😱 CBS DRAMA ERUPTS AFTER SCOTT PELLEY’S REPORTED CLASH WITH NETWORK BOSSES CQ🚨

Scott Pelley on ’60 Minutes’.Credit: 

Michele Crowe/CBS

Scott Pelley’s time is up at 60 Minutes.

The longtime correspondent has been fired from CBS News’ flagship program after slamming network leadership in a fiery staff meeting on Monday.

During that meeting, Pelley accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” 60 Minutes, and told newly appointed executive producer Nick Bilton that he had “slender” qualifications for the job. Bilton, a filmmaker and former tech journalist, was hastily appointed following the firing of 26-year 60 Minutes veteran Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, as well as the exit of 20-year correspondent Anderson Cooper.

“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” Bilton wrote in a letter Tuesday, which EW has viewed. “And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated effective immediately.”

EW has reached out to representatives Pelley and 60 Minutes for comment.

In the full letter, Bilton reiterated his enthusiasm to be joining the 60 Minutes team, which he first expressed during Monday’s contentious staff meeting.

“One of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead,” he wrote.

Bilton accused Pelley of having “hijacked” the meeting in order to “disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt.” He then noted that he’d “hoped that in sitting down with you [on Tuesday] we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.”

The meeting, which included Weiss, Bilton, CBS News president and executive editor Tom Cibrowski, and a representative from CBS HR, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, ended in a stalemate. Bilton ended his communication to Pelley by noting he had been “terminated for cause,” a distinction which could cost Pelley severance and pave the way for a legal battle.

The departure of Pelley — who has been reporting stories for 60 Minutes since 2004 — comes as the latest shakeup in a tumultuous period for CBS News.

Weiss, founder of the digital news site The Free Press, took the reins at CBS News in October, following Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global and its assorted assets.

Alfonsi alleged that her ouster from 60 Minutes was due to a story she reported regarding the Trump administration deporting Venezuelan men to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, which was yanked before airing last year. (Weiss said at the time that the piece “was not ready”; it eventually aired with additional comments from the Trump administration.)

“Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes,” Alfonsi said. She added, “CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.”

Dozens of well-known journalists, including many CBS News veterans, sent an open letter to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison on Monday, urging him to protect 60 Minutes‘ editorial independence.

“Acquiring CBS News came with a legal requirement to serve the public interest, avoid political interference, and maintain editorial independence. Institutional trust is not transferred through ownership,” the letter read in part. “Modernizing the show for new audiences and new delivery approaches is important — but not at the cost of editorial integrity. The wholesale dismissal of editorial management, without a public pledge to maintain the values, standards, and traditions of this program, puts the legacy of 60 Minutes in jeopardy.”

Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder and Paramount Skydance majority stakeholder Larry Ellison, are close allies of Donald Trump. In November, Trump bragged on 60 Minutes that the program “paid me a lotta money,” a reference to his 2025 lawsuit against Paramount over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. That lawsuit was eventually settled for $16 million, though many legal observers claimed the settlement was a capitulation to Trump so that Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount would receive regulatory approval.

With the recent departures, only three 60 Minutes correspondents remain: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim.