Deceased Nag and Cudgel Alert: CBS News Edition

When CBS fired Scott Pelley last week, a logical assumption was that he had a substantial 401(k) or a standing offer to work elsewhere if his former gig went sideways. Perhaps both. The longtime CBS News and “60 Minutes” correspondent had to know that one doesn’t call out the new boss in front of colleagues without repercussions. 

Indeed, the consequences were swift, as the network turfed him one day after a contentious exchange at new chief Nick Bilton’s first staff meeting. Further details and Pelley’s own account of events reveal an even more dispiriting, if entirely predictable, situation. 

Bilton is the hand-picked choice of network news division head Bari Weiss to lead “60 Minutes.” Put another way, one unqualified, mediocre former New York Times columnist installed another to run the network’s premier news program. 

Last week’s intro staff meeting quickly devolved, according to multiple reports amid leaks from attendees, and lasted just 15 minutes before Bilton exited. Initial reporting said that Pelley interrupted Bilton’s opening monologue to say that Weiss was “murdering” the news magazine. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that," Pelley said in multiple reports in which outlets obtained audio of the meeting. Pelley added that both Weiss and Bilton are unqualified for their positions and that Bilton would “never be welcome here.” He asked Bilton why several senior staffers were fired the week prior. Bilton didn’t answer the question and responded that it wasn’t his decision (side note: journalists do not always adhere to standards to which they hold their subjects). A Weiss deputy and new CBS editor told Pelley that he was being rude. “This is not actually productive,” Charles Forelle said. “This is not an interview.” Pelley replied, “It’s working for me.” He added, “Anybody came into our house, this is ’60 Minutes.’ I guess you wandered in expecting to read a statement off?” 

Bilton walked shortly thereafter. Pelley was fired the following day, and Bilton released a whiny, self-serving statement: “While I’m new to ‘60 Minutes,’ I’ve 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’s 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.” 

We’ll get to Bilton’s qualifications and career shortly. Pelley responded to Bilton’s remarks with a lengthy statement in which he said that new management was attempting to curry favor with the Trump administration. He lamented the loss of professionalism, experience and institutional knowledge due to those already fired. “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.” 

Bilton’s claim that he’s devoted his career to investigative journalism is dubious, at best. At the New York Times, he was a design editor in the newsroom and a researcher, and later a forgettable columnist writing about technology issues. He moved to Vanity Fair a decade ago and tried to pass himself off as having been on the front lines of the story about Theranos, the fraudulent health tech company that landed founder Elizabeth Holmes in jail after bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. He lately devoted his time to making documentaries and collaborating with Martin Scorsese on a screenplay. Like Weiss, he has never worked in TV news, yet somehow was sold on the idea that overseeing the most venerated news magazine in TV history is a fine entry-level position. 

Pelley sat down with a New York Times reporter late last week and elaborated on the entire dust-up and his termination. He said that he and remaining staff were in shock after a handful of senior staffers were fired the week previously, without explanation, including the head of the show – a woman with decades of experience at the network and Emmy Awards on her resume who was given until the end of the workday to clear out her office. He was also put off by an introductory email that Bilton sent to staff in advance of the first meeting, in which he wrote that it’s no longer 1968 (the year “60 Minutes” went on the air), implying that the newsmag is stuck in the past, and seemed unaware that the show has been broadcast online, globally, for more than a decade and not just at 7 p.m. on Sundays. 

At the intro staff meeting, Pelley said that Bilton sat in front of the group and simply started to read a statement from his phone, a remarkably tone-deaf ice-breaker. Pelley felt compelled to speak up, he said, after he looked around the room and saw that he was the most senior staffer in attendance (age 68, with 37 years at CBS). As for the notion that he publicly berated the new boss, Pelley said that he believed the meeting was private and behind closed doors (subtract points for naivete, as every employee, disgruntled or otherwise, carries a portable recording device these days), and that “60 Minutes” DNA includes tension and hard questions. The next day he was called into the office, where a CBS news exec said he had committed a fireable offense and ended the meeting after 10 minutes. He said that he honestly didn't believe that he'd be fired (subtract more points for naivete). He learned later that day that he was canned. 

The shakeups and firings at CBS News and “60 Minutes” are dressed up as modernizing traditional storytelling and identifying new avenues of connection and communication. As the site’s media grump, I’ve yammered about much of this previously, but it’s worth repeating that it’s yet another big corporate thumb on the scale of independent journalism. CBS was bought by Skydance Media, whose leader, billionaire David Ellison, overpaid for Weiss’s media startup and then installed her as head of the network’s news division. Both Ellison and his dad, gazillionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, are Trump supporters and needed a compliant FCC to sign off on Skydance’s purchase of Paramount and CBS. Weiss alienated the room almost immediately by firing staffers, holding a “60 Minutes” piece on the notorious El Salvador prison where immigrants were sent, hosting a town hall with the widow of slain shit-stirrer Charlie Kirk, and inserting morning show haircut Tony Dokoupil as evening news anchor. She passes herself off as a centrist truth seeker, but her track record is right-wing sympathizer and Israel supporter who often targets mainstream media, “wokeness” and diversity initiatives. Now comes Bilton. 

Pelley said that both Weiss and Bilton are out of their depth. He likened it to being asked to fly a 747 with hundreds of passengers to Paris. “We need adult supervision and at the moment we don’t have it,” Pelley said in the Times. “We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who through no fault of their own have no experience in television. They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at ‘60 Minutes’ before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity. We can save this. It’s possible to land this plane. But right now, CBS News is on fire.”