FCC Chair Brendan Carr took to social media earlier today to slam erstwhile 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley after the longtime broadcast journalist told The New York Times the idea of being fired following his tense confrontation with the newsmagazine was “the furthest thing from my mind.”
“One of the reasons why trust in media is so low is because many legacy journalists are completely out of touch,” Carr wrote on X. “You could not get away with that behavior at any run of the mill job. It is revealing to see how blind some are to that.”
Carr’s comments come after Pelley opened up about his dismissal for the first time; in an interview with the Times over the weekend, the reporter said the October-installed CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and the network’s leadership are engaged in “subtle political bias” to influence the newsmagazine, and that top brass “don’t know what they’re doing.”
Pelley alleged that Weiss instructed him to skew reporting about the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the ensuing ICE protests in Minneapolis, such as by depicting protesters as “more violent” in a way that was representative of “a thumb on the scale for the president’s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.”
Meanwhile, a network spokesperson characterized the requests for edits as standard procedure: “In an email, Bari made four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible. As is frequently the case in any newsroom that operates with collaboration, not everything she raised made it into the final piece.”
The tumult began amid a wave of firings following the installment of newly minted executive producer Nick Bilton May 28, who oversaw the ousting of correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. During Bilton’s introductory meeting last Monday, veteran Pelley accused Weiss of “murdering” the show, questioning her and Bilton’s qualifications.
Bill Owens, who resigned as executive producer of 60 Minutes in April 2025, saying he could no longer be assured of editorial independence, praised Pelley for his remarks. Shortly after the verbal confrontation, Pelley was fired after an emergency meeting Tuesday. He told the Times he was blindsided by the decision: “So I’m thinking that the meeting’s going to carry on. We’re going to have a long conversation. Very quickly after the meeting began, [CBS News president] Tom Cibrowski said, this conversation is over. I was stunned.”
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately,” Bilton wrote in a letter to Pelley.
Pelley, a 37-year veteran of CBS News, responded to his firing, saying, “The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well,” and that “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” and “incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.”
Meanwhile, Weiss defended the decision as such: “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.”
Since then, the 51-time Emmy winner has made it clear that he contests Weiss’ version of events as he was “effectively fired” and “there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back.’”
Though Bilton attempted to reassure staffers in a memo following Pelley’s exit that the organization “will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on these stories,” insiders told Deadline that morale is at an all time low.
Additionally, SAG-AFTRA and WGAE have censured the management onslaught. “Like all workers, journalists have the right under federal law to speak up on behalf of their colleagues about workplace concerns without fear of employer retaliation or punitive action,” the actors’ guild said. “SAG-AFTRA is prepared to take and support any and all legal actions related to the company’s conduct over the last several weeks.”
