Scott Pelley, the recently fired CBS 60 Minutes anchor, has accused his old network's editorial management of trying to rewrite reality before a segment aired on the killing of Minneapolis protester Renee Good by an immigration officer in January.
In an interview with the New York Times published Sunday, the 68-year-old veteran broadcaster said CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had sent an email to his supervisor requesting last-minute changes. Pelley paraphrased the email as asking, "Can we make the protesters look more violent?" and demanding that Good's car be described as "driving toward the officer" - even though video of the shooting doesn't support that conclusion.
A CBS News spokesperson countered that Weiss's four points in the email exchange had "no political motivation" and were meant solely to make the segment "as strong, fair, and accurate as possible." Not all suggestions made it into the final piece, the spokesperson added.
Pelley's accusations land amid broader turbulence at the vintage news show. Executive producer Tanya Simon has been replaced, several correspondents and producers have left over editorial independence concerns, though veterans Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim are staying on. Newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton, a former Vanity Fair journalist, assured staff in a memo that "the foundation of 60 Minutes is journalistic independence."
Pelley's comments followed a heated meeting where he accused Weiss of "murdering" the show - after which he was fired. He expressed concern that Weiss "had zero television experience" and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News, calling her lack of TV news experience "red flags." He also dismissed Bilton's modernization push as disingenuous, quipping that it was "almost as if Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in 1990, and it just cracked open."
Pelley detailed that video of Good's shooting shows the officer standing slightly off the front of the car, with Good's wheels turned away from him. Cell phone video from the officer's vantage point, publicly released, captured him calling Good a "fucking bitch" - something Pelley said he "can't repeat in polite company." Pelley argued that Weiss wanted the description to echo Donald Trump's characterization of the shooting when he was president. CBS News said there was "no credible argument" that Weiss was putting a thumb on the scale for the Trump administration.