CBS Fired Scott Pelley for Defending 60 Minutes. 70 Journalists Were Already Gone.

CBS Fired Its Most Decorated Correspondent

CBS News fired Scott Pelley on June 2, 2026, hours after a meeting where he publicly accused editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of destroying the program he spent 21 years building.

“She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s doing exactly that.”

Scott Pelley, telling colleagues at a staff meeting, June 1, 2026

Pelley is the most decorated correspondent in the 58-year history of 60 Minutes: 51 Emmy Awards, four duPont-Columbia Silver Batons, three Peabody Awards. He won half of all major awards the program earned during his tenure. Before 60 Minutes, he reported from Ground Zero on September 11, covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, and Sudan, and added 1.5 million viewers to the CBS Evening News as anchor.

This is the second time CBS fired him for refusing to stay quiet. In 2017, Pelley was removed as Evening News anchor after repeatedly reporting a hostile work environment to the CBS chairman. The chairman told him if he kept raising it, he would lose his job. He kept raising it.

The previous week, Weiss and her new executive producer Nick Bilton fired five senior staff in a single day. Pelley refused to meet with them privately. When he confronted Bilton at a staff meeting, he told him he would “never be welcome” at 60 Minutes. Bilton, a tech journalist who has never worked in television news, fired Pelley the following evening.

Everyone Who Was Fired

Pelley was not the first. At least 70 CBS News journalists have been fired, laid off, or pushed out since Weiss took over in October 2025.

Beyond the named firings below: 8 on-air personalities were fired in November 2025, all women. CBS cut 6% of its entire news workforce on March 20, ending CBS Radio after 99 years of continuous broadcast. Anderson Cooper did not renew his contract in February after clashing with Weiss.

Name	Role	Tenure	Date	What Happened
Debora Patta	Senior foreign correspondent	12 years	Oct 2025	First major firing under Weiss
Tanya Simon	60 Minutes executive producer	30 years	May 28, 2026	Replaced by Nick Bilton
Sharyn Alfonsi	60 Minutes correspondent	10+ years	May 28, 2026	CECOT investigation delayed for political reasons
Cecilia Vega	60 Minutes correspondent	First Latina correspondent	May 28, 2026	Accused CBS of “inserting political bias”
Draggan Mihailovich	60 Minutes executive editor	20+ years	May 28, 2026	Fired in May 28 purge
Matthew Polevoy	60 Minutes senior producer	15+ years	May 28, 2026	Fired in May 28 purge
Scott Pelley	60 Minutes correspondent	21 years	Jun 2, 2026	Fired for publicly confronting Weiss and Bilton

Alfonsi had clashed with Weiss months earlier after her investigation into Venezuelan deportees held at El Salvador’s CECOT prison was delayed. Alfonsi called the decision political, not editorial. After being fired, she said: “This was not a routine corporate transition. It was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting.”

Follow the Money

Two transactions totaling $166 million put CBS News under new editorial leadership with no broadcast journalism experience.

Transaction	Date	Amount	What It Bought
Trump lawsuit settlement	Jul 2025	$16 million	FCC approved the Paramount-Skydance merger
Free Press acquisition	Oct 2025	$150 million	Bari Weiss installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News

Trump sued CBS in October 2024 over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, claiming deceptive editing and seeking $20 billion. The FCC, chaired by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, approved the merger weeks after the settlement. Trump praised the Weiss appointment on 60 Minutes itself.

Weiss had no broadcast journalism experience. She was an opinion columnist at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal before founding The Free Press, a center-right opinion site.

Bilton previously wrote for the New York Times and Vanity Fair and directed documentaries for HBO and Netflix. He has never worked in television news. He replaced Tanya Simon, who spent 30 years at 60 Minutes.

Pelley Warned on Camera

On April 28, 2025, during the “Last Minute” segment on 60 Minutes, Pelley told a national audience that Paramount had begun supervising CBS News content “in new ways.” Executive producer Bill Owens resigned the same day after 24 years, saying he could no longer “make independent choices based on what was best for 60 Minutes.”

Three weeks later, Pelley told Wake Forest graduates that “freedom is under attack,” warning about threats to civil liberties, voting rights, and press freedom. Sean Hannity called the speech “unhinged.” Twelve months later, Pelley was fired.

Sue, Settle, Acquire, Install, Fire

A president sues a network. The parent company pays $16 million to settle, and the settlement secures a federal merger approval. The new owners spend $150 million to install a new editor-in-chief. The editor fires 70 journalists in 8 months.

64th in the world. The U.S. press freedom ranking dropped 7 places in one year to its lowest point ever recorded. 70 million Americans live in counties with no local newspaper.

Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said when the settlement was announced: “A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning.”

The most recent 60 Minutes season had 2.5 billion video views on social media, a digital record. The audience was not the problem.

What You Can Do Now

Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and ask them to support the PRESS Act, a federal shield law protecting journalists from being compelled to reveal sources. The bill has bipartisan support but has not reached the floor.
File a public comment with the FCC about whether the Paramount-Skydance merger conditions are being met. The merger required CBS News to maintain editorial independence. File at fcc.gov/ecfs.
Subscribe to independent newsrooms. ProPublica, The Marshall Project, your local public radio station. The outlets doing the reporting that corporate networks won’t are funded by readers, not mergers.
Contact the Senate Commerce Committee and ask members to hold oversight hearings on media consolidation and editorial independence. The committee has jurisdiction over FCC merger approvals and broadcast licensing.