Scott Pelley accused CBS News management under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of trying to inject “falsehoods and bias” into reporting after the veteran correspondent was fired Tuesday.
Pelley, who spent 37 years at CBS News and became one of the most recognizable faces of “60 Minutes,” leveled a series of extraordinary allegations against CBS News leadership without giving specifics.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” the 68-year-old Pelley wrote. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”
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Pelley claimed he repeatedly resisted those efforts.
“To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them,” he said.
He also alleged that politicians had been given influence over editorial decisions.
“Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast,” Pelley wrote. “Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done.”
Pelley appeared to be alluding to a Post exclusive that found that Weiss allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to choose CBS News correspondent Major Garrett as the journalist who would interview him — even though “60 Minutes” star Lesley Stahl had been angling to get the sit-down for months.
Garrett’s interview with Netanyahu was aired on “60 Minutes” even though he is not a part of the show’s full-time roster of correspondents.
In his first public statement since CBS News terminated his employment, Pelley blasted the network’s new leadership and claimed “the collapse of values at the top has become untenable” following the recent ouster of top producers and correspondents.
“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,” Pelley wrote in a statement posted to Instagram early Wednesday.
“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.”
The broadside comes just two days after Pelley confronted newly installed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton during a contentious staff meeting.
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According to accounts of the meeting, Pelley accused Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes’” and said she “was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
CBS News terminated Pelley after the confrontation, capping a tumultuous week that also saw the departures of executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, senior executive producer Draggan Mihailovich, veteran producer Guy Campanile and staffer Matthew Polvoy.
