Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley is blunt with the New York Times in a new interview.
“CBS News,” he says, “is in fire.”
Pelley was dismissed this week after 37 years with the network for speaking his mind against the new, Trump-tilted regime.
Several of his colleagues were fired before his confrontation with new executive producer Nick Bilton including executive producer Tanya Simon and fellow correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Here’s the link to the interview.
Pelley tells the Times that when he went into his final meeting with CBS News execs, Tom Cibrowski accused him of physically attacking Bilton at the prior, public dust up.
He says: “Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton. 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. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, OK, I take that back. And I said, great.”
Pelley says of the $16 million settlement the previous CBS regime reached with Donald Trump: “Paying the bribe broke our hearts.”
He says: “The very last thing that the previous ownership did was pay a multi-million-dollar bribe to the president to settle this frivolous, ridiculous lawsuit…No lawyer thought that was necessary, but they did it to get the sale [of Paramount CBS to David and Larry Ellison] through.”
