https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/07/scott-pelley-bari-weiss-renee-good-report
Fired journalist accuses CBS News chief of interfering with report because it did not echo Trump’s view of the shooting
Scott Pelley was fired from CBS 60 Minutes last week. Photograph: Charles Sykes/AP
The fired 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley has accused editorial management at CBS of interfering with a broadcast segment on the killing of the Minneapolis protester Renee Good by an immigration officer in January.
The veteran broadcaster, who was recently dismissed from the show, said CBS News’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, had sent an email to his supervisor requesting changes shortly before the airing of the segment in question.
In an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, the 68-year-old Pelley accused Weiss of injecting “falsehoods and bias” into programming.
Pelley told the outlet: “Two of the things in the email include, ‘Can we make the protesters look more violent?’ Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”
Pelley maintained that was the direction contained in the email even though video of Good’s shooting did not support such a conclusion.
A CBS News spokesperson told the Times in response to Pelley’s statements that Weiss had made four points in an email exchange on the segment that had “no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible”.
“Not everything she raised made it into the final piece,” the statement added.
Pelley’s accusation comes amid turbulence at the flagship TV news show that has seen the 60 Minutes executive producer Tanya Simon replaced and several correspondents and producers leave over questions of editorial independence. Three of the show’s veterans – Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim – are staying on.
The newly installed executive producer, Nick Bilton, a former Vanity Fair journalist and film-maker, told staff in a memo that “the foundation of 60 Minutes is journalistic independence.
“We will always pursue stories without fear or favor.”
Pelley’s accusations to the Times followed a heated exchange at a meeting on Monday in which he accused Weiss of “murdering” the show. He was fired soon after.
In his latest salvo, Pelley said he was concerned that Weiss “had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News”. He also called her lack of TV news experience “red flags to me”.
Pelley also said that Bilton’s mission to modernize the 58-year-old show ignored changes that were already in play.
“Of course we have to reach out to a younger and younger audience, but their argument about joining the internet age is just disingenuous,” Pelley said. “It’s almost as if Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in 1990, and it just cracked open. They’ve just discovered the internet, and they’re running around telling everybody how important it is.”
Pelley’s accusations over the Minneapolis segment in part centered on what took place in the seconds before Good was shot by an immigration enforcement officer.
“On the video, you see the officer standing slightly off the front of the car,” Pelley told the Times. “You clearly see Ms Good’s wheels turned completely as far as they will go, away from the officer. But he shoots her in the head [and] kills her.”
Pelley also alluded to cellphone video from the officer’s vantage point that was publicly released and captured him calling Good a “fucking bitch”.
As Pelley put it, the officer said “something about her that I can’t repeat in polite company”.
Pelley said that 60 Minutes had “gone out of our way in our plan from the very beginning to show the protesters for the responsibility that they had … somehow that wasn’t enough for Ms Weiss”.
He added that video of the shooting showed that the officer wasn’t standing in front of the car and she wasn’t “driving toward him”. He argued that Weiss “wanted it described that way” because it echoed what Donald Trump said of the shooting in his capacity as president.
Asked to respond to Pelley’s claim that Weiss “was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the [Trump] administration”, CBS News said there was “no credible argument” to suggest she was doing that.
Scottie's Playtime 
this seems a bit scrambled, as to detail, but from the way I see it here, Im seeing Pelley has earned his
“early retirement”.
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I’ve little sympathy for him or any of them. There is so much more they could have been doing for years to keep people actually informed to make good decisions regarding our government, but they didn’t. They’ve been playing into Republican hands for decades, and now Republicans are showing yet more of themselves, and even people who treated them loyally are getting shafted once there is finally a line these reporters will not cross.
Now, if we the people watching this happen here are not getting the picture, yet, I just don’t know why it’s worth bothering to do more than making sure our families, friends, and neighbors are OK, and letting politics truly burn itself down.
I do not want politics to burn itself down. It would be the devil to get a good system again. I want to keep laws and good behavior and integrity and truthfulness (not truthiness!) and the things I’d always believed the USA stood for. But if people are going to continue to go for sensation over good hard information that they may not like, then we will not improve anything.
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Hi Ali. I spent last night and this morning writing four paragraphs replying to you adding my thoughts and ideas to your good ones. Only to have WordPress decide it couldn’t be posted because the tab had been open too long with out being refreshed. I will try again after I get home from my shots or maybe while doing the mandatory wait time if I can get WordPress to work on my old Ipad. Hugs
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Gotta love WordPress!
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Hi Ali. Sadly it is the only real game in town. I have tried a few others and find them more of a struggle than I can handle. So I have to pay their price and put up with their issues. Hugs
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Hi Ali. I feel the same way about the news anchors on right wing media that know they are lying and misinforming but they are doing it for the huge multimillion dollar salary / payout. I long for the old days of Walter Cronkite and news delivered with few additives, letting the viewer decide how to feel about the reported news. Now the people reporting and the anchors / hosts feel the need to tell the viewers how they should feel about the story by the way they describe and phrase it.
I remember when in the 1980s I was in the military and in Germany and I would listen to BBC news wishing the US news could be delivered the same way. They just said what happened, and not much more. No editorializing.
I guess the big change came when news departments at the major networks went from not having to make a profit but carried at a loss for the public good. Now news departments must make money and the only way to do that is to be the most sensational and outragous. I don’t like it.
I like to get my news from independent news providers who source where they got it such as Alison Gill who does the podcasts Daily Beans and Beans Talk. Plus I get a lot of news from both the Majority Report who puts on screen the clips and written material they are discussing along with the Pod Save America and Pod Save the World people. I have several other news YouTube channels and podcasts I listen to and I like how I can look up what they are saying to verify it. I also get some news from young guys like Adam Mockler and Parkergetajob who are young but very smart and understand politics. I think our political candidates need to spend more effort on those news providers than mainstream media. I beleive that fewer and fewer people are consuming mainstream media and more people increasingly get their information from smaller internet based providers.
As for your your idea of making sure those who won’t face reality and instead get all their information from what I call the media arm of the tRump political party formerly known as the republican party I agree they can not be reached and we should make sure they don’t get too far into the outrage machine and act badly on the lies / misinformation. Like you I don’t want to burn down our political system or a free and independent media, as I feel it is necessary for a democracy. As for democracy a large part of the problem is the SCOTUS who are taking bribes making taking bribes legal and letting unlimited money flow into candidates / issues by the very wealthy and corporations. That money from the upper incomes has caused the people making the laws and rules in elected office to disregard the needs, wants, and desires of the lower income people who are the majority of the public. To fix it I think we need progressive candidates that want to radically rein in the wealthy and return to a New Deal society for and of the people. IMO of course.
Oh sorry it got so long but I felt you really hit on some good points I wanted to share my thoughts on. Hugs
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Hi Judy. He did go off on his boss and disparaged his employers so they were well with in their rights to fire him. But to me the important part of this story is the fact that Bari Weiss was hired to change how stories were reported so they favored the tRump administration rather than showing them in a bad light. Larry Ellison and his son David are right wing billionaires who are hard maga supporters. Ellison made no doubt about his plans to reshape the network to be more like Fox and supportive of tRump. He is also trying to buy ABC and I have seen the way coverage of news is being delivered even before the sale if finial. For me the important part of this is the loss of the independent media which has long been thought of as the cornerstone of a democracy. The bias in news reporting now is open and makes it challenging to get the facts and just the facts. Hugs
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It’s a shame, when you think about something like this. We have spent years watching news programs and trusting people like Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley to give us straight stuff, no matter how it stung. And now someone is yanking the chains and suggesting that news anchors shade the news a bit in order to make the cops look good and the victims the guilty parties. At some point no one is going to believe anything, and rightfully so. They are almost the only link we have to what’s out there.
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Hi Judy. Your point on people not believing anything is the point tRump made during his first term when he was asked why he attacked the media so intensely and called everything he did not like or agree with fake news by stupid people. He responded he did it so when they report bad things about him or that he did wrong the public / his supporters won’t believe the media but instead double down on supporting him.
I do think as I explained to Ali there are other credible news sources now than the main stream media which seems to be controlled by the upper incomes to support the government and wealthy. I use podcasts and independent media that I can verify and fact check. I like to get my news from independent news providers who source where they got it such as Alison Gill who does the podcasts Daily Beans and Beans Talk. Plus I get a lot of news from both the Majority Report who puts on screen the clips and written material they are discussing along with the Pod Save America and Pod Save the World people. I have several other news YouTube channels and podcasts I listen to and I like how I can look up what they are saying to verify it. I also get some news from young guys like Adam Mockler and Parkergetajob who are young but very smart and understand politics. Hugs
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