Photo by Paul Hennessy \/ SOPA Images\/Sipa USA\/Sipa via AP Images<\/p>\n
Veteran anchor Scott Pelley\u00a0was fired by CBS News on Tuesday, a day after his explosive meeting with new 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton.<\/p>\n
Bilton announced Pelley\u2019s termination in a letter addressed to the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, obtained by Mediaite.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,\u201d wrote Bilton. \u201cYesterday\u2019s 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, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move from the new EP comes just a day after his first meeting<\/a> with\u00a060 Minutes\u00a0staff was hijacked by Pelley, who demanded to know more details on Thursday\u2019s firings, which included Bilton\u2019s predecessor<\/a>,\u00a0Tanya Simon, correspondent<\/a> Cecilia Vega, and<\/a> the show\u2019s long-time Executive Editor Draggan Mihailovich.\u00a0<\/p>\n The former anchor of CBS Evening News also took aim<\/a> at Weiss, claiming she had \u201cno qualifications for her job\u201d and countering Bilton\u2019s claim that the new chief \u201cloves\u00a060 Minutes\u201d with a sharp interjection.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s murdering \u201960 Minutes.\u2019 She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it\u2014and she\u2019s doing exactly that,\u201d said Pelley. \u201cShe has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she\u2019s made at the \u2018Evening News\u2019 have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?\u201d<\/p>\n Pelley also criticized<\/a> Bilton directly, telling him he \u201cwould never be welcomed\u201d at the show and calling out Bilton\u2019s \u201cslender\u201d qualifications for the job.<\/p>\n The new EP claimed that he had hoped to make peace at a meeting with Pelley on Tuesday, but that effort was not successful\u2013 an outcome reported on earlier<\/a> in the day, leading to rumors of Pelley\u2019s imminent departure. Bilton invoked the meeting yet again in a staff memo announcing Pelley\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n \u201cI know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don\u2019t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground,\u201d wrote Bilton. \u201cThat was not the path Scott chose.\u201d<\/p>\n In the memo, Bilton claimed his biggest regret was that \u201cthis situation interfered\u201d with his meeting about the upcoming season of 60 Minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I regret most is that this situation interfered with the conversation I had hoped to have with you about Season 59 and the future of this show,\u201d he wrote, before nodding to the recent swath of firings. \u201cI realize this is a great deal of change in a very short time, and I wouldn\u2019t pretend otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n Bilton\u2019s letter to Pelley struck a harsher tone, calling out his \u201cmisconduct\u201d and \u201cantipathy to the future of the show\u201d before informing him of his firing.<\/p>\n Read the full text of Bilton\u2019s letter:<\/p>\n Dear Mr. Pelley:<\/p>\n I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I\u2019m new to 60 Minutes, I\u2019ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday\u2019s 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, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.<\/p>\n Despite yesterday\u2019s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.<\/p>\n Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (\u201cCBS) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.<\/p>\n Sincerely, The post New 60 Minutes Boss Fires Scott Pelley in Scorched-Earth Letter: \u2018You Hijacked My First Meeting\u2019<\/a> first appeared on Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Paul Hennessy \/ SOPA Images\/Sipa USA\/Sipa via AP Images Veteran anchor Scott Pelley\u00a0was fired by CBS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[10673,236,88,292793,171371],"class_list":["post-681268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-60-minutes","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-nick-bilton","tag-scott-pelley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes<\/p>\n