Scott Pelley’s 37-year career at CBS News ended Tuesday in disgraced after a public clash with management that finally pushed his bosses past the breaking point.
CBS News fired the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent and former “CBS Evening News” anchor one day after Pelley stood up in an all-staff meeting and accused CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of “murdering ’60 Minutes'” and blasted newly appointed executive producer Nick Bilton as a man with “slender qualifications” for the job.
Pelley was terminated for cause effective immediately.
“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote in a termination letter obtained by Fox News. “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.”
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” Bilton added. “And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately.”
Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and documentary filmmaker tapped by Weiss to lead the program, had reached out to Pelley repeatedly over the weekend trying to arrange a private conversation before Monday’s meeting. Pelley declined.
In a follow-up memo to the full “60 Minutes” staff, Bilton said: “I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”
Pelley did not go quietly. In a parting statement, he took one final shot at the new leadership.
“Incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc,” he said. He added: “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. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again — a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”
The confrontation was months in the making. Weiss, the former New York Times opinion editor who famously resigned from that paper in 2020 citing its woke culture, was named CBS News Editor-in-Chief last October after Paramount’s acquisition by Skydance brought new CEO David Ellison to the helm.
Pelley had already clashed publicly with her in December 2025 when Weiss pulled a “60 Minutes” segment on illegal immigrants held at an El Salvador prison just hours before it was scheduled to air. At a staff meeting after that incident, Pelley said Weiss needed to take her job “more seriously.”
In recent weeks, Weiss fired longtime executive producer Tanya Simon, who had worked at “60 Minutes” for nearly three decades, along with correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. Pelley is the fourth major “60 Minutes” figure to be ousted in that time.