Watch: Why 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley Accused Bari Weiss of “Murdering” the CBS News Show
Is time running out for 60 Minutes?
That’s what veteran correspondent Scott Pelley fears is happening under CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, saying during a June 1 staff meeting at the show’s New York headquarters that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes,” according to the New York Times, which cited a recording of the meeting obtained by the publication. The comment was made during an exchange with newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton, who defended Weiss’ intentions.
“Bari loves this institution,” Bilton said, per the Times. “She loves 60 Minutes.”
Pelley countered, “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
Weiss, who was not at the meeting, was hired in October by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison to, as he put it at the time, “invigorate” the network’s news operation.
E! News has reached out to CBS News for comment.
A source with knowledge of the situation told E! that Weiss and Bilton had been reaching out to Pelley since May 28, when Bilton’s hiring was announced, in hopes of meeting with the 68-year-old privately.
And had they connected, according to the source, they would have communicated to him that he is an integral part of 60 Minutes and its future.
Michele Crowe/CBS News via Getty Images
Pelley’s characterization of Weiss “murdering” 60 Minutes flies in the face of what they’ve been saying, the source continued, which is that Bilton was brought in so that CBS’ flagship news magazine can keep doing the hard-hitting interviews and ambitious investigative journalism it’s known for.
In her memo to staffers announcing Bilton’s hiring last week, obtained by E!, Weiss said their responsibility is “to preserve that legacy and vital mission by building a show that thrives in the 21st century.” And that, she added, required “a new approach.”
Pelley has been one of the more outspoken critics of network management, his warning shots beginning even before Ellison’s Skydance Media closed its deal to acquire Paramount Global last summer in an $8.4 billion merger.
During an April 2025 tribute to outgoing 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, who had resigned after 37 years at CBS, Pelley said during the broadcast, “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it.”
Michele Crowe/CBS News
Ellison appointing Weiss as CBS News’ first ever editor in chief only inflamed tensions further.
Before founding her conservative-leaning online media company The Free Press—which Paramount Skydance bought last year for $150 million—the 42-year-old worked at the Wall Street Journal and then spent three years as a New York Times columnist and opinion editor.
She resigned from the paper in 2020, alleging in an open letter that she had been subjected to “constant bullying by colleagues” who disagreed with her views.
CBS News ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
Upon arrival at CBS News last fall, Weiss wrote in a memo to employees, per Deadline, that she would approach their concerns about what was working and what wasn’t with “an open mind, a fresh notebook, and an urgent deadline.”
But then one story after another about the goings-on at CBS News described an increasingly disgruntled newsroom.
The reports of discord prompted criticism from Gayle King in January, with the CBS Mornings anchor chastising “leakers in the building” during a staff meeting, according to a recording obtained and reviewed at the time by The Independent.
“If you don’t want to be here, if this is not the place, it’s OK,” King said toward the end of a Q&A session, per the Independent. “But for the rest of us who would like to be here, who’d like to do a good job and figure things out along the way, this is a very bumpy time for all of us.”
Count Anderson Cooper among those who decided it was time for him to go after nearly 20 years as a 60 Minutes correspondent.
While the 58-year-old dad to sons Wyatt, 6, and Sebastian, 4, cited wanting to spend more time with his family as his reason for narrowing his workload down to his duties at CNN, speculation raged that the Anderson Cooper 360 anchor wanted no part of what was going on at CBS News.
But, Cooper said as he delivered his final sign-off May 18, “I hope 60 Minutes is around for when my kids grow up and have kids of their own, and they can watch it with their kids.”
Paramount Skydance is now in the process of acquiring CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery, with the latter’s shareholders approving the sale in April.
Mary Kouw/CBS ©2026 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
Meanwhile, seemingly all of Weiss’ staffing shakeups, from her choice of Tony Dokoupil to anchor the CBS Evening News in December to her recent hiring of Bilton as 60 Minutes exec producer have been met with mixed reviews.
Bilton, a tech journalist and documentary producer, was brought in to replace EP Tanya Simon, who was fired last week along with executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, managing editor Guy Campanile and senior producer Matthew Polevoy.
Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were also let go.
Jai Lennard/CBS News©2023 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
All of which factored into Pelley’s June 1 evisceration of Weiss.
“She has no qualifications for her job,” he told Bilton, per the NY Times. “You have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
To which Bilton responded, per the recording, “Well, I will show you. That’s what I have to say. That is my plan over the next two weeks. I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”
And Bilton stressed, per the Times, that “the journalism is the journalism.”
“The rumors people are spreading,” he said, “that I’m going to turn the show into 60 one-minute episodes, that it’s going to be like TikTok, that is not changing. The show is going to stay exactly like it is for now.”
A statement that, considering all the journalists in the room, presumably begged some follow-up questions.
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