Why 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley Accused Bari Weiss of "Murdering" the CBS News Show

Pelley has since shared his perspective on the discord at 60 Minutes ahead of his firing

"Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause,” he told Variety June 2. "Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos."

Pelley went on to slam questionable practices he said new leadership tried to instill at the network.

"For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story," he added. "I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done."

In addition, Pelley said "incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc"—recalling how, "in a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all." Still, he expressed his hope for change.

"I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives," Pelley concluded in his statement to Variety. “I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”

E! News has reached out CBS News regarding Pelley’s termination and comments and has attempted to contact Pelley.

Pelley's characterization of Weiss "murdering" 60 Minutes flies in the face of what they've been saying, the source continued, which is that Bilton was brought in so that CBS' flagship news magazine can keep doing the hard-hitting interviews and ambitious investigative journalism it's known for.

In a memo Weiss sent to staffers announcing Bilton's hiring last week, obtained by E!, she said their responsibility is "to preserve that legacy and vital mission by building a show that thrives in the 21st century." And that, she added, required "a new approach."

Upon arrival at CBS News last fall, Weiss wrote in a memo to employees, per Deadline, that she would approach their concerns about what was working and what wasn't with "an open mind, a fresh notebook, and an urgent deadline."

But then one story after another about the goings-on at CBS News described an increasingly disgruntled newsroom.

The reports of discord prompted criticism from Gayle King in January, with the CBS Mornings anchor chastising "leakers in the building" during a staff meeting, according to a recording obtained and reviewed at the time by The Independent. 

“If you don't want to be here, if this is not the place, it's OK,” King said toward the end of a Q&A session, per the Independent. “But for the rest of us who would like to be here, who’d like to do a good job and figure things out along the way, this is a very bumpy time for all of us.”

Meanwhile, seemingly all of Weiss' staffing shakeups, from her choice of Tony Dokoupil to anchor the CBS Evening News in December to her recent hiring of Bilton as 60 Minutes exec producer have been met with mixed reviews.

Bilton, a tech journalist and documentary producer, was brought in to replace EP Tanya Simon, who was fired last week along with executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, managing editor Guy Campanile and senior producer Matthew Polevoy.

Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were also let go.

All of which factored into Pelley's June 1 evisceration of Weiss.

"She has no qualifications for her job," he told Bilton, per the NY Times. "You have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”

To which Bilton responded, per the recording, “Well, I will show you. That’s what I have to say. That is my plan over the next two weeks. I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”