The new top producer at “60 Minutes” is thanking staffers for their work after what he said was “a hell of a first week.”
“It has been a trying and difficult few days,” said Nick Bilton, who recently became the executive producer at “60 Minutes,” in a memo viewed by Business Insider.
Bilton was grilled by longtime correspondent Scott Pelley about his qualifications and those of his boss, CBS News top editor Bari Weiss. While both Bilton and Weiss worked at news organizations like The New York Times, neither had a background in TV news.
Pelley confronted Bilton on Monday during his inaugural all-hands meeting after CBS let go of “60 Minutes” correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Pelley also said Weiss was “murdering” the “60 Minutes” program, according to audio obtained by Status and The New York Times.
CBS then fired Pelley on Tuesday, with Bilton telling the network veteran his “antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear.”
Weiss told CBS News staffers in an editorial meeting Wednesday morning that the broadcast network “had to part ways” with Pelley, saying that she was “only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect.”
Bilton said in his Thursday memo that “the foundation of 60 Minutes is its journalistic independence” and said the new program “will always pursue stories without fear or favor.”
“It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: We will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on those stories,” Bilton wrote.
In statements following their exits, Pelley, Alfonsi, and Vega all described clashes with CBS News leadership over issues of editorial integrity and the network’s direction.
Critics of Weiss have said she is trying to make the network more politically palatable to President Donald Trump, whose administration will need to grant regulatory approval for CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery. Weiss and Paramount have broadly denied that the changes to CBS News were intended to curry favor with Trump. Weiss has framed the changes as necessary to overhaul the century-old news organization for the digital era.
Bilton also broke some news in his memo, naming Maria Gavrilovic as senior producer for “60 Minutes.”
Following the departures of Pelley, Alfonsi, and Vega — plus Anderson Cooper’s recent exit — only three full-time “60 Minutes” correspondents remain: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim.
In the memo, Bilton said that “Lesley, Bill and Jon are core to this show’s success.”
There has been widespread speculation in the media industry about whether the remaining correspondents will stick around.
Read Bilton’s full memo here:
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