60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley fired by CBS News after clash

Scott Pelley, one of the most well-known and respected journalists in broadcast journalism, has been fired by CBS News after clashing with network brass over last week’s severe round of cuts at 60 Minutes, the show he has worked on since 2004, The Guardian confirmed.While changes were long expected at 60 Minutes, CBS News management shocked staffers last week by firing the network’s executive producer, executive editor and two correspondents, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, without giving a specific reason for their terminations.During an extremely heated meeting on Monday morning with the show’s newly appointed executive editor Nick Bilton, along with another CBS News executive, Pelley rebuked Bari Weiss, the longtime opinion commentator who joined the network in October as editor-in-chief.“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley said, as first reported by The Guardian. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”A source close to the network said that executives had attempted to meet with Pelley after the terminations on Thursday, to no avail.Ultimately, Pelley met with Weiss and fellow executives on Tuesday, and she conveyed that his behavior was inappropriate. Pelley then told members of the show’s staff that he expected to be terminated, sources said.The termination letter from Nick Bilton to Scott Pelley. Photograph: Provided to the GuardianPelley received a message from Bilton on Tuesday evening informing him that he had been “terminated for cause effectively immediately”. In the message, which was first reported by Puck’s Dylan Byers, Bilton called out Pelley’s conduct in the meeting. “Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” he wrote.Bilton also sent an email to the staff of 60 Minutes informing them of Pelley’s termination. “You should hear this from me first. We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” he wrote in the message, which was obtained by The Guardian. “I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”With journalist Anderson Cooper announcing earlier this year that he would be leaving the show, Pelley’s departure leaves 60 Minutes with only three full-time correspondents months ahead of the launch of its 59th season this fall: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and L Jon Wertheim. (CBS News journalist and former evening news anchor Norah O’Donnell contributes to the show.)The show is expected to more readily utilize correspondents from across the network, though no new contributors were named as part of the announcement on Thursday.“What I regret most is that this situation interfered with the conversation I had hoped to have with you about Season 59 and the future of this show,” Bilton wrote in his message to the show’s staff. “I realize this is a great deal of change in a very short time, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. … What I will commit to is this: My unyielding support for each of you, the journalism that you do and what we will do together going forward.”Last Wednesday, while presenting at the News & Documentary Emmy awards, Pelley publicly praised Alfonsi – hours after she announced that the network was not renewing her contract for reasons she said were punitive. “There have been many great 60 Minutes correspondents over the years. I see Sharyn Alfonsi in the audience,” he said.Pelley also had extremely kind words for Santiago Campos, an 18-year-old high school senior who said – after accepting a scholarship funded by CBS News – that the network’s current leadership “stains the legacy of Mike Wallace”, the former 60 Minutes correspondent.Pelley first joined CBS News in 1989. During his lengthy career at the network, he has reported from around the country and the world. He served as chief White House correspondent, and later as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 2011 to 2017. He first joined the 60 Minutes franchise as a correspondent for the spin-off show 60 Minutes II in 1999.On 12 December 2025, months after David Ellison’s Skydance had acquired CBS parent company Paramount, and Weiss had been installed as editor-in-chief, Pelley told a crowd in Washington that he was satisfied with how the network’s new management had treated 60 Minutes.“It’s early yet, but what I can tell you is we are doing the same kinds of stories with the same kind of rigor, and we have experienced no corporate interference of any kind,” he said when accepting an award honoring the legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.Only nine days later, Alfonsi informed her colleagues that Weiss had spiked her story on a notorious prison in El Salvador for “political” reasons, ushering in one of the biggest controversies in the network’s history.Rome Hartman, a longtime 60 Minutes producer who retired last year, praised Pelley as “among the all-time greats of CBS News and of 60 Minutes”.He also called out Weiss and Bilton for terminating Pelley because he pushed back aggressively during a staff meeting, despite the anti-cancel culture positioning of Weiss’s company the Free Press. “We SHOULD wrestle over important stuff,” he wrote in a text message. “The irony is flammable!”Jeff Fager, who served as executive producer of 60 Minutes from 2003 to 2018, when he was terminated, called Pelley “the heart and soul of 60 Minutes”.“He’s the present-day Mike Wallace of the program,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be in charge without him.”