“60 Minutes” often reports on institutional dysfunction. Now, the show itself — tick, tick, tick — is as dysfunctional as Enron or Theranos.
That’s not to say it’s about to vanish into the cultural ether. But it’s doing the one thing every news outlet tries to avoid: becoming the story.
On Tuesday, CBS News fired correspondent Scott Pelley. The decision followed an explosive staff meeting the day before. According to reports, Mr. Pelley questioned the qualifications of Nick Bilton, the show’s new executive producer.
Pelley also castigated Bari Weiss, the newish editor-in-chief at CBS News. As he said of his bespectacled overlord: “She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that. She has no qualifications for her job.”
So, yeah, maybe not the best way to get a raise or Christmas card.
Bilton accused Pelley of hijacking his first meeting with staff to “disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.”
In a separate communique to staff, Bilton wrote: “I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with (Pelley) over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”
You can understand the path Scott chose.
He was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
Weiss recently purged the show of several staff, including executive producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Cecilia Vegas and Sharyn Alfonsi.
Weiss has also meddled with stories, as when she halted a harrowing dispatch about migrants sent to a brutal El Salvador prison. She rationalized that decision by arguing the story did not include an on-camera response from the White House. If such a preposterous standard existed in the past, we would still not know about Watergate, the Pentagon Papers or mass surveillance programs.
“60 Minutes” didn’t become the most watched news show for 52 straight seasons by speaking truth to power while also giving those in power a kill switch on which truths can be spoken.
I really wish Pelley had the flu and missed that staff meeting on Monday.
Now everyone loses. Pelley loses an unrivalled platform to showcase his work; the show averaged over 9 million viewers per episode this season. “60 Minutes” loses a trusted and recognized face, a former war correspondent and dedicated reporter since 1989.
Pelley has won more awards than any other correspondent in the show’s history. The man is a legend among legends.
The network wants you to believe this termination was a necessary amputation to stop the spread of insubordination. Pelley was hostile to change. He exuded “antipathy to the future of the show,” Bilton wrote. His tantrum broke the newsroom’s foundation of “trust and mutual respect,” Weiss told staffers in a Wednesday morning call.
But here’s what they are both overlooking: Scott Pelley was not wrong.
If they had a lick of sense, they would have interpreted his outburst not as combat theatrics, but as a cry for help.
Pelley is a smart man. He knew eviscerating his superiors would lead to his own Viking funeral. But out of love for “60 Minutes,” and a broader passion for journalism, he was warning them that their new squishy directives would lead inexorably to a collision with a brick wall.
This termination will not build trust and mutual respect. It will galvanize staffers into believing interlopers and carpetbaggers are now running the show — and investigative journalism is the least of their concerns.
Play it safe. Don’t anger the regulators.
By firing Pelley, “60 Minutes” started an ominous stopwatch on its own demise.
When Pelley says he was asked to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” that is the story. When fears over potential blowback from the White House smother editorial independence, no staffer will be disabused of the notion that the new corporate owners, led by Paramount Skydance chair David Ellison, are incentivized to be allergic to muckraking.
You can’t treat accomplished journalists like they are suspects in a future arson.
“60 Minutes” has lost Pelley after already losing Anderson Cooper. I’m guessing Lesley Stahl and Bill Whitaker are suddenly active on LinkedIn.
Weiss and Bilton feel the show needs to change, evolve, adapt, be more of a both-sides rodeo. But does it? This season, “60 Minutes” killed it on both linear and digital. Viewers consumed nearly 20 billion minutes of content across platforms. Engagement on social was up 137 per cent. The show made the Top 10 TV ratings every week.
The new overlords should be saying: “Keep doing what you’re doing!”
Instead, they started a civil war in which everyone loses.
Scott Pelley could see all of this coming. However impertinent, he called it out.
The truth hurts. That is the real reason he was fired.
