{"id":910562,"date":"2026-06-05T10:12:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/what-scott-pelley-once-told-me-about-60-minutes-and-the-future-of-news\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:12:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:12:02","slug":"what-scott-pelley-once-told-me-about-60-minutes-and-the-future-of-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/what-scott-pelley-once-told-me-about-60-minutes-and-the-future-of-news\/","title":{"rendered":"What Scott Pelley Once Told Me About ’60 Minutes’ And The Future Of News"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"A<\/picture><\/div>\n
\n

Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley attends an event at Paramount Studios in Hollywood in May 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

AFP via Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Hours after CBS fired longtime 60 Minutes<\/em> correspondent Scott Pelley<\/a> on Tuesday, following a tense and widely reported clash<\/a> with the show\u2019s newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton one day prior, I found myself thinking back to a phone conversation I once had with Pelley as he was on his way to JFK Airport to fly out for a story.<\/p>\n

He was headed to Europe, and we eventually got around to talking about the show itself. When I asked at one point why 60 Minutes<\/em> still matters today, Pelley didn\u2019t hesitate: In an age of fragmented information, misinformation, and evaporating trust from viewers, he insisted that the program’s mission had never been more important. The show \u201cmust<\/em> exist today,\u201d he told me, \u201cbecause the quality of information has become so poor. People are getting information in tiny fragments. People are getting disinformation fed to them from all corners.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd 60 Minutes<\/em> is a place where you can go still today, thank god, where you can see a story that is well-researched, well-edited \u2026 So I think 60 Minutes<\/em>\u2019 reason to be has never been greater in its entire history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

A tumultuous week for \u201860 Minutes\u2019<\/h2>\n

His remarks to me then obviously stand in contrast to his assertion to Bilton earlier this week that CBS News boss Bari Weiss<\/a> is \u201cmurdering\u201d 60 Minutes<\/em> at the behest of the Trump administration \u2014 and also under the auspices of David Ellison, the Trump-aligned CEO of Paramount, which owns CBS News.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. <\/span><\/p>\n

Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Pelley\u2019s abrupt firing, one of the biggest stories in media right now, comes amid a sweeping overhaul of CBS News that\u2019s already seen a wave of departures, layoffs, and resignations. 60 Minutes<\/em> itself has also lost executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, while Anderson Cooper departed the program earlier this year.<\/p>\n

And while Pelley was unavailable for comment, he did release a statement after his firing that blasted the current leadership of CBS News for \u201cincompetence and unprofessionalism\u201d and for working \u201cto curry favor with the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting aside the fact that Bilton now has quite a task before him \u2014 with less than four months or so before an expected launch of 60 Minutes<\/em>\u2019 new season in September, along with multiple editor and correspondent roles to fill \u2014 one of the many noteworthy things that stands out about the show and internal drama is the messaging around it.<\/p>\n

Pelley\u2019s comments to me about 60 Minutes<\/em>\u2019 relevance, for example, track the show\u2019s own marketing verbiage, with its social media channels touting<\/a> that 60 Minutes<\/em> ended its 58th season in May \u201cbreaking records.\u201d It remains, among other things, the #1 news program in the U.S. for the 52nd consecutive year, with 2.5 billion video views across social media \u2014 a 185% increase from the prior season, according to the show.<\/p>\n

60 Minutes<\/em> also averaged 9.1 million TV viewers last season, up 9%. The program, in other words, certainly looks like it\u2019s found a formula that works.<\/p>\n

That said, notwithstanding those metrics or the sense of urgency and mission articulated by a correspondent like Pelley \u2014 who worked for CBS News for nearly 37 years, and for more than 20 of those years at 60 Minutes<\/em> \u2014 the show\u2019s current management sees a TV property that\u2019s actually sliding inexorably toward irrelevance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroadcast,\u201d Bilton reportedly noted during this week\u2019s contentious meeting with staff, \u201cis an iceberg that\u2019s melting.\u201d And in a welcome note to the show\u2019s employees, he elaborated about how \u201cthe world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved. And if we don\u2019t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won\u2019t be here for the next sixty years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking at an all-hands town hall to CBS News employees earlier this year, Weiss reportedly stressed that dramatic change was needed across the board at the network\u2019s news division. Because \u201cwe are not producing a product enough people want.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: It can feel at times, certainly to anyone on the outside, like the key people involved with 60 Minutes<\/em> are all talking about a different TV show whenever they communicate about the program. It\u2019s either as relevant as ever, a record-breaking success, or doomed for irrelevance and sorely in need of change, depending on who you ask.<\/p>\n

As for the staffers who remain, NBC News<\/a> reported Wednesday that many feel \u201ccompletely adrift\u201d and a sense of \u201cgreat uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Andy Meek<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley attends an event at Paramount Studios in Hollywood in May 2024. AFP via Getty Images Hours after CBS fired longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday, following a tense and widely reported clash with the show\u2019s newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton one day prior, I found myself<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":910563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149990,596],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-910562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pelley","category-scott"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}