“60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton pressed ahead Tuesday with plans to speak individually with staff members, a day after correspondent Scott Pelley confronted him during a heated meeting, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Bilton, a documentary filmmaker and technology journalist, laid out those plans during a meeting with “60 Minutes” employees Monday morning. But that gathering was overshadowed by Pelley’s fiery criticism of Bilton and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss.
Pelley, speaking firmly and at times angrily, told Bilton that Weiss was “murdering” the venerable broadcast newsmagazine, a staple of the CBS lineup since 1968.
“She does not love this place,” Pelley told Bilton, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. “She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
CBS News spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday’s round of one-on-one meetings and Monday’s gathering of employees. The Guardian first reported the exchange between Pelley and Bilton.
A former “60 Minutes” veteran told NBC News that the atmosphere was “funereal” Tuesday.
“It’s devastating,” added the veteran, who said they have spoken with multiple current staffers.
Pelley also pressed Bilton on the recent firings of former executive producer Tanya Simon and fellow correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, decisions that Bilton said predated him. The group of “60 Minutes” employees who lost their jobs last week included Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor, and Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer, the source said.
Alfonsi had publicly clashed with Weiss late last year over the decision to postpone a “60 Minutes” segment about the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador. Alfonsi has alleged the story was abruptly pulled for “political reasons.” Weiss said it was “not ready” for air.
The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” aired in January and included statements from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that were not in the original version.
Alfonsi, Vega, Mihailovich and Polevoy did not immediately respond to interview requests.
Weiss, an opinion writer and the founder of the website The Free Press, tapped Bilton to oversee “60 Minutes” and announced his hiring last week. The two are former columnists at The New York Times, and neither had broadcast television experience before arriving at CBS.
In a particularly tense exchange at Monday’s meeting, Pelley said Weiss has “no qualifications” for her job and Bilton has “slender qualifications” for his job. Pelley added that Weiss’ changes at the “CBS Evening News” broadcast were “catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
In response, Bilton said in part: “I will show you. That’s what I have to say. That is my plan over the next two weeks. I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”
Earlier in the meeting, Bilton had attempted to reassure “60 Minutes” employees that the program would not radically change under his direction.
“The journalism is the journalism,” he said in part, according to the audio recording. “That is why I am here. That is why we are all here.”
CBS came under new corporate ownership last year after its parent company, Paramount, merged with David Ellison’s Skydance Media in an $11 billion transaction. Ellison, the son of Silicon Valley mogul Larry Ellison, now looks set to expand his media empire with a $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN and HBO.
The deal between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery was formally approved by the latter’s shareholders, but the merger still awaits regulatory approval from the Trump administration.
