Takeaways from Scott Pelley's emotional interview about his '60 Minutes'
demise
[June 10, 2026]
By JOCELYN NOVECK
NEW YORK (AP) — When CBS News President Tom Cibrowski asked Scott Pelley
if he could come by for a meeting last Tuesday, the longtime “60
Minutes” correspondent booked about an hour on his calendar, he says. He
assumed he’d be having an extensive discussion about issues that led to
his tense confrontation a day earlier with his new boss, Nick Bilton.
He didn’t know Bari Weiss, the news division’s editor in chief, would be
there. But his initial reaction to seeing her was “This is terrific of
her,” he told The New York Times in a wide-ranging podcast interview. He
figured he'd able to ask questions, and she’d explain her sweeping
changes of the previous week, in which she’d replaced the executive
producer, Tanya Simon, and let go two correspondents, along with other
key staffers.
The last thing on his mind? That he himself was about to be fired, after
a meeting that he says lasted about 10 minutes. “I just didn't connect
the dots,” he said.
In a raw and emotional interview with the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro,
released Sunday, Pelley, who had been at CBS for 37 years, told his side
of the story. Several times, he teared up. He said the whole affair felt
“like your spouse was murdered.”
Here are some takeaways from the interview.
He didn't see ‘Black Thursday’ coming
THE BACKGROUND: Five days before he was fired, on the previous Thursday,
the stunning changes were announced. In Simon’s place Weiss had
installed Bilton, a former tech columnist at the Times and a
documentarian with no TV broadcast experience. Though Weiss, who had
quickly become a polarizing figure in the industry, had been widely
expected to make changes, Pelley says that what he calls “Black
Thursday” came as a shock.
THE QUOTE: “No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming. This is our
entire senior staff. Tanya Simon, our boss, she’s the first woman ever
to be executive producer of ‘60 Minutes.’ And she concluded this season
with a growth in our audience of nine percent, which is unheard-of in
broadcast television."
His emotions are close to the surface
THE BACKGROUND: The correspondent teared up several times when
describing how close-knit relationships were at the show.
THE QUOTE: “That’s a family at ‘60 Minutes'. My colleagues and I have
worked together 10, 20, 30 years. We travel together. We dine together.
We go into literal combat together. My former boss and former producer
Bill Owens saved my life in a firefight in Iraq. So, Lulu, these bonds
are pretty tight, and when somebody wipes out, murders, a large number
of your family members, people are hurt, and shocked, in disbelief and
just desperate for some explanation. And as you and I sit here today,
there still has been none."
The staff meeting with the new boss was preceded by an ‘insulting’
email
THE BACKGROUND: Bilton had written an introductory email to the staff.
Pelley didn't appreciate it.
THE QUOTE: “It was so insulting ... He told us that it wasn’t 1968
anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn’t cost 32 cents
anymore, and suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when
the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved.”
At the meeting, a ‘tone-deaf’ boss read from his phone
THE BACKGROUND: Pelley set a scene of a roomful of people "who have
devoted their lives to ‘60 Minutes"’ and had received no explanation of
what was going on. He says they were waiting for Weiss to elucidate. She
didn't attend. Instead, Bilton took out his phone and started reading
from it.
THE QUOTE: “Nick makes his way to the front of the room and does
something absolutely jaw-dropping to me. He pulls out his phone and
begins reading a statement off his phone in a room full of 50
heartbroken people. The callousness, the tone-deafness of that, you
could hear the groan in the room. They put out a big spread of bagels
like we were all going to feel better. ... I 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.”
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Scott Pelley, anchor of "CBS Evening News," at the CBS Upfront in
New York, May 15, 2013. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
 He never expected to be fired
THE BACKGROUND: What happened at the meeting is now widely known,
with Pelley challenging Bilton about his qualifications for the job
and saying Weiss was “murdering” the show, among other things.
Still, he did not think his job was on the line.
THE QUOTE: “Oh gosh, furthest thing from my mind. …Some reporter I
turned out to be. I just didn’t connect the dots. I mean, was this
meeting (on Monday) contentious? Yes, but ‘60 Minutes’” is known for
two things: a ticking stopwatch and hard questions.”
He says leadership advocated ‘falsehoods and bias’
THE BACKGROUND: In the story about the deaths of Renee Good and Alex
Pretti in confrontations with federal immigration agents in
Minneapolis earlier this year, Pelley says that he and colleagues
made efforts, on their own, to show examples of how protesters had
been aggressive. But Weiss asked for more that he says he could not
give. Ultimately, Pelley simply resisted the changes and the piece
went forward.
Asked about the accusation, CBS News responded: “In 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.”
THE QUOTE: “We get the piece approved by everyone. And 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’m paraphrasing. I don’t
have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the
other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving
toward the officer … This is not what you see on the video.. But
that’s how that happened. There was a thumb on the scale for the
president’s version of events that I felt was a level of political
influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.”
He has not spoken to three fellow correspondents who stayed
THE BACKGROUND: Pelley says in the interview he has not spoken to
Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker, who have said they
decided to stay for now, based on assurances that they can work
without interference. But he says he doesn’t think those assurances
can be trusted. He also suggests that Anderson Cooper, who did not
renew his contract for what he said were family reasons, actually
was leaving because of the new leadership.
THE QUOTE: “I haven’t talked to them. .... we have had conversations
before this about staying to maintain the principles of the
broadcast. If we leave, we can’t help. There have been other times —
when Anderson left, when others were fired — that we could have
stormed into a meeting and quit, but those very distinguished
correspondents and myself did have conversations about this and
decided that we were better working on the inside, and that we could
influence things for the better. And we did. And it was my intention
to stay and do exactly that. ... (Now) I would venture to say that
trust is broken.”
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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment
for The Associated Press.
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