Scott Pelley Is Ridiculous in All the Usual Ways

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

 

Is there a bigger chasm anywhere in American life than the one that separates the way in which mainstream journalists perceive themselves and the way in which mainstream journalists are perceived by everyone else?

 

Here’s Scott Pelley, formerly of CBS’s 60 Minutes, complaining about being fired for cause:

 

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”

 

Where to start? First off, if Pelley cared about his job that much, he probably shouldn’t have behaved as unprofessionally as he did when he met his new boss, Nick Bilton. As the Washington Post reports, “Pelley laid into Bilton during a Monday morning ‘60 Minutes’ meeting, when he questioned Bilton’s qualifications” in front of a host of other staff. During that meeting, Pelley also insisted that Bari Weiss, his other boss, “has no qualifications for her job,” and, later, when Bilton organized a private meeting, Pelley continued in the same vein. In his letter firing Pelley, Bilton wrote that Pelley had

 

rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. 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.

 

Which . . . well, yeah. There is simply no circumstance in which an employee can behave like this and expect to remain employed. A lot of journalists in this country seem to believe that they belong to an elect class to which the normal rules do not apply. They do not. Journalists are protected by the First Amendment, yes, but they are not more protected than anyone else, and nor do those protections afford them the right to behave like jerks in the workplace. CBS is a private company. It is not, at root, any different than Unilever or Ford or Home Depot. Scott Pelley attacked his boss in public and private. Scott Pelley was fired. Film at 11.

 

Perhaps Pelley believed that he was indispensable? Certainly, his rhetoric suggests as much. But that rhetoric is ridiculous, isn’t it? “I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” he claimed yesterday. “I have been in combat in Iraq”!

 

Oh come on. We all know what those words imply, and what they imply is untrue. If I were to tell people that I’d been “in combat” in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’d know full well what I was conveying, and I’d expect to be mocked — or worse — in return. Pelley has visited Iraq and Afghanistan. He may even have been in danger in those places. But he was not “in combat.”

 

This is not pedantry. As a man of words, Pelley ought to be aware of how he sounds. And, no doubt, he is. In recent years, quite a lot of journalists have taken to portraying themselves in this manner — as firefighters or resistance fighters or soldiers for a noble cause. In almost every case — almost; there are a few exceptions — this is preposterous. Scott Pelley is a TV announcer. He works in an office, and, occasionally, in a studio. His description of his visits to Ukraine is a little less delusional — “I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast” — but it’s still silly, insofar as it suggests that we should all be grateful to him for his service. 60 Minutes is . . . fine. But Pelley is hardly Ernie Pyle. He provided light-to-medium entertainment, to be consumed by accident between the afternoon NFL games and Sunday Night Football, and he was paid $7 million a year for it. Thanks?

 

One must also wonder what the “therefore” is supposed to be in that sentence: “I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast” . . . therefore I am allowed to berate my boss in front of my colleagues and face no consequences? What, precisely, is Pelley’s claim? He made his decision. Now he must deal with the fallout.