Journalism is supposed to speak truth to power, as when Walter Cronkite reported, on the CBS airwaves, that the Vietnam war was not progressing as the US government was claiming, or when the Washington Post revealed, through its Watergate reporting, that the Nixon administration was corrupt.
Truth to power. Or, as the New York Times motto has it, telling it straight, “without fear or favor”.
But when Scott Pelley did exactly that by telling CBS, his own workplace of more than three decades, what he thought it needed to hear, they axed him.
Rather than hearing the truth that Pelley spoke in a staff meeting on Monday, rather than taking it seriously and vowing reform, the bosses treated his remarks as grounds for dismissal. He was fired on Tuesday “for cause”.
And, as a result, 60 Minutes – the admired, lucrative and top-rated Sunday evening news program – will never be the same. Pelley has been the most prominent correspondent on that show in recent years, and its public-facing heart and soul.
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Pelley plainly believes that the destruction of a storied institution is the result, and perhaps the point, of what his bosses are doing. It started when the chief executive of CBS’s parent company, tech scion David Ellison, named Bari Weiss the top editor of CBS News last fall.
With no broadcast TV experience, the opinion journalist and founder of the anti-woke media site The Free Press, was brought in, to put it politely, as a change agent. To bring the show into the digital era.
Since then, Weiss has been a one-woman wrecking ball at CBS News, and particularly at 60 Minutes.
She meddled with cherished editorial independence, prompting the departures of deeply respected reporters and producers.
Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were let go; Anderson Cooper declined to sign a new deal. And, by several credible accounts, the show’s outstanding journalism has been tainted by politics, as Weiss moves the news programming rightward. That Donald Trump has praised CBS’s new ownership speaks volumes.
Pelley has even said in recent days: “New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
He did not pull his punches about Weiss in the staff meeting, which was intended to introduce Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, who replaced the internally revered Tanya Simon.
Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley charged. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
He bluntly told Bilton that he has “slender” qualifications for his new role and that Weiss even less for hers.
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The staff stood up and applauded.
You might wonder, well, what were Pelley’s bosses supposed to do?
Should they have allowed this underling to be disrespectful and to undermine corporate authority?
As Pelley himself said, any disrespect heshowed was dwarfed by the disrespect that’s been the hallmark of Bari Weiss since she was appointed.
Instead of recognizing that she’d been handed a rare jewel and caring for it, she took a hammer to it.
Something Weiss apparently doesn’t understand is that a newsroom – whether at a tiny local newspaper or the BBC – is a living organism with a culture all its own. That culture doesn’t function based only on commands from above.
Strict hierarchical control hurts (yes, it can even kill) the journalism.
Creative people want to do their work – which many of them consider a mission, not just a job – in an atmosphere of respect, cooperation and a certain amount of autonomy. They understand that they take direction from above and that their preferences may be overruled, but their most closely felt ideals cannot be trampled on.
Weiss got off to a terrible start late last year when she infamously pulled, before broadcast, an investigation by Sharyn Alfonsi into the brutal conditions at a prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration had deported Venezuelans.
Alfonsi charged that “corporate censorship” was the reason; this was happening, after all, at a time when CBS’s parent company had big business before the Trump administration. (The piece, which had been thoroughly vetted inside 60 Minutes, eventually was aired with minor changes, but the damage was done.)
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So, Scott Pelley, clearly furious at all that has happened, at the exodus of talent and the harm to reputation, told it as he saw it. Truth to power.
He knew exactly what he was doing, of course, and what was likely to happen. And, at almost 69 years old, Pelley is senior enough in his much-decorated career to be able to do what his more vulnerable colleagues cannot.
Sadly, though, 60 Minutes will never be the same. It took a long time to build that institution and well under a year to inflict this body blow.
Pelley will be OK.
While his bosses look (to varying degrees) like bumblers, cowards or corporate tools, Pelley will be remembered as a beacon of integrity and a symbol of righteous indignation – somebody willing to lose his job in order to speak truth to power.
