Washington (United States) (AFP) – CBS News fired longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday following clashes over the show’s future, the latest shakeup under the network’s new leadership.
Last year CBS became a part of Paramount Skydance and brought in Bari Weiss – a longstanding critic of progressive politics – to lead its news division.
Many CBS News journalists quit following Weiss’s appointment, alleging curbs on their editorial independence.
Newly appointed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton said Pelley “hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.”
“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you,” Bilton wrote in a termination letter late Tuesday, according to CBS News.
“I therefore write on behalf of (CBS News) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately,” he said.
In respone, Pelley said the new CBS owner is casting aside the “legend” of the flagship news magazine program “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
“Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause,” Pelley wrote in a statement, cited in US media reports.
At the staff meeting on Monday, Pelley had reportedly accused top editor Weiss of “murdering the show.”
CBS, a mainstay of the broadcast television landscape, was once home to famed US journalists Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.
Pelley, 68, joined CBS News in 1989. He previously worked as the “CBS Evening News” anchor.
In July, CBS announced the cancellation of “The Late Show,” hosted by Stephen Colbert, a staunch Trump critic.
Trump has intensified his long-established hostility toward the media since his return to the White House, regularly deriding certain outlets as “fake news.”
Hopefully he sues and wins, because disagreeing isn’t a fireable cause.
Pretty sure New York is at-will employment so unless there’s a clause about it in his contract I don’t think he can
IANAL, I’m not even in New York State or the US
At-will doesn’t just mean the employer can violate their contract, so there’s a lot of nuance that can be going on here. And at this level there’s usually a lot of negotiation on what goes into the employment contract. When I get an employment contract I make amendments and request changes.
But when you fire someone for cause, they can challenge whether that cause is justified. After 37 years at a job, firing someone for-cause so you don’t have to pay them out is going to get challenged, they almost certainly owe a large payout at least.