Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley is taking aim at his old network again. He says CBS News lost its credibility when Paramount Skydance took over, and that a change of course now wouldn’t bring it back.
In an email Q&A with the Poynter Institute published this week, Pelley was asked whether CBS might change direction after Democrats’ midterm wins. He said that question misses the point because the network’s credibility is already gone. He argued that CBS management took editorial control away from journalists after Skydance’s takeover.
“To me, it’s not a question of which way the bias leans,” Pelley said. “It doesn’t matter which agenda is imposed; independence and credibility are lost.”
Pelley also had a warning for journalists at CNN, which Paramount Skydance took ownership of in October.
“They should watch for ownership reneging on its promise of independence,” he said.
Pelley spent 37 years at CBS News. He was fired in June after a heated staff meeting where he confronted Nick Bilton, the newly installed “60 Minutes” executive producer, and called CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss “unqualified.” Weiss was put in charge of the news division after David Ellison’s Skydance took over Paramount. Bilton accused Pelley of a “performative display of hostility” when he fired him.
Pelley has also accused management of pushing bias into a “60 Minutes” story about the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. CBS News rejected that account and said Weiss made “four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth.”
Not everyone accepts Pelley’s version of events. A CBS News insider disputed his latest claims to Mediaite and said Pelley could not give “one specific example that supports the allegations he’s making.” In June, a CBS News spokesperson called Pelley’s argument not credible and said there was no political interference at the network.
Pelley’s own past remarks complicate his story. As recently as December, he acknowledged that the network’s new owners had not tried to influence or kill any “60 Minutes” reports.
The fight goes back to President Trump’s lawsuit accusing “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing a 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount settled the suit for $16 million in July 2025, weeks before federal regulators approved the Skydance merger. Pelley has called the settlement a “bribe,” and Paramount has denied it.
Pelley now runs his own media company. “In my media company, I am able to lead my team with integrity and return to the values I was taught in nearly 40 years at CBS News,” he said.
Poynter is set to give Pelley its Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism on Saturday, marking his 50 years in the business.
CBS News, for its part, insists it is building a news operation fit for a changing media landscape, and says the critics who claim otherwise have yet to back their accusations with specifics.