Scott Pelley Picks Another Fight After CBS Sends | Political News
Scott Pelley obtained precisely what he was angling for. Now he needs to relitigate it.
Less than 24 hours after CBS News terminated his contract for trigger on Tuesday evening, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent launched a assertion Wednesday accusing CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of mendacity to her own workers about what occurred in the Tuesday assembly that ended his profession at the community.
Weiss opened a Wednesday morning workers call by addressing the firing instantly. Her model: CBS tried to discover a path ahead after Monday’s all-hands blowup, could not get there, and Pelley selected the end result himself.
According to remarks confirmed from the workers call:
“Before we get into it, I need to address what’s transpired in our newsroom over the past two days and what is making news. I know I speak for myself, and I hope I speak for everyone here, when I say that I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect.
“We can not do our work without it. That basis was damaged on Monday, and despite our makes an attempt to have interaction with Scott Pelley and to discover a means back, sadly we weren’t in a position to do so, and so we had to half methods. We didn’t need that to occur, but that’s the trail that he selected.”
Pelley’s response landed hours later. He essentially called her a liar.
In a assertion launched Wednesday morning:
“Bari Weiss is aware of what she said will not be true. In the assembly on Tuesday, in which I used to be successfully fired, there was no effort of any sort to ‘discover a means back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial assembly. At no level did anybody in the Tuesday assembly counsel that there could possibly be steps taken by either aspect that would lead to a decision.”
According to Pelley, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski raised the possibility of firing him in the first 15 seconds of the Tuesday meeting. Pelley says Weiss, Cibrowski, and new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton were “brazenly hostile from the start” and stonewalled every query he put to them about the May 28 mass firing of the show’s senior management.
He documented the exchange in his assertion:
“In fact, Weiss, Cibrowski and Nick Bilton refused to answer my questions. I asked Weiss a number of questions about why she fired the entire senior staff of 60 Minutes a few days before and without cause.
“‘I’m not answering that query,’ she said.
“I asked why she did not come to 60 Minutes’ offices to explain her actions.
“‘I’m not answering that query.’
“Why did she fire 60 Minutes Executive Producer Tanya Simon?
“‘I’m not answering that query.'”
As RedState reported Tuesday evening, Pelley had set the stage for all of this himself. When Bilton held his first all-hands assembly with “60 Minutes” staff on Monday — his first week on the job, having officially taken over the previous Thursday — Pelley used it to publicly challenge Bilton’s credentials, tell him he would “never be welcome” at the program, and accuse Weiss of “murdering” the show. Bilton had invited Pelley to dinner the previous week to talk one-on-one. Pelley declined. He chose Monday instead.
Update: Peacocking ’60 Minutes’ Journo Struts Straight Into Consequences After Combative Meeting
Bilton prolonged no additional invites after that. Tuesday evening, he despatched Pelley a termination letter obtained by the New York Times.
The letter said:
“You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I’ve heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated efficient immediately.”
Dylan Byers confirmed that after the Tuesday meeting broke down, Weiss and her team deliberated for several hours before Bilton sent the termination letter at approximately 9:30 p.m. ET.
Pelley’s firing is the most consequential move of Weiss’s tenure so far. It follows a week that already saw the ouster of executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega on May 28. Anderson Cooper had already exited voluntarily at the end of the season. Bilton now takes over a weekly broadcast that has lost four on-air correspondents in under a month. “60 Minutes” was up 9 % in viewership this past season from the 12 months prior, according to Nielsen.
Pelley, in a phone interview Tuesday evening, leaned hard on his biography:
“I’ve been in fight in Afghanistan. I’ve been in fight in Iraq. I’ve been in the battle zone in Ukraine a number of instances, risking my life and the happiness of my household because of my devotion to the printed.”
Former correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, fired May 28 alongside Cecilia Vega, posted on Instagram Wednesday:
“He was fired for asking questions, which is the job. If you need one sentence that tells you exactly what CBS News has become under Bari Weiss, that’s it.”
CBS News declined to remark to the Times. Puck News’s Dylan Byers flagged the language in Bilton’s termination letter as a signal of litigation forward. Pelley selected a public combat over a personal dinner. Now he could get a courtroom instead.
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