“60 Minutes” correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim said Friday that they planned to stay on at the newsmagazine, capping days of turmoil for the show.
“We have had a hard time deciding whether to stay,” the three wrote in a memo to their colleagues at the program, before adding: “We don’t want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.”
They wrote that they were still “deeply upset by the firings” of executive producer Tanya Simon and high-ranking producer Draggan Mihailovich, whom they called “strong leaders who everyone respected.” Their colleague Scott Pelley was fired earlier this week after he challenged the newsmagazine’s new executive producer over the recent firings.
The longtime correspondents said that “as far as we can tell,” those leaders were fired because “they fought for our ‘60 Minutes’ values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity.”
“Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” they added in the memo, obtained by NBC News. “Collaboration and argument are the way we have always worked at 60.”
Stahl, 84, has spent most of her career at CBS News and joined “60 Minutes” in 1991. Whitaker, 74, spent three decades as a CBS reporter before joining the newsmagazine in 2014. Wertheim, 55, joined three years later.
The trio’s statement is the latest beat in the turmoil engulfing “60 Minutes,” America’s top-rated and most prestigious newsmagazine, which just ended its 58th season.
The upheaval started last week, when several key senior staff members were let go. Tensions between “60 Minutes” staffers and management reached a fever pitch during a Monday meeting to introduce executive producer Nick Bilton, at which Pelley openly challenged leadership and accused CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the storied newsmagazine that debuted in 1968.
“She does not love this place,” Pelley told Bilton at the meeting, according to a recording. “She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
The next day, Pelley was fired after a nearly 40-year run at CBS News. In a statement, Pelley expressed “gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again —a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”
In a Wednesday call with network employees, Weiss tried to temper fears and explain the decision to fire Pelley, saying newsroom leaders could not “find a way back” with the veteran journalist.
“I hope I speak, I know I speak for myself, and I hope I speak for everyone here when I say that I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect. We cannot do our work without it,” Weiss told CBS News employees Wednesday.
Shortly afterward, Pelley released his own statement disputing Weiss’ characterization of the Tuesday meeting, saying that at no point did anyone “suggest that there could be steps taken by either side that would lead to a resolution.”
As previously reported by NBC News, the turmoil within “60 Minutes” has left staffers grappling with questions about the program’s future.
On Thursday night, Bilton attempted to assuage those fears in an emailed memo to the staff, writing that the storied show “will never be instructed by the ownership” of the network on its reporting. In the memo obtained by NBC News, Bilton wrote that he had spoken with Stahl, Wertheim and Whitaker and stressed that they were “core to this show’s success.”
“We talked about what makes 60 Minutes exceptional, about the traditions and legacy of the past, about how you do the work that produces such momentous pieces. We also talked about change: About new audiences, new platforms, and new ways of storytelling that these new audiences need,” Bilton wrote about his conversations with the three. “We’ll speak more about that in the weeks to come.”
Amid the upheaval, however, the three “60 Minutes” correspondents said they “feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure.”
“That is simply, categorically not the case,” the trio said in the memo. “We have been grieving because this whole mess has wounded and damaged the broadcast.”
They added that they “want to stay and fight,” while also working to build trust with Bilton.
“We heard all the right things in yesterday’s ‘independence’ memo,” they said. “It went a long way, and now we need to see these commitments to our process and procedures put into action. If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is — committing acts of independent, fearless journalism and storytelling — we’re here for it.”
“If not, we leave,” they said.
