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- [00:00]
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- [00:15]
JVL
Hello, everyone. An extraordinary moment in broadcast journalism today over at the home offices of CBS News. The recently decapitated staff of 60 Minutes came together with their new boss, Nick Bilton, the new executive producer who met the staff and holy schnikes, Scott Pelly stood up and did like a your best version of Walter Cronkite or just pick your journalism hero and went toe to toe with the new guy to call out Barry Weiss and the Ellisons and, and what the corporate overlords are doing in order to try to murder 60 minutes. I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague Will Sommer will take me through what happened at this meeting this morning.
- [01:08]
Will Sommer
Sure. So the very brief backstory is, you know, last week Bari Weiss kind of lopped off a lot of the chief producers and you know, correspondent Sharon Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega out of there. And so now this is kind of her attempt to cement it, to cement her control and the Ellison's control over 60 minutes. And so we see Nick Bilton meets with the staff for his first all hands meeting. And basically Scott Pelly, you know, one of the legendary 60 Minutes correspondents, he really gets into it with Nick Bilton and, you know, holds his feet to the fire. And Nick Bilton basically wilts and, you know, kind of gets owned in various ways.
- [01:42]
JVL
It was amazing to me because Bilton. So we know this. So our friends over at Oliver Darcy's status newsletter got the scoop with an audio recording of the meeting. And they, they gave us not a full transcript, but, but a very detailed blow by blow. And it seems to me that Nick Bilton walked into this meeting totally blind with almost no recognition that he was coming in as a villain. And then when challenged, had like, I mean, the guy just seems to have become a yammering idiot.
- [02:19]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, if we can quote here from, from some of the stuff in status. Great newsletter. So it seems like this exchange really kicked off after. So Barry loves this. Bilton told staffers she loves 60 Minutes. And then Scott Pelly says she's murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it. And she's doing exactly that. So, you know, Scott Pelly not mincing words there.
- [02:42]
JVL
It's wild. And so Nick Bilton then starts talking about Don Hewitt, who's a Legendary producer who created 60 Minutes and what. What Don Hewitt would want. And Pelly says to him at one point, do you know Don Hewitt? Because I worked with him. Leslie stahl spent like 30 years with that guy. And Bill's like, no, I read some stuff that he said, though. I mean, it's crazy to have walked into that room and decide that you're going to win them over by quoting the guy who's the patron saint of the entire organization, as if Don Hewitt would be on your side and not theirs.
- [03:24]
Will Sommer
This is. This is. Nick Bilton had kind of made these remarks almost like sort of Don, Hugh Hewitt would have wanted me to sort of dumb things down, dilute the brand. I mean, essentially what he had said was Don Hewitt found documentaries too long. And so he made 60 Minutes. And so, you know, along those lines, you know, maybe we should. We should kind of break it up into smaller formats, make it more accessible. And as you said, I mean, Scott Pelley basically said, oh, really? You know, when did you hear that from Don Hewitt? I don't recall that as someone who actually knew him.
- [03:50]
JVL
Pelly then asked Bilton what was wrong with Sharon Alfonsi. A bunch of these firings were made as simultaneously Nick Bilton's hiring was announced. And Bilton seems to not want to have responded at all. He. So he just tries to sort of spin around and say, well, I didn't fire her. I don't know anything about it. Which is, again, crazy because you wouldn't take the job without knowing that your team is going to be decimated. The idea that Bilton thought that he could walk into a meeting with the best journalists in the business and get away without answering their questions.
- [04:34]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I mean, this is really remarkable. Nick Bilton appears to be trying this move where he's sort of like Barry Wise, by the way, it's worth noting, was not there, which seems to have kind of set people off in the first place. I mean, she's just fired their boss, seemingly like their second in command, a bunch of their reporting colleagues, two of them, and she doesn't bother to show up. She kind of throws Nick Bilton into. To the sharks.
- [04:53]
JVL
Right. She sends one of her factotums, Charles Farrell, there.
- [04:57]
Will Sommer
Yes.
- [04:57]
JVL
And Forell's entire point of the entire contribution to this meeting seems to be trying to tell Scott Pelly that he's being rude. Stop talking, Scott. You're being rude.
- [05:08]
Will Sommer
So. So, as you said, I mean, Nick Bilton says, you know, I don't know, he's kind of acting like he Just walked in there. He doesn't know what Barry Weiss is up to. It's nothing to do. Am what I. Dilton says I don't know what was wrong with her. And Scott Pelly says no one talked to you about that. They're taking one of your correspondence away, and no one mentioned to you what was wrong with Sharon.
- [05:27]
JVL
Again, just astonishing. And Pelly just keeps going. At this point, all I could think of was one of my favorite movies of all time. In fact, my favorite Michael Mann movie. Not Heat, which is an amazing movie, but the Insider, which is the story of the last time CBS corporate interfered with 60 minutes. And it was such a big deal that we wound up getting a movie starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino about it. And in it, there is this amazing scene where Mike Wallace finally realizes that he's been played by CBS corporate, and he loses his mind with them.
- [06:05]
Mike Wallace (quoted)
You corporate lackey. Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit Me? I'm trying to band aid a situation here, and you're too dim to. Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike. Try Mr. Wallace. We work in the same corporation. Doesn't mean we work in the same profession.
- [06:25]
JVL
Christopher Plummer. Oh, my gosh, Christopher Plummer's so good. Will, I don't know if you've ever been around, like, anchors, like, real anchor talent, they do have this ability to turn on the voice of God. And so you see Christopher Plummer doing that there in that moment as Mike Wallace. And reading this story today, all I could think of was like, oh, that's what Scott Pelly did. He's got that anchor voice where all of a sudden he just turns on the gravitas. And so he finishes with the Sharon Alfonsi thing. And then he says, what was wrong with Dravan Mikhailovich? And just starts going on him about that.
- [07:06]
Will Sommer
The moment you're talking about here is exactly what I was thinking of when essentially, Charles Farrell, this Barry Weiss flunky, says, you know, hey, you don't want to be rude. And he says, you know, what was really rude was, you know, kicking Sharon Alfonse out of here, telling Tonya Simon, the executive producer, all these years of 60 minutes, you're out of here by 5 o', clock, getting rid of all these people. And, you know, he says, that is what is really rude. And so I think to that, I mean, you can tell that. I mean, there's that. That tension and that. I mean, I think it's very difficult for Barry Weiss and now Nick Bilton. To get past without just clearing all these people out.
- [07:37]
JVL
There's another moment where Bilton tries to pivot towards talking about the future. And he's. And he says, you know, he's talking about who he's going to bring in his people. He says, these are not going to be new correspondents that have never done this before. And Oliver Darcy reports that the remark drew laughter. The laughter being because Bilton has never done this before. Bilton has zero experience in broadcast journalism. He's never done it. And zero experience in management. He's never led a news team. You know, he wrote a column for Vanity Fair and for the New York Times, and he hosted a podcast, but that's about it. And so, again, just the tone deafness of this guy who seems to have walked in without any inkling that everybody there hates him and that they all see him and understand exactly who and what he is and what he's up to. It's just shocking to me.
- [08:38]
Will Sommer
Yeah. You know, I think if anyone was optimistic about Nick Bilton here, I think this meeting really just proved that he's not up to this task. I mean, this is one of these situations where, okay, you've had the weekend. You're gonna come into this meeting and the knives are gonna be out for you. You're gonna have, as Scott Pelly pointed out, some of the most sort of intense interrogators, interviewers in journalism, asking you questions. And instead he rolls up and he's like, well, what's going on here?
- [09:00]
JVL
You know, why.
- [09:01]
Will Sommer
Why is it as though he'll just be able to say, look, I don't know. It's up to Barry Weiss, you know, not my fault. I can't answer for it.
- [09:07]
JVL
Then this is. This is the best. Bilton then says, I've been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I have sat and talked with incredibly powerful people like you have. None of it intimidates me. Okay, so you're not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people. This is one of those cases where I do have to say that you should be showing, not telling. If you have to tell people that you're not intimidated, you might be intimidated, Will.
- [09:36]
Will Sommer
Yeah. I mean, and then ultimately they kind of flee the meeting. They abruptly end it, and they say, you know, in the New York Times account, enjoy the bagels and kind of, you know, scoot out.
- [09:45]
JVL
What an amazing, amazing thing. I just want to say, I have been part of a meeting like this before, and what an absolute hero Scott Pelley is. What a prince among men he is to stand up for his colleagues, both people still there and the people recently departed. And he's got to know that this means he's going to be gone. Right. And he is just willing to do it. He's like, yeah, you know what, whatever. Here I am. This is at the point I am in my career. I'll be the one. I've got the stature to do this and I'll be okay when I get pushed out. And so I'm going to take a stand for everybody else. Man, that's awesome.
- [10:34]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I think it's very admirable, especially after what happened to Sharon Alfonsi, what the reason she got fired was. They held her story about Seacoth, the Salvadoran prison migrants who had been deported there. And then basically once she complained about that internally and it got leaked suddenly, I mean, that's what put a target on her back because I'm sure she said, you know what, whatever you want with the story, she'd probably still be there. But, you know, she, she put herself out there and she got fired. And now I think a very similar thing is probably going to happen to
- [10:59]
JVL
Scott Pelley just very quickly before we get out of here. The given reason for making all these changes was because Bari Weiss wants to get CNN hip with the kids and into the digital future. And out of just one hour a week on Sundays and whatnot. And you and I were talking about this off camera earlier. This is crazy because A, everything else that Bari Weiss has touched at CBS News is dying. Like, ratings are down, viewership is contracting. B, 60 minutes is not. 60 minutes is the lone property at CBS News which has been doing great and which in fact is showing like 187% growth year over year on digital. And so this isn't about growth on digital, is it, Will?
- [11:46]
Will Sommer
No, I don't think it is. I mean, I think that's an excuse. I think this idea of, you know, 60 Minutes is still making a lot of money. The audience is growing, the revenue is growing. And as, as you said, I mean, status reported that the things like the tick tock accounts, all of this, like, like, how are we doing reaching younger audiences or growing online, that's going up, too. And so I think this is basically a cover for neutering 60 minutes, putting someone like Nick Bilton in that they can, Barry Weiss or the Ellisons can control and, you know, making it more amenable to the Trump administration.
- [12:14]
JVL
Yeah, well, I mean, Trump has always been fixated on 60 Minutes itself. He? He doesn't like 60 Minutes, the program. It's not just CBS News. And I guess he's got his way. It's amazing. I feel bad for all the journalists at 60 Minutes. I hope they keep fighting the good fight for as long as they can. Scott Pelly. Sir, you're a hero. God love you. Everybody else, hit like, hit. Subscribe, follow the channel. We'll be back with more terrible news soon. Like, any minute now. Good luck, America.