The Resistance’s Newest Retiree

By Abe Greenwald

Thursday, June 04, 2026

 

I oppose the firing of Scott Pelley from CBS News. But only because I have little doubt that he wanted very badly to be canned, and it would have been delicious were he denied this wish.

 

At a staff meeting on Monday, Pelley told 60 Minutes’ new executive producer, Nick Bilton, that CBS News’ new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”

 

He didn’t stop there. Pelley added: “She has no qualifications for her job; you [Bilton] have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?” At some point, Pelley asked his executive producer why he accepted the job “knowing that you will never be welcome here.”

 

When Bilton said, “I care so deeply about this institution,” Pelley said, “Oh, please.”

 

Pelley’s words don’t strike me as those of a man looking to keep his position. It seems, rather, that he was going for a take-this-job-and-shove-it speech absent the necessary courage to say, “I quit.” I don’t know the details of Pelley’s contract with the network, but quitting can be more costly than getting terminated. You might think of this as career-suicide-by-cop.

 

Only it’s not really career suicide for a well-known and wealthy television host to quit in a blaze of self-righteous glory. Like getting arrested these days, it opens doors. Bari, oddly, has become a stand-in for Donald Trump. That now makes Pelley the latest resistance hero, which is a more sought-after commodity than a generic anchor on a dying network show. He hasn’t gotten this much attention in his entire career. 

 

Which is why I wish Bilton and Bari had dashed his hopes by shrinking his professional role and keeping him on staff as a diminished malcontent.

 

Of course, that’s not the way to run a successful operation. And the whole point of bringing Bari onboard was to make CBS News successful. When someone speaks to his higher-up the way Pelley spoke to Bilton and insults his boss the way he insulted Bari, he has to be fired. Pelley put the network on notice, announcing that he’d be an uncooperative employee going forward. So Bari had no choice but to grant him his wish.

 

In truth, Pelley’s post-network career might not be as exciting as he may hope. As far as resistance figures go, he’s not poised to be in anyone’s starting lineup. Despite his fiery morning-meeting rant, Pelley is stiff and bland and fluent in the kind of liberal boilerplate commentary that’s all but lost its relevance today. He’s also almost 70. Come to think of it, maybe he wanted out not to leverage his hero status but because he recognized that the world had passed him by. Which puts him on the same page as the CBS News brass, after all.