Veteran journalist\u2019s dismissal comes after he reportedly accused management of \u2018murdering\u2019 influential news programme.<\/p>\n
By Reuters and The Associated Press<\/p>\n
Published On 3 Jun 20263 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
US broadcaster CBS has fired Scott Pelley, a longtime correspondent for its 60 Minutes programme, after he reportedly said Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was \u201cmurdering the show\u201d and accused its new producer of having \u201cslender qualifications\u201d for the job.<\/p>\n
The firing on Tuesday deepened the turmoil at the most influential TV news programme in the US, days after a leadership overhaul.<\/p>\n
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Pelley, 68, criticised management on Monday during a fiery staff meeting with Nick Bilton, the programme\u2019s new executive producer installed by Weiss last week, according to a report on the Status website.<\/p>\n
In a termination notice obtained Tuesday night by The Associated Press news agency, Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, accused Pelley of carrying out an \u201cambush\u201d against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n
Pelley said in a statement that 60 Minutes has lost its DNA under new management. He accused managers of asking him to \u201cinject falsehoods and bias\u201d into his work without sharing specific details.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration,\u201d he said in the statement.<\/p>\n
Status, which said it had a recording of Monday\u2019s meeting, reported that Pelley had said Weiss was brought in to kill the news outlet \u201cand she\u2019s doing exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiss was not present at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Pelley reportedly grilled Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton\u2019s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.<\/p>\n
Alfonsi had criticised Weiss last year for postponing a segment about deportees sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, also known by its Spanish acronym CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, as part of US President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
Pelley joins more than half a dozen people who have\u00a0departed\u00a0the Sunday news magazine, which is the longest-running\u00a0prime-time\u00a0show in the US, in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Skydance Media \u2013 run by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, a cofounder of Oracle and a longtime supporter of Trump \u2013 acquired CBS owner Paramount in August \u2060and installed Weiss in October.<\/p>\n
David Ellison helped secure regulatory approval for the deal, which created Paramount Skydance, with the promise that the CBS network would reflect the \u201cvaried ideological perspectives\u201d of American viewers.<\/p>\n
Before the deal, Paramount paid $16m \u2060to settle a 2024 lawsuit that Trump filed over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. He charged that the editing of one of her remarks gave a distorted view of his rival for the White House, but legal experts said his case was without merit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran journalist\u2019s dismissal comes after he reportedly accused management of \u2018murdering\u2019 influential news programme. By Reuters and The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,46,75,7607,44,772,1690],"class_list":["post-712291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-entertainment","tag-media","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}