Jimmy Kimmel is standing up for Scott Pelley after the longtime broadcast journalist was fired from “60 Minutes.”
Pelley was cut from the newsmagazine program after accusing newly appointed CBS News boss Bari Weiss of “murdering” the show and saying new executive producer Nick Bilton has “slender qualifications for this job.”
“Last night, the Trump suck-ups at CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at ‘60 Minutes,’” Kimmel said during his Wednesday night monologue, “because he stood up for truth and integrity at a show that’s been the gold standard for broadcast journalism for 57 years.”
Kimmel said Pelley “had enough” after the “clowns who now run that show and the CBS News division” fired his colleagues, including Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. “That was it for Scott Pelley,” Kimmel said. “He said the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. And he let him have it in a staff meeting right to the new guy’s face.” (Pelley’s tirade against new “60 Minutes” leadership was leaked to the press, and it resulted in a meeting the following day that led to his firing.)
“The president, of course, applauded this cowardly decision,” Kimmel added, quipping: “He said Scott Pelley is part of a gang of crooked stupid people — different from the gang of crooked stupid people he’s a part of.”
Pelley, who joined “60 Minutes” in 2004, was fired after telling Bilton he would “never be welcome” at the show, while questioning his qualifications in front of the editorial staff. After a meeting between Pelley and the program’s new leadership, CBS decided to terminate his employment “for cause.” Bilton wrote to Pelley in a letter obtained by the press, “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.”
In a call with CBS News employees on Wednesday, Weiss defended the firing and accused Pelley of breaking the staff’s foundation of “trust and mutual respect.”
Pelley then issued his own statement, claiming that “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified,” Pelley wrote. “To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.”
He continued, “The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”
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