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"Newsroom culture clash" at CBS News

www.thewrap.com

Former ‘60 Minutes’ EP Bill Owens Backs Scott Pelley's Criticism of 'Fraud' Bari Weiss

Bill Owens, the former executive producer for "60 Minutes," praised Scott Pelley for speaking out against CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss.
www.thewrap.com www.thewrap.com

Here is more Bill Owens is one of many Active and former CBS News staff members who supported Scott Pelley in demanding that both Bari Weiss and David Ellison should be held accountable on how they are running CBS News with political interference.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
But it is (or rather, was?) uncommon for an interviewer on a news program to "just talk off the cuff." When someone like Mike Wallace would sit down with a world leader or controversial figure, he'd done his homework. Correspondents would hold their subjects' feet to the fire, and they brought the receipts. Softball interviews have never been "on brand" for 60 Minutes.

Rogan has some nut-case on and barely pushes back. "Oh, that's interesting. I guess UFOs are real and the aliens are among us. Up next, vaccines are probably bad..."

If Weiss and Bilton are dead set on making the show into an offshoot of the "manosphere," then Pelley is right...they're murdering it.

The interesting thing is that there are Gen Z kids on YouTube who are doing a better job than Bilton knows how to do. I've been following a story about Lego (of all things) and the young people behind the channel have done some really decent work. Long story short, a chain of stores bilked a family out of their $200k worth of Star Wars Lego sets, and the people behind the channel went through every legal and "by the book" effort necessary to return the money/Lego to the family, but were stymied by the Utah-based owners, who (apparently) are in tight with the local police, who had the YouTubers arrested for everything from stalking to trafficking heroin when they tried to serve legal papers after winning a lawsuit. The story is compelling for a number of reasons, including crooked business owners screwing over a family trying to sell their dying father's collection to cover his medical bills, (allegedly) crooked small town cops, and "the little guy" fighting for what's right.

It's not anywhere near the polish and professionalism of 60 Minutes, but it's getting millions of views across not just the original channel (Reckless Ben) but other channels covering the story. Does that mean "Reckless Ben" should be hired as the next 60 Minutes correspondent? No, but it hints at a path forward. Namely, that young people DO find "investigative journalism" compelling if it is relateable. Not only will they watch it, but will seek it out and support it with clicks and views and shares.
Click to expand...

The investigative person or "I-Team" is also a dying breed in local TV markets, but remain effective at TV stations who still have them.

I wish there were more of them than those who do fluff stories or infomercials disguised as "interviews" aka pay-to-play segments.

Same with serious, dedicated talent that doesn't do near-daily postings of glamour shots or stupid dances on Facebook or Instagram.
 
thenetwork said:
The investigative person or "I-Team" is also a dying breed in local TV markets, but remain effective at TV stations who still have them.

I wish there were more of them than those who do fluff stories or infomercials disguised as "interviews" aka pay-to-play segments.
Click to expand...

I wish it were otherwise as well, but that's sadly not the reality. It costs a lot less for an affiliate of Sinclair (for example) to run a canned segment than sending out a reporter, a producer, and a photog to track down some local business doing nefarious stuff. I only watch local broadcast media when I go home for the holidays (my mom is 86 and still watches it) and the mid-day shows are a wasteland of fluff....which is nothing new.

There is some hope for the future, but I'm not holding out for local TV to catch on. There's good YouTube channels that do investigative content, though...you just have to find them. More Perfect Union is great for doing deeper dives on issues that affect rural and working class voters, and on the other end of things is Coffeezilla that does a lot of hard work exposing crypto scams and has even managed to get interviews where he's confronted people like Sam Bankman Fried and others.

Can this sort of content be sold to a TV audience in a news magazine format? That remains to be seen, but for the most part it lives online. There's a bit of movement in the area of online content creators getting into the cable news space. YouTubers like Brian Tyler Cohen and even a Gen Z like Adam Mockler are landing commentator spots on some of the networks like CNN and MSNow, which tells me they're breaking through in an era of creaky, out of touch media.
 
CBS fires Scott Pelley. From CNN:

(quote)
“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,” newly appointed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton wrote to Pelley on Tuesday evening.

“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” Bilton wrote. “And I have heard you.”

Therefore, he wrote, “your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately.”
(end quote)

To be honest, I worry less about Pelley, who has enough star power to land elsewhere if he so chooses, and more about the behind-the-scene folks who are having to deal with this situation.

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/02/media/scott-pelley-60-minutes-cbs-meeting-bari-weiss-cibrowski-bilton
 
thenetwork said:
The investigative person or "I-Team" is also a dying breed in local TV markets, but remain effective at TV stations who still have them.

I wish there were more of them than those who do fluff stories or infomercials disguised as "interviews" aka pay-to-play segments.

Same with serious, dedicated talent that doesn't do near-daily postings of glamour shots or stupid dances on Facebook or Instagram.
Click to expand...

Some very wealthy and powerful individuals in this country would like to stop investigative journalism altogether. Why? Because the majority of the things being investigated are things these people are doing that, if publicized, would make them look bad. They don't want to stop doing what they're doing because they are gaining money, power,or both from their corruptions. Thankfully, NPR, The New York Times, and some others still have investigative reporters on their books, but those being investigated are fighting back. And hard! And those being investigated know they have an ally in the White House. Enough said.
 
TheBigA said:
It's official: Scott Pelley has been fired:

www.nbcnews.com

CBS News fires ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Scott Pelley after clash with new producer

Pelley’s exit deepens the turmoil at “60 Minutes,” where employees have clashed with CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss over the show’s editorial direction.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
Click to expand...
Congrats and the great part is that Pelley still has integrity while Bari Weiss and the new 60 minutes producer is doing the bidding for the Ellisons.

Hope all the fired staff members at CBS News the best.
 
Mark Roberts said:
To be honest, I worry less about Pelley, who has enough star power to land elsewhere if he so chooses, and more about the behind-the-scene folks who are having to deal with this situation.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm gonna take a wild guess that hosts like him aren't hurting for money.

I also wonder about how this whole "putting all your eggs in the sucking up to Trump" basket will work out in the wake of the "Freedom 250" debacle, the slush fund debacle, the ballroom debacle, and the guy they've hitched their wagon to bleeding support.
 
Scott Pelley issued a statement:

www.showbiz411.com

UPDATING Scott Pelley Claims in Exit Statement from "60 Minutes" He Was "Instructed to Inject Falsehoods and Bias Into a Political Story" - Showbiz411

Scott Pelley's exit statement from "60 Minutes" is chilling. See the bold face type below. He accuses new management of instructing him to inject
www.showbiz411.com www.showbiz411.com

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
Click to expand...
 
The people they've fired are some of the best in the business. It would be great to see them all land on a competitor together for a new show that goes up against 60 Minutes. That's probably wishful thinking though, and there are fewer places than ever for credible news people to land now.

The Ellisons will soon own CNN in addition to CBS and there's no reason to expect them not to gut that organization's integrity too. And ABC is also facing mob-style coercion from the president's FCC hitmen. The options for credible broadcast and cable news are shrinking at a seemingly record pace.
 
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Theater of My Mind said:
The people they've fired are some of the best in the business. It would be great to see them all land on a competitor together for a new show that goes up against 60 Minutes. That's probably wishful thinking though, and there are fewer places than ever for credible news people to land now.

The Ellisons will soon own CNN in addition to CBS and there's no reason to expect them to not gut that organization's integrity too. And ABC is also facing mob-style coercion from the president's FCC hitmen. The options for credible broadcast and cable news are shrinking at a seemingly record pace.
Click to expand...
Support independent journalism. It’s the only way forward.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
The people they've fired are some of the best in the business. It would be great to see them all land on a competitor together for a new show that goes up against 60 Minutes. That's probably wishful thinking though, and there are fewer places than ever for credible news people to land now.

The Ellisons will soon own CNN in addition to CBS and there's no reason to expect them not to gut that organization's integrity too. And ABC is also facing mob-style coercion from the president's FCC hitmen. The options for credible broadcast and cable news are shrinking at a seemingly record pace.
Click to expand...

The good news (if there is any) is that the current executives of ABC/Disney have decided to fight the President and the FCC in court on this.



According to the story which aired yesterday, one of the attorneys the company has hired is none than Paul Clementother who represented Ronald Reagan in his confrontations with the U.S. Supreme Court.

And, of course, the New York Times is continuing to fight back. And frankly, especially in the ABC/Disney case, I don't think our courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, are quite ready to give up *all* of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment's press freedoms.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
I’m to the point where I rely more and more on news organizations from outside the U.S. Of course being a shortwave listener for 60 years I’ve always had access to external sources for most of my life.
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True too even the BBC News is not immune to lawsuits from Chairman Carr and Donald Trump. I have to search around ABC News Australia, CBC News, DW News, France 24 and Al-Jazzera for better news content.

Also we have to protect the wire services like AP, Reuters, AFP and others from the same issues we are seeing here with CBS News.

Oddly enough one would think Rupert Murdoch would be protected in the Trump Administration given that the Murdochs own Fox News. But this one when Trump sues Wall Street Journal and the Murdochs one would think its parody at first given that they are both right wing. But then again that case has been dismissed the first time. But Trump decided to keep suing the Murdochs and BBC News. Also the Murdochs know that being too dependent on Trump will harm them like what we are seeing now.

 
Scott Pelley is an excellent journalist. I remember when he provided live coverage of the bombing of the Boston Marathon back in 2013, as the police were closing in on the bombing suspects. That was a very fast-breaking news story, with constant updates, and he did a top notch job of keeping current with all the developments. He reminded me a little bit of Walter Cronkite, who was skilled at reporting live events as they happened. I hope that Scott Pelley can find a job at another news outlet or start his own broadcast on the internet. CBS is shedding some of their top talent. JMO. - D.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
Yeah I'm gonna take a wild guess that hosts like him aren't hurting for money.
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He's around 70. He can ride off into the sunset if he wants. His is another name I remember as I saw him on WFAA in the 80's. Growing up, the news was always on at my house, and my dad spent all of dinner talking about news and issues. From what his termination letter said, it looks like CBS is going to try to get out of paying him the rest of his contract. I suspect a lawsuit will be filed soon.

Deus Ex Machiato said:
I also wonder about how this whole "putting all your eggs in the sucking up to Trump" basket will work out in the wake of the "Freedom 250" debacle, the slush fund debacle, the ballroom debacle, and the guy they've hitched their wagon to bleeding support.
Click to expand...

I will never understand why so many people spend so much time, effort, and energy trying to curry the favor of people who don't like them. Bari Weiss is gay; she's married to tech writer Nellie Bowles. Her personal politics don't easily fit into one bucket, but the audience she's chasing will never see her as an equal no matter what she does. She will always be less and will always be disposable to those people. They will discard and forget about her as soon as she's no longer useful while she's running off people who would support her. I learned by early first grade that being nice to the bully only benefits the bully and guarantees the bullying will continue. I don't understand how so many people get to adulthood without figuring that out.
 


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