{"id":258385,"date":"2026-06-07T19:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258385\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T19:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:07:09","slug":"5-takeaways-from-scott-pelleys-times-magazine-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258385\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Takeaways From Scott Pelley\u2019s Times Magazine Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Pelley worked at CBS News for 37 years, including as White House correspondent, anchor of the \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d and \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent until he was fired on Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His departure came after the editor in chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, dismissed several of his colleagues and hired a new \u201c60 Minutes\u201d executive producer, Nick Bilton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a thumb on the scale for the president\u2019s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News,\u201d Mr. Pelley told Lulu Garcia-Navarro in his first sit-down interview<\/a> since he was fired.<\/p>\n

He spoke about the specific incident he viewed as interference, about his experiences at CBS News over the past weeks and months and about what he hopes will come of this tumultuous time at the network.<\/p>\n

Here are five takeaways.<\/p>\n

He was insulted by Mr. Bilton\u2019s introductory email.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told us that it wasn\u2019t 1968 anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn\u2019t cost 32 cents anymore,\u201d Mr. Pelley said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bilton\u2019s email \u201csuggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved,\u201d Mr. Pelley said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Pelley said that the email also noted \u201cthat it was \u2018strange\u2019 that \u201860 Minutes\u2019 is only on the air at 7 o\u2019clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week, when we\u2019ve been on the air 24\/7 globally, online, for well over a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn\u2019t know anything about us, didn\u2019t know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new leader,\u201d Mr. Pelley said.<\/p>\n

He felt that he was the one who had to speak out.<\/p>\n

Of the first staff meeting with Mr. Bilton, Mr. Pelley said that there had been no senior staff members because they \u201chad been wiped out.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the meeting, Mr. Pelley accused Ms. Weiss of \u201cmurdering\u201d<\/a> the longstanding Sunday news program \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at my friends and colleagues in the room, and realized I was the senior person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that somebody had to stand up, not just for the broadcast, but for the people,\u201d he added, tearing up. \u201cThere are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNewsrooms are sort of like the military or the police or the beautiful people at the F.D.N.Y. down the street,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt 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

He accused Ms. Weiss of injecting \u2018falsehoods and bias\u2019 into a story about protests in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

As he worked on a segment on confrontations in which two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal immigration agents<\/a> in January in Minneapolis, Mr. Pelley said, he felt it was very important to note that the protesters themselves had been very aggressive.<\/p>\n

He said that screenings of the segment for members of the \u201c60 Minutes\u201d staff had been \u201cvery well received.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get the piece approved by everyone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include: Can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I\u2019m paraphrasing. I don\u2019t have the quote, but that\u2019s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good\u2019s car \u2014 you need to describe her as driving toward the officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding Mr. Pelley\u2019s claims of interference with his story about the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, a CBS News representative replied: \u201cIn an email, Bari made four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair and accurate as possible. As is frequently the case in any newsroom that operates with collaboration, not everything she raised made it into the final piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

An entire episode nearly did not make it to air.<\/p>\n

The episode that included Mr. Pelley\u2019s Minneapolis story \u201ccame within 19 minutes of not making it to air,\u201d he said, because the team working on it had blown its deadline by several hours in trying to respond to Ms. Weiss\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire hour of \u201860 Minutes\u2019!\u201d he said. \u201cIt was the night of the Grammys. \u201860 Minutes\u2019 was the lead-in to the Grammys, and we almost didn\u2019t have a broadcast. I pledged to myself that no matter what Bari Weiss wanted to do in a story, I would never break the deadline again because we put the entire network in jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes that Ms. Weiss needs to be removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelevision\u2019s not her thing,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is like somebody walking up to me and saying: \u2018There\u2019s a 747. There are 400 people on it \u2014 we need you to fly it to Paris.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to decline because I don\u2019t have a clue. And it would have been so much better if Bari Weiss had been offered this job and said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not for me; I don\u2019t know how to do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But he remained hopeful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can save this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s possible to land this plane. But right now, CBS News is on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Pelley worked at CBS News for 37 years, including as White House correspondent, anchor of the \u201cCBS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[95970,95968,96639,2998,9,11,10,4468,56641,98039,17085,2556,95967],"class_list":["post-258385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-60-minutes-tv-program","tag-bari","tag-bilton","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-weiss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258385","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=258385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}