In his first interview since being fired, longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley accused CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of “putting a thumb on the scale” for the Trump administration and called for her removal.
Speaking with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times, Pelley detailed his concerns from the start of Weiss’ tenure and described what he called direct editorial interference in a story about protests in Minneapolis against an ICE crackdown.
Pelley specifically claimed Weiss pushed changes — just hours before airtime — to the segment on the fatal shooting of Renee Good. He said she asked to make protesters appear more violent and to describe Good’s car as driving toward the officer, a version he said contradicted video evidence.
Pelley expressed early doubts about Weiss’ leadership, citing her lack of television experience and no background managing a large global news operation like CBS News.
“What concerned me was that she had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News,” Pelley said. “Those were red flags to me.” He also criticized Weiss’ and new executive producer Nick Bilton’s push to modernize the 58-year-old program, calling their focus on digital platforms outdated and disingenuous.
“It’s almost as if Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in 1990, and it just cracked open,” Pelley said. “They’ve just discovered the internet.”
According to the NY Times article, Pelley said four our hours after deadline, Bari Weiss emailed his boss Tanya Simon. She asked whether they could make the protesters appear more violent and wanted the script to describe Renee Good’s car as driving directly toward the officer.
That description does not match what the video actually shows. stated Pelley. In the footage, the officer is standing slightly to the side of the car, and Good’s wheels are clearly turned sharply away from him. Yet he shot her in the head, killed her, and made an offensive comment about her that Pelley would not repeat.
From the start, Pelley's team had worked hard to fairly show the protesters’ own responsibility in the events and had scrubbed the video archives for supporting scenes, he said. But that was not enough for Weiss. The video evidence showed the officer was not standing in front of the car and that Good was not driving toward him. Still, that was how the president had described it, and that was how Weiss wanted the story told, according to Pelley.
In response to the accusations, a CBS News spokesperson told The Times that Weiss made four editorial points in an email during normal back-and-forth. The suggestions, the spokesperson said, had “no political motivation” and were aimed solely at making the piece “as strong, fair, and accurate as possible.” Not every point raised made it into the final segment, the network noted.