Scott Pelley said he no longer recognizes “60 Minutes” in the months following the takeover of CBS News by Paramount Skydance, and accused the executive set in charge of the news division of “incompetence and unprofessionalism” that have “wreaked havoc” for months.
Pelley, in his first statement since CBS News announced his termination Tuesday evening, said Paramount Skydance “is casting this legend aside” as it weakens the newsmagazine “apparently to curry favor with the Trump administration.”
A CBS News spokesman did not respond immediately to a query seeking comment.
CBS News terminated the “60 Minutes” veteran after the journalist and executives felt they could not find a way to work together following a heated public argument Monday between Pelley and Nick Bilton, the former tech journalist installed last week by editorial chief Bari Weiss, who also dispatched the show’s most senior producers as well as correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Pelley is the fourth “60 Minutes” reporter to leave the venerable newsmagazine since February, leaving just a trio — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — to handle assignments as the show prepares to get stories ready for its 59th season in the fall.
“Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos,” Pelley said.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. 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. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done,” he added. “Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”
Pelley, who has been one of the most public faces at CBS News over a period of decades, anchoring both “CBS Evening News”: for a period and contributing to “60 Minutes,” indicated he hoped the storied news division that once served as home to Walter Cronkite might turn itself around. “I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”