Bari Weiss addressed the elephant in the room during CBS News‘ daily editorial meeting Wednesday morning.
Late Tuesday night, CBS fired Scott Pelley, the veteran 60 Minutes correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, after he lashed into Weiss and new 60 executive producer Nick Bilton in a meeting with show staff Monday.
Weiss used the call to explain the decision, as first reported by Jeremy Barr.
“I know I speak for myself, and I hope I speak for everyone here when I say that I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect. We cannot do our work without it,” Weiss said. “That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways.”
“We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose,” she continued. “That unfortunate outcome does not discount from the amazing contributions and work that Scott Pelley has done for CBS and for 60 Minutes over the course of his career.”
The comments from Weiss are similar to ones she made in the daily meeting late last year, after she held a 60 Minutes story from Sharyn Alfonsi about the notorious CECOT prison.
“I want to say something about trust: our trust for each other and our trust with the public,” Weiss said at the time. “The only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect, and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues. Anything else is absolutely unacceptable.”
In Monday’s meeting, Pelley told Bilton that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place, she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that,” and said that he had “slender” qualifications for the EP job.
“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton told Pelley in his note Tuesday informing him of his termination. “I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.”
In a statement of his own late Tuesday, Pelley one again ripped into the leadership, criticizing their actions since taking over late last year.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” he said. “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. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.”
Bilton, a former New York Times and Vanity Fair tech reporter, was named EP of the show last week. He outlined some of the changes he hopes to bring in an interview with THR, including expanding the roster of correspondents and bringing the show to more digital platforms.
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