MS NOW host Rachel Maddow is backing Scott Pelley, the veteran CBS News 60 Minutes anchor, after new executive producer Nick Bilton reportedly fired him. On her latest TV appearance, Maddow said she hopes Pelley ends up “right here,” pointing to MSNBC.
Rachel Maddow has high hopes Scott Pelley will wind up at MSNBC after being fired from 60 Minutes
Rachel Maddow said, “There’s nothing else going on at CBS News other than what we can see is happening at CBS News. And I don’t know where Scott Pelley will land. Frankly, I hope he lands right here. I hope he’s on TV tomorrow. I hope that everybody in journalism and everybody who values a free press figures out ways to outmaneuver the people who are trying to take the free press from us.”
On June 2, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss wrote a letter to Pelley. It read, “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.”
Pelley, who had been part of 60 Minutes since 2004, responded to the firing, as reported by Deadline, saying, “The new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration. The waste is heartbreaking.”
“For my part, 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. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done,” Pelley continued
He added, “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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