Scott Pelley Attacks Bari Weiss’s Leadership of '60 Minutes' at CBS Staff Meeting

Scott Pelley told colleagues at a Monday staff meeting that Bari Weiss was "murdering" the CBS News program "60 Minutes," according to an audio recording obtained by Status and The New York Times. "She does not love this place," Pelley said. " Pelley made the remarks during an exchange with new top producer Nick Bilton, whom Weiss installed in place of Tanya Simon.

Pelley has spent more than three decades at CBS News. Business Insider could not independently confirm the audio recording, and CBS News declined to comment. " Bilton previously worked as a tech journalist at The New York Times and Vanity Fair and made documentaries for HBO and Netflix.

Pelley pressed Bilton on recent personnel changes, including the exits last week of correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. Vega said in an exit memo that she and her colleagues had faced "efforts to insert political bias into our stories" in the last few months. "Let's call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven.

It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy," Vega said. Alfonsi recounted in a memo an intense editorial dispute with Weiss about her December segment on the Trump administration's migrant deportation tactics in sending people to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. Weiss delayed the segment, which later ran, saying she wanted an on-the-record response from Trump officials.

" "It was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom," Alfonsi wrote. Weiss has described her changes at CBS News as a shift from a linear television strategy to a streaming mentality.

At a CBS News town hall earlier this year, she said, "Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television.