CBS News fires correspondent Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes

CBS News fired its longtime 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley connected Tuesday evening, amid an ongoing, tumultuous shakeup of the organisation nether caller leadership.

Newly installed CBS News main Bari Weiss fired a drawstring of unit astatine the quality programme past week, including its longtime enforcement producer, and tapped a caller editor, Nick Bilton, with nary broadcast quality experience.

The moves inflamed concerns the network's enactment would undermine autarkic journalism astatine the US's longest-running and highest-rated quality programme.

At a unit gathering connected Monday, Pelley accused Weiss of "murdering 60 Minutes", US media reported. Bilton called Pelley uncooperative successful a termination missive sent to the host.

The BBC has contacted CBS News for comment.

In a connection aft his firing, Pelley accused the organisation of becoming much politicised and forcing him to "inject falsehoods and bias" into his work.

"I've been told to see assertions that are unverified," helium continued.

Pelley said "incompetence and unprofessionalism successful the caller absorption person wreaked havoc".

In the missive terminating Pelley's declaration connected Tuesday, Bilton accused him of hijacking the unit gathering to disparage Bilton, his qualificatons and intentions with "remarkable incivility and contempt".

"Your antipathy to the aboriginal of the amusement has travel done large and clear. And I person heard you," Bilton wrote.

He sent a abstracted memo to 60 Minutes staff, saying helium made aggregate attempts to person nonstop conversations with Pelley and could not find communal ground.

"That was not the way Scott chose," Bilton wrote, according to a missive published by CBS News.

CBS News has a concern statement with the BBC, meaning quality contented including video footage tin beryllium shared. BBC News is editorially autarkic of CBS.

The upheaval astatine the quality organisation had been nether mode since August 2025 erstwhile David Ellison, an state of US President Donald Trump, bought CBS's genitor company, Paramount.

Ellison installed Weiss arsenic the caller editor-in-chief of CBS successful October. She has outlined a caller imaginativeness for CBS News successful the integer era.

Weiss told unit successful January that CBS News was relying excessively heavy connected broadcast tv and was "not producing a merchandise that capable radical want".

"The world is twofold. First: Not capable radical spot us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media," she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Second: We are not doing capable to conscionable audiences wherever they are. So they are leaving us."

CBS has since laid disconnected a fig of employees - much past 6% of its workforce - and unopen down its storied vigor division. After the latest play of 60 Minutes ended connected 17 May, the web fired Tanya Simon, its enforcement producer, and longtime correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, and hired Bilton to pb the show.

Vega said successful a connection afterwards that executives had tried to power stories and "insert governmental bias" and called it "dangerous for the amusement and unsafe for democracy".

"Today, I mislaid an astonishing job," she wrote. "But I inactive person my integrity. To my erstwhile colleagues, proceed to clasp the line."

Pelley was the show's managing exertion and anchor and had been a 60 Minutes analogous for 22 years. He worked astatine CBS News for 37 years and departs with "a bosom brimming with gratitude", helium wrote successful his statement.

Bilton is simply a erstwhile New York Times exertion columnist and documentary filmmaker. He said aft his hiring that Weiss was bringing him successful portion audiences for 60 Minutes were expanding - up 9% according to Nielson ratings - but that was not indicative of its longterm prognosis.

"It's inactive the No. 1 quality broadcast successful America. But past tells you disruption doesn't hap instantly erstwhile caller exertion comes on — it's usually a fewer years later," Bilton told CNBC. "We're connected the precipice of this happening to broadcast TV.