‘60 Minutes’ Correspondent Scott Pelley Fired One Day After Criticizing His Bosses: Will The Network Be Forced To Pay Out His Contract?

CBS News fired a veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent, Scott Pelley, just one day after he ripped into his bosses during a staff meeting, but some commentators believe that there may be a lawsuit on the horizon challenging the notion that he was fired for cause, which could force the network to pay out the remainder of his contract. Earlier this week, Mr. Pelley excoriated CBS News’s management in a staff meeting, claiming that the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was “murdering ‘60 Minutes.’” That allegation came after the former executive producer of the newsmagazine program, Tanya Simon, the show’s executive editor, Draggan Mihailovich, and two correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, were fired. The original purpose of the meeting was to introduce staff to the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, Nick Bilton, but Mr. Pelley “hijacked” the meeting to air his grievances, which raised questions about his future at the network. On Tuesday evening, CBS News terminated Mr. Pelley’s contract. In a letter, Mr. Bilton said that he had invited the disgruntled correspondent to dinner before the meeting.“It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” the executive producer said. “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.”Mr. Bilton added that he “hoped” he could “find a path forward” despite the contentious meeting, but said it was “clear” Mr. Pelley was “not interested in such a path.” Several commentators suggested that the letter and its declaration that Mr. Pelley was “terminated for cause” were written in anticipation of a potential lawsuit. A media reporter at Puck, Matthew Belloni, wrote on X, “Here come the lawyers….”A liberal columnist, Sophia Nelson, wrote, “Walking lawsuit. This is employer/employee workplace personnel matter. Totally not okay for the employer to do this. I hope #ScottPelley lawyers up big.”Some commentators suggested that the “for cause” language suggests that CBS News does not want to pay out the remainder of Mr. Pelley’s contract. A media journalist, David Poland, said on X that it is “fair” for CBS not to want to pay out the remainder of the contract.“But they have no case. Expressing yourself at a private meeting is not cause. This will settle… if CBS is lucky. They should pay him out immediately and not continue down this road,” he saidShortly after getting fired, Mr. Pelley fired back at CBS’s management, saying in a statement, “Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause.” The statement asserted that “good people” at the network were “silenced because they stood up for our audience.”Mr. Pelley also alleged that network executives “instructed” him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” but he said, “In every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.”There have been lingering questions about Mr. Pelley’s future at CBS for more than a year after he delivered a rare on-air rebuke of the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, for its attempt to settle President Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS as Paramount was waiting for the government to approve its merger with Skydance Media. Last June, he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that it would be “very damaging” to CBS to settle Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. Liberal journalists have accused CBS executives of trying to shift the network’s editorial voice to the right. The CEO of Skydance, David Ellison, told reporters last August that he wants the network to produce journalism that Democrats and Republicans feel they can watch. Lawyers for Skydance have made written commitments that CBS will produce unbiased journalism. While Mr. Pelley, Ms. Vega, and Ms. Alfonsi have publicly accused their corporate bosses of trying to meddle in their editorial decisions, none of them shared any incidents of executives successfully altering their stories. Last December, CBS temporarily held a story from Ms. Alfonsi about the Trump Administration’s policy of sending Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador. She said the decision was political, but Ms. Weiss told staff that the story was held because it did not provide any new information about policy, and noted it did not include statements from the federal government. Ms. Alfonsi’s story aired in January and was largely unchanged. CBS did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

‘60 Minutes’ Correspondent Scott Pelley Fired One Day After Criticizing His Bosses: Will The Network Be Forced To Pay Out His Contract?

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