Fired CBS Star Scott Pelley Goes Scorched Earth On Network Bosses In Stunning Statement

The biggest media story of the week has involved the latest shake-up of 60 Minutes, CBS News’ venerable Sunday night newsmagazine. CBS News is under the leadership of Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press, who has been given a mandate to change things at the news division, reportedly at the direction of David Ellison, who owns CBS’s parent company, Paramount. And those changes have often been seen as MAGA-friendly.

This week, longtime CBS correspondent Scott Pelley reportedly assailed Weiss and the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton. In a subsequent meeting, Pelley was fired from the network, “for cause.” All of this was quickly leaked to the press, likely by both sides, with audio from the meeting ultimately published by the New York Times. Therefore, the line from the 60 Minutes movie The Insider, “The New York Times ran a blow-by-blow of what we talked about behind closed doors,” came true once again.

According to The Hill, Weiss told the newsroom, “I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect; we cannot do our work without it. That foundation was broken on Monday.”

Then, late on Tuesday night, Pelley released a new statement.

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, it has grown on every major online platform, extending its reach to…

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) June 3, 2026

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“There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes,” Pelley said in the statement.

The show, Pelley said, “has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”

Pelley also made specific accusations about his now-former bosses.

“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”