A major shakeup is underway after CBS veteran Scott Pelley was fired by the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, following a tense exchange between the pair. Nick was recently appointed to the position by CBS’s controversial editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, after working as a columnist at The New York Times, and has little broadcast TV experience.
Scott, meanwhile, has worked with CBS for 37 years after joining the team as a reporter in 1989. He went on to serve as CBS News‘ chief White House correspondent from 1997 to 1999, and was the CBS Evening News anchor from 2011 to 2017. The 68-year-old has also been a correspondent for 60 Minutes since 2004.
Scott was fired from CBS following a fallout with the channel’s executives, including Nick. “Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” Nick wrote in a letter to Scott on Tuesday, as reported by Variety. “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.“
According to several outlets, Scott called Nick out publicly at a network meeting on Monday, criticizing his decision to fire 60 Minutes‘ executive producer Tanya Simon, as well as two correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
The veteran accused Bari Weiss of “murdering” 60 Minutes in the meeting, adding that “she does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.” He also claimed she had “no qualifications” for the job, and that Nick only had “slender qualifications” due to his time as a tech journalist.
Scott added that Bari’s changes at CBS Evening News had been “catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
© Getty ImagesNick reportedly responded that he planned to meet with everyone in the team to reassure them that the program would not change drastically. Several outlets then reported that Scott had a meeting with CBS executives on Tuesday to discuss his comments in the previous meeting.
Learn more about 60 Minutes’ recent changes below…
According to Variety, Nick then sent out a staff email claiming that Scott had remained obtuse when he attempted to patch things up between them. “I know how much Scott meant to you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.”
Scott’s former colleague, Cecilia, shared in a statement that she believed she was fired for refusing to succumb to political bias.
© WireImage“In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories,” she said. “Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions.“
© Getty Images for The Free Press“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy,” she concluded. CBS has undergone dramatic changes since billionaire Larry Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired it in 2025, with many veteran journalists leaving the network in protest of Bari’s appointment as editor-in-chief.
Bari shared that she was excited for Nick to take over the role of executive producer of 60 Minutes. “He has been consistently prescient about the ways that the technological revolution that we’re living through is upending the way that we consume storytelling and information,” she told the NYT. “He has been the one to see the tsunami before the wave hits the rest of us.“
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