Transcript
0:00 And out of this, late yesterday we learned that Scott Pelley, a 60 Minutes correspondent and former anchor of this very broadcast, had been fired. Here's CBS News senior national correspondent Jim Axelrod. >> Tonight, we have the story of the >> Less than 24 hours after CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley was fired from his job on 60 Minutes, CBS News editor-in-chief Barry Weiss addressed the decision during a staff meeting this morning. Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately, we weren't able to do so and so we had to part ways.
0:35 Minutes later, Pelley issued a response that his discussion with CBS News executives was hostile from the start and that no CBS executive at any time suggested a way back. To say so now is disingenuous and they know it. CBS News executives dispute that and say the intent of the meeting was to find a path forward. It's been a tumultuous 3 days for CBS News. On Monday, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, called the staff together to introduce himself. Soon after the meeting started, Pelley began to question him on the recent firings of former executive producer Tanya Simon, her deputy, two senior staffers, and two 60 Minutes correspondents. 60 Minutes staffers who were at the meeting say the exchange quickly grew tense. Pelley questioned the qualifications of Bilton to lead the news magazine saying Bilton would never be welcome there and said Weiss was, quote, "murdering the show." Last night, after the meeting with executives, Bilton sent Pelley a termination letter saying he was being fired for cause and describing his actions in the staff meeting Monday as performative and that Pelley had no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.
1:57 After Belton's termination letter, Pelley responded, "For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story." Although he did not identify which story. A CBS spokesman answered those charges. "There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Barry Weiss. The only interference is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom."
2:27 >> I'm Scott Pelley. >> And so, Pelley's career at CBS News is now over. A career that took off in Dallas before moving to Washington to cover the Clinton administration. >> Good evening. >> And then taking over the CBS Evening News anchor desk for 6 years in 2011. But it was traveling the world for 60 Minutes where Scott Pelley did much of his highest-profile work. Work that ended after 37 years at CBS News last night.
2:58 Jim Axelrod, CBS News, New York. >> Jim, thank you. When I started at CBS, Scott Pelley was in this very chair, still doing a dozen stories a year for 60 Minutes. And amid all of that, meeting every new correspondent to share his view of the mission here. He believed freedom of the press, to quote Madison, was the right that guaranteed all the others. And the stakes are always that high. And that if you'd made it to CBS News, you were among the best in the world.
3:27 He worked every single day to live up to that standard. And here's just some of the work you'll remember. >> Scott Pelley reports on search and rescue at ground zero. >> When the planes hit almost 25 years ago, Scott Pelley was among the first reporters down there, and he didn't leave for days. >> Trying to listen and see if anybody was in there. >> Wait a minute, you're you're you're you're you're you're digging through the debris, and what you're finding are the tops of fire >> Right.
3:52 >> He covered the wars that followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, not from the studio, but from the field. >> How do you measure success? >> And not once, but dozens of times. >> Millions of Syrians have been forced from their homes. >> He traveled to hotspots all over the world. >> People living where we are now have really never known peace. >> Over his two decades at 60 Minutes, that included the genocide in Darfur and the battle for Kyiv. And when the hotspot was here at home, he covered that, too.
4:24 What he called the hard times generation after the Great Recession. >> How long have you been living in this truck? >> About 5 months. >> What's that like? >> It's an adventure. >> There were also presidential interviews, of course, from Bush to Biden. And more than 50 Emmy Awards along the way. He was, in some ways, a man from another era, and that's not a knock. He didn't watch the competition, he said, because he knew who he was. A journalist who valued truth at all costs.
4:54 And always kept alive the memory of colleagues killed in the field. A reminder that his chosen line of work could be a dangerous one. >> But Pelley also made one major break from the past. He changed the signs around here. Under the CBS Evening News logo, where Scott Pelley's own name would have been, he instead wrote the CBS Evening News with all of us. Well, Scott, from all of us, thank you.