Scott Pelley on His Firing and the ‘Massacre’ at ’60 Minutes’

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0:36I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is The Interview. It's hard to overstate the impact of 60 Minutes on journalism. Since its debut on CBS in 1968, it's been the home of some of the most famous and lauded journalists, from Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley to Leslie Stahl, Anderson Cooper, and until this past week, Scott Pelley. Pelley was fired after an explosive series of events and much turmoil at CBS, including a controversial financial settlement with President Trump, the sale of the network to David Ellison, and the appointment of Barry Weiss to lead CBS News. Pelley, along with a number of other 60 Minutes correspondents who were fired, have now accused Weiss of editorial interference and bias, charges that CBS and Weiss deny.

1:30We've included a fuller statement from CBS News at the end of the episode. This is Scott Pelley's first sit-down interview since he was fired.

1:58Thank you so much for coming in. I know that this is a very difficult moment. You were just fired from the news organization, which you were at the heart of for 37 years. I can't believe I'm hearing those words. CBS News. Yes. I want to actually start by just asking you how you're feeling in this moment. before we start how you got here? Well, if we want to talk about it at an emotional level, the best thing that I can imagine in terms of describing it is that it's like your spouse was murdered.

2:37There's some moments of the day I feel fine. There are some moments of the day that I just frankly fall apart when I least expect it. Not that there's any particular trigger. But I do want to be clear that I do not feel sorry for me. I don't care about me. I'm fine. I care about these people that I left behind, the people who are still trapped there, and this institution that I love so much. You said that I've been there 37 years. I've been married 42 years. So that's the depth of my devotion. Let's talk about how we got to this moment. A few days before your firing, several high-profile 60 Minutes correspondents and leaders were fired.

3:40Leading up to that, there'd been a lot of reporting about changes that were coming to 60 Minutes. Was that the sort of change you were expecting? No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming. This is our entire senior staff, people beloved. Tanya Simon, our executive producer, she's the boss. And this was her triumph. 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 9%, which is unheard of in broadcast television, and a growth in our online presence of 190%. Last season, we had 2.5 billion views. That's a third of humanity.

4:40So we're riding high. This management team has been brilliant. Tanya has the best first year of any executive producer, and I've worked for all of them. and then the night before, Tanya and I and Dragan Mihaljevic, her deputy, et cetera, were all at the Emmy Awards and we win two Emmy Awards. Within hours, all of those people have been wiped out and one-third of our correspondents have been fired. And at the same moment that that happens, we are informed of our new executive producer. His name is Nick Bilton. I'm sure he must be a wonderful man, but no one had ever heard of him. He has zero experience in television news and no experience in management.

5:42So imagine how we feel when someone like that comes into a shop like 60 Minutes. Explain to me exactly how you felt. Shock, dismay, impossible to believe, searching desperately for an explanation, knowing that an explanation would be forthcoming and then not seeing that. No executive at CBS News, our editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss, coming over to 60 Minutes to explain, to talk with us, to sit with us. 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,

6:53saved 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. CBS leadership says that they tried to get in touch with you to talk about all of those changes before Bilton's first day. And you didn't speak to them. Why not? I'm almost 69 years old. And if I've learned one thing in life, it is not to reflexively react when you feel that way. And I thought, you know, I'm going to give it a day or something.

8:11I'm too emotionally wrought up. I'm going to say the wrong thing. I'm not going to hear what they have to say. This isn't the moment. It was incredible to me that they did reach out to talk to me after wiping all these people out. I mean, within hours.

8:32So we had a baby shower at the house, and we got through the weekend, and I learned that Nick Bilton was going to speak to the 60-Minute staff on that next Monday morning. My wife and I had a long-planned hiking trip in the Canadian Rockies planned, and I wasn't going to be able to be at the meeting. and she and I talked about it, realized that this was an existential moment for 60 Minutes, so we canceled the vacation so I could be there. And that was the first time that I had an opportunity to meet Nick Bilton. At that meeting, you spoke up very forcefully. You asked him why he'd taken the job knowing, and this is a quote, that you will never be welcome here.

9:22why did you decide to have that first interaction with your new boss in public and not behind closed doors? It wasn't in public. It was behind closed doors. I was with my family in a closed room. None of this was meant to be public. But, Lulu, imagine I'm walking into this room with these people who have devoted their lives to 60 Minutes. They have not received any kind of explanation. They are waiting for Barry Weiss to walk in the room in the hope that she's going to explain why this tragedy has occurred and why it was so necessary. And I'm waiting to see who comes in, and it's Nick Bilton and one of Barry's deputies.

10:18No Barry. People are a little shocked by this. As we're standing in there, 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 when that happened they'd put out a big spread of bagels like we were all going to feel better and also if i can give you a little bit of context please what had happened a couple of days before the meeting was so critical. Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff, sort of introducing himself.

11:23And it was so insulting to the staff and so insulting to the history of 60 Minutes. He told us in that email 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. And he said in his email that it was, quote, strange, end quote, that 60 minutes is only on the air at seven o 'clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week. When we've been on the air 24-7 globally, online for well over a decade. It betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn't know anything about us, didn't know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new executive producer, our new leader.

12:35So people read that memo. It's very concerning. It's heartbreaking. It's hard to compare this to anything other than something that actually could happen to your family. It's a very loving and empathetic organization. And we were met with cold, callous, indifference to what anyone thought. Why did you feel that you were the person that needed to get the answers to the questions that you had and everyone had at that meeting. Why did you feel compelled to speak up? It was fate. First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out. They're not there. I looked around the room. I'm the only correspondent there, which surprised me very much.

13:30I learned that my colleagues were out shooting stories, as they should be in the month of June. But I'm the only correspondent there, which surprised me. and I looked around at my friends and colleagues in the room and realized I was the senior person. Only I could do it. None of them could be asked to take that risk.

13:56So when I saw Nick Bilton's email and then saw him reading to my brokenhearted people off his phone, I felt that somebody had to stand up for the broadcast, not just the broadcast, but the people. There are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant.

14:27Newsrooms 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 very strong bonds, very emotional bonds are found or are developed in that kind of setting. And to have people running CBS News who don't know that, have never felt that, and don't understand it, is a tragedy I never expected to see. You know, Barry Weiss came into the job with a mandate to evolve and modernize CBS News, to reinvent legacy media. In that meeting, you said Weiss was, and I'm quoting here, murdering 60 Minutes, language that you've used here.

15:31Can you explain to me what you mean by that? You're using words like massacre, murder. What do you mean by that? It was the wholesale nature of it. Our senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. Let's remember that. If the ratings had collapsed or there was some journalistic scandal about a story, then okay, we deserve it. But we had a triumphal year, so this is incredibly difficult to understand. Cecilia Vega, Sharon Alfonsi, our very best correspondents, just summarily fired for no stated reason and without explanation. This is one-third of our correspondent core. So this isn't like they fired our boss, which they did.

16:24They wiped out a large number of people. One of the things Nick Bilton said in that ill-fated email to the staff was that he was excited to tell, I'm paraphrasing here, he was excited to tell the staff about the new crop of correspondence. And when I saw that, I thought, okay, they're going to fire all of us eventually. That's the plan. He put it in writing for all of us to see. And so that's why I use these, admittedly for a journalist, hyperbolic terms. They capture the scale of what happened. You then do have a meeting with CBS leadership after this very contentious interaction. connection.

17:20Can you tell me about that meeting and if you were at that point going in expecting to be fired? Oh, gosh. Furthest thing from my mind. It hadn't occurred to me. The president of CBS News, Tom Sobrowski, sent me a note and said, can you come by and talk to us? And I said, absolutely. I scheduled about an hour on my calendar for the meeting. I didn't know who was going to be there in the meeting. So I walk in the door and I see Barry Weiss is sitting in there and I think, this is terrific of her. She's come to this meeting and now I'm going to be able to ask her these questions. She's going to be able to explain what happened.

18:06But it really didn't occur to you that you could be fired after so many of your colleagues had been let go, after you'd had this contentious interaction with your new boss? You know, some reporter I turned out to be. I just didn't connect the dots. I mean, was this meeting contentious? Yes, but 60 Minutes is known for two things, a ticking stopwatch and hard questions. And we ask ourselves those hard questions in the shop because they sharpen us and make us better. There was a screening once with Mike Wallace and Mike and the executive producer and founder of 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt, got into a big argument about a script.

18:49Wallace jumps up in the middle of the screening, throws his script up in the air, and yells at Don, well, then you write the effing thing. One of those pieces of paper comes down and slices an associate producer across the face. He's bleeding now. He's got a paper cut on his face. That was about a story. The meeting that I was in was about whether 60 Minutes was going to even survive or not. So you walk in, and what was the energy of the room? Hostile. Dismissive. Before I could take my seat, Tom Sebrowski said, this is a firing offense. I was confused. I wasn't sure who he was talking about in the room.

19:44but it became plain very quickly that they were talking about me, and they were unhappy about the meeting that had occurred, a meeting that had ended in thunderous applause for me, if I may say so, because somebody had stood up for the broadcast. So I sit down, like, okay, well, let's talk about it. Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton. This is a lie. I didn't come within 10 feet of Nick Bilton. In my life, I have never put my hands on anyone in anger. Not one time. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, okay, I take that back. And I said, great. Conversation proceeded a little bit.

20:45I turned to Barry Weiss, who was sitting to my left, and I said, but let's talk about the firings. Why were the firings necessary? I'm not answering that question. Well, how did Tanya Simon not lead the broadcast brilliantly? I'm not answering that question. okay, Sharon Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, what possible reason could there be to take them off the air? I'm not answering that question. So now I'm detecting a pattern. That's going to go nowhere. She is still going to stonewall about why she took all these people out.

21:29So I'm thinking that the meeting's going to carry on. We're going to have a long conversation. I'm going to hear from them about what they think. They're going to hear from me about what I think. The temperature in the room is low, but it's very hostile from their side. I'm speaking about the way I'm speaking to you now. Very quickly after the meeting began, Tom Sebrowski said, this conversation is over. I was stunned. I didn't have a 60-minute stopwatch in that room. I don't know how long it lasted really, but I think it was about 10 minutes. So they tell me, that is to say Tom Sebrowski tells me as I'm walking through the door, you'll have our answer in a few minutes.

22:24I went over to my office and much to my surprise, all of my guys on my team were still there. They wanted to know what happened in the meeting. What was that all about? Did they explain why our people were fired? And I sat down in my office. It has a big plate glass window that looks out on the newsroom and there were a whole bunch of people standing out there, but I didn't think anything of it. I'm waiting to find out what my fate is. I explained to my team, I think I just got fired, but they haven't told me that. And then I look up and all those people are still out there and the staff members, and I don't think anything of it.

23:06And then it hits me. This is a vigil. An hour goes by, two hours go by, three hours go by, four hours go by, and I go back outside and said, I'm leaving. They've been standing out there for four hours. I said, I'm leaving. You guys have got to go home to your families right now. I doubt they're going to tell me tonight. So I packed up and left just so those people would go home. And not long after that, the email came through and said that I'd been fired. Just to understand your position in this, you would have been open to a path forward. You wanted to remain at 60 minutes. Absolutely. A path forward to me was a obvious conclusion for what this meeting was going to be about.

24:06That's exactly what I thought. and I expected them to say, look, this is why we had to fire everybody. I mean, your questions, Scott, are valid and here's why we did what we did. So stay at 60 Minutes, absolutely. It didn't occur to me that this could happen. But Scott, in a meeting, you accused Barry Weiss, the head of the network, of wanting to murder the show, of coming into 60 Minutes with the agenda to dismantle the institution, and you did not think that that was going to have repercussions that could lead to your firing? We used to be able to have conversations like that at CBS News. But the difference today is that the people running CBS News will not be questioned.

25:07After the break, more with Scott Pelley.

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27:03I want to take a step back because, of course, all this didn't happen in a vacuum. The saga really at CBS News began when David Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, took over CBS as part of his purchase of Paramount. There was a lot of turmoil around that sale. The longtime previous owner of Paramount and CBS Sherry Redstone told my New York Times colleague that she sold the company to Ellison in part because after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th, she wanted to devote herself to causes around Israel. I'm sure there were other reasons as well. Did you ever speak to Ms. Redstone about the sale, and how did you feel about it?

27:47I didn't speak to Sherry Redstone about the sale. I felt the sale was very necessary. The company was in financial trouble. It wasn't clear what our path forward was going to be just as a company. Mr. Ellison came in with a lot of money behind him. a young man of vision, and I thought this is going to be very good for all of us. The very last thing that the previous ownership did was pay a multi-million dollar bribe to the president to settle this frivolous, ridiculous lawsuit. And very shortly after that, somehow, the Trump administration approved the sale. So that lawsuit against 60 Minutes had caused a great deal of concern in 60 Minutes.

28:49Paying the bribe broke our hearts. No lawyer thought that was necessary, but they did it to get the sale through. And at that point, my colleagues and I thought, great, that's behind us. We have bright new leadership with financial resources. We're in better shape than we were before. That was the theory. Just to give the context here, President Trump had sued 60 Minutes over an interview of Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. As you mentioned, Paramount under Sherry Redstone settled the case, even though many legal experts believed that there was no merit to the suit, and they paid$16 million to the president.

29:35Paramount denied that those two things were linked, that payment and then the deal going through. And correct me if I'm wrong, am I hearing you say that you supported the sale to Ellison? Had you lost confidence in the leadership of Sherry Redstone at that point? They bribed the president to get the deal done. So yeah, There was a massive collapse of confidence in the previous ownership. So the deal goes through and Ellison takes over. What assurances, if any, did you get from David Ellison and the new leadership that there wouldn't be interference at 60 Minutes? Did you ask for those assurances?

30:12Did you speak with David Ellison? The morning the merger was announced as complete, I was amazed that, as far as I know, the first stop that David Ellison made in his new empire was 60 Minutes, CBS News. First thing in the morning, he's walking through the 60 Minutes offices. He comes and walks into my office and extends his hand and says, I'm proud to meet you, sir. He called me. I guess I'm just old. And I told him how wonderful it was to meet him. He walked out into our newsroom and made a very nice speech about independence, about how important 60 Minutes was to the corporation writ large, and essentially telling everybody that they were going to take care of us.

31:07Um, we were walking on air. Uh, we liked him. Uh, he had the financial backing to back up his words. And we thought a bright new era was coming after all the previous difficulty. ellison then hires barry weiss to run cbs news um weiss we should say is a former opinion writer at the new york times who left to start her own publication after claiming bias in the times opinion section i never worked with her for the record the free press which she launched is generally pro-israel it builds itself as pushing against what it sees as the mainstream media. What did you make of her appointment? I was not familiar with her name.

31:56So I did some research and discovered those things that you just outlined. She was going to be the new editor-in-chief at CBS News. There never had been a title like that at CBS News. It's sort of a print title. It doesn't really translate to television, but she wanted to call herself that. What concerned me was that she had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News. Those were red flags to me. But I thought, you know, David Ellison thinks she's the right person for the job. We are absolutely going to welcome her, listen to her, and give her the benefit of the doubt.