Firings at CBS' '60 Minutes' reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump; NPR, June 3, 2026

David Folkenflik, NPR; Firings at CBS' '60 Minutes' reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump

"The battle royale over the network's most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.

And given CBS's acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.

That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS' parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok's U.S. operations. Now they're seeking approval from Trump's regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN."

Read the letter firing Scott Pelley from ‘60 Minutes’ — and his response; The Washington Post, June 3, 2026

Scott Nover

 and 

Liam Scott

, The Washington Post; Read the letter firing Scott Pelley from ‘60 Minutes’ — and his response

"Pelley was fired Tuesday when Bilton sent him this letter, printed in full below...

Pelley responded in a late-night statement shared with The Washington Post, lambasting the network, its leadership and its ownership under David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance, whom he accused of trying to “curry favor with the Trump administration.

You can read it in full here:"

CBS News Fires Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’; The New York Times, June 2, 2026

Benjamin Mullin and Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times ; CBS News Fires Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’

"CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.

Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.

“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.

CBS News declined to comment. In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been “terminated for cause effective immediately.”"

Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’; The New York Times, June 1, 2026

 

Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, The New York Times; Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’

"CBS News faced a fresh wave of turmoil on Monday after Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, laced into the show’s newly hired executive producer during a staff meeting and accused Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, of “murdering” the longstanding Sunday news program.

In an extraordinary exchange, Mr. Pelley, his newscaster’s baritone sometimes shaking in anger, told Nick Bilton, the new executive producer, that he had “slender” qualifications for his new job and questioned the network’s commitment to the future of the program, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

The 10 a.m. gathering, held at the program’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, was intended as a formal introduction to Mr. Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker who was appointed last week as part of a major shake-up at “60 Minutes.” CBS fired Tanya Simon, the previous executive producer, and her deputy, along with Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, two of the show’s correspondents — an event that Mr. Pelley referred to as “Black Thursday.”

The meeting quickly turned tense — not a surprise after months of strain between veteran journalists at “60 Minutes” and Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist who was a longtime critic of legacy media institutions before she became the head of one last year. She was appointed by David Ellison, a tech scion who took control of CBS’s parent company Paramount in a multibillion-dollar merger...

Ms. Weiss’s handling of “60 Minutes” has generated internal turmoil for months.

In December, she pulled a segment reported by Ms. Alfonsi, about the brutal treatment of migrants in a Salvadoran prison, saying that it needed more reporting. The segment was critical of the Trump administration, and Ms. Alfonsi said the decision was “political.” The piece ultimately aired with some additional comments from the Trump administration."

The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone for US media; The Guardian, May 1, 2025

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian ; The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone for US media

"Pelley said that, to date, no story had been killed but that Owens “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires”.

Pelley’s comments were picked up widely, and now the world knows that viewers can no longer fully trust what they see on the Sunday evening show that has done such important and groundbreaking journalism for decades.

Of course, as with so many of the red alerts mentioned above – lawsuits, threats, changes in long-held practices that protect the public’s right to know – the problem involves Donald Trump’s overweening desire to control the media. Controlling the message is what would-be authoritarians always do.

Trump sued 60 Minutes for $20bn a few months ago, claiming unfair and deceptive editing of an interview with his then rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. And his newly appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, took an aggressive approach by reopening an investigation into CBS over supposed distortion of the news. The editing of the Harris interview, by all reasonable accounts, followed standard practices.

What has happened with 60 Minutes is a high-octane version of what is happening everywhere in Trump 2.0.

Those who could stand up to Trump’s bullying are instead doing what scholars of authoritarianism say must be avoided, if democracy is to be salvaged. They are obeying in advance.

Not everyone, of course. It’s inspiring to see prominent institutions – Harvard and other universities, many law firms, Georgetown law school and the Associated Press – refusing to buckle."

Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice; Washington Post, March 26, 2017

Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post; Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice

"Pelley, and others at CBS, declined to comment for this column, saying the work speaks for itself. There is clearly every wish to avoid setting up CBS as anti-Trump or as partisan.

But, accepting Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award last November, Pelley tipped his hand: “The quickest, most direct way to ruin a democracy is to poison the information.”"