Hopes for the Future of CBS

This podcast is supported by Bank of America Private Bank You're cut from a different cloth. And with Bank of America Private Bank, you have an entire team tailored to your needs. withith wealth and business strategies built for the biggest ambitions like yours. Whatever your passion, unlock more powerful possibilities at privatebank. bankfammerica. com What would you like the power to do? Bank of America, official Bank of the FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six. Bank of America Private Bank is a division of Bank of America NA member FDSC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation I'm Lu Garcia Navarro and this is the interview It's hard to overstate the impact of sixty minutes on journalism Since its debut on CBS in nineteen sixty eight, it's been the home of some of the most famous and lauded journalists, from Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley to Leslie Stahall, Anderson Cooper, and until this past week, Scott Pelly. Kelly was fired after an explosive series of events and much turmoil at CBS, including a controversial financial settlement with President Trump. The sale of the network to David Ellison, and the appointment of Barry Weiss to lead CBS News Kelly, along with a number of other sixty minutes correspondents who were fired, have now accused Weiss of editorial interference and bias, charges that CBS and Weiss deny We've included a fuller statement from CBS News at the end of the episode This is Scott Pelly's first sit down interview since he was fired Thank you so much for coming in. I know that this is a very difficult moment You were just fired from the news organization, which you were at the heart of for thirty seven years. I can't believe I'm hearing those words. CBS newews. Yes I want to actually start by just asking you how you're feeling in this moment Be we start how you got here Well, if we want to talk about it at an emotional level, The best thing that I can imagine in terms of describing it is that it's like your spouse was murdered Um There's some moments of the day, I feel fine There are some moments of the day that I just frankly fall apart when I least expect it Not that there's any particular trigger But I do want to be clear that I do not. feel sorry for me. I don't care about me. I'm fine I care about these people that I left behind the people who are still there and this institution that I love so much You said that I've been there thirty seven years I've been married forty two years. So that's the depth of my devotion Let's talk about how we got to this moment A few days before your firing Several high profile sixty minutes, correspondents and leaders were fired. Leading up to that, there'd been a lot of reporting about changes that were coming to sixty minutes Was that the sort of change you were expecting No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming This is our entire senior staff People beloved Tanya Simon, our executive producer. she's the boss And this was her triumph. She's the first woman. ever to be executive producer of Sixty Minutes And she concluded this season W a growth in our audience of nine percent, which is unheard of in broadcast television And a growth in our online presence of one hundred and ninety percent. Last season, we had two point five. Billion Views That's a third of humanity. So We're riding high This management team has been brilliant Tanya has the best first year of any executive producer, and I've worked for all of them And then the night before Tanya and I and Dragon Mahhalovichch, deputy, etcetera. We were all at Emy Awards. And we went to Emmy Awards. withithin hours All of those people have been wiped out and One third of our correspondence. and fired. And at the same moment that that happens We are informed of our new executive producer. His name is Nick Bilton. I'm sure he must be a wonderful man But no one had ever heard of him He has zero experience in television news and no experience in management So imagine how we feel When someone like that comes into a shop like sixty minutes. Explain to me. Exactly how you felt. Um Sock, dismay impossible to believe. searching desperately for an explanation knowing that an explanation would be forthcoming and then not Seeing that No executive at CBS News. O editor in chief, Barry Weiss comoming over to sixty minutes to explain to talk with us, to sit with us. That's a family at sixty minutes. My colleagues and I have worked together ten, twenty, thirty years. We travel together, we dine together, we go into literal combat together My Former boss and former producer, Bill Owens. Save my life in a firefight, in Iraq So Lul Lu These bonds are pretty tight And when somebody wipes out Murders A large number of your family members People are hurt and shocked in disbelief And just desperate for some explanation. And as you and I sit here today, there still has been none. CBS leadership says that they I tried to get in touch with you to talk about all of those changes before Bilton's first day and you didn't spepeak to them. why not I'm almost sixty nine years old and if I've learned one thing in life, it is not to reflexively react when you feel that way And I thought, You know, I'm going to give it today or something Um emotionally wrought up, I'm gonna to say the wrong thing. I'm not going hear what they have to say. This isn't the moment It was incredible to me that they did reach out to talk to me after wiping all these people out. I mean, within hours So u We had a baby shower at the house And we got through the weekend and I learned that Nick Bilton was going to speak to the sixty Mutute staff on that next Monday morning My wife and I had a long planned hiking trip in the Canadian Rockies planned, and I wasn't going to be able to be at the meeting And she and I talked about it, realized that this was an existential moment for sixty minutes. so we cancellled the vacation so I could be there And that was the first time. that I had an opportunity to meet Nick Bilton At that meeting you spoke up very forcefully. You asked him why he'd taken the job knowing, and this is a quote that you will never be welcome here. Did you decide to have that first interaction with your new boss in public and not behind closed doors? It wasn't in public. It was behind closed doors I was with my family. in a closed room None of this was meant to be public M you Lulu, imagine I'm walking into this room with these people who have devoted their lives to sixty minutes They have not received any kind of explanation They are waiting for Barry Weiss to walk in the room in the hope that she's going to explain why this tragedy has occurred why it was so necessary And I'm waiting to See who comes in, and it's Nick Bilton and one of Barry's deputies, No Barry People are a little shocked by this. As we're standing in there, Nick makes his way to the front of the room and does something absolutely jaw dropping to me. He pulls out his phone and begins reading a statement offffice phone in a room full of fifty heartbroken people The callousness The tone, deafness of that You could hear the groan in the room when that happened put out a big spread of bagels like we were all gonna feel better And also, if I can give you a little bit of context, please What had happened A couple of days before the meeting was so critical Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff sort of introducing himself And It was So insulting to the staff and so insulting to the history of sixty mininutes. He told us in that email that it wasn't nineteen sixty eight anymore And he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn't cost thirty two cents anymore and suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in nineteen sixty eight when the program first went on the air and that nothing had improved. And he said in his email that it was, quote, strange. in quote that sixty minutes is only on the air at seven o'clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week When we've been on the air twenty four seven. globally online. for well over a decade. It betrayed the fact built and didn't know anythingthing about us didn't know anything about our culture. and yet was being imposed on us as our new executive producer, our new leader So people read that memo It's very concerning It's heartbreaking It's hard to compare this to anything other than something that actually could happen to your family It's a very looving empathetic organization And we were met with cold palace. andifference to what anyone thought Why did you feel that you were the person that needed to get the answers to the questions that you had and everyone had at that meeting. Why did you feel compelled to speak up? It was fate First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out. They're not there I looked around the room, I'm the only correspondent there, which surprised me very much. I learned that my colleagues were out shooting stories as they should be in the month of June But I'm the only correspondent there, which surprised me And I looked around at my friends and colleagues in the room and realized I was the senior person On I could do it None of them could be asked. take that risk. So When I saw Bilton's email and then saw him reading too my broken hearted people off his phone Um, I I felt that somebody had to stand up for the broadcast, not just the broadcast, but the people There are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant. Newsrooms are sort of like the military or the police or Beautiful people at the FDNY down the street, It is a life threatening job in many instances And u veryery strong bonds, very emotional bonds are found or developed in that kind of setting. to have people running CBS news who don't know that, have never felt that and don't understand it is a tragedy I never expected to see You know, Barry Wise came into the job with a mandate to evolve and modernize CBS news to reinvent legacy media In that meeting, you said Weiss was, and I'm quoting here, murdering sixty minutes, language that you've used here. Can you explain to me what you mean by that You're using words like massacre, murder. What do you mean by that? It is the wholesale nature of it are senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. Let's remember that. If the ratings had collapsed or there was some journalistic scandal about a story, then okay We deserve it. But we had a triumphal year. So this is incredibly difficult to understand. Cecilia Vega Saron Alfoni. our very best correspondents just summarily fired for No stated reason. and without explanation. This is one third of our correspondent core So this isn't like they fired our boss, which they did They wiped out a large number of people One of the things Nick Bilton said in that ill fated email to the staff was that he was excited to tell, I'm paraphrasing here. He was excited to tell the staff about the new correspondence And when I saw that, I thought, okay, They're going to fire all of us Eventually, that's the plan. He put it in writing for all of us to see And so that's why I use these admittedly for a journalist hyperbolic terms They capture the scale what happened You then do have a meeting with CBS leadership after this very contentious interaction Can you tell me about that meeting and if you were at that point going in expecting to be fired? Oh gosh, furthest thing from my mind. It hadn't occurred to me. The president of CBS News, Tom Zbrowski sent me a note and said, Can you come by and talk to us? And I said, Absolutely I scheduled about an hour on my calendar for the meeting. I didn't know who was going to be there in the meeting. So I walk in the door And I see Barry Weiss is sitting in there and I think, This is terrific of her She she's come to this meeting. And now I'm going to be able to ask her these questions. She's going to be able to explain what happened But it really didn't occur to you that You could be fired after so many of your colleagues had been let go after you'd had this contentious interaction with your new boss. You know, some reporter I turned out to be. I just didn't connect the dots. I mean, was this meeting contentious? Yes, but Sty Mutes is known for two things ticking stopwatch and hard questions And we ask ourselves those hard questions in the shop because they sharpen us and make us better. There was a screening once withith Mike Wallace and Mike and the executive producer and founder of Sty Mutes, Don Hewittt got into a big argument about a script Wallace jumps up in the middle of the screening throws his script up in the air and yells at Don. Well, then you write the F and thing One of those pieces of paper comes down and slices an associate producer across the face. He's bleeding now He's got a paper cut on his face That was about a story The meeting that I was in was about whether sixty mininutes was going to even survive or not So you walk in And what was the energy of the room? Hostal Um Dmissive Before I could take my seat, Tom Sabrowski said, this is a firing offense. I was confused. I wasn't sure who he was talking about in the room came planain very quickly that they were talking about me, and they were unhappy about the meeting that had occurred a meeting that had ended in thunderous applause for me, if I may say so, because somebody had stood up for the broadcast So so I sit down like, Okay, well, let's talk about it Um, Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton This is a lie I didn't come within ten feet of Nick Bilton in my life I have never put my hands on anyone. in angcher. not One time And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, okay, I take that back And I said, great. The conversation proceeded a little bit. I turned to Barry Weiss, who was sitting to my left, and I said, but know let's talk about the firings. Why were the firings necessary? I'm not answering that question. How did Tanya Simon not lead the broadcast brilliantly? I'm not answering that question Okay, Sharonell Fonzi Cecilia Baker What possible reason could there be to take them off the air? I'm not answering that question So now I'm detecting a pattern That's gonna to go nowhere. She is still going to stonewall about why she took all these people out. So I'm thinking that the meeting's going carry on. We're going to have a long conversation. I'm going to hear from them about what they think They're gonna hear from me about what I think The temperature in the room is low, but it's very hostile from their side I'm speaking about the way I'm speaking to you now. veryer quickly after the meeting began Tom Sabrowski said, this conversation is over I was stunned I didn't have a sixty minute stopwatch in that room. I don't know how long it lasted really, but I think it was about ten minutes So They tell me That is say Tom Sabrowski tells me as I'm walking through the door, you'll have our answer in a few minutes I went over to my office and much to my surprise All of my guys on my team were still there They wanted to know what happened in the meeting. What was that all about? Did they explain why our people were fired And I sat down in my office. It has a big plate glass window that looks out on the newsroom and there were a whole bunch of people standing out there, but I didn't think anything of it. I'm waiting to find out what my fate is I explained to my team, I think I just got fired, but they haven't told me that. And then I look up and all those people are still out there staff members, and I don't think anything of it And then it hits me. This is a vigil An hour goes by, two hours go by, three hours go by Four hours go by and I go back outside and said, I'm leaving. You've been standing out there for four hours. I said, I'm leaving. You guys have got to go home to your families right now. I doubt they're gonna tell me tonight So I packed up and left just so those people would go home And not long after that, the email came through and said that I'd been fired. Just to understand your position in this You would have been open to a path forward. you wanted to remain at sixty minutes. Absolutely a path forward to me was a Obvious. conclusion for what this meeting was going to be about That's exactly what I thought Um, And I expected them to say, look, this is why we had to fire everybody. I mean, your questions, Scott are valid. and here's why we did what we did. So stay at sixty minutes. Absolutely It didn't occur to me. that this could happen But's Scott In a meeting, you accused Barry Weise, the head of the netor of wanting to murder the show of coming I sixty minutes with the agenda to dismantle the institution And you did not think that that was going to have repercussions that could lead to your firing? used to be able to have conversations like that at CBS News But the difference today is that the people running CBS newews will not be questioned Yeah After the break, Moo was Scott Pelly This podcast is supported by Bank of America Private Bank Cut from a different cloth And with Bank of America Private Bank, you have an entire team tailored to your needs. withith wealth and business strategies built for the biggest ambitions like yours. Whatever your passion, unlock more powerful possibilities at privatebank. bank offammerica. com What would you like the power to do? Bank of America, official Bank of the FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six. 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Terms apply take a step back because of course all this It didn't happen in a vacuum The saga really at CBS News began when David Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire, Larry Ellison took over CBS as part of his purchase of Paramount There was a lot of turmoil around that sale The longtime previous owner of Paramount and CBS Sherry Redstone I told my New York Times colleague that she sold the company to Allllison in part because after Hamas's attack onn Israel on october seventh, she wanted to devote herself to causes around Israel. I'm sure there were other reasons as well. Did you ever speak to Ms. Redstone about the sale And how did you feel about it I didn't speak to Sherry Redstone about the sale Um I felt the sale was very necessary the company was in financial trouble. It wasn't clear what our path forward is going to be just as a company Um Mr. Ellison came in with a lot of money behind it. uh a young man of vision. And I thought this is going to be very good for all of us. The very last thing that the previous ownership did was pay a multimillion dollar bribe to the president to settle this frivolous ridiculous lawsuit And very shortly after that, somehow, the Trump administration approved the sale So That Lwsuit against sixty Mutes had caused a great deal of concern in sixty Minutes. Paying the bribe broke our hearts No lawyer thought that was necessary did it to get the sale through And at that point, my colleagues and I thought Great That's behind us We have bright new leadership with financial resources We're in better shape than we were before. That was the theory. Just to give the context here, President Trump had sued sixty minutes over an interview of Vice President Kamala Harris during the twenty twenty four election As you mentioned, Paramount under Sherry Redstone settled the case, even though many legal experts believe that there was no merit to the suit And they paid sixteen million dollars to the president Paramount denied that those two things were linked, that payment and then the deal going through And correct me if I'm wrong Am I hearing you say that you supported the sale to Ellison? how do you lost confidence in the leadership of Sherriry Redstone at that point They bribed the president to get the deal done. So yeah, there was a massive collapse of confidence in the previous ownership So the deal goes through and Ellison takes over What assurances, if any, did you get from David Ellison and the new leadership that there wouldn't be interference at sixty minutes. Did you ask for those assurances? Did you speak with David Ellison The morning the Merger was announced is complete I was amazed that As far as I know The first stop that David Ellison made in his new empire was sixty minutes, CBS News First thing in the morning. here he's walking through the sixty minutes offices. He comes and walks into my office. and extends his hand and says, I'm proud to meet you. sir, he called me. I guess I'm just old. But and I told him how wonderful it was to meet him. He walked out into our newsroom and made a very nice speech about independence, about how important sixty Minutes was to the corporation writ large and essentially telling everybody that they were going to take care of us Um We were walking on air h we liked him. he had the financial backing to Back up his words And we thought a bright new era was coming after all the previous difficulty Allllison then hires Barry Weise to run CBS News Weiss, we should say, is a former opinion writer at the New York Times who left to start her own publication after claiming bias in the Times opinions section, I never worked with her for the record The free press which she launched is generally pro Israel. It bills itself as pushing against what it sees as the mainstream media What did you make of her appointment? I was not familiar with her name So I did some research and discovered those things that you just outlined She was going to be the new Editor in chief at CBS News, there never had been a title like that at CBS News. It's sort of a print title. It doesn't really translate to television but she wanted to call herself that. What concerned me was that she had the zero television experience and had never manage A large global operation like CBS News. Those were red flags to me. But I thought, you know, David Ellison thinks she's the right person for the job We are absolutely going to welcome her Listen to her. and give her the benefit of the doubt. I mean,'m sururprised that you hadn't heard of her. She's A lightning rod in journalism You know She just hadn't crossed My radar. And if I hadn't heard of Barry Weiss at that point in time, that probably tells you more about me than it does her So When Barry comes in, she has a meeting with senior sixty Minute staffers and in that meeting She asked, and I'm quoting, why does the country think you're biased Is that a correct assessment of that? I wasn't there. I see. But that is what I've been told by my colleagues who were there. And they were shocked. was sort of her hello to the staff at sixty minutes What was the feeling about that particular Opening Salvo to the team. U oh. She, I am told. said something to the effect of why do you think The country thinks you're biased But she didn't offer any kind of a metric. You know, what's your metric? Why do you think so Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about? Because we certainly didn't believe that And We just felt that she was making statements that perhaps she couldn't back up and was coming into the news division with hardened preconceived notions that didn't seem to be thought through. You have now accused wice of injecting And I'm quoting here falsehoods and bias This was in your harding statement. into at least one of your politically sensitive stories Can you tell me the nature of that? complaint, What did she specifically ask for? What story are you talking about As I recall, that's February And my team and I are doing a story about the protests in Minneapolis against the ice crackdown there We've interviewed Senator Rand Paul Republican because he's going to hold hearings into this. And the fact that a Republican was going to do that was quite newsworthy. So we interviewed Senator Paul and then built out a story about what had happened the killing of Renee Good killing of Alex Pretty the protests I felt it was very important to identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were halff of these confrontations And so I instructed my producers to find images over the past few weeks of these protests in which we see the protesters acting aggressively We found a picture of a protesor chest bumping an officer. We found a picture of an officer being hit in the head with a snowball. we held together a lot of video of protesters screaming in the faces of officers Because we were going to talk about the killing of prettyty and the killing of good. And it seemed to me important to tell the audience about the entire context. In fact, I remember writing a line in the story that said that the protesters We're pushing the boundaries of what it means to peacefully assemble taking the language from the First Amendment And I thought we'd done a really good job with this. We also included a picture of Alex Predty before he was killed kicking out a tail lightight on a police car and made a point of saying, this is Alex Predty and this is what he did So the story goes through screenings It's very well received. There are notes as always, and we do rewrites as always U, but this is on a very Tight deadline. It's Sunday We're going on the air that night And in the case of stories that are, as we say, crashing, meaneing right against the deadline. Our deadline on Sunday is noon. So we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone And about four hours after our deadline Very wise sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon Two of the things in the email include Can we make the protesters look more violent Now, I'm paraphrasing. don't have the quote But that's what was communicated to me and The other thing was Renee Goods car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer This is not what you see video video, you see the officers standing slightly off the front of the car And you clearly see Miss. Good's wheels time. completely as far as they will go away from the officer but he shoots her in the head, kills her and says something about her in that moment that I can't repeat in polite company So We have gone out of our way in our plan from the very beginning to show the protesters for the responsibility that they had We had already scrubbed the video archives, looking for those scenes But it somehow wasn't enough for Ms. Weiss The video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving toward him, but that's what the president said about that. And that's the way she wanted it described to be clear, there were lots of videos that showed different moments of that interaction And there was a big manyany analyses subsequently about what exactly through those various videos had actually happened. Ining an excellent one by the New York Times video that I showed in our piece. clearly showed the officers' feet So if he's standing in front of the car, you can't see his feet And it very clearly showed that the wheels were turned away from him what appeared to be the maximum turn until the wheel had stopped So you get those Suggestions, feeedback from the sort of editorial chief of CBS News What did you do? I mean, did you do as she asked I asked my producers Look I told you to find violent video of the protesters so we could represent that accurately Now I want you to go back and look again Did we leave anything out that's important Did we make a mistake here I don't think so, but go back and look And then I sat down with a video editor and I went over the video of the Renee Good Killing over and over and over again, stop motion, slow motion, et cetera And u realized that the event was not as the president said and not the way Berry Weiss remembered it And so, u It's late Our deadline was noon It's now Almost five o'clock That's dangerous as hell And so I decided that I wouldn't do those things I wasn't going to get in a debate about it. I wasn't going to call Barry Weiss about it. I was just going to refuse to make those changes Did you change any language in the Broadcast, anything Not that I recall based on her notes. But as you probably are aware When you're doing a story, especially on deadline, a lot of things happen There's a lot of input And you're just scrambling to save everybody's skin because you're going have a crash. if you which is What happened next day I didn't hear anything Nobody called, Nody said anything. It occurred to me that maybe Barry Weiss didn't see the broadcast and didn't realize that those changes hadn't been made that u That's how that happened. There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in thirty seven years at CBS News Why was that the interpretation? I mean, could she not have been trying to be fair to the administration at a moment of very high tension? She could have been trying to be fair to the administration, except I felt that the story was abundantly fair to the administration and u and to the IC officers and to the the u Border Patrol officers who were caught in that moment Um We were being told to write a version of events that conflicted with the video account I couldn't understand that We had already done, in my view the important work of journalism to balance the story, finally, the story is not out of balance was not out of balance But there was a thumb on the scale to push the balance a little further in another direction Is it possible To see this as the system working. She had notes you felt they didn't make sense to take The peace ran and there was no retaliation. Well, it was the interference as a problem especially a story that's been approved by the top editors Um, and Bigger problem, Lulu, frankly is not any kind of political influence, The problem was the incompetence You don't break a deadline Now this is four hours after episode of sixty Minutes came within nineteen minutes of not making air the entire hour. of sixty minutes Um It was the night of the Grammys. sixty minutes was the lead into the Grammys. And we almost didn't have a broadcast nineteen minutes I can't imagine that's ever happened before And I pledgeed to myself at that time that no matter what Barry Weiss wanted to do in a story I would never break the deadline again because we put the entire network in jeopardy Scott, I want to ask you Point blank Why did you think she was asking for these things The impression that I had at the moment was that She was presenting I me try ees. I kind of need to be a little bit careful here because I don't want to Be hyperbolic My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration Um just constantly looking out for views of the president We're reporting those views. There's nothing wrong with reporting those views, but it was never enough Al needed more from the president, from the administration, that sort of thing. The balance was off We've been working for balance for decades and for the first time in my career balance was off We should say Cecilia Vega, who was recently fired, also alleged interference in sixty minutes after she was let go. Sharonl Fancy as well you are now doing the same. These are three highighly respected longim journalists who are basasically echoing Um the same claim. CBS has denied any bias or interference, saying in a recent statement that changes and disputes were merely the quote normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom U I just want to pause before we go on A more generous interpretation of Weiss's tenure might be that her missteps have been due to a lack of experience not deliberate bias or malice. know just thinking again about your comment about her murdering sixty mininutes Could inexperience be the real problem unless a conspiracy to do away with CBS news? I think inexperience is the larger part of the problem At a certain point, I began to think that a political bias was going to be our big problem And then later, it occurred to me that it was the inexperience, the incompetence that was the bigger problem The breaking of deadlines, all that kind of thing So the most difficult thing, I think for the staff is trying to make up for all of these missteps terms of our production and in terms of the technical aspects of television. It's been enormously stressful Another high profile sixty minutes host, Andanderson Cooper declined to renew his contract too this year And at the end of his final show, he went on air and said I hope sixty minutes remains sixty minutes That was seen as a swipe veryery wise Did you talk to Anderson about why he did not renew his contract and his reasons for leaving? I did not was his decclining to renew his contract seen as problem for sixty minutes or U or a sign that something was amiss I mean, how did you receive that news? cororrespondents don't resign from sixty minutes It's For people like me, It's the greatest job in the world. There is nothing else to aspire to And so if a person of Anderson Cooper's Stature decides that he has to leave the broadcast. That's an indication. that he has found his role there Untenable. It's been reported that Barry Weiss was upset that Anderson Cooper's comments had aired in that way. That's my understanding Do you think that was part of the reason executive producer Tona Simon was let go? Yes. Um, Yes My understanding from people directly involved in that interaction is that Barry Weiss was quite livid that Anderson Cooper was allowed to say those things and that she Barry was not consulted beforehand which in Our normal course of business would not have been done anyway And I believe that that was part of the reason U Tanya was let go But she wasn't let go for cause. She was let go to create a space for the new person, Nick Bilton to come in. Tanya was completely blindsided by this. She was told that she was coming into a meeting to discuss the past season and the next season Kind of a lessons learned and planning meeting So she doesn't go there with a lawyer or with a witness of any kind. She walks in, she sits down. I'm told that Tom Sabrowski and Barry Weiss are in there. And Tom starts the meeting with The nature of this meeting has changed U we're letting you go and just told her she was fired and had to get out of her office by five o'clock Can I give you a little bit of background The Simon family is legendary at CBS News. Her father was a famous Vietnam correspondent and then Bob Simon covered every single war, everywhere in the world throughout his entire career. I was with him in Kuwait during the Gulf War, in nineteen ninety. We would stand on the roof of the hotel and watch the missiles come in He taught me. How to be a worker respondent And then Tanyya Simon comes in She's at the broadcast thirty years There is no respect for that Get out of the office by five o'clock company in the world treats their precious people in that way The callousness. The inhumanity Breathtaking, complete lack of empathy in this management for anyone who works there How can you have someone who deserves so much respect? Tanya Simon spent her whole childhood. Waiting for the call that her father was dead neverever knowing. if she would ever see him again s her whole childhood. Get out by five o'clock Make of that what you will I can hear how much this has hurt you Yes It's like your spouse being murdered And I don't care about me. It's not about me. I am not emotional about this because I have lost this job. I've done it for a long time. I've had the greatest experiences. But the people I leave behind treated in this way that breaks my heart And it's going to take me a long time to get over it to be perfectly honest One of the arguments that Barry Weiss has made about sixty mininutes in CBS News is that they need to be brought into the modern era. Nick Bilton also said in a staff meeting with you that broadcast is an ice cube that is melting. Do you think They have a point and that sixty minutes needs to change, even if it's reaching a huge audience now, Do it's metabolism do the kinds of correspondence that it has have to change to reach a younger audience. that interacts with media in a completely different way. and Eit journalists perhaps like you as Somet from a different era. too old Um Of course, we have to reach out to a younger and younger audience. Their argument about joining the internet age is just disingenuous It's almost as if Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in nineteen ninety. And it just cracked open. they've just discovered the interternet and they're running around telling everybody how important it is. CBS News. Yeahah. join the fight. We started our first sixty minutes Online show, sixty minutes overtime in twenty ten. I shoot TikTok verticals or I used to shoot TikTok verticals on every assignment. shot material for Over time on every assignment We're there We're everywhere So you don't think sixty minutes needs to change The point is that sixty minutes is constantly changing constantly innovating So I just find the charge that we at sixty Mutes, were frozen in Aber in nineteen sixty eight and nothing's ever changed since then. I find that absolutely absurd and the kind of argument that would be made by people who just don't know what we are Bilton sent a very conciliatory note to the staff this past week. At last He promised editorial independence. He praised some of your longtime colleagues, Leslie Stahall, Bill Whitaker, John Wortham And I just want to say my producer just told me that while we've been talking, Those three released a statement that they are staying at sixty minutes. How does that make you feel? sameame reason I was staying we felt like I haven't talked to them I assume it's the same reason And we have had conversations before this about staying to maintain the principles of the broadcast Um If we leave, we can't help And that was my opinion There have been other times when Anderson left, when others were fired that we could have stormed into a meeting and quit Those very distinguished correspondents and myself did have conversations about this over time and decided that we were better working on the inside and that we could influence things for the better. And we did. And it was my intention to stay and do exactly that. Do you think though they can trust those assurances No. would venture to say that trust is broken Do you think Barry Weiss needs to be removed Oh gosh, yes Um Look, she's said a loveovely person And her free press organization that she founded has been very successful. She's proven that U G for her Television's not her thing. Um She brings an ideology into CBS newews where that is just anathemma And so it's a terrible fit It's probably not her fault But it's just a terrible fit. She doesn't know television, she doesn't understand how it works. She doesn't have management experience for a large organization like CBS News. So yes, I do think that we would be far better off without her. Maybe she goes back to the free press and has a stterling career This is like somebody walking up to me and saying There's a seven forty seven. There are four hundred people on it We need you to fly it to Paris I'm going to decline I don't have a clue And it would have been so much better if Barry Weiss had been offered this job and said, o That's not for me. I don't know how to do that President Trump reacted to your being fired Did he He went on a podcast and called you a stiff. I'm surprised. the president of the United States would bother to notice, but okay. P please tell me, I'm not aware of this. He also said you were part of this gang of stupid crooked people that don't care about your country Um Stupid, I can I can take that Um stiff. Yeahah, probably Um don't care about the country. U I've never worn the uniform. But I've been in combat for this country In Afghanistan Rock Kuwait hot at spent nights in fox holes filling up with water in the desert I'm not aware that the president of the United States has ever done any of those things for his country? Please correct me if I'm wrong You become a journalist becausecause you love the First Amendment You become a journalist because you love the country And while all the other descriptions that the presresident used about me might be applicable There is no Democracy without journalism It can't be done. And that is why I am a journalist Last few questions. You know, on Fox News, they're gonna just run the parts where I'm crying and say I'm a lunatic It's the era we live in. It is the era we live in Scott you joined CBS as a reporter in nineteen eighty nine proudest day of my life You know, as I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking about in many ways, how the story of mododern CBS is the story of your own career too When you look back because your tenure is now over D I hope your departure does. What do you hope will happen now my hope is that the leadership of Paramount will say to themselves, okay, this isn't working Um we have broadcasts that almost don't get on the air. We have respected journalists saying that there is a thumb on the scale for one political party over another. We have a broadcast which is ammong the most important in America The most successful in the history of all of television. It was doing great So why are we making these changes? We need adult supervision And at the moment, we don't have it We have people who haveve been installed in these jobs who through no fault of their own Have no experience in television. It's not their fault But they don't know what they're doing And there's a Subtle political bias that I've never seen at sixty months before. And so or at CBS News before And so that is my hope, a return to sanity. A return to honor, a return to courage. We used to have all of those things in abundance And now we don't We can Save This It's possible to land this plane Right now CBS News, in my view, is on fire Scott Pelly, thank you so much for coming in today That's Scott Pelly.