Scott Pelley fired from '60 Minutes' after confrontation with new boss

“60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley was fired Tuesday, one day after a fiery confrontation with his new boss, executive producer Nick Bilton, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In an email to “60 Minutes” staff, Bilton wrote that the show had “parted ways” with Pelley.

“I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground,” Bilton said. “That was not the path Scott chose.”

In a separate letter to Pelley, Bilton wrote that he had been “terminated for cause.”

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” Bilton wrote. He called Pelley’s conduct in the meeting a “performative display of hostility - enacted in front of the staff.”

“Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you,” Bilton wrote.

Pelley could not immediately be reached for comment.

The termination comes after Pelley laid into Bilton during a Monday morning “60 Minutes” meeting, when he questioned Bilton’s qualifications and accused CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss of trying to kill the network’s iconic newsmagazine, according to two staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, as well as an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post.

“She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” Pelley said of Weiss, who was not present during the meeting. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that. She has no qualifications for her job.”

Pelley’s ouster continues what has been a rocky start to Bilton’s tenure atop one of the most prestigious news programs in the United States.

Bilton, a longtime technology journalist with no experience producing traditional broadcast television, was announced Thursday as the new executive producer of “60 Minutes.” That same day, Weiss fired two of the show’s seven correspondents - Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega - and four of its top producers, including executive producer Tanya Simon.

“What qualifies you to be in this position?” Pelley asked during the Monday meeting. Later, he continued grilling Bilton: “You have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic. So why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”

Pelley called the staff firings “cruel” and suggested that Bilton had not anticipated how the terminations would be perceived within the network, “because I find it impossible to imagine that you would take this job knowing that you would never be welcome here.”

“I have no problem taking a job in a place that I am not welcome, okay?” Bilton responded. “I don’t believe that will be the case, okay? I believe that I will prove that to everyone. But I am not intimidated by the things that you’re saying in any way, shape, or form, okay? I’ve been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I’ve sat across from incredibly powerful people, like you have, and none of it intimidates me, okay? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people. I want that to be clear, okay?”

With Pelley’s firing, “60 Minutes” is down to four correspondents. Longtime correspondent Anderson Cooper left voluntarily following the season’s conclusion last month.

Current and former staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, were outraged on Tuesday evening following Pelley’s firing.

“The idea that Scott Pelley creates a hostile environment at that place is the most laughable idea I’ve ever heard,” one former staffer said.

“‘60 Minutes’ is full of jerks but he is the most calm, professional and polite correspondent I’ve ever worked for.”

A current staffer said, “Scott Pelley is the only person who allows this show to continue. Without him, ’60 Minutes′ is gone. They can use the tick tick tick but they will never have the whole clock again.”

When asked how the feeling inside “60 Minutes” was, another staffer put it bluntly: “It’s like being awake during surgery.”