Pelley, among television’s most recognizable reporters, who maintained a home in Darien for 13 years before selling it in 2020 and leaving the state, was let go by the network amid a clash over the future of “60 Minutes.”
His firing comes less than a week after CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss dismissed Tanya Simon, the show’s executive producer, as well as several prominent correspondents. Simon had presided over a show that had grown its viewership over the last season and remained the network’s top draw.
Weiss, who has been criticized by staff for what they say is introducing political bias into the country’s most-watched news program, hired Nick Bilton, a technology journalist with a limited television background, to replace Simon.
In a Monday staff meeting, the contents of which have been widely reported, Pelley criticized Bilton’s limited television experience and accused Weiss of “murdering ’60 Minutes.'” Pelley had worked on the show since 2004 and previously served as an anchor of “CBS Evening News.”
Just over a day later, Bilton fired Pelley, sending the longtime correspondent a letter in which he defended his own credentials and ripped into him for publicly criticizing the show’s new leadership.
“You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote. “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.”
In a statement released on social media Wednesday, Pelley accused network leaders of interfering with the news program to appeal to the Trump administration.
Critics have linked Weiss’s hire to run the network to attempts by owner David Ellison to appease government officials amid the merger of Paramount and Skydance Media, which was approved last year.
“When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects,” Pelley wrote. “Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”