CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, he said, jettisoning one of the network\u2019s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d the country\u2019s top-rated news program.<\/p>\n
Mr. Pelley, 68, a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent and a former anchor of \u201cCBS Evening News,\u201d joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network\u2019s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of \u201cmurdering \u201860 Minutes,\u2019\u201d citing the ouster last week of the program\u2019s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have parted ways with Scott Pelley,\u201d Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show\u2019s staff on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
CBS News declined to comment. In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been \u201cterminated for cause effective immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview shortly after he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d which he said he still cared about deeply.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been in combat in Afghanistan,\u201d Mr. Pelley said. \u201cI have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to fire Mr. Pelley will almost certainly spike the tensions that have coursed through CBS News for months, and within \u201c60 Minutes\u201d in particular.<\/p>\n
It also raises the stakes of Ms. Weiss\u2019s decision to replace the leadership team at \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d CBS News\u2019s most successful franchise, and hire Mr. Bilton to oversee the show. The program\u2019s viewership was up 9 percent this past season from a year prior, and the show is routinely among the nation\u2019s highest-rated weekly broadcasts, according to Nielsen.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check back for updates. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, he said, jettisoning one of the network\u2019s best-known journalists in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[95970,11288,95968,96639,92716,95969,2998,9,11,10,4468,56641,98039,17085,2556,1876,95967],"class_list":["post-253134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-60-minutes-tv-program","tag-appointments-and-executive-changes","tag-bari","tag-bilton","tag-cbs-corporation","tag-cbs-evening-news-tv-program","tag-cbs-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news-and-news-media","tag-nick","tag-pelley","tag-scott","tag-television","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-weiss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}