Fired “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley says CBS News’ top editor, Bari Weiss, is directing coverage to be more aligned with the Trump administration’s views.
During an appearance on The New York Times podcast, “The Interview,” Pelley elaborated on his June 2 statement, in which he said CBS News’ new management had instructed him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
“There was a thumb on the scale for the president’s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News,” Pelley told “The Interview.”
Pelley said his “60 Minutes” team had produced a story in February detailing ICE operations in Minnesota, during which agents shot and killed Renee Good, and the subsequent anti-ICE protests.
Pelley said Weiss sent an email to his former boss, Tanya Simon, asking if they could make changes to the segment.
“Two of the things in the email include: Can we make the protesters look more violent?” Pelley said. “Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing was Renée Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”
Pelley said the second request contradicted video evidence.
“I went over the video of the Renée Good killing over and over and over again. Stop motion. Slow motion. And realized the event was not as the president said and not the way Bari Weiss remembered it,” he said.
Pelley said Weiss could have been trying to give the Trump administration a fair shake, but ultimately, believed the requests were motivated by a political agenda.
“She could have been trying to be fair to the administration, except I felt that the story was abundantly fair to the administration and to the ICE officers and to the Border Patrol officers who were caught in that moment,” Pelley said. “We were being told to write a version of events that conflicted with the video account.”
A spokesperson for CBS News said in a statement that Weiss’ request had “no political motivation.”
“In an email, Bari made four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible. As is frequently the case in any newsroom that operates with collaboration, not everything she raised made it into the final piece,” the spokesperson said.
CBS News fires Pelley
Pelley’s comments come after CBS News fired him last week following a clash with Nick Bilton, the new “60 Minutes” executive producer Weiss appointed, and critical comments he made about Weiss.
Weiss told CBS News staffers that management attempted to engage with Pelley and “find a way back,” but “unfortunately, we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways. We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.”
Pelley, in a statement at the time, said Weiss “knows what she said is not true.”
Clashes with a new editor
The clash between Pelley and CBS News’ top brass began after its parent company — Paramount Skydance — acquired Weiss’ anti-establishment news site, The Free Press, in October 2025.
As part of the deal, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison appointed Weiss editor in chief of CBS’s newsroom. Her lack of television experience and a perceived political bias concerned some staffers.
Weiss began shaking up CBS News in the months that followed, including pulling a December segment about the Trump administration’s use of El Salvador’s CECOT prison from the air and telling staffers in January that layoffs weren’t off the table.
“60 Minutes” has undergone a major overhaul. Longtime correspondent Anderson Cooper left the show in May, while CBS News fired Pelley, correspondent Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich.
CBS News also didn’t renew its contract with Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who covered the Trump administration’s use of the Salvadoran prison.
The Paramount settlement
Although the fallout at “60 Minutes” has dominated recent headlines, the drama began long before.
President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against Paramount — CBS News’ parent company — in 2024, saying the outlet used “deceptive editing” in a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount initially fought the lawsuit but settled with Trump for $16 million in July 2025.
Ellison’s company, Skydance Media, merged with Paramount the following month.
In his interview on Sunday, Pelley described that settlement as a “bribe.”
“That lawsuit against 60 Minutes had caused a great deal of concern in ’60 Minutes.’ Paying the bribe broke our hearts,” he said. “No lawyer thought that was necessary.”
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