Rod Kuckro

I connect the dots writing about the people and politics driving transformation of the electric utility industry. Facts matter. Retweets ≠ endorsements.

[Dylan Byers @DylanByers]

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, 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.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

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. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

CBS news

[Maura DragonHeart 🍀🇺🇸🇮🇪🇮🇹 🌛🌝🌜💙 @maura_resister]

🤣🤣🤣

[PaulleyTicks @PaulleyTicks]

In honor of the true heroes on this Memorial Day, I fixed it.

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

News: Pope Leo XIV's profound new encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," centers human dignity in an era of artificial intelligence, provides a masterclass in Catholic social teaching, and warns against the dangers of not only AI, but economies that are not "inclusive." 5 takeaways.

[The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow]

https://t.co/qXCzDy2jeB

[Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ @RepDonBacon]

.@GeorgeWill: Don Bacon is going home to Omaha. His departure illustrates a conundrum inside a paradox: Those you wish would leave Congress linger. And those you wish would stay depart because of traits that make them worthy legislators: seriousness and spines.
https://t.co/oXxfigw1fA

[💙🇵🇷Deanna🇺🇦💙 @DemDeanna]

Please retweet, FAM!! 🤣

[Josiah Hawthorne @JosiahHawthorne]

The original event that this is the 250th anniversary of was "a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer" for the people of the soon-to-be-fledgling-nation to "confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions."

Rededication without repentance is just self-congratulation.

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

He was an exemplary senator.

[Jonathan Martin @jmart]

NEW: My long chat with @LamarAlexander about his memoir, out next week.

He says Jan 6 clearly was "high crimes and misdemeanors" and all but begs his party to move on from Trump

"I think the country is going to be ready for an American president with character, temperament, good manners, good use of language, good demeanor. The kind of person that we are happy to introduce our grandson to and hope he emulates."

Which we don’t have now?

"No, we don’t have that now."

[Brad @BraddrofliT]

I’m a farm-raised, meat-and-potatoes, southern white boy from Kentucky and I’m a libtard.

I hunt, fish, say “y’all,” and think healthcare shouldn’t bankrupt people. The confusion this causes online is incredible.

[scha·den·freu·de  @BlisterPearl]

The US government already has a ballroom just down the street. The Andrew Mellon Auditorium is less than a mile away from the White House is beautiful and accommodates more people than the new ballroom will and is owned by the U.S. Government.
via Shelia Earl

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

You really can’t dispute most if not all of this. Evangelicals seem to have a lot to answer for.

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

This is a fair question to all evangelical Christians, including myself:

“Dear conservative evangelicals;

You gave him a pass on “grab them by the pussy.”

You don’t mind that he’s an Olympics-class liar.

A thirty-four count fraud conviction didn’t faze you.

Not even an adjudication of rape bothered you.

He’s mentioned in the Epstein documents literally 38,000 times. You don’t find it odd that he’s personally blocking the release of three million of those files.

He’s the most corrupt politician in American history.

He’s broken all ten of the Ten Commandments. Including taking the lives of 153 little girls whose only crime was being in school. And then he lied about it.

He doesn’t go to your church. He doesn’t go to ANY church.

He cheats at golf.

He cheats at business.

He cheats contractors.

He cheats on his wives.

He cheats in elections.

He’s profane.

Crooked.

Disrespectful.

Selfish.

Driven by greed.

By ego.

By revenge.

Yet here you are worshipping a golden idol in his likeness.

So what is it about YOU that makes you a Christian?

Bruce Lindner”

[Rick Reilly @ReillyRick]

As a reporter, I'm so disappointed by the men of the White House press corps. They let Trump constantly bully women reporters. In sports, we stood up 4 each other. I once got into a brawl w/ a U Miami ass't coach over the sexist way he treated a female writer. Grow a pair!

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

Watch

[Catholic Sat @CatholicSat]

Pope Leo XIV treated to some Neil Diamond as the band of the Pontifical Swiss Guard play Sweet Caroline.

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

Odd commentary here from a provocateur masquerading as a journalist

[Mollie @MZHemingway]

@CarolLeonnig @davidfolkenflik @MSNOW_Reports @FBI @KDilanianMSNOW LOL. The fact that investigating leaks is the breaking of a norm for the FBI is such an indictment of the FBI and their water carriers such as you and Fusion Ken.

[Nature Vid @naturevid2]

King Charles III quietly did something genuinely moving during his state visit to the United States. A lifelong environmentalist who has championed conservation for over five decades often at the cost of ridicule from the British press the King ended his trip by visiting Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

There, he sat with park rangers, swore in a new group of Junior Rangers, met Buddy the bald eagle, and unveiled a new partnership between Shenandoah and Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park. This is the same man who converted his own estate to organic farming back in 1986, long before it was fashionable.

A foreign monarch showing up with real curiosity and respect for America’s public lands felt refreshingly sincere. And yet, it barely made a headline.

That silence is telling. When a visiting head of state reminds us of the value of our own national parks more visibly than our own leadership, something has gone wrong.

For decades, King Charles has put his credibility on the line for the natural world.

Meanwhile, America’s public lands have faced aggressive rollbacks: the weakening of protections like the Roadless Rule, opening tens of millions of acres of national forests to logging and mining, and efforts to sell off large portions to private interests.

It’s a stark contrast. One man has spent a lifetime planting trees and defending nature.

The other treats the outdoors primarily as a backdrop for golf courses.

Our public lands deserve better than being viewed as a development opportunity. They belong to all of us and they’re worth protecting, not selling.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

NEW: Pope Leo XIV says that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual ethics must be less prioritized over “greater, more important issues.”

“We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”

[Rod Kuckro @RodKuckro]

How is that illegal?

[CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk]

Southern Poverty Law Center indicted in federal court over alleged use of paid informants to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups
https://t.co/qQ70N2kzap