← The Interview
The Interview
Scott Pelley on His Firing and the ‘Massacre’ at ’60 Minutes’
01:03:38
An exclusive sit-down with the now-former CBS News correspondent.
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- [00:00]
A
This podcast is supported by PMI us, the US Businesses of Philip Morris International. At PMI Us, we're committed to offering science backed smoke free products to adult smokers while making it our mission to help prevent underage access. Learn more about our 10 point approach to underage access prevention@USPMI.com
- [00:23]
B
I'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. Peli 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 Ell, and the appointment of Bari Weiss to lead CBS News. Peli, 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. We'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. Thank 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.
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A
I can't believe I'm hearing those words.
- [01:59]
B
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.
- [02:11]
A
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. There'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.
- [03:16]
B
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. Leading 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.
- [03:40]
A
No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming. This is our entire senior staff, people. Beloved Tonya 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. 2.5 billion views. That's a third of humanity. So 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 Mihailovic, her deputy, et cetera, we're 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. So imagine how we feel when someone like that comes into a shop like 60 Minutes.
- [05:37]
B
Explain to me exactly how you felt.
- [05:42]
A
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. Saved 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.
- [07:23]
B
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?
- [07:37]
A
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. I'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. So we had a baby shower at the house, and we got through the weekend. And I learned that Nick Bilton was gonna 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 gonna 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.
- [08:57]
B
At that meeting, you spoke out very forcefully. You asked him why he'd taken the job, knowing, and this is a quote, that you will never be welcome here. Why did you decide to have that first interaction with your new boss in public and not behind closed doors?
- [09:15]
A
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 Bari 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. No, 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 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. And 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 7 o' clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week, when we've been on the air 247 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. So 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.
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B
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?
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A
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. I 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. So 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. Newsrooms 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.
- [15:00]
B
You know, Barry Wise 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. Can you explain to me what you mean by that? You're using words like massacre, murder. What do you mean by that?
- [15:26]
A
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 corps. So this isn't like they fired our boss, which they did. They 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 gonna 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.
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B
You then do have a meeting with CBS leadership after this very contentious interaction. Can you tell me about that meeting? And if you were at that point going in expecting to be fired?
- [17:14]
A
Oh, gosh. Furthest thing from my mind, it hadn't occurred to me. The president of CBS News, Tom Zabrowski, sent me a note and said, can you come by and talk to us? 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 Bari 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.
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B
But 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?
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A
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. Wallace 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.
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B
So you walk in and what was the energy of the room?
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A
Hostile, dismissive. Before I could take my seat, Tom Zabrowski said, this is a firing offense. I was confused. I wasn't sure who he was talking about in the room. But 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 10ft 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. I turned to Barry Weiss, who was sitting to my left, and I said, but let's, you know, 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. So 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 Zabrowski 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 Zabrowski tells me as I'm walking through the door, you'll have our answer in a few minutes. I 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 staff members, and I don't think anything of it. And 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. 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 gonna 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.
- [23:32]
B
Just to understand your position in this, you would have been open to a path forward. You wanted to remain at 60 minutes.
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A
Absolutely. A path forward to me was a obvious conclusion for what this meeting was going to be about. That'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.
- [24:13]
B
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.
- [24:36]
A
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.
- [24:54]
B
After the break. More with Scott Pelley.
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A
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- [25:28]
B
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A
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- [26:40]
B
I 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 7, 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?
- [27:25]
A
I didn't speak to Sherri 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 multimillion 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. Paying 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.
- [28:51]
B
Just to give the context here, President Trump had sued 60 Minutes over an interview of Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2020. 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, Paramount 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 Shari Redstone at that point?
- [29:28]
A
They bribed the president to get the deal done. So, yeah, there was a massive collapse of confidence in the previous ownership.
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B
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? Did you speak with David Ellison the
- [29:52]
A
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 here, he. 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. We were walking on air. We liked him. He had the financial backing to back up his words. And we thought a bright new era was coming after all the previous difficulty.
- [31:03]
B
Ellison then hires Bari Weiss to run CBS News. 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 bills itself as pushing against what it sees as the mainstream media. What did you make of her appointment?
- [31:30]
A
I was not familiar with her name, so 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 gonna welcome her, listen to her, and give her the benefit of the doubt.
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B
I mean, I'm surprised that you hadn't heard of her. She's a lightning rod in journalism.
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A
You know, she just hadn't crossed my radar. And if I hadn't heard of Bari Weiss at that point in time, that probably tells you more about me than it does.
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B
So when Barry comes in, she has a meeting with senior 60 Minute staffers. And in that meeting, she asked, and I'm quoting, why does the country think you're biased? Is that a correct assessment of that?
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A
I wasn't there.
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B
I see.
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A
But that is what I've been told by my colleagues who were there, and they were shocked. That was sort of her hello to the staff at 60 Minutes.
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B
What was the feeling about that particular opening salvo to the team?
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A
Uh. Oh. She, I am told, said something to the effect of, why do you think the country thinks you're biased? But she didn't offer any kind of a metric. You know, what's your metric? Why do you think so? Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about? Because we certainly didn't believe that. And we just felt that she was making statements that perhaps she couldn't back up and was coming into the news division with hardened, preconceived notions that didn't seem to be thought through.
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B
You have now accused Weiss of injecting, and I'm quoting here, falsehoods and bias. This was in your parting statement into at least one of your politically sensitive stories. Can you tell me the nature of that complaint? What did she specifically ask for? What story are you talking about?
- [34:21]
A
As I recall, that's February, and my team and I are doing a story about the protests in Minneapolis against the ice crackdown there. We've interviewed Senator Rand Paul, Republican, because he's going to hold hearings into this. And the fact that a Republican was going to do that was quite newsworthy. So we interviewed Senator Paul and then built out a story about what had happened. The killing of Renee Good, the killing of Alex Preddy, the protests. I felt it was very important to identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were half of these confrontations. And so I instructed my producers to find images over the past few weeks of these protests in which we see the protesters acting aggress. We found a picture of a protester chest bumping an officer. We found a picture of an officer being hit in the head with a snowball. We culled together a lot of video of protesters screaming in the faces of officers because we were going to talk about the killing of Preddy and the killing of Good. And it seemed to me important to tell the audience about the entire context. In fact, I remember writing a line in the story that said that the protesters were pushing the boundaries of what it means to peacefully assemble, taking the language from the First Amendment. And I thought we'd done a really good job with this. We also included a picture of Alex Freddy before he was killed, kicking out a taillight on a police car, and made a point of saying, this is Alex Brady, and this is what he did. So the story goes through screenings. It's very well received. There are notes, as always, and we do rewrites, as always. But this is on a very tight deadline. It's Sunday. We're going on the air that night. And in the case of stories that are, as we say, crashing, meaning right against the deadline. Our deadline on Sunday is noon. So we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Barry Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the quote, but that's what was communicated to me. And the other thing was Renee Goode's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. This is not what you see on the video. On the video, you see the officer standing slightly off the front of the car, and you clearly see Ms. Good's wheels turned completely as far as they will go away from the officer. But he shoots her in the head, kills her, and says something about her in that moment that I can't repeat in polite company. So we have gone out of our way in our plan from the very beginning to show the protesters for the responsibility that they had. We had already scrubbed the video archives looking for those scenes, but it somehow wasn't enough for Ms. Weiss. The video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving toward him. But that's what the President said about that, and that's the way she wanted it described.
- [38:52]
B
To be clear, there were lots of videos that showed different moments of that interaction, and there was a big many analyses subsequently about what exactly through those various videos had actually happened, including an
- [39:06]
A
excellent one by the New York Times. The video that I showed in our piece clearly showed the officer's feet. So if he's standing in front of the car, you can't see his feet. And it very clearly showed that the wheels were Turned away from him what appeared to be the maximum turn until the wheel had stopped.
- [39:30]
B
So you get those suggestions, feedback from the sort of editorial chief of CBS News. What did you do? I mean, did you do as she asked?
- [39:44]
A
I asked my producers. Look, I told you to find violent video of the protesters so we could represent that accurately. Now I want you to go back and look again. Did we leave anything out that's important? Did we make a mistake here? I don't think so, but go back and look. And then I sat down with a video editor and I went over the video of the Renee Goode killing over and over and over again. Stop motion, slow motion, et cetera, and realized that the event was not, as the President said, and not the way Bari Weiss remembered it. And so it's late. Our deadline was noon. It's now almost 5 o'. Clock. That's dangerous as hell. And so I decided that I wouldn't do those things. I wasn't going to get in a debate about it. I wasn't gonna call Bari Weiss about it. I was just gonna refuse to make those changes.
- [40:55]
B
Did you change any language in the broadcast? Anything?
- [41:00]
A
Not that I recall, based on her notes. But as you probably are aware, when you're doing a story, especially on deadline, a lot of things happen. There's a lot of input. And you're just scrambling to save everybody's skin because you're gonna have a crash if you. Which is what happened next day. I didn't hear anything. Nobody called, nobody said anything. It occurred to me that maybe Barry Weiss didn't see the broadcast and didn't realize that those changes hadn't been made. But that's how that happened. There was a thumb on the scale for the President's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.
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B
Why was that? The interpretation? I mean, could she not have been trying to be fair to the administration at a moment of very high tension?
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A
She could have been trying to be fair to the administration, except I felt that the story was abundantly fair to the administration and to the ICE officers and to the Border Patrol officers who were caught in that moment. We were being told to write a version of events that conflicted with the video account. I couldn't understand that. We had already done, in my view, the important work of journalism to balance the story finally. The story was not out of balance. It was not out of balance, but there was a thumb on the scale to push the balance a little further. In another direction.
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B
Is it possible to see this as the system working? She had notes. You felt they didn't make sense to take. The piece ran, and there was no retaliation.
- [43:08]
A
Well, it was the interference that's a problem, especially a story that's been approved by the top editors. And the bigger problem, Lulu, frankly, is not any kind of political influence. The problem was the incompetence. You don't break a deadline. Now, this is four hours after that episode of 60 Minutes came, within 19 minutes of not making air. The entire hour of 60 Minutes. It was the night of the Grammys. 60 Minutes was the lead into the Grammys, and we almost didn't have a broadcast. 19 minutes. I can't imagine that's ever happened before. And I pledged to myself at that time that no matter what Bari Weiss wanted to do in a story, I would never break the deadline again because we put the entire network in jeopardy.
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B
Scott, I want to ask you point blank, why did you think she was asking for these things?
- [44:28]
A
The impression that I had at the moment was that she was representing. Let me try to be a little bit careful here, because I don't want to be hyperbolic. My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration, just constantly looking out for the views of the president. We're reporting those views. There's nothing wrong with reporting those views. But it was never enough. Always needed more from the president, from the administration, that sort of thing. The balance was off. We've been working for balance for decades, and for the first time in my career, the balance was off.
- [45:33]
B
We should say Cecilia Vega, who was recently fired, also alleged interference in 60 minutes after she was let go. Sharon Alfonsi as well. You are now doing the same. These are three highly respected longtime journalists who are basically echoing the same claim. CBS has denied any bias or interference, saying in a recent statement that changes and disputes were merely the, quote, normal back and forth between editor and correspondent. That happens in every newsroom. I just want to pause before we go on. A more generous interpretation of Weiss's tenure might be that her missteps have been due to a lack of experience, not deliberate bias or malice. You know, just thinking again about your comment about her murdering 60 minutes. Could inexperience be the real problem and less a conspiracy to do away with CBS News?
- [46:35]
A
I think inexperience is the larger part of the problem. At a certain point, I began to think that a political bias was gonna be our big problem. And then later it occurred to me that it was the inexperience, the incompetence that was the bigger problem. The breaking of deadlines, all that kind of thing. So the most difficult thing, I think for the staff is trying to make up for all of these missteps in terms of our production and in terms of the technical aspects of television. It's been enormously stressful.
- [47:17]
B
Another high profile 60 Minutes host, Anderson Cooper, declined to renew his contract too this year. And at the end of his final show, he went on air and said, I hope 60 minutes remains 60 minutes. That was seen as a swipe at Bari Weiss. Did you talk to Anderson about why he did not renew his contract and his reasons for leaving?
- [47:40]
A
I did not.
- [47:41]
B
Was his declining to renew his contract seen as a problem for 60 minutes or, or a sign that something was amiss? I mean, how did you receive that news?
- [47:58]
A
Well, correspondents don't resign from 60 Minutes. It's. For people like me, it's the greatest job in the world. There is nothing else to aspire to. And so if a person of Anderson Cooper's stature decides that he has to leave the broadcast, that's an indication that he has found his role there untenable.
- [48:28]
B
It's been reported that Barry Weiss was upset that Anderson Cooper's comments had aired in that way.
- [48:34]
A
That's my understanding.
- [48:36]
B
Do you think that was part of the reason executive producer Tonya Simon was let go?
- [48:39]
A
Yes. Yes. My understanding from people directly involved in that interaction is that Bari Weiss was quite livid that Anderson Cooper was allowed to say those things and that she, Berry, was not consulted beforehand, which in our normal course of business would not have been done anyway. And I believe that that was part of the reason Tanya was let go. But she wasn't let go for cause. She was let go to create a space for the new person, Nick Bilton, to come in. Tanya was completely blindsided by this. She was told that she was coming into a meeting to discuss the past season and the next season kind of lessons learned and planning meeting. So she doesn't go there with a lawyer or with a witness of any kind. She walks in, she sits down. I'm told that Tom Zabrowski and Bari Weiss are in there. And Tom starts the meeting with the nature of this meeting has changed. Were letting you go and just told her she was fired and had to get out of her office by 5 o'. Clock. Can I give you a little bit of background? The Simon family is legendary at CBS News. Her father was a famous Vietnam correspondent and then Bob Simon covered every Single war everywhere in the world throughout his entire career. I was with him in Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1990. We would stand on the roof of the hotel and watch the missiles come in. He taught me how to be a war correspondent. And then Tania Simon comes in. She's at the broadcast 30 years. There is no respect for that. Get out of the office by 5 o'. Clock. What company in the world treats their precious people in that way? The callousness, the inhumanity. Breathtaking. Complete lack of empathy in this management for anyone who works there. How can you have someone who deserves so much respect? Tanya Simon. Spent her whole childhood waiting for the call that her father was dead, never knowing if she would ever see him again. Her whole childhood. Get out by 5 o'. Clock. Make of that what you will.
- [52:25]
B
I can hear how much this has hurt you.
- [52:33]
A
Yes. It's like your spouse being murdered. And I don't care about me. It's not about me. I am not emotional about this because I have lost this job. I've done it for a long time. I've had the greatest experiences. But the people I leave behind, treated in this way, that breaks my heart. And it's going to take me a long time to get over it. To be perfectly honest,
- [53:15]
B
one of the arguments that Bari Weiss has made about 60 minutes and CBS News is that they need to be brought into the modern era. Nick Bilton also said in a staff meeting with you that broadcast is an ice cube that is melting. Do you think they have a point and that 60 Minutes needs to change even if it's reaching a huge audience now? Does it? Its metabolism? Do the kinds of correspondence that it has have to change to reach a younger audience that interacts with media in a completely different way and looks at journalists perhaps like you, as something from a different era?
- [53:58]
A
Too old? Of course. We have to reach out to a younger and younger audience. But their argument about joining the Internet age is just disingenuous. It's almost as if Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in 1990 and it just cracked open. They've just discovered the Internet and they're running around telling everybody how important it is at CBS News. Yeah. Join the fight. We started our first 60 Minutes online show, 60 Minutes Overtime in 2010. I shoot TikTok verticals, or I used to shoot TikTok verticals on every assignment. I shot material for overtime on every assignment. We're there. We're everywhere.
- [54:54]
B
So you don't think 60 minutes needs
- [54:55]
A
to change my point is that 60 minutes is constantly changing, constantly innovating. So I just find the charge that we at 60 Minutes were frozen in amber in 1968 and nothing's ever changed since then, I find that absolutely absurd and the kind of argument that would be made by people who just don't know what we are.
- [55:26]
B
Nick Bilton sent a very conciliatory note to the staff this past week. At last, he promised editorial independence. He praised some of your longtime colleagues, Leslie Stahl, Bill Whitaker, John Wortham. And I just want to say my producer just told me that while we've been talking, those three released a statement that they are staying at 60 Minutes. How does that make you feel?
- [55:54]
A
Same reason I was staying. We felt like I haven't talked to them. I assume it's the same reason. And we have had conversations before this about staying to maintain the principles of the broadcast. If we leave, we can't help. And that was my opinion. There have been other times when Anderson left, when others were fired, that we could have stormed into a meeting and quit. But those very distinguished correspondents and myself did have conversations about this over time and decided that we were better working on the inside and that we could influence things for the better. And we did. And it was my intention to stay and do exactly that.
- [56:44]
B
Do you think, though, they can trust those assurances?
- [56:47]
A
No, no, I would venture to say that trust is broken.
- [56:53]
B
Do you think Bari Weiss needs to be removed?
- [56:56]
A
Oh, gosh, yes. Look, she's a lovely person, and her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful. She's proven that. Great for her, but television's not her thing. She brings an ideology into CBS News where that is just anathema. And so it's a terrible fit. It's probably not her fault, but it's just a terrible fit. She doesn't know television. She doesn't understand how it works. She doesn't have management experience for a large organization like CBS News. So, yes, I do think that we would be far better off without her. Maybe she goes back to the Free Press and has a. A sterling career. But this is like somebody walking up to me and saying, there's a 747. There are 400 people on it. We need you to fly it to Paris. I'm going to decline because I don't have a clue. And it would have been so much better if Bari Weiss had been offered this job and said, oh, that's not for me. I don't know how to do that.
- [58:19]
B
President Trump reacted to your being Fired, did he? He went on a podcast and called you a stiff.
- [58:27]
A
I'm surprised that the president of the United States would bother to notice, but okay. Please tell me I'm not aware of this.
- [58:35]
B
He also said you were part of this gang of stupid, crooked people that don't care about your country.
- [58:43]
A
Stupid. I can take that stiff. Yeah. Probably. Don't care about the country. I've never worn the uniform. But I've been in combat for this country in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kuwait, been shot at, spent nights in foxholes filling up with water in the desert. I'm not aware that the president of the United States has ever done any of those things for his country. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment. You become a journalist because you love the country. And while all the other descriptions that the president used about me might be applicable. Not that one. There is no democracy without journalism. It can't be done. And that is why I am a journalist.
- [60:16]
B
Last few questions.
- [60:19]
A
You know, on Fox News, they're gonna just run the parts where I'm crying and say I'm a lunatic.
- [60:25]
B
It's the era we live in.
- [60:28]
A
It is the era we live in.
- [60:30]
B
Scott, you joined CBS as a reporter in 1989.
- [60:34]
A
Proudest day of my life.
- [60:36]
B
You know, as I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking about, in many ways, how the story of modern CBS is the story of your own career too. When you look back, because your tenure is now over, what do you hope your departure does? What do you hope will happen now?
- [61:06]
A
My hope is that the leadership of Paramount will say to themselves, okay, this isn't working. We have broadcasts that almost don't get on the air. We have respected journalists saying that there is a thumb on the scale for one political party over another. We have a broadcast which is among the most important in America. The most successful in the history of all of television. It was doing great. So why are we making these changes? We need adult supervision, and at the moment, we don't have it. We have people who have been installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no experience in television. It's not their fault, but 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. And so that is my hope. A return to sanity, a return to honor, a return to courage. We used to have all of those things in abundance, and now we don't. We can save this it's possible to land this plane, but right now, CBS News, in my view, is on fire.
- [62:52]
B
Scott Pelley, thank you so much for coming in today. That's Scott Pelley. We reached out to CBS News after this interview regarding Peli's claims of interference on his Minneapolis story. A CBS News spokesperson replied, quote, in an email. Barry made four points in the course of editorial back and forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair and accurate as possible. As is frequently the case in any newsroom that operates with collaboration, not everything she raised made it into the final piece, unquote. As for the broader claims of bias, the spokesperson wrote, quote, there is no credible argument to suggest Ms. Weiss was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration in any instance over the past seven months, urging reporters to get more information, to see comments from multiple perspectives, to pitch fresh stories. These are the basic functions of any editor. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel@YouTube.com this conversation was produced by Seth Kelly. It was edited by Allison Benedict, mixing by Afim Shapiro, original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew Wyatt, Orem Paola Neudorf, Jo Bil Munoz, David Herr, Eddie Costas, Pat Guenther, Leland James, Amy Marino, Kathleen o' Brien and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is the interview from the New York Times.
- [65:16]
A
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