Statement on CBS firing Scott Pelley

On Tuesday, CBS News fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley — a 40-year veteran of the network — effective immediately and without severance. 

Pelley was terminated after he criticized CBS leadership in a staff meeting. This follows a sweeping purge at 60 Minutes last week, in which senior executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were also let go. Alfonsi and Vega have both said publicly that their terminations were politically motivated.

“Scott Pelley said out loud what many of us have been thinking: that the new leadership installed at CBS has been brought in not to strengthen the institution, but to transform it from a bastion of independent reporting into an ideological mouthpiece,” said Anjuli Kronheim Katz, Executive Director of The Committee for the First Amendment. “What we’re looking at is not corporate restructuring or firing for cause. This is what corrupt media consolidation looks like in action.” 

The string of firings comes amid mounting opposition to the proposed merger between Paramount, the parent company of CBS owned by David Ellison, and Warner Bros-Discovery. It is a harrowing blueprint for the future of CNN, WBD’s most valuable news asset, if this merger is allowed to go ahead. The Committee for the First Amendment will continue to oppose this merger and stand with every journalist at CBS News and across the country who stands up against overreach by the government and its allies.