June 8, 2026
Pelley Spills Tea and Tears, Says CBS “Murdered” 60 Minutes Family
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RSS Feed Former veteran 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley gave his first interview since being fired by CBS last week. Pelley tells the New York Times what he says really happened leading up to that contentious Monday meeting one week ago today and why he chose to challenge his new boss in front of staff. Pelley also claims his firing was a complete shock and went down much differently than was relayed by CBS brass to staff the following day.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, the folks, It is a Monday, June eighth, and Scott Pelley says that CBS News is on fire. He is throwing all kinds of gasoline and matches and anything else he can throw on it on his way out, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:21
Speaker 2: He says, the place is on fire. Roach he I mean he.
00:00:24
Speaker 3: Lit the match.
00:00:26
Speaker 1: What I always say, don't don't burn bridges or don't burn the place down on your way out?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Who he is? He's on fire?
00:00:32
Speaker 4: Yes, and yes he's done more than burn a bridge. I feel like, look the reason why this is so remarkable, This Scott Pelly interview that he has given to The New York Times just after being fired. You don't see this, you don't read this, You don't hear about this because either someone knows that they might need one of those bridges to get back into their career. So you usually don't see this because people would like to work again number one. Number two, people usually save it for the book they're writing or some screenplay they're selling. But rarely do you see somebody just tell the unvarnished version of events within days of being fired in a very public way.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: You just listed the very reasons why nobody has heard anything from us yet about what really happens on.
00:01:22
Speaker 4: The set exactly, or what really happened while we were being let go.
00:01:29
Speaker 3: There are so many stories.
00:01:31
Speaker 1: Us to tell you what George really does in commercial breaks, you like us to hear what Robin roberts the noises coming out of her dressing room. Sometimes we can say anything, right, I'm saying, you're looking at me like I was about to drop.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: Where are you going with this?
00:01:47
Speaker 4: The notes we exchanged, Oh my goodness, There are so many stories.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: But the point is we all know better. This is not done.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Even if you're upset, how pissed you are, you do burn the place down on the way out robes. It's clear at sixty what sixty eight, sixty nine he has made his money.
00:02:07
Speaker 2: He's about to say what he wants to say.
00:02:09
Speaker 4: And I also think that this is deliberate in the sense that he wants the building to burn down. He thinks what they're doing to this beloved show in broadcast and network is what's tearing it down, and he wants to maybe maybe he thinks he's throwing water on it by showing everybody how it's burning, maybe he can stop it from burning to the ground.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: Okay, well he is Robes. He's been talking since he got fired. Yes, he has talking, got him fired, and he has not stopped. Everybody familiar with the story by now. Scott Pelly, long time at CBS News in a particular sixty minutes, long time correspondent, fired recently after a confrontation with the new guy, Nick Bilton, the executive producer. This was days after several other people where let go. He called it a bloody Thursday, the first firing of two correspondents. The executive producer. All this is going on. He has been talking Robe since he left, but he hasn't said this much, and he has giving a long sit down to The New York Times Robes some of the things in here. CBS has to and has been answering because he is making direct accusations that go at the heart of journalism.
00:03:25
Speaker 4: Direct accusations, and he gets specific about who's to blame, what they did, what they said, and when he says they did all of the above. So he doesn't just speak in generics or he's not being coy or just dropping little nuggets. He is laying it all out in this interview. And a reminder, this meeting, this contentious meeting, was exactly one week ago today. It was a Monday morning staff meeting. Everyone meet Nick Bilton. And it was the next day, on Tuesday, that Scott Pelley was fired. So this article has come out just within days of his firing.
00:04:02
Speaker 3: He hasn't even let the dust settle.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. And he wants to sit down, he wants to talk. Okay, go ahead, take advantage while he is talking.
00:04:10
Speaker 3: We're listening.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: His contract situation was, what he was fired for. Cause, yes, right, so this is not a money situation. He's about to go to a battle with roads. He looks like he is settled in for a public fight and not a courtroom fight with CBS. He is trying to take this at least the new leadership. It sounds like that, here's the deal.
00:04:33
Speaker 4: You are dealing with a veteran investigative journalist who has been in war zones, who has been fired at, who has, as he puts in this puts it out in this article, has risked his life and limb for CBS News. And so yeah, I think he feels he's earned the right and maybe even has the duty to expose what he says is happening behind the scenes, behind closed doors in CBS.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: So we're going to go through some of it here, some of the things that certainly jumped out at us bro I'll start here at the top. A lot of people thought it was why he explained this, but so much of what got headlines after that meeting, that contentious meeting, was that he said that Barry Weiss was murdering sixty minutes, was murdering the show, and some looked at that.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: And thought, huh, that's a little strong. He stood by that.
00:05:22
Speaker 4: Yes, he not only did he stand by it, he explained it, and it actually almost made what he said even harsher. He said, 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. He talks about the fact that when Barry Weiss didn't show up at that meeting with Nick Bilton, that his jaw dropped. The rest of the staff's jaws dropped because they expected, of course, she's going to be there. To explain the firings, to explain her hiring.
00:06:01
Speaker 3: She, of course is.
00:06:02
Speaker 4: The one who made all of these decisions. Why wouldn't she be at that particular sixty minute staff meeting.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gave a lot more insight into that meeting, which is sounding even more extraordinary than we understood previously. I take issue, or at least I was curious if throughout this I wondered why Scott Pelly he should have acknowledged or reached out to the bosses or at least accepted their.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: Calls before.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: That meeting where he was supposed to be introduced. He explained that as well. I wonder what you thought about this explanation that he did give. He said, I thought I'd give it a day. I was too emotional, he said, I'm going to say the wrong thing. I'm not going to hear what they have to say. This isn't the moment. So we got through the weekend and I learned that Nick Bilton was going to speak to the sixty minute staff the next Monday morning. Does that like he's almost ignoring his bosses for the weekend because he was going through something. He said, he was emotional thought he would say the wrong thing.
00:07:03
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:07:04
Speaker 4: Did he just not respond to them, Did he at least maybe send them a note saying, Hey, we do need to talk, but I need to let my emotions calm right now. As you can imagine, I'm quite upset about losing all of the senior members of our staff, including two incredible journalists, and so I'm still reeling from that. If you would just give me a moment, I need a pause, we can speak better or more. I can speak more clear headed when I've had a moment to breathe. I mean, if he just maybe gave that explanation, I don't know that he did. He certainly didn't act as though he did. It sounded to me, the way I read it, he just ignored texts and phone calls from his bosses.
00:07:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like grovees he did. It sounded like he didn't even respond to them. The way the question did get asked him in this interview was that they said they tried to get in touch with you to talk about the changes before the first day, and you didn't speak to them.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: Why not, Okay, And he.
00:08:00
Speaker 1: Goes into it, so, Yeah, it sounds as if like he couldn't say a word because he thought he was going to say something.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: Okay, but that's interesting. So that's the weekend.
00:08:09
Speaker 4: He finds out about this Monday morning meeting and he thinks, oh, I'm so hot right now. I can't trust myself on a phone or on a text, but I'll trust myself face to face with this person in twenty four hours. I'm wondering what made him think he'd be calmer or more level headed with just a day, you know.
00:08:27
Speaker 1: To that point as well, he did go, and he explained to us a little further how that meeting kind of came about how he ended up in their Rhodes because he was supposed to be on vacation.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. He wasn't even supposed to be there.
00:08:42
Speaker 4: He was supposed to be on a beautiful hike in the Canadian Rockies, I believe, with his wife. And he said he sat down with his wife and said, I think I need to be there tomorrow and she agreed, and I thought it was interesting. He said he was the only correspondent there because it's June. And I guess I'm not sure how sixteen minutes does their shooting schedule, but it sounded like it's crunch time, and so a lot of folks were out doing their jobs.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: And we fired the others recently.
00:09:08
Speaker 4: Correct, there aren't a lot to go around now with just oh, I guess at that point there were four of them.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So folks were shooting. Folks were out, and he did. He was the senior person. He said in the room. So robes, this I cannot I almost don't even I would love for CBS to tell to answer this, but they say, Nick built and everybody, Yes, the new guy who's coming in, who has no television broadcast experience, who has been now just heaped them on these folks.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: This is your new boss.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: He gets up in front of them, robes, he's about to speak to them for the first time, and is this true?
00:09:43
Speaker 2: Is this possible that he did this in front.
00:09:46
Speaker 4: Of Scott Pelly told The New York Times that Nick Bilton, making a first impression again with sixty minute staffers, pulls out a phone and starts reading a statement. We can read exactly what Scott Pelly told The New York Times. He said, Nick makes his way to the front of the room and does something absolutely jaw dropping to me. He pulls out his phone and begins reading a statement off his phone in a room full of fifty heartbroken people. The callousness, the tone deafness of that, you could hear the groan in the room. They put out a big spread of bagels, like we were all going to feel better.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: That is stunning, That's incredible. I mean, I've never how is that possible?
00:10:32
Speaker 4: Tone deaf, tone, death, but never having walked into Look, I know he had been a columnist for the New York Times. I know he had done some documentarian work, some successful documentarian work. Don't mean to diminish that, But you and I had been in newsrooms for almost three decades. There has never been a newsroom that I have walked into, whether it was a local station in Charleston, South Carolina, to Washington, d C.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: To MSNBC.
00:10:58
Speaker 4: These rooms are filled with brilliant, smart, curious folks who can and always usually will speak their mind.
00:11:08
Speaker 3: This is a very particular group of people.
00:11:12
Speaker 4: And if you have not been around a newsroom and now you're at like the highest level with the most highly trained journalists and they're going to expect something from you, I find it shocking that he didn't have any recognition about how he would be received perceived and how what he chose to do, if it's true, might have been almost as bad as spitting in all of their faces.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: Road, What do you have to read? What he pulls out his phone, reading a statement off his phone, roads, I don't.
00:11:53
Speaker 3: Understand seem so disingenuous.
00:11:55
Speaker 2: Wait, this is where they're all just saying hi to each other for the first time? Is that right?
00:11:58
Speaker 3: This is according to Scott Pelly.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Yes, I would love an explanation because this right now is one sided and confusing, because I want to take him at his word, but I can't make sense of what we're talking about here. Ropes, you don't go and there's no start with just eye contact. Yes, you have to do that pull This is stunning.
00:12:18
Speaker 4: And it sets a tone like really, this guy, this guy is the guy who's going to be leading us, who can't even look us in the eye and talk to us like human beings and have a real conversation, maybe even discuss the elephant in the room.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: So him giving these details helps with the context. I didn't know initially. He's the senior person. He's probably the only one who could speak up. I didn't know about the groans I didn't know even the setup. It's about fifty people in the room, he said, many of folks were kind of standing around, is how it was set up in ropes.
00:12:48
Speaker 2: He starts with that.
00:12:50
Speaker 4: And so you can actually imagine and understand to a point his blood boiling on behalf of his fellow coworkers and those who had been fired. Hearing this guy start out like that, and watching him, you can and he was already upset, was already trying to maintain composure or maintain composure, and then he comes in reading off his phone. You can see how that might have just been the final straw.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: You know, I, initially when we heard what happened in the room, say yes, based on this readout, I know there was a recording, so we knew what was said.
00:13:24
Speaker 4: He didn't know it was being recorded, though he did make that point clear he was not intending for this to become some big public display. Certainly didn't expect an audio transcript of what happened to be released.
00:13:36
Speaker 1: So I say that to say we know what happened, so we actually do have a full readout robes. Initially, when this story came out, I said, that is a firebule offense. You know what, that's a fireable offense. But he shouldn't be fired now, Robes, I go a little less in that direction of it being a fire ru bowle of fence, babe, maybe a suspendable offense. But Robes, if for no one to recognize that maybe this staff, this guy, this family that we are now just coming in on, they just look like for nobody to give a damn about maybe what a human being was going through. Can we have a human moment first? Yes, this is sad as shit. Now, this he should not have been fired. This could have been handled, Robes, if you just the adult in the room, the leader has to understand, Okay, my new person is upset and really really pissed, and it's my job not to match that emotion or react anyway, and let them have this one. And I'm gonna give a little pass on the behavior. Because of the forty years and because of the past.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: Robes, this now, I don't think he should have been fired.
00:14:54
Speaker 1: Now.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a viable offense.
00:14:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, because there was I think what upset and I don't think it Pelis would have set him and so many others. Was that there was no explanation for the firing, There was no acknowledgment, there was no understanding of what that did to this family. And he talked about how these are people who, over decades and decades, have been literally in fox holes together.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: They've been in the trenches, they have been fired at together.
00:15:18
Speaker 4: He even credited the former executive producer as saving his life when they were overseas. These are people who spend countless hours together in highly stressful situations, and then you just rip the family apart and start reading off your phone.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: And yes, he blew up.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: He did, And sometimes you gotta give a family member of pass.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: No, he was.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Disrespectful, it was awful. It was awful to do it in front of folks. But he also made the point throughout the article at times, Rhodes, I didn't do it in front of people or the public. I did it in front of our family in a closed meeting.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: This was just us. There was some justification I think could be there and maybe not this. You got it.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: I give him a full pass, now, man, you got context is important. Your new boss. You just lost three people you have gone to war with and you.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: Pulled six I think total were fired.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh yeah, I forgot the exactly yes, everybody has gone.
00:16:22
Speaker 4: Six people were fired, four of the senior staff, and then two including the executive ducer, and then two correspondents. And I thought it was so fascinating to hear from him, because I would have thought had I done something like that. Granted, I was never in Scott Pelly's situation in terms of where he was and who he meant and what he meant to that show. But he said he didn't think for one second what he was doing was going to get him fired. He said it was the furthest thing from his mind that he was going to be fired. He said it hadn't occurred to me. The president of CBS News, Tom Sabowski, who we know well, sent me a note and said, can you come by and talk to us? And I said absolutely. I scheduled about an hour on my calendar for the meeting. I didn't know who was going to be there. So he's walking into this meeting the next day on Tuesday, and he says to The New York Times he had no idea, no thought that he might.
00:17:16
Speaker 1: Be fired, probably probably because he was meeting with Tom Sebroski and Tom Lebrowski is not the guy who usually does the firing. No, now we say that from experience that we laugh a little. But he was always, as you say, good cop.
00:17:29
Speaker 3: He was the good cop.
00:17:30
Speaker 4: Always like, look, we have been and called into several meetings and certainly have had some tough executive meetings.
00:17:37
Speaker 3: I think anyone who's been in.
00:17:39
Speaker 4: Broadcast news, certainly at the network level, has probably been in one of those meetings. And Tom Sabrowski was the friendly face. He was the guy who I might even text beforehand and say, what's actually going on, what's happening, give me a heads up, And we've actually even texted back and forth. So yeah, he was the guy who you thought was on your side from a talent perspective walking into a meeting. He was the guy that I figured or assumed and always believed was in my corner.
00:18:04
Speaker 1: So this was according to Scott Pelly, his experience. He walked into this meeting and how was it? He said, quote hostile, dismissive. Before I can take my ce Tom Zabrowski said, this is a firing offense. So I sit down, like, okay, let's talk about it. Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: This is a lie.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: I didn't come within ten feet of Nick Bilton in my life. I have never put my hands on anyone in danger, in anger, excuse me, in anger. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, okay, I take that back, and I said, great, huh what huh?
00:18:39
Speaker 4: I'm confused because I thought, wait, he is claiming that Sabrowski is accusing him of physically assaulting Nick Bolton, which Nick Bilton, which would have been weird because obviously there were forty nine or fifty other folks in the room. So I mean, maybe he meant it felt like a physical was sold because it was an emotional ambush.
00:19:02
Speaker 3: I mean, clearly you could describe it.
00:19:03
Speaker 4: As a verbal ambush or a verbal abuse, you could possibly say that, but physical that seemed bizarre.
00:19:11
Speaker 1: So then they just say, yeah, okay, you got me all good and move on. That was a bizarre telling of that story. Continuing on here now it gets to the point which a lot of people think is happening over there behind the scenes, and some people who have left the place have done this as well said publicly that CBS there is some bias seeping in and under the new boss, Barry Weiss, they are being encouraged robes to in some of their words, do some of the presidents or the White Houses, if not bidding, at least messaging.
00:19:46
Speaker 4: Yes, I was gonna say bidding, but messaging might be a better way to put it. And yes, he even talked about a specific instance with The New York Times where he claims it put the entire jeopardy of the show getting on air because she wanted to include or for them to find images of the protesters looking more violent. And he went into a long explanation how he spent hours because he did believe it was important to show what the protesters had done, not that they deserved their fate, certainly, but just to show that there was another side to it. There were visuals of protesters behaving violently, and he said he felt very comfortable with what they had found, that they had scoured hours of video to try and find what they put in there, and so he just said basically, at the end of the day, he made the decision to not make any changes, and he wasn't he wasn't punished in any way for it, but he said that it came within nineteen minutes I believe of not airing. And this was the night I believe leading into the Grammys. So this was a huge night for sixty Minutes. And he was just a gast that someone who was in charge of CBS would actually be willing to put the show in jeopardy to try and skew what was real.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: As he put it, the bigger problem problem, frankly, is not any kind of political influence. The problem was the incompetence. You don't break a deadline. That episode came within nineteen minutes of not making it to the air, the entire hour of sixty Minutes. It was the night of the Grammy. Sixty Minutes was the lead ind to the Grammys, and we almost didn't have a broadcast. I pledged to myself that no matter what Barry Weiss wanted to do in a story, I would never break the deadline again. Because we put the entire network in jeopardy. I wonder if some higher ups are going to listen to that.
00:21:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, because then he goes on to add this, and I think this is the big issue he is taking with Barry Weiss and perhaps with Nick Bilton. I think inexperience is the larger part of the problem. The most difficult thing for the staff is trying to make up for all of these missteps in terms of our production and the technical aspects of television. It's been enormously stressful. I hadn't heard that before, Gruh.
00:21:50
Speaker 1: So you can only imagine. Look, you're actually making our jobs harder. And our jobs are hard, you're making them harder, is what she said. At what he said, This is what how he put it. My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration. Now, even though Rosey talks about the incompetence there, he absolutely said that he feels some influence. Was absolutely that he was or she was pushing for things that you might see the White House push for. He continued, saying, constantly looking out for the views of the president. We're reporting those views. There's nothing wrong with reporting these views. But it was never enough. So he gave a little example some of it. It sounded like maybe a difference of opinion and some pushbacks. He didn't have necessarily a smoking gun of a story, necessarily, he told in here he didn't.
00:22:38
Speaker 4: He had just her pushing for more images of violence from protesters at the expense of even potentially getting the show on the air. And if it weren't for his decision to ignore it, it wouldn't have the entire show would have I guess not aired.
00:22:53
Speaker 3: Don't know how that would have worked.
00:22:55
Speaker 1: That's wild to think that something as important as the Grammys to that network was that and Jeopardy. Does anybody behind the scenes know that? Is he exposing some real Oh he used the word in confidence.
00:23:06
Speaker 4: But questioning that she cared more about what the president would think, rather than if the show makes the air at all.
00:23:12
Speaker 1: We shall see. We'll stay here, folks, We will let you hear the excerpt and hear what led up to him saying that CBS News is on fire.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: Stay here.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ as we debates we.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Should take the Scott Pelly route, right.
00:23:37
Speaker 1: If we don't want to get back into broadcast television anyway, we might as well go ahead and do that.
00:23:42
Speaker 3: Tell shorged Earth. I've thought about it.
00:23:45
Speaker 4: People have definitely walked up to us both and said you should write a book, oh man, And look, we could and it would be a bestseller.
00:23:52
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
00:23:52
Speaker 4: Garn teed, but we would also be guaranteeing that we would never ever ever work again in broadcasting. Maybe that's what's going to happen anyway.
00:24:06
Speaker 2: Well, broadcast television, television.
00:24:09
Speaker 4: You're right, that's true. There's a nuance there. Now we've got all sorts of other options, which is incredible, Which might, you know, open up a lane for us to write that book. I've actually said before though just not even ABC, but take NBC, take all the other experiences, if you truly wrote an honest version of what you've experienced in broadcast news anyone who's watched the Morning Show because people always ask me, is it really like that?
00:24:33
Speaker 3: And my answer is it's worse.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: I haven't watched morning shows.
00:24:36
Speaker 4: It's more we should watch it together because I want to get your take on it. I would say, as salacious as it is, it's even more silacious in real life. The things we've seen, the things we've read, the experiences I have found myself in are I don't think something that most people would actually believe it's truth is stranger than fiction. And that has actually been my experience in network.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: Could we'd never be able to tell the story even in just the names have been changed to protect the end.
00:25:05
Speaker 4: I think when we're eighty, we could just drop the ball. I thought about, Yeah, who cares. It's not about money, it's not about fame. It's just about telling the truth. People would be shocked.
00:25:15
Speaker 2: People don't need to hear some of that.
00:25:17
Speaker 3: Maybe not Okay, do you know you want to?
00:25:20
Speaker 2: God, Pelly, he is speaking his truth.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: At least, look well, it's part of the reason of the justification for so much that's going on over there at CBS News sixty minutes say hey, it's.
00:25:29
Speaker 2: A new day, it's a new age.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: You've got to move you all and get some younger audience, move you to a more digital space.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: And he kind of took issue with that.
00:25:38
Speaker 4: Yes, he said, it's almost as if Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in nineteen ninety and it just cracked open. They've just discovered the Internet and they're running around telling everybody how important it is.
00:25:51
Speaker 3: At CBS News, Yeah, join the fight.
00:25:54
Speaker 4: We started our first sixty minutes online show, sixty Minutes Overtime in twenty teno TikTok Verticals or I used to shoot TikTok verticals on every assignment, we're there, we're everywhere. It's offensive to them, to them to suddenly hear younger folk who haven't been in broadcast news come and explained to broadcast news veterans that the Internet's a big thing. Now, I mean, come on, that is offensive.
00:26:20
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't just saying the Internet, like using the digital aids and streaming and coming along, is more to it than just hey, the Internet. But I thought his answer was funny.
00:26:30
Speaker 4: It was funny, yes, And look he goes on to speak just about like their level of experience, and that is a major major issue, and he went for it.
00:26:40
Speaker 3: I mean, he went for the juggular and how he described them.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: But this is how he closed out this interview, at least how the interviewer closed to wrap it up here said we need adult supervision, and at the moment we don't have it. We have people who've been installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no experience in television. I don't know what they're doing. And there's a subtle political bias that I've never seen in sixty minutes before or at CBS News before. So that is my hope, a return to sanity. We can say this, it's possible to land this plane. But right now CBS is on fire.
00:27:21
Speaker 3: Again. He lit the match and he threw it.
00:27:24
Speaker 4: I mean, you tell the world that the people who are in charge of not only your show, but of all of CBS News, they don't know what they're doing.
00:27:36
Speaker 2: Biased and incompetent.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: So why would I watch CBS News Exactly watch because I know his voice. I like his voice, and now he's telling me I should question everything that's coming out of there because they are biased and incompetent. I don't even know if sixty Minutes will air on Sunday, not because they pull it off the air, but they might not make Deadline.
00:27:55
Speaker 2: Who I mean, what's going on over there?
00:27:57
Speaker 4: I wonder what the ratings will be like this Sunday. I mean, I didn't see what they were yesterday. We should check that out because look, I would imagine more eyes initially might be on the program to see how is it that they're pulling this off now without any of well, with everything being upended the way it is, and certainly this we know what it's like behind the scenes and newsrooms when there's new management, when certain people get fired We've seen people have major layoffs, but I've never experienced anything like what's going on over there, And I can only imagine how demoralized most folks must feel.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: And of course it's a small industry. We know plenty of folks in and out of that building, so we're rooting for them. And I'm rooting for CBS News. Not a matter of very wife leaving or whatever it may be. I just want you know the industry is struggling, losing viewers, all these things. You don't need this at a big place.
00:28:50
Speaker 4: Like we love broadcast news. We sacrificed our lives to be a part of. It is something that we believed in that we love and we hate to see it dying or at least look, we understand things need to evolve and change, but this isn't how anybody wants to see it happen. What did you think of Scott Pelley's Instagram post?
00:29:06
Speaker 2: Uh?
00:29:07
Speaker 4: Kind of like a little thank you maybe to fans who've been supporting him.
00:29:13
Speaker 1: It was a that was one of those things, right, This is why you need editors Like come on, bro, I get why he's getting. He can post what he wants. That's the life he's living, but it given the moment to given the conversation, it seemed tonally off.
00:29:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is interesting. He called Nick Bilton tone deaf. I think a lot of people might might reference his Instagram post is perhaps the same. He is seen on his boat. He is steering his own ship, maybe anchors away. Maybe he was going for some little cute double entendres. But yes, he's anchoring or captaining a boat with an American flag waving behind him.
00:29:54
Speaker 1: That's a that's a it's a sailboat.
00:29:57
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: Oh yes, Because of his caption to all of you who have been so kind, you are the wind in my sails, so deeply grateful.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: That's kind of funny.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: It's just a little cheesy there, we had it fine, but the picture you did he actually was at his word tone deaf on Nick bi.
00:30:16
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a little tone deaf.
00:30:18
Speaker 2: It's tone deaf.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: Just need a little bit of a heads up, Hey, everything going on talking about elite media, people calling you.
00:30:25
Speaker 2: A pompous ass and pull up yourself.
00:30:28
Speaker 4: You know, here I am on my sailboat, sailing away, laughing at all of you suckers while I cash in on my hefty retirement funds.
00:30:39
Speaker 3: Yes, I understand I.
00:30:39
Speaker 2: Would have pulled them to the side. But it's fine. It's not the end of the world.
00:30:43
Speaker 4: But yes, many people might be cheering him on. You go sail around the world. You've just you've earned it. Scott Pelly, this.
00:30:50
Speaker 1: Is one where I would love, completely off the record, drink with Barry Weiss. Really tell me what you think it is like I was at this moment, just honest moment. Tell me what you think about what he's been saying out there. I'd love to hear.
00:31:04
Speaker 4: Oh, just any CBS News executive in one of those meetings, how's that going for you? Oh, because they understand obviously what's happening in the world of PR right now and it's perhaps not on their side, but always interesting at least it has been recently over at CBS News. We always appreciate you listening to us over here at Amy and DJ. So with that, everyone, thank you for listening. I'm Amy, that's DJ. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, the folks, It is a Monday, June eighth, and Scott Pelley says that CBS News is on fire. He is throwing all kinds of gasoline and matches and anything else he can throw on it on his way out, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:21
Speaker 2: He says, the place is on fire. Roach he I mean he.
00:00:24
Speaker 3: Lit the match.
00:00:26
Speaker 1: What I always say, don't don't burn bridges or don't burn the place down on your way out?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Who he is? He's on fire?
00:00:32
Speaker 4: Yes, and yes he's done more than burn a bridge. I feel like, look the reason why this is so remarkable, This Scott Pelly interview that he has given to The New York Times just after being fired. You don't see this, you don't read this, You don't hear about this because either someone knows that they might need one of those bridges to get back into their career. So you usually don't see this because people would like to work again number one. Number two, people usually save it for the book they're writing or some screenplay they're selling. But rarely do you see somebody just tell the unvarnished version of events within days of being fired in a very public way.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: You just listed the very reasons why nobody has heard anything from us yet about what really happens on.
00:01:22
Speaker 4: The set exactly, or what really happened while we were being let go.
00:01:29
Speaker 3: There are so many stories.
00:01:31
Speaker 1: Us to tell you what George really does in commercial breaks, you like us to hear what Robin roberts the noises coming out of her dressing room. Sometimes we can say anything, right, I'm saying, you're looking at me like I was about to drop.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: Where are you going with this?
00:01:47
Speaker 4: The notes we exchanged, Oh my goodness, There are so many stories.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: But the point is we all know better. This is not done.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Even if you're upset, how pissed you are, you do burn the place down on the way out robes. It's clear at sixty what sixty eight, sixty nine he has made his money.
00:02:07
Speaker 2: He's about to say what he wants to say.
00:02:09
Speaker 4: And I also think that this is deliberate in the sense that he wants the building to burn down. He thinks what they're doing to this beloved show in broadcast and network is what's tearing it down, and he wants to maybe maybe he thinks he's throwing water on it by showing everybody how it's burning, maybe he can stop it from burning to the ground.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: Okay, well he is Robes. He's been talking since he got fired. Yes, he has talking, got him fired, and he has not stopped. Everybody familiar with the story by now. Scott Pelly, long time at CBS News in a particular sixty minutes, long time correspondent, fired recently after a confrontation with the new guy, Nick Bilton, the executive producer. This was days after several other people where let go. He called it a bloody Thursday, the first firing of two correspondents. The executive producer. All this is going on. He has been talking Robe since he left, but he hasn't said this much, and he has giving a long sit down to The New York Times Robes some of the things in here. CBS has to and has been answering because he is making direct accusations that go at the heart of journalism.
00:03:25
Speaker 4: Direct accusations, and he gets specific about who's to blame, what they did, what they said, and when he says they did all of the above. So he doesn't just speak in generics or he's not being coy or just dropping little nuggets. He is laying it all out in this interview. And a reminder, this meeting, this contentious meeting, was exactly one week ago today. It was a Monday morning staff meeting. Everyone meet Nick Bilton. And it was the next day, on Tuesday, that Scott Pelley was fired. So this article has come out just within days of his firing.
00:04:02
Speaker 3: He hasn't even let the dust settle.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. And he wants to sit down, he wants to talk. Okay, go ahead, take advantage while he is talking.
00:04:10
Speaker 3: We're listening.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: His contract situation was, what he was fired for. Cause, yes, right, so this is not a money situation. He's about to go to a battle with roads. He looks like he is settled in for a public fight and not a courtroom fight with CBS. He is trying to take this at least the new leadership. It sounds like that, here's the deal.
00:04:33
Speaker 4: You are dealing with a veteran investigative journalist who has been in war zones, who has been fired at, who has, as he puts in this puts it out in this article, has risked his life and limb for CBS News. And so yeah, I think he feels he's earned the right and maybe even has the duty to expose what he says is happening behind the scenes, behind closed doors in CBS.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: So we're going to go through some of it here, some of the things that certainly jumped out at us bro I'll start here at the top. A lot of people thought it was why he explained this, but so much of what got headlines after that meeting, that contentious meeting, was that he said that Barry Weiss was murdering sixty minutes, was murdering the show, and some looked at that.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: And thought, huh, that's a little strong. He stood by that.
00:05:22
Speaker 4: Yes, he not only did he stand by it, he explained it, and it actually almost made what he said even harsher. He said, 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. He talks about the fact that when Barry Weiss didn't show up at that meeting with Nick Bilton, that his jaw dropped. The rest of the staff's jaws dropped because they expected, of course, she's going to be there. To explain the firings, to explain her hiring.
00:06:01
Speaker 3: She, of course is.
00:06:02
Speaker 4: The one who made all of these decisions. Why wouldn't she be at that particular sixty minute staff meeting.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gave a lot more insight into that meeting, which is sounding even more extraordinary than we understood previously. I take issue, or at least I was curious if throughout this I wondered why Scott Pelly he should have acknowledged or reached out to the bosses or at least accepted their.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: Calls before.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: That meeting where he was supposed to be introduced. He explained that as well. I wonder what you thought about this explanation that he did give. He said, I thought I'd give it a day. I was too emotional, he said, I'm going to say the wrong thing. I'm not going to hear what they have to say. This isn't the moment. So we got through the weekend and I learned that Nick Bilton was going to speak to the sixty minute staff the next Monday morning. Does that like he's almost ignoring his bosses for the weekend because he was going through something. He said, he was emotional thought he would say the wrong thing.
00:07:03
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:07:04
Speaker 4: Did he just not respond to them, Did he at least maybe send them a note saying, Hey, we do need to talk, but I need to let my emotions calm right now. As you can imagine, I'm quite upset about losing all of the senior members of our staff, including two incredible journalists, and so I'm still reeling from that. If you would just give me a moment, I need a pause, we can speak better or more. I can speak more clear headed when I've had a moment to breathe. I mean, if he just maybe gave that explanation, I don't know that he did. He certainly didn't act as though he did. It sounded to me, the way I read it, he just ignored texts and phone calls from his bosses.
00:07:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like grovees he did. It sounded like he didn't even respond to them. The way the question did get asked him in this interview was that they said they tried to get in touch with you to talk about the changes before the first day, and you didn't speak to them.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: Why not, Okay, And he.
00:08:00
Speaker 1: Goes into it, so, Yeah, it sounds as if like he couldn't say a word because he thought he was going to say something.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: Okay, but that's interesting. So that's the weekend.
00:08:09
Speaker 4: He finds out about this Monday morning meeting and he thinks, oh, I'm so hot right now. I can't trust myself on a phone or on a text, but I'll trust myself face to face with this person in twenty four hours. I'm wondering what made him think he'd be calmer or more level headed with just a day, you know.
00:08:27
Speaker 1: To that point as well, he did go, and he explained to us a little further how that meeting kind of came about how he ended up in their Rhodes because he was supposed to be on vacation.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. He wasn't even supposed to be there.
00:08:42
Speaker 4: He was supposed to be on a beautiful hike in the Canadian Rockies, I believe, with his wife. And he said he sat down with his wife and said, I think I need to be there tomorrow and she agreed, and I thought it was interesting. He said he was the only correspondent there because it's June. And I guess I'm not sure how sixteen minutes does their shooting schedule, but it sounded like it's crunch time, and so a lot of folks were out doing their jobs.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: And we fired the others recently.
00:09:08
Speaker 4: Correct, there aren't a lot to go around now with just oh, I guess at that point there were four of them.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So folks were shooting. Folks were out, and he did. He was the senior person. He said in the room. So robes, this I cannot I almost don't even I would love for CBS to tell to answer this, but they say, Nick built and everybody, Yes, the new guy who's coming in, who has no television broadcast experience, who has been now just heaped them on these folks.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: This is your new boss.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: He gets up in front of them, robes, he's about to speak to them for the first time, and is this true?
00:09:43
Speaker 2: Is this possible that he did this in front.
00:09:46
Speaker 4: Of Scott Pelly told The New York Times that Nick Bilton, making a first impression again with sixty minute staffers, pulls out a phone and starts reading a statement. We can read exactly what Scott Pelly told The New York Times. He said, Nick makes his way to the front of the room and does something absolutely jaw dropping to me. He pulls out his phone and begins reading a statement off his phone in a room full of fifty heartbroken people. The callousness, the tone deafness of that, you could hear the groan in the room. They put out a big spread of bagels, like we were all going to feel better.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: That is stunning, That's incredible. I mean, I've never how is that possible?
00:10:32
Speaker 4: Tone deaf, tone, death, but never having walked into Look, I know he had been a columnist for the New York Times. I know he had done some documentarian work, some successful documentarian work. Don't mean to diminish that, But you and I had been in newsrooms for almost three decades. There has never been a newsroom that I have walked into, whether it was a local station in Charleston, South Carolina, to Washington, d C.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: To MSNBC.
00:10:58
Speaker 4: These rooms are filled with brilliant, smart, curious folks who can and always usually will speak their mind.
00:11:08
Speaker 3: This is a very particular group of people.
00:11:12
Speaker 4: And if you have not been around a newsroom and now you're at like the highest level with the most highly trained journalists and they're going to expect something from you, I find it shocking that he didn't have any recognition about how he would be received perceived and how what he chose to do, if it's true, might have been almost as bad as spitting in all of their faces.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: Road, What do you have to read? What he pulls out his phone, reading a statement off his phone, roads, I don't.
00:11:53
Speaker 3: Understand seem so disingenuous.
00:11:55
Speaker 2: Wait, this is where they're all just saying hi to each other for the first time? Is that right?
00:11:58
Speaker 3: This is according to Scott Pelly.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Yes, I would love an explanation because this right now is one sided and confusing, because I want to take him at his word, but I can't make sense of what we're talking about here. Ropes, you don't go and there's no start with just eye contact. Yes, you have to do that pull This is stunning.
00:12:18
Speaker 4: And it sets a tone like really, this guy, this guy is the guy who's going to be leading us, who can't even look us in the eye and talk to us like human beings and have a real conversation, maybe even discuss the elephant in the room.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: So him giving these details helps with the context. I didn't know initially. He's the senior person. He's probably the only one who could speak up. I didn't know about the groans I didn't know even the setup. It's about fifty people in the room, he said, many of folks were kind of standing around, is how it was set up in ropes.
00:12:48
Speaker 2: He starts with that.
00:12:50
Speaker 4: And so you can actually imagine and understand to a point his blood boiling on behalf of his fellow coworkers and those who had been fired. Hearing this guy start out like that, and watching him, you can and he was already upset, was already trying to maintain composure or maintain composure, and then he comes in reading off his phone. You can see how that might have just been the final straw.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: You know, I, initially when we heard what happened in the room, say yes, based on this readout, I know there was a recording, so we knew what was said.
00:13:24
Speaker 4: He didn't know it was being recorded, though he did make that point clear he was not intending for this to become some big public display. Certainly didn't expect an audio transcript of what happened to be released.
00:13:36
Speaker 1: So I say that to say we know what happened, so we actually do have a full readout robes. Initially, when this story came out, I said, that is a firebule offense. You know what, that's a fireable offense. But he shouldn't be fired now, Robes, I go a little less in that direction of it being a fire ru bowle of fence, babe, maybe a suspendable offense. But Robes, if for no one to recognize that maybe this staff, this guy, this family that we are now just coming in on, they just look like for nobody to give a damn about maybe what a human being was going through. Can we have a human moment first? Yes, this is sad as shit. Now, this he should not have been fired. This could have been handled, Robes, if you just the adult in the room, the leader has to understand, Okay, my new person is upset and really really pissed, and it's my job not to match that emotion or react anyway, and let them have this one. And I'm gonna give a little pass on the behavior. Because of the forty years and because of the past.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: Robes, this now, I don't think he should have been fired.
00:14:54
Speaker 1: Now.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a viable offense.
00:14:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, because there was I think what upset and I don't think it Pelis would have set him and so many others. Was that there was no explanation for the firing, There was no acknowledgment, there was no understanding of what that did to this family. And he talked about how these are people who, over decades and decades, have been literally in fox holes together.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: They've been in the trenches, they have been fired at together.
00:15:18
Speaker 4: He even credited the former executive producer as saving his life when they were overseas. These are people who spend countless hours together in highly stressful situations, and then you just rip the family apart and start reading off your phone.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: And yes, he blew up.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: He did, And sometimes you gotta give a family member of pass.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: No, he was.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: Disrespectful, it was awful. It was awful to do it in front of folks. But he also made the point throughout the article at times, Rhodes, I didn't do it in front of people or the public. I did it in front of our family in a closed meeting.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: This was just us. There was some justification I think could be there and maybe not this. You got it.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: I give him a full pass, now, man, you got context is important. Your new boss. You just lost three people you have gone to war with and you.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: Pulled six I think total were fired.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh yeah, I forgot the exactly yes, everybody has gone.
00:16:22
Speaker 4: Six people were fired, four of the senior staff, and then two including the executive ducer, and then two correspondents. And I thought it was so fascinating to hear from him, because I would have thought had I done something like that. Granted, I was never in Scott Pelly's situation in terms of where he was and who he meant and what he meant to that show. But he said he didn't think for one second what he was doing was going to get him fired. He said it was the furthest thing from his mind that he was going to be fired. He said it hadn't occurred to me. The president of CBS News, Tom Sabowski, who we know well, sent me a note and said, can you come by and talk to us? And I said absolutely. I scheduled about an hour on my calendar for the meeting. I didn't know who was going to be there. So he's walking into this meeting the next day on Tuesday, and he says to The New York Times he had no idea, no thought that he might.
00:17:16
Speaker 1: Be fired, probably probably because he was meeting with Tom Sebroski and Tom Lebrowski is not the guy who usually does the firing. No, now we say that from experience that we laugh a little. But he was always, as you say, good cop.
00:17:29
Speaker 3: He was the good cop.
00:17:30
Speaker 4: Always like, look, we have been and called into several meetings and certainly have had some tough executive meetings.
00:17:37
Speaker 3: I think anyone who's been in.
00:17:39
Speaker 4: Broadcast news, certainly at the network level, has probably been in one of those meetings. And Tom Sabrowski was the friendly face. He was the guy who I might even text beforehand and say, what's actually going on, what's happening, give me a heads up, And we've actually even texted back and forth. So yeah, he was the guy who you thought was on your side from a talent perspective walking into a meeting. He was the guy that I figured or assumed and always believed was in my corner.
00:18:04
Speaker 1: So this was according to Scott Pelly, his experience. He walked into this meeting and how was it? He said, quote hostile, dismissive. Before I can take my ce Tom Zabrowski said, this is a firing offense. So I sit down, like, okay, let's talk about it. Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: This is a lie.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: I didn't come within ten feet of Nick Bilton in my life. I have never put my hands on anyone in danger, in anger, excuse me, in anger. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, well, okay, I take that back, and I said, great, huh what huh?
00:18:39
Speaker 4: I'm confused because I thought, wait, he is claiming that Sabrowski is accusing him of physically assaulting Nick Bolton, which Nick Bilton, which would have been weird because obviously there were forty nine or fifty other folks in the room. So I mean, maybe he meant it felt like a physical was sold because it was an emotional ambush.
00:19:02
Speaker 3: I mean, clearly you could describe it.
00:19:03
Speaker 4: As a verbal ambush or a verbal abuse, you could possibly say that, but physical that seemed bizarre.
00:19:11
Speaker 1: So then they just say, yeah, okay, you got me all good and move on. That was a bizarre telling of that story. Continuing on here now it gets to the point which a lot of people think is happening over there behind the scenes, and some people who have left the place have done this as well said publicly that CBS there is some bias seeping in and under the new boss, Barry Weiss, they are being encouraged robes to in some of their words, do some of the presidents or the White Houses, if not bidding, at least messaging.
00:19:46
Speaker 4: Yes, I was gonna say bidding, but messaging might be a better way to put it. And yes, he even talked about a specific instance with The New York Times where he claims it put the entire jeopardy of the show getting on air because she wanted to include or for them to find images of the protesters looking more violent. And he went into a long explanation how he spent hours because he did believe it was important to show what the protesters had done, not that they deserved their fate, certainly, but just to show that there was another side to it. There were visuals of protesters behaving violently, and he said he felt very comfortable with what they had found, that they had scoured hours of video to try and find what they put in there, and so he just said basically, at the end of the day, he made the decision to not make any changes, and he wasn't he wasn't punished in any way for it, but he said that it came within nineteen minutes I believe of not airing. And this was the night I believe leading into the Grammys. So this was a huge night for sixty Minutes. And he was just a gast that someone who was in charge of CBS would actually be willing to put the show in jeopardy to try and skew what was real.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: As he put it, the bigger problem problem, frankly, is not any kind of political influence. The problem was the incompetence. You don't break a deadline. That episode came within nineteen minutes of not making it to the air, the entire hour of sixty Minutes. It was the night of the Grammy. Sixty Minutes was the lead ind to the Grammys, and we almost didn't have a broadcast. I pledged to myself that no matter what Barry Weiss wanted to do in a story, I would never break the deadline again. Because we put the entire network in jeopardy. I wonder if some higher ups are going to listen to that.
00:21:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, because then he goes on to add this, and I think this is the big issue he is taking with Barry Weiss and perhaps with Nick Bilton. I think inexperience is the larger part of the problem. The most difficult thing for the staff is trying to make up for all of these missteps in terms of our production and the technical aspects of television. It's been enormously stressful. I hadn't heard that before, Gruh.
00:21:50
Speaker 1: So you can only imagine. Look, you're actually making our jobs harder. And our jobs are hard, you're making them harder, is what she said. At what he said, This is what how he put it. My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration. Now, even though Rosey talks about the incompetence there, he absolutely said that he feels some influence. Was absolutely that he was or she was pushing for things that you might see the White House push for. He continued, saying, constantly looking out for the views of the president. We're reporting those views. There's nothing wrong with reporting these views. But it was never enough. So he gave a little example some of it. It sounded like maybe a difference of opinion and some pushbacks. He didn't have necessarily a smoking gun of a story, necessarily, he told in here he didn't.
00:22:38
Speaker 4: He had just her pushing for more images of violence from protesters at the expense of even potentially getting the show on the air. And if it weren't for his decision to ignore it, it wouldn't have the entire show would have I guess not aired.
00:22:53
Speaker 3: Don't know how that would have worked.
00:22:55
Speaker 1: That's wild to think that something as important as the Grammys to that network was that and Jeopardy. Does anybody behind the scenes know that? Is he exposing some real Oh he used the word in confidence.
00:23:06
Speaker 4: But questioning that she cared more about what the president would think, rather than if the show makes the air at all.
00:23:12
Speaker 1: We shall see. We'll stay here, folks, We will let you hear the excerpt and hear what led up to him saying that CBS News is on fire.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: Stay here.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ as we debates we.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Should take the Scott Pelly route, right.
00:23:37
Speaker 1: If we don't want to get back into broadcast television anyway, we might as well go ahead and do that.
00:23:42
Speaker 3: Tell shorged Earth. I've thought about it.
00:23:45
Speaker 4: People have definitely walked up to us both and said you should write a book, oh man, And look, we could and it would be a bestseller.
00:23:52
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
00:23:52
Speaker 4: Garn teed, but we would also be guaranteeing that we would never ever ever work again in broadcasting. Maybe that's what's going to happen anyway.
00:24:06
Speaker 2: Well, broadcast television, television.
00:24:09
Speaker 4: You're right, that's true. There's a nuance there. Now we've got all sorts of other options, which is incredible, Which might, you know, open up a lane for us to write that book. I've actually said before though just not even ABC, but take NBC, take all the other experiences, if you truly wrote an honest version of what you've experienced in broadcast news anyone who's watched the Morning Show because people always ask me, is it really like that?
00:24:33
Speaker 3: And my answer is it's worse.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: I haven't watched morning shows.
00:24:36
Speaker 4: It's more we should watch it together because I want to get your take on it. I would say, as salacious as it is, it's even more silacious in real life. The things we've seen, the things we've read, the experiences I have found myself in are I don't think something that most people would actually believe it's truth is stranger than fiction. And that has actually been my experience in network.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: Could we'd never be able to tell the story even in just the names have been changed to protect the end.
00:25:05
Speaker 4: I think when we're eighty, we could just drop the ball. I thought about, Yeah, who cares. It's not about money, it's not about fame. It's just about telling the truth. People would be shocked.
00:25:15
Speaker 2: People don't need to hear some of that.
00:25:17
Speaker 3: Maybe not Okay, do you know you want to?
00:25:20
Speaker 2: God, Pelly, he is speaking his truth.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: At least, look well, it's part of the reason of the justification for so much that's going on over there at CBS News sixty minutes say hey, it's.
00:25:29
Speaker 2: A new day, it's a new age.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: You've got to move you all and get some younger audience, move you to a more digital space.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: And he kind of took issue with that.
00:25:38
Speaker 4: Yes, he said, it's almost as if Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton were sealed in a time capsule in nineteen ninety and it just cracked open. They've just discovered the Internet and they're running around telling everybody how important it is.
00:25:51
Speaker 3: At CBS News, Yeah, join the fight.
00:25:54
Speaker 4: We started our first sixty minutes online show, sixty Minutes Overtime in twenty teno TikTok Verticals or I used to shoot TikTok verticals on every assignment, we're there, we're everywhere. It's offensive to them, to them to suddenly hear younger folk who haven't been in broadcast news come and explained to broadcast news veterans that the Internet's a big thing. Now, I mean, come on, that is offensive.
00:26:20
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't just saying the Internet, like using the digital aids and streaming and coming along, is more to it than just hey, the Internet. But I thought his answer was funny.
00:26:30
Speaker 4: It was funny, yes, And look he goes on to speak just about like their level of experience, and that is a major major issue, and he went for it.
00:26:40
Speaker 3: I mean, he went for the juggular and how he described them.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: But this is how he closed out this interview, at least how the interviewer closed to wrap it up here said we need adult supervision, and at the moment we don't have it. We have people who've been installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no experience in television. I don't know what they're doing. And there's a subtle political bias that I've never seen in sixty minutes before or at CBS News before. So that is my hope, a return to sanity. We can say this, it's possible to land this plane. But right now CBS is on fire.
00:27:21
Speaker 3: Again. He lit the match and he threw it.
00:27:24
Speaker 4: I mean, you tell the world that the people who are in charge of not only your show, but of all of CBS News, they don't know what they're doing.
00:27:36
Speaker 2: Biased and incompetent.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: So why would I watch CBS News Exactly watch because I know his voice. I like his voice, and now he's telling me I should question everything that's coming out of there because they are biased and incompetent. I don't even know if sixty Minutes will air on Sunday, not because they pull it off the air, but they might not make Deadline.
00:27:55
Speaker 2: Who I mean, what's going on over there?
00:27:57
Speaker 4: I wonder what the ratings will be like this Sunday. I mean, I didn't see what they were yesterday. We should check that out because look, I would imagine more eyes initially might be on the program to see how is it that they're pulling this off now without any of well, with everything being upended the way it is, and certainly this we know what it's like behind the scenes and newsrooms when there's new management, when certain people get fired We've seen people have major layoffs, but I've never experienced anything like what's going on over there, And I can only imagine how demoralized most folks must feel.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: And of course it's a small industry. We know plenty of folks in and out of that building, so we're rooting for them. And I'm rooting for CBS News. Not a matter of very wife leaving or whatever it may be. I just want you know the industry is struggling, losing viewers, all these things. You don't need this at a big place.
00:28:50
Speaker 4: Like we love broadcast news. We sacrificed our lives to be a part of. It is something that we believed in that we love and we hate to see it dying or at least look, we understand things need to evolve and change, but this isn't how anybody wants to see it happen. What did you think of Scott Pelley's Instagram post?
00:29:06
Speaker 2: Uh?
00:29:07
Speaker 4: Kind of like a little thank you maybe to fans who've been supporting him.
00:29:13
Speaker 1: It was a that was one of those things, right, This is why you need editors Like come on, bro, I get why he's getting. He can post what he wants. That's the life he's living, but it given the moment to given the conversation, it seemed tonally off.
00:29:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is interesting. He called Nick Bilton tone deaf. I think a lot of people might might reference his Instagram post is perhaps the same. He is seen on his boat. He is steering his own ship, maybe anchors away. Maybe he was going for some little cute double entendres. But yes, he's anchoring or captaining a boat with an American flag waving behind him.
00:29:54
Speaker 1: That's a that's a it's a sailboat.
00:29:57
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: Oh yes, Because of his caption to all of you who have been so kind, you are the wind in my sails, so deeply grateful.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: That's kind of funny.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: It's just a little cheesy there, we had it fine, but the picture you did he actually was at his word tone deaf on Nick bi.
00:30:16
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a little tone deaf.
00:30:18
Speaker 2: It's tone deaf.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: Just need a little bit of a heads up, Hey, everything going on talking about elite media, people calling you.
00:30:25
Speaker 2: A pompous ass and pull up yourself.
00:30:28
Speaker 4: You know, here I am on my sailboat, sailing away, laughing at all of you suckers while I cash in on my hefty retirement funds.
00:30:39
Speaker 3: Yes, I understand I.
00:30:39
Speaker 2: Would have pulled them to the side. But it's fine. It's not the end of the world.
00:30:43
Speaker 4: But yes, many people might be cheering him on. You go sail around the world. You've just you've earned it. Scott Pelly, this.
00:30:50
Speaker 1: Is one where I would love, completely off the record, drink with Barry Weiss. Really tell me what you think it is like I was at this moment, just honest moment. Tell me what you think about what he's been saying out there. I'd love to hear.
00:31:04
Speaker 4: Oh, just any CBS News executive in one of those meetings, how's that going for you? Oh, because they understand obviously what's happening in the world of PR right now and it's perhaps not on their side, but always interesting at least it has been recently over at CBS News. We always appreciate you listening to us over here at Amy and DJ. So with that, everyone, thank you for listening. I'm Amy, that's DJ. We'll talk to you soon.