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CBS News fired veteran correspondent Scott Pelley from "60 Minutes" after the journalist publicly accused the new leadership of the program of destroying one of the most iconic news shows in American television, as reported by CNN Español.
Pelley is one of the most recognized journalists on American television.
He was the host of CBS Evening News, where he had been working since 1989, and a correspondent at the White House.
In "60 Minutes," the most-watched news program in the United States, high-impact investigations were led, including a five-year study on the Havana Syndrome, the mysterious symptoms experienced by U.S. diplomats and officials since 2016, suggesting directed energy weapons as the most plausible explanation for a subset of cases.
"In '60 Minutes', a total of four special reports on the topic were aired. None of the journalistic teams investigating the enigmatic issue went as far or provided more compelling revelations as the group led by Pelley," stated Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio on .
Justification for termination
The dismissal was communicated in writing by Nick Bilton, the newly appointed executive producer of the show, who cited "just cause" based on Pelley's behavior during an all-staff meeting held on Monday.
In that meeting, Pelley pressed Bilton to explain the layoffs of senior producers and two correspondents from the program that occurred the previous week, and accused the editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, of having "killed" "60 Minutes."
"She doesn't love this place. They brought her here to destroy it, and that's exactly what she has been doing," Pelley said before all the staff.
Bilton responded with a termination letter in which he claimed that Pelley "hijacked" his first meeting with the staff "to discredit me, my qualifications, and my intentions with a lack of civility and extraordinary contempt," and declared his contract "terminated for cause, effective immediately."
In his subsequent statement, Pelley went beyond the internal dispute and denounced that the new leadership had requested him to include "falsehoods and biases" in politically sensitive stories. "I have been ordered to include unverified claims. So far, I have managed to ignore these instructions in every case," he wrote.
Pelley also revealed that the incompetence of the new executives nearly prevented the program from airing: "In a case related to one of my stories, the program was just 19 minutes away from not going on the air."
"In '60 Minutes,' we have fought harder than anyone can imagine to save the program that became an American icon. The leadership of '60 Minutes' is now unrecognizable. The principles that I valued so much have vanished; therefore, I too must depart," he emphasized.
The journalist pointed directly to the political backdrop of the crisis: "The new owner of our network is sidelining the legacy of '60 Minutes,' apparently to win the favor of the Trump administration."
That background is inseparable from the corporate interests of Paramount (owner of CBS), whose CEO is David Ellison, the son of billionaire Republican Larry Ellison, who is close to Trump.
The relationship between Trump and CBS has a recent history of conflict: in 2024, Trump sued the network for $20 billion, claiming that a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris was manipulated. In July, Paramount reached a settlement for $16 million, intended for Trump's presidential library, without a public apology from CBS.
Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025. Known for her critical stance towards the so-called "woke ideology" and the Democratic Party, she has driven a radical restructuring that has already cost the jobs of two correspondents and the executive producer, prior to Pelley.
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