CBS fires Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes after clash with new producer

US broadcaster CBS has fired Scott Pelley, a longtime correspondent for its 60 Minutes programme, after he reportedly said Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was “murdering the show” and accused its new producer of having “slender qualifications” for the job.

The firing on Tuesday deepened the turmoil at the most influential TV news programme in the US, days after a leadership overhaul.

Pelley, 68, criticised management on Monday during a fiery staff meeting with Nick Bilton, the programme’s new executive producer installed by Weiss last week, according to a report on the Status website.

In a termination notice obtained Tuesday night by The Associated Press news agency, Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, accused Pelley of carrying out an “ambush” against him.

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” the letter said.

Pelley said in a statement that 60 Minutes has lost its DNA under new management. He accused managers of asking him to “inject falsehoods and bias” into his work without sharing specific details.

“Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration,” he said in the statement.

Status, which said it had a recording of Monday’s meeting, reported that Pelley had said Weiss was brought in to kill the news outlet “and she’s doing exactly that.”

Weiss was not present at the meeting.

Pelley reportedly grilled Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

Alfonsi had criticised Weiss last year for postponing a segment about deportees sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, also known by its Spanish acronym CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, as part of US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Pelley joins more than half a dozen people who have departed the Sunday news magazine, which is the longest-running prime-time show in the US, in recent weeks.

Skydance Media – run by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, a cofounder of Oracle and a longtime supporter of Trump – acquired CBS owner Paramount in August ⁠and installed Weiss in October.

David Ellison helped secure regulatory approval for the deal, which created Paramount Skydance, with the promise that the CBS network would reflect the “varied ideological perspectives” of American viewers.

Before the deal, Paramount paid $16m ⁠to settle a 2024 lawsuit that Trump filed over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. He charged that the editing of one of her remarks gave a distorted view of his rival for the White House, but legal experts said his case was without merit.