{"id":258289,"date":"2026-06-07T16:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258289\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T16:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:46:10","slug":"scott-pelley-compares-60-minutes-firings-to-family-being-murdered-in-new-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258289\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Pelley compares ’60 Minutes’ firings to ‘family’ being murdered in new interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jobless news veteran Scott Pelley broke down in tears as he claimed the hysterical tirade that got him fired from \u201c60 Minutes\u201d was a response to the \u201cmurders\u201d of his \u201cfamily\u201d in a\u00a0\u201cBlack Thursday massacre\u201d at the show.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pelley, 68, broke down\u00a0several times\u00a0during an interview with the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0as he discussed for the first time being axed from CBS News after nearly four decades at the network.<\/p>\n

He conceded that he had been hyperbolic to accuse new network boss Bari Weiss of murdering \u201c60 Minutes\u201d \u2014 just to go even further, claiming\u00a0it was the staff themselves that she murdered.<\/p>\n

Scott Pelley spoke out about the \u201cBlack Thursday Massacre\u201d firings at CBS in an exclusive new interview with the New York Times. The Interview \/ YouTube<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like your spouse being murdered,\u201d he said at one point of the rejigging\u00a0of staff with newcomers\u00a0in to take\u00a0charge at the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming,\u201d Pelley told the paper of the network laying off senior staff,\u00a0including executive producer Tanya Simon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night before, Tanya and I were at the Emmy Awards, and we won two Emmys. Within hours, all of those\u00a0people have been wiped out, and one-third of our correspondents have\u00a0been fired,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy colleagues and I have worked together 10, 20, 30 years. We travel together. We dine together.\u00a0We go into literal combat together<\/a>,\u201d Pelley continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like your spouse being murdered,\u201d Pelley said at one point of the rejigging\u00a0of staff with newcomers\u00a0into to take\u00a0charge at the show. CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, these bonds are pretty tight, and when somebody wipes out, murders, a large number of your family members, people are desperate for some explanation, and as you and I sit here today, there still has been none,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to Simon, CBS had let go of correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, senior executive producer Draggan Mihailovich, veteran producer Guy Campanile, and staffer Matthew Polvoy.<\/p>\n

Pelley said he found the email from new \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer Nick Bilton informing staff of their departure \u201cinsulting.\u201d<\/p>\n

After comparing it to being \u201clike your spouse being murdered,\u201d he said, \u201cI am not emotional about this because I have lost this job. I\u2019ve done it for a long time. I\u2019ve had the greatest experiences. But the people I leave behind, treated in this way? That breaks my heart, and it\u2019s going to take me a long time to get over it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pelley was fired after he raged against Weiss in a fiery June 2 meeting, claiming she was \u201cbrought in to kill\u201d 60 Minutes, sources told The Post. Weiss was not present at the meeting \u2014 which irked the journalist.<\/p>\n

He told The Times he typically tries\u00a0to not\u00a0be\u00a0so reactionary, but was unable to help himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m almost 69 years old, and if I\u2019ve learned one thing in life, it is not to reflexively react when you feel that way. I thought, I\u2019m going to give it a day. I\u2019m too emotionally wrought up. I am going to say the wrong thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

CBS News terminated Pelley after the confrontation, which he insisted \u201chadn\u2019t occurred to\u201d him could happen, despite the\u00a0headline-grabbing attack\u00a0at\u00a0his bosses.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSome reporter I turned out to be.\u00a0I\u00a0just\u00a0didn\u2019t connect the dots,\u201d he said \u2014 while correctly noting that headlines on his interview would\u00a0focus\u00a0\u201cthe parts where I\u2019m crying and say I\u2019m a lunatic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pelley was fired after he raged against CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in a fiery June 2 meeting, claiming she was \u201cbrought in to kill\u201d 60 Minutes, sources told The Post. CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

During the acrimonious meeting, Pelley claimed that Weiss \u201chas no qualifications for her job,\u201d and said that the sweeping changes she had already made at the network were \u201ccatastrophic,\u201d sources told The Post.<\/p>\n

He also went directly after Bilton, a 49-year-old tech journalist, telling him he had \u201cslender\u201d qualifications for his new job, sources said.<\/p>\n

Pelley added that Bilton \u201cwill never be welcome here\u201d and asked him why he took the job under those circumstances, a source said.<\/p>\n

CBS laid off many of the TV magazine\u2019s senior staff, including journalists Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon. CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people,\u201d Bilton shot back, according to a second source. \u201cI want that to be clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pelley told the Times that he felt like Bilton was \u201cbeing imposed on us as our new leader,\u201d despite not knowing anything about \u201c60 Minutes\u201d or the people who worked there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that somebody had to stand up not just for the broadcast but for the people. There are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant,\u201d he said, tearing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion \u2014 a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work,\u201d Pelley wrote. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cNewsrooms are sort of like the military or the police or the beautiful people at the FDNY down the street. It is a life-threatening job in many instances. And to have people running CBS News, who don\u2019t know that, have never felt that, and don\u2019t understand it, is a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bilton eventually stormed out of the meeting, sources said.<\/p>\n

Pelley was informed he had been fired a short time later.<\/p>\n

He thanked his colleagues in a statement afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion \u2014 a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jobless news veteran Scott Pelley broke down in tears as he claimed the hysterical tirade that got him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16763,2997,1208,9,11,10,98749],"class_list":["post-258289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-60-minutes","tag-bari-weiss","tag-media","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-scott-pelley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258289","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=258289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}