explain last Thursday’s firings of top producers and two correspondents at the storied newsmagazine. Bilton, who was appointed on the same day, tried to reassure staff that he respected the program’s legacy while arguing that changes were necessary.

Pelley also accused Weiss, who was not in attendance, of “murdering” “60 Minutes.” When Bilton said Weiss loves the show, Pelley responded, “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”

Pelley’s charge had political overtones. President Donald Trump sued CBS in 2024 over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, and even though legal experts said the suit was frivolous, Paramount’s previous ownership team decided to settle the case in July 2025 rather than defend the program in court.

Furthermore, Paramount’s new ownership team has sought a close relationship with Trump and his administration, and some critics of CBS have asserted a link between corporate attempts to appease Trump and the current overhaul of “60 Minutes.” Paramount is currently seeking Trump administration approval to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN.

Pelley invoked some of this in a statement late Tuesday, saying “the new owner of our network” is casting the legacy of “60 Minutes” aside, “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”

CBS leaders have portrayed the situation very differently, saying that Weiss and her deputies are trying to revive a moribund TV news division and reorient its programs to reach new digital audiences.

Weiss has tapped outsiders to do so. Her hiring of Bilton, a filmmaker and former tech reporter with little TV news experience, was the latest in a string of hotly debated moves.

During Monday’s staff meeting, Pelley depicted Weiss and Bilton as unqualified for their jobs and said Bilton would “never be welcome here.”

Some insiders at CBS said afterward that they thought Pelley was daring Weiss to fire him. His detractors at the network said he acted like a bully at the staff meeting. But his supporters — and he has many — said he was just standing up for his colleagues and trying to protect the “60 Minutes” franchise.

In the letter justifying Pelley’s termination on Tuesday night, Bilton wrote to Pelley, “You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.”

Bilton called it a “performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff” that “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.”

“Despite yesterday’s misconduct,” Bilton continued, “I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.”

That was a reference to a late afternoon meeting between Pelley and senior leadership. Weiss and Bilton were present, along with CBS News president Tom Cibrowski and a human resources representative, according to a source.

The meeting, which was first reported by Puck, ended without any clear resolution, and Pelley told staffers that he expected to be fired.

Later Tuesday evening, Bilton wrote to “60 Minutes” staffers about Pelley’s termination, acknowledging the correspondent’s stature inside the newsmagazine while defending the decision to “part ways” with him.

“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.”

Bilton also sought to turn the staff’s attention back to the future of “60 Minutes,” writing, “I realize this is a great deal of change in a very short time, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.”

“I won’t relitigate the last week with you here,” Bilton wrote. “What I will commit to is this: My unyielding support for each of you, the journalism that you do and what we will do together going forward.”

In Pelley’s statement following the termination letter, the correspondent said “60 Minutes” “lost its DNA” due to last week’s firings.

“Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience,” Pelley wrote. “They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

Pelley also denounced “incompetence and unprofessionalism” from the new leaders of CBS.

“At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon,” Pelley wrote. “We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to ‘keep up the good fight.’ Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”

Brian Stelter, CNN