It was turmoil inside CBS News all day Monday as stunned executives and journalists at one of the leading news brands in the world grappled with questions swirling about their own organization with no answers:
- Will “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley be fired?
- If he’s fired, will others at “60 Minutes” quit?
- Will new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton stay?
- And what on earth was CBS News chief Bari Weiss attempting to accomplish with these mass firings at “60 Minutes” – if she’s not aiming to simply destroy the show?
“Shell shocked. Gobsmacked,” were the reactions noted inside the 57th Street CBS News building, according to a news insider. “People were frightened.”
The explosive exchange between Pelley and Bilton was simply not the kind of interaction that anyone has seen at CBS News, a network focused on world leaders, war and revolution, social issues, politics and corruption. It is emphatically not a place where colleagues attack one another in the open.
According to a leaked recording, things quickly came to a head between Pelley and the new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton in a group meeting Monday morning. During the meeting, Pelley said of Weiss, who appointed Bilton, “She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
The comments underscore the level of frustration not just from Pelley, but a wider CBS News staff bombarded with multiple rounds of layoffs, shake-ups and tension-filled confrontations over the last eight months. The result has been nothing but skepticism and distrust over Weiss, leading to Monday’s outburst.
But did Pelley go too far?
“What he did today was a firing offense,” said one senior individual on Monday evening.
And yet a spokesman for CBS News said he did not know if Pelley would be fired or indeed what, if any, response would be forthcoming.
Bilton walked out of the meeting after assuring Pelley, “I have no problem taking a job in a place that I am not welcome in.”
The new executive producer then addressed the “60 Minutes” correspondent directly, telling him before exiting the meeting, “Scott, I’m not intimidated by you. I look forward to talking to you in a one-on-one setting as these meetings are scheduled. And enjoy the bagels.”
Weiss herself was planning to attend the meeting, and was warned of an impending clash with staff, so she stayed away, insiders told me.
If Pelley is fired, one said, others will almost certainly quit. That is, even though his outburst was “an unthinkable act of treason.”
If Bilton stays, as he presumably will, the organization will try to muddle its way forward, damaged and listing and leaking to the gossip columns. Meanwhile, no answers were forthcoming about why Weiss was so determined to burn “60 Minutes” down.
“I’ve been racking my brain,” said one executive, ignoring the argument that Weiss was trying to curry favor with the Trump administration.
Pelley attends the annual Freedom Award Benefit hosted by the International Rescue Committee at The Waldorf Astoria on Nov. 7, 2012 in New York City. (Getty Images)
A parallel narrative among non-CBS broadcast and other journalists burned across texts and phone message lines all day.
Hiring Bilton was “a preposterous decision to decapitate the proven leadership of the No. 1 show and replace it with a dilettante with no TV or leadership experience and a bunch of mumbo jumbo ideas about being disruptive,” said one former broadcast network chief, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s arrogant, stupid and they will fail.”
Meanwhile Dan Rather, Lowell Bergman and dozens of other journalists urged David Ellison to protect CBS News’ editorial independence , in a sign of their own lack of confidence in Weiss and her strategic choices.
We “urge you and your management team at CBS News to uphold the principle of editorial independence that has made ‘60 Minutes’ — in the words of the show’s new executive producer — ‘the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced,’” they wrote in a letter to the CEO. “Acquiring CBS News came with a legal requirement to serve the public interest, avoid political interference and maintain editorial independence.”
Simultaneously, a Facebook group of former “60 Minutes” journalists and producers were chewing over the drama that happened Monday morning. One named Joel Bernstein pushed back against the Bilton bile.
Noting that he was a producer in the days of “Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Diane Sawyer, Bob Simon, Dan Rather, Morley Safer, Andy Rooney,” he observed: “They were iconic. And they were led by the one-and-only Don Hewitt. That was when the ‘show’ was at its best. OK! Today, it might be the best show on television but — sorry — not as good as it had been. So let’s not say that the shows of the present can’t be better. They can be. Perhaps this fella can make them better. Give him a shot. Don’t tear him apart — yet.”
Most of the others weren’t waiting to tear Bilton apart and decried the shredding of trust with Weiss.
“If the new guy had been appointed by (former CBS News president) Susan Zirinsky people would be inclined to give the guy a shot,” said former “CBS Evening News” writer Paul Fisher. But he said insiders don’t trust Weiss. “All they know about Bari Weiss is every step they take, every move they make they’ll be watching you.”
And predictably, the former “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens backed Pelley’s outburst against Weiss, calling her a “fraud.”
“He stood up the way I did a year ago and I couldn’t be prouder of him,” said Owens, who had a 37-year career at CBS News, at the New York Press Club dinner.
