David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount, promised to respect the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” in a call with Lesley Stahl, one of the show’s correspondents, she told The New York Times on Tuesday.
The call to Ms. Stahl, made on Sunday, was one of the first signs that Mr. Ellison was personally taking steps to calm the turmoil at the news network after the firing of the show’s leadership and several of its star correspondents. The overhaul, overseen by Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, was met with a rebuke from Scott Pelley, a star correspondent at “60 Minutes” who has since been fired.
Ms. Stahl told the news program’s staff about Mr. Ellison’s call during a champagne toast she held at the “60 Minutes” offices in Midtown Manhattan on Monday in an attempt to shore up morale at the program.
She, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, the remaining stars of the program, had agonized about whether to stay in the aftermath of the staff changes and Mr. Pelley’s firing. But in a letter to the show’s staff Friday, they concluded that they had to remain at the show because they didn’t “want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.”
“My toast was, ‘to us,’ meaning the survivors,” Ms. Stahl said in a text message on Tuesday. “Maybe ‘us’ with a twinge of survivor’s guilt.”
Mr. Ellison’s takeover of Paramount last year raised questions about the kind of steward he would be for CBS News. Mr. Ellison has been friendly with President Trump as his company, Paramount, seeks federal sign-off on a $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. He has said he wants CBS News to appeal to what he describes as the 70 percent of Americans who consider themselves center-right or center-left.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Pelley also said that Ms. Weiss had put her “thumb on the scale” for Mr. Trump during the last season of “60 Minutes,” a charge the network has denied. That assertion echoed a complaint from Sharyn Alfonsi, another correspondent, who said Ms. Weiss’s editorial guidance on one of her stories was “political.”
Last week, scores of prominent journalists, including well-known veterans of CBS News, signed an open letter to Mr. Ellison, who took over Paramount’s CBS last year, asking him to commit to the show’s independence. He has not yet weighed in publicly.
Paramount had no immediate comment.
The tumult at “60 Minutes” has raised questions about the future of the program, which must forge ahead without many of its biggest stars or longest-tenured leaders.
Three of the show’s seven correspondents — Mr. Pelley, Ms. Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega — were fired; a fourth, Anderson Cooper, left. Nick Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker who is the show’s new executive producer, has no broadcast experience. And the firings have widened a rift between the leaders of CBS News and the staff at “60 Minutes,” who are used to operating with a high degree of independence from the network.
There are more pressing concerns, too: “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air reruns until the next season begins in September. The show typically has correspondents record new introductions to their segments to update anything that has become outdated. But many of the recent segments involved the correspondents who were recently fired.
One example is an interview with the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, conducted by Mr. Pelley, that was scheduled to air again alongside the premiere of “The Odyssey” this summer.
During Ms. Stahl’s toast on Monday, Mr. Wertheim also weighed in. He turned to Mr. Bilton and told him that he had been dealt “a hell of a hand,” noting that there were “bridges to build and fences to mend and assorted other structural metaphors,” according to two people familiar with his remarks.
“But there’s a path here,” he told Mr. Bilton.
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