Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News’s Bari Weiss of Lying About Meeting That Led to His Firing

A recently fired CBS News correspondent, Scott Pelley, is accusing the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, of lying about how the meeting that resulted in his termination played out.Mr. Pelley’s contract was terminated on Tuesday evening, a day after he ripped into the Tiffany Network’s management during a staff meeting and accused Ms. Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes.’” He also attacked the newsmagazine program’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, saying he had “slender” qualifications for the job and would “never” be welcomed there. On Wednesday morning, Ms. Weiss addressed the firing, telling CBS News employees that executives met with the former correspondent and tried to “find a way back,” but were unable to do so, and “we had to part ways.”Mr. Pelley was not content to let that comment go, and responded with his own statement, saying, “Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true.” “In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort of any kind to ‘find a way back,’ as Weiss said in the editorial meeting,” Mr. Pelley said. “At no point did anyone in the Tuesday meeting suggest that there could be steps taken by either side that would lead to a resolution.”Mr. Pelley claimed that Ms. Weiss and the president of CBS News, Tom Cibrowski, were “openly hostile from the start” and mentioned the possibility of him being fired “in the first 15 seconds” of the meeting. He also accused Ms. Weiss of refusing to answer questions about why “she fired the entire senior staff of ‘60 Minutes.’”The statement accused Mr. Cibrowski and Ms. Weiss of being “abrupt, dismissive and uninterested in dialogue.”“No constructive dialogue was allowed by the CBS executives at any point. I was stonewalled for about 10 minutes and then, for no apparent reason, “This conversation is over,” Mr. Pelley wrote. CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. In a letter on Tuesday, Mr. Bilton accused Mr. Pelley of rejecting his overtures, ambushing him during the staff meeting, and acting with “remarkable incivility and contempt.” The letter also said that Mr. Pelley was fired for cause.Puck’s Dylan Byers has said the language suggests that CBS News executives are preparing for the possibility of a legal fight. While Mr. Pelley said in his statement that the conversation with Ms. Weiss was abruptly cut off while he was willing to keep talking, Mr. Byers reported that CBS News executives “were left with [the] sense that Scott was not open minded about reaching detente.”The ouster of Pelley comes days after CBS fired two other “60 Minutes” correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as Mr. Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon. CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was a correspondent with “60 Minutes” for roughly 20 years, voluntarily left the show last month. After the departures, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim are the remaining correspondents at the program. The shakeup at “60 Minutes” has raised questions about whether they plan to stay. Ms. Stahl, along with Mr. Pelley, was one of the most outspoken critics of the efforts by CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, to settle President Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS.Last year, she told the New Yorker that she was “angry” at Paramount’s leadership. However, she declined to say what her “limit” would be that would lead her to quit “60 Minutes.” She said that the former executive producer of the program, Bill Owens, asked the correspondents not to quit after he was forced out last year. So far, the three remaining “60 Minutes” correspondents have not publicly spoken out about whether they plan to stay, nor have they commented on the ouster of Mr. Pelley.

Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News’s Bari Weiss of Lying About Meeting That Led to His Firing

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