NEWSScott Pelley Calls Out CBS Leadership After Shocking Firing: 'The Waste Is Heartbreaking'
In a scathing retort to his new boss' termination letter, '60 Minutes' vet Scott Pelley blasted the network's 'falsehoods and bias.'
June 4 2026, Published 3:51 p.m. ET
News veteran Scott Pelley issued a scathing public statement accusing CBS News leadership of attempting to inject "falsehoods and bias" into a politically sensitive story shortly after he was fired from 60 Minutes on Tuesday, June 2.
Pelley's immediate termination followed a contentious staff meeting where he directly confronted the program's newly appointed executive producer, Nick Bilton.
During the meeting, Pelley accused CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of "murdering 60 Minutes" and targeted Bilton's lack of traditional broadcast experience, calling his qualifications "slender." Bilton fired Pelley the following day, issuing a termination letter that cited an "ambush" and "remarkable incivility."
Scott Pelley was fired in early June.
In his statement, Pelley claimed 60 Minutes "lost its DNA" following the firing of senior leadership and correspondents, alleging that new management pushed for political bias and unverified information, and allowed politicians to select interviewers.
He further cited "incompetence and unprofessionalism" causing near-misses in broadcasting and argued that the "collapse of values" made his departure necessary after 37 years.
According to reporting by the Associated Press and The Washington Post, Pelley's ouster is part of a broader shakeup following the acquisition of CBS's parent company, Paramount, by Paramount Skydance.
Many veterans have left the show.
Under the leadership of President Donald Trump ally David Ellison and Editor-in-Chief Weiss, multiple high-profile exits from the iconic newsmagazine have occurred — including CNN vet Anderson Cooper and the show's executive producer and top correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi — prompting internal clashes over the historic news program's right-leaning direction.
CBS News and network programming have experienced significant ratings declines, as evidenced by the flagship CBS Evening News and the late-night lineup.
Anchored by Tony Dokoupil, the broadcast has frequently drawn fewer than 4 million viewers. The show lags far behind its competitors, drawing about half the audience of ABC's World News Tonight (over 8 million) and trailing NBC's Nightly News (around 6 million).
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'CBS Mornings' has also struggled.
CBS Mornings has also struggled, drawing approximately 1.8 million viewers — well behind NBC’s Today (3 million) and ABC’s Good Morning America (2.9 million).
In a major programming change, CBS leased its 11:35 p.m. time slot to Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed. The new show's debut drew around 995,000 viewers, which represents a whopping 85 percent drop from the finale audience of its predecessor, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. CBS moved to a time-buy model because the Colbert-led format was operating at a reported annual loss of $40 million.
The steep declines in viewership have sparked scrutiny of the network’s recent executive-level and editorial decisions under Weiss.
On Wednesday, June 3, Weiss addressed the network during a daily editorial call.
Pelley’s full statement, released on Wednesday, June 3, quickly went viral following a second, private follow-up meeting on Monday evening.
According to reports by Puck News, the meeting was meant to discuss a "path forward" and attempt to reconcile internal divisions. Because the second meeting failed, CBS News officially terminated Pelley the following evening (Tuesday, June 2) without severance.
On Wednesday, June 3, Weiss addressed the network during a daily editorial call, stating that Pelley had broken the foundation of "trust and mutual respect" during the Monday dispute. She noted that despite management's explicit efforts to engage with Pelley during the secondary meeting, no agreement could be reached, leaving them no choice but to part ways.
Pelley's statement read in part: “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, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9 percent jump in viewers on CBS. 60 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. The waste is heartbreaking."
He added, "Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos. 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."
He concluded, saying he's moved by the "thousands of wishes we have received to 'keep up the good fight.'"
"Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well. I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion — a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return. Scott Pelley.”
