Time Runs Out: CBS News Fires Scott Pelley

CBS News fired longtime journalist Scott Pelley on Tuesday in a sharp clash over the future of its flagship program “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news show.

Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and former anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” was terminated for cause effective immediately, according to a memo from Nick Bilton, the newly hired executive producer of the program.

The dismissal followed a staff meeting on Monday in which Pelley accused CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing last week’s ouster of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.

Scott Pelley

“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Bilton wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday night. CBS News declined to comment.

In a telephone interview Tuesday evening, Pelley expressed deep attachment to the broadcast, for which he said he had risked his life over decades.

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast,” he said.

Pelley joined CBS in 1989. His firing ranks among the most dramatic moves in Weiss’s turbulent tenure at the network and is expected to intensify internal tensions.

It also escalates questions about Weiss’s decision to replace “60 Minutes” leadership entirely and install Bilton — a tech journalist with no prior broadcast television experience — as executive producer. Despite the upheaval, the program’s viewership rose 9% this past season and remains one of the nation’s highest-rated weekly broadcasts.