Scott Pelley accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of ordering him to falsify a report on federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis — and said CBS management lied about a physical altercation to justify his firing — in an emotional New York Times interview published Sunday, his first since CBS cut him loose on June 2.
“CBS News is on fire,” Pelley told Times interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “My hope is that the leadership of Paramount will say to themselves, this isn’t working.”
Read: Pelley Calls Weiss a Liar After CBS Boss Claims Network Tried to ‘Find a Way Back’
The Minneapolis Segment
The interview’s most specific allegation centers on Pelley’s February 1 report, titled “Calls grow for independent probe into Minneapolis shootings,” which examined the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of two US citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — by federal immigration officers. Pelley said he interviewed Sen. Rand Paul, who was chairing Senate oversight hearings on Metro Surge tactics, and built the segment to reflect the full picture, including video of aggressive protest behavior.
“We culled together a lot of video of protesters screaming in the faces of officers because we were going to talk about the killing of Pretti and the killing of Good, and it seemed to me important to tell the audience about the entire context,” Pelley told Garcia-Navarro. The piece cleared internal screenings and received approval from CBS staff.
Weiss sent an email to Pelley’s executive producer Tanya Simon roughly four hours after the noon ET submission deadline — about three hours before the program’s 7 p.m. ET airtime — with notes on the segment. Two of them, Pelley said, stood out. “Can we make the protesters look more violent?” he said, describing the gist of one note. “I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me.” The other instruction: “Renee Good’s car — you need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”
Pelley said he refused both changes. He described the intervention as management instructing him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” He called it “a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News” and said it felt like Weiss was “putting a thumb on the scale” for the Trump administration’s version of events.
A CBS News spokesperson pushed back directly. The feedback Weiss sent to Simon, the spokesperson said, “had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible.” The spokesperson called Pelley’s broader argument about political interference “not credible.”
‘Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton. This is a lie.’
Pelley also disclosed a new allegation about his termination meeting. He said CBS News president Tom Cibrowski opened the session by accusing him of physically attacking executive producer Nick Bilton during the confrontation at a prior staff meeting — the incident that precipitated his firing.
“Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton,” Pelley told Garcia-Navarro. “This is a lie. I didn’t come within 10 feet of Nick Bilton. In my life, I have never put my hands on anyone in anger.” He said Cibrowski backed down when pressed: “And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, OK, I take that back.”
CBS has not publicly addressed the allegation.
The Emmys, the Firings, the Tears
Pelley broke down several times during the interview. He told Garcia-Navarro that the night before CBS fired him and his colleagues, he and Simon had attended the Emmy Awards, where 60 Minutes won two trophies.
“Within hours, all of those people have been wiped out, and one-third of our correspondents have been fired,” he said. “My colleagues and I have worked together 10, 20, 30 years. We travel together. We dine together. We go into literal combat together. My former boss and former producer Bill Owens saved my life in a firefight in Iraq. So, these bonds are pretty tight, and when somebody wipes out, murders, a large number of your family members, people are desperate for some explanation, and as you and I sit here today, there still has been none.”
Pelley acknowledged the “murder” language, for which he faced criticism after audio of a staff meeting leaked earlier in the week, had been hyperbolic — but said he stood by the sentiment.
On Weiss
Pelley stopped short of accusing Weiss of malice. “She’s a lovely person,” he said. “And her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful, she’s proven that. Great for her. But television’s not her thing.” His sharpest diagnosis of the CBS crisis, he said, was not political interference but managerial incompetence: “The bigger problem was not any kind of political influence. The problem was the incompetence.”
He nonetheless called on Paramount leadership to remove her.
“It’s not their fault, but they don’t know what they’re doing.
“There’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at 60 Minutes, or CBS News before. That is my hope, a return to sanity. A return to honor, a return to courage. We used to have all of those things in abundance, and now we don’t.
“We can save this. It’s possible to land this plane. But right now, CBS News, in my view, is on fire.”
CBS offered no specific response to the removal request. Weiss had not publicly responded to the interview as of Monday morning.
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