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
Scott Pelley represents the tradition that built “60 Minutes.” There was no performance. There was no branding exercise. There was journalism.
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Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.
Franklin Graham’s role, along with political pastors like him since 2016, is to convince evangelicals that the blasphemous & sinful things Trump does on a daily basis really aren’t blasphemous & sinful. Trump couldn’t care less about religion or these people, he uses & mocks them
Hey @Franklin_Graham, assuming there is a God, and assuming you meet him one day when you leave this life, he’s going to put this tweet in front of you and he’s going to ask you point blank why you lied here and called a man who is the very antithesis of Jesus Christ the most “pro-Christian” president ever. He’s also gonna demand to know why you sold your soul to so obscenely support such a cruel, hateful, ignorant, & dishonest sociopath. I hope you’ll have some good answers.
I predicted someone like Trump many years ago, in THE DEAD ZONE. So now I'm saying this--in the next 12-16 months, we're going to find out if the two machines for the removal of a man unable to fulfill his duties actually work. They are impeachment and the 25th amendment. He is deeply unwell .
“He didn’t literally mean he would wipe out an entire civilization”
Then he shouldn’t have fucking said it.
He’s the President of the United States. He has sole launch authority over the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, and words mean things.
@iamufohunter Blasphemy from Franklin Graham and Paula White. The war with Iran is only about oil. Trump said so himself from that ridiculous podium with that ugly gold eagle thing on it t.
NEWS that Congressional staff are not going to like- Delta is suspending its special congressional desk service for members of Congress until the shutdown is over. @ajc https://t.co/q2w4VIkK7p
Robert Mueller was a hero who served this nation with honor for his entire life.
When you die, Americans, and people around the world, will dance in the streets for weeks because you’re a low, degenerate, criminal fraud who left a full stain on the Presidency.
Y'all... I've NEVER seen Hartsfield Jackson this bad. This is what security looks like this morning (Friday). We've talked to people that got to the airport at 3am that missed their 6am flight.
@ATLNewsFirst@GAFollowers
Kentuckians, you would NOT be able to vote with your Kentucky REAL ID if these idiots pass the SAVE Act. You would need a passport or go find your birth cert and if you are a married woman, find your marriage cert. More barriers to exercise your RIGHT to vote… just dumb.
I feel like it should be bigger news that Trump is now openly considering a military draft. Young men haven't been called up for a draft since 1972. Not during the Gulf War. Not during Iraq or Afghanistan. He received five draft deferments but is now open to drafting your kids.
Look, it's just purely a coincidence that Donald Trump started a war just days before the release of FBI 302s of interviews of a victim claiming he raped her when she was 13 years old.
BREAKING: At Jesse Jackson’s celebration of life, @BarackObama just torched Donald Trump’s America.
“Each day we wake up to some new assault to our democratic institutions — another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to it. To things you didn’t think were possible.”
I miss this guy!