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Brian Steinberg
Senior TV Editor
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Getty Images The new head of “60 Minutes” found himself working against the clock in a Monday meeting with staff.
CBS News hopes to keep Scott Pelley and the remaining correspondents tied to “60 Minutes” on the show, according to a person familiar with CBS News, despite reports of a blistering verbal donnybrook between the long-time journalist and Nick Bilton, who was named last week to lead the venerable newsmagzine.
In a meeting held Monday, Pelley lashed out at Bilton and current CBS News management, according to multiple press reports, alleging that Bari Weiss, the CBS News Editor in Chief who orchestrated an overhaul of the program last week, is “murdering ’60 Minutes.” Pelley also alleged that Weiss held “no qualifications for her job” and said Bilton that he has “slender qualifications for this job.”
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The remarks were reported previously by Status, a newsletter that focuses on the media sector. CBS News declined to comment on reports of what Pelley said.
Bilton has suggested that he’d like the program to generate even more content. “The show is on the air one day, one night, one hour a week, and to me there is an incredible opportunity to take the show and do a lot of things with it,” he told Variety last week. Bilton is replacing Tanya Simon, a longtime senior steward of the show and a daughter of one of its former correspondents, Bob Simon. Her deputy, Draggan Mihailovich, was also ousted, along with two of the show’s correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Pelley also demanded to know why CBS News fired former Simon, Alfonsi and Vega, asking Bilton “why should we expect any of this is going to be any better?” Status reported that Bilton attempted to deflect the queries and wound up ending the meeting prematurely. Charles Forelle, a new CBS News senior editor, recently hired by Weiss from The Wall Street Journal, told Pelley several times he was being “rude,” according to Status, which reported the remarks based on an audio transcript of the meeting it obtained.
Despite the conflagration, CBS News has hopes of keeping Pelley at the show, according to a person familiar with the situation. This person says senior CBS News executives have reached out to Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl and Jon Wertheim — the “60 Minutes” correspondents who remain on staff — several times since last week in hopes of convincing them to stick with the program.
Pelley, Whitaker and Stahl did not respond to queries last week asking for their comments on the show’s next steps. Wertheim did not respond immediately to a query sent Monday.
Pelley has a reputation for tilting at CBS News management when he feels his work or the work of the programs he works on is being undermined. The anchor, a veteran of both “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News,” last year railed against the loss of Bill Owens, the former executive producer and a close colleague, following what many interpreted as interference with the program by previous managers at Paramount.
“Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires,” Pelley said during an on-air segment at “60 Minutes.” “No one here is happy about it.”
While being interviewed on CNN in 2019, Pelley alleged that he was taken off CBS’ evening-news broadcast in 2017 after raising complaints internally about the news division’s workplace culture. “We’ve been through a dark period of the last several years of incompetent management and sort of a hostile work environment within the news division,” Pelley said during a segment on the CNN program “Reliable Sources.” He added: “I lost my job at the ‘Evening News’ because I wouldn’t stop complaining to management about the hostile work environment.”
More to come…
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