STUNNING: Fired ’60 Minutes’ star Scott Pelley BLOWS WHISTLE on CBS execs for ‘falsehoods and bias’

The dramatic news from our colleagues across town at CBS News, who have been going through the bottom lands.CBS News is under a transformation that is driven by the president of the United States, by corporate interests that want federal approval for a big merger, a big consolidation in the media and news business.in order to do that, and maybe because they want to.Otherwise, they have been essentially bulldozing one of the great news organizations, news brands in American history, CBS News, the home of, among other things, 60 Minutes, the most successful American news program ever.The veteran correspondent, at 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley, the most recognizable person on 60 Minutes, the former host of CBS's network news show and one of the most respected journalists in America.Scott Pelley has been fired by CBS News tonight after a widely reported staff meeting confrontation with the new leadership that was brought in essentially from the classified ads to come run 60 Minutes.

Scott Pelley, confronting that new leadership about the changes that have happened at CBS News under the new leadership, under the new management, the sort of oligarchic takeover of that news organization, and now the news tonight that he has been fired.Scott Pelley has put out a statement tonight, just in the last few minutes, in response to being fired.I would read it to you, but listen to me. I sound like I've been gargling with steel wool.Luckily, Jen Psaki is here and is going to read the statement.I'm going to be your spokesperson, sort of.

This is incredibly powerful.We were just talking during the break about everybody needs to hear every word, so I'm just going to read every single word so that the audience hears it.It starts this way.in America like 60 Minutes.The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history.For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world.

This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard of 9 % jump in viewers on CBS.60 has been the number one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories.When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects.Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.The waste is heartbreaking.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.

Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience.They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias.They stood for professionalism against chaos.For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.Wow.

I've been told, these are just incredible words to hear from Scott Pelley.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.This is similar to what Cecilia Vega also had in her statement just last week.He goes on to say, I've been told to include assertions that are unverified.To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast.Giving politicians control over 60 minutes interviews is not how this is done.

Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc.In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air.at all.Wow.This is 60 Minutes.I mean, nine million people, I believe, were watching as of last...

And a financial powerhouse.A financial powerhouse.At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon.We owed that to our millions of viewers.I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to keep up the good fight.Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight, but now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable.

The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable.The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion, a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work very often at the risk of their own lives.I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again, a day when sanity, confidence, and courage return.Wow.

How does the rest of CBS News Come to work tomorrow.

How does the rest of 60 Minutes come to work?

And how do the correspondents who are still there feel?And how do the people who are doing this look themselves in the mirror?

Fine.Let me be clear.They're good.They're good.We talked about this during the break.I would liken this.

This is the equivalent.They're good.They're dozing CBS, right?Elon Musk came into the government, not understanding how the government worked, and bulldozed it.Realized after mistakes, and just left a wasteland.Hated the government he was tearing apart, and there was no evidence that they wanted to rebuild it.

That's what we're witnessing here.

Yeah.I mean, there's also this question that you encounter time and time again in this era in a variety of ways.contexts and institutions, which is when to stay and when to go.And what do you do with it?Like if you wereat the Department of Justice, right, and you're a civil servant who believes in upholding the law, how long can you hold on at the Department of Justice in the Trump administration?

How long?What is the line?When's the moment when you get the thing from the boss that says, go do this thing that's over the line?And that set of ethical decisions that people had to make under these intense contexts of pressure, get repeated over and over and over across the institutions that the current administration is trying to destroy.

Can I just make an argument, though?Whenever we look at those organizations and say, how could people stay?Why aren't they quitting?And we've said this about newspapers and television.These are people's jobs.

No, totally.

These are their lives.

No, and I mean it.I'm not saying how could people.I'm saying there are people right now watching this program who work in the Department of Justice, who are like good people with great values who believe in justice.There are people who are watching this program right now who work in the FBI or in the intelligence, one of the 18 intelligence agencies that are apparently gonna get helmed by Bill Pulte.I mean, across the board, there are folks that are embedded in institutions that are attempting to, that sort of nefarious forces of corruption are trying to co -opt or destroy, and have to make evaluations about how they are going to.

I will say one piece of that is, when you do decide you have to go, the one, I mean, I don't envy anybody.You gotta do it that way.You have to do it this way.You gotta do it that way.You have to say why you went.Yes.

And you have to say what you saw.And whether you were pushed out or whether you left on your own terms, If it is time to go, I can tell you categorically the patriotic thing to do is to tell what you know.

Here is the thing that I'm focusing on when I look at the CBS story.Scott Pelley is, as you describe, just this figure in this time.But there's a new generation of journalists who are coming out ofjournalism schools and that are coming out of local broadcast and media situations looking to begin this trek.And what struck me in everything that Scott Pelley said was this new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.I've been told to include assertions that are unverified.

If you are a 27 year old newly minted journalist, who's starting that track.This is what's so dangerous and corruption, corruptive, and so poisonous about this administration and what they've been doing is that they're not, they're not worried about the past and the things in the present.They want to transform, terraform the future.And in this space, in the media space, if I got a young kid and I'm telling him now you're going to put this in paragraph 27, what's he going to do?

Last Wednesday was the Emmys, and at the Emmys, and we saw 60 Minutes win multiple Emmys, a young man was given the Mike Wallace Award.CBS gave him this award, and he got up there.He's not older than 25 years old, and he spoke out against this organization that is now being controlled by corporate interests and standing in the way of the truth.So I hear exactly what you're saying, but it also gives me such faith when you watch these extraordinary young people.

But that's exactly the point I'm getting to.How do they respond?And if he's the example of that response, then what you just said, Rachel, about that moment when you have to come to truth with yourself, they can write this letter.They can write this letter.

I was just going to say, I want to call some preemptive BS on what we're going to hear from the right, which is that, you know, anybody that Scott Pelley, that Cecilia Vega are products of the left.that they are defending Democrats.And I'm just going to say, I worked for two Democratic presidents who were interviewed by them.I was grilled by some of them every single day.I had no idea what their politics were.They were tough as nails on every single person I worked for.

They called out things that they didn't think should be happening in government.That's who they were.So anybody who calls that out, that is total BS.And I can tell you from experience.Yeah.

And I would also say that Scott Pelley, if you're watching, come work for us.I actually don't have the power to hire you.

But if MS takes a vote, we all vote yes.