‘60 Minutes’ Correspondent Scott Pelley Fired by CBS After Clash With Management

CBS News has fired “60 Minutes” longtime correspondent Scott Pelley after a tense meeting with new Executive Producer Nick Bilton and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss on June 2.

Bilton emailed Pelley notifying him of his immediate termination following the meeting, citing Pelley’s “hostility” and “misconduct” during the meeting as reasons for the decision, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Epoch Times.

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote. “I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.”

Bilton called Pelley’s alleged actions during the meeting a “performative display of hostility” in the dismissal letter.

The executive management team tried again to meet with Pelley June 2, but the second meeting resulted in Pelley’s firing after 22 years.

“Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path,” Bilton wrote.

Bilton, a former technology journalist and filmmaker with no broadcast experience, said he started his job excited to collaborate with the staff and called Pelley to invite him to dinner to talk, but Pelley rejected the offer.

Pelley has not made a public statement as of publication. A request for comment to his booking agency was not immediately returned.

Pelley started working at CBS News in 1989.

Bilton started at the longest-running primetime news show on May 28. He was brought in as someone outside the traditional television news establishment to reshape the 57-year-old program for digital and streaming audiences.

In recent months, “60 Minutes” has been navigating internal disputes amid a turnover in management triggered by a $16 million settlement it reached with President Donald Trump in July 2025 over alleged deceptive edits of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the run up to the 2024 election.

The lawsuit saw the departure of former executive producer Bill Owens citing a loss of editorial independence.

CBS’s parent company Paramount then merged with Skydance, with the company pledging to address bias, restore fact-based reporting, and invest in “trusted local news,” according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr.

Independent journalist, commentator, and media executive Weiss was subsequently named by Paramount as the editor-in-chief of CBS News in October.

The program airs every Sunday night with its iconic stopwatch ticking as it opens.

“The fact that this show has remained a fixed point in a culture is part of why this show still matters as much as it does,” Bilton said on his first day in a post on X.

Aldgra Fredly and Evgenia Filimianova contributed to this report.