Peter Johnson

senior analyst @tripepismith | former reporter and editor @newtimesslo @santamariasun

[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

[Barry Malone @malonebarry]

The man is talking about war to an audience of children with a giant f'ing bunny standing beside him. Everything is insane.

[Kenneth P. Vogel @kenvogel]

A @nytimes video analysis shows that after agents restrained Alex Jeffrey Pretti & removed his gun from the skirmish, an agent appears to fire 4 shots at Petri.

That agent & another then fire 6 more shots at Pretti while he lies motionless on the ground. https://t.co/ZPGBxgRIpu

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

The Trump administration claims that Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, was armed and a threat when agents shot him in the back and killed him. In fact, as best we can tell at this stage from the multiple videos, he was: a.) a Good Samaritan trying to help a small woman with a backpack whom agents had thrown to the ground and pepper sprayed; b.) unarmed, his legally licensed weapon already having been removed by another agent and taken away from the scene seconds earlier; c.) on his knees, pinned by agents and no threat to anyone at the moment two agents shot him approximately ten times in the back. As with Renee Good, it's disgusting not only that the authorities execute a person in cold blood but also that they lie about it to defame their victim and then block an investigation by local police that might establish the facts.

[Rep. Salud Carbajal @RepCarbajal]

ICE murdered another American citizen in Minneapolis. DHS and ICE are clearly out-of-control and they need to be held accountable for their horrific actions in Minnesota and beyond. I call on the Senate to block the DHS funding package next week, and my Republican colleagues to support our Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Noem. ICE’s brutality must be stopped.

[Kurt Bardella @kurtbardella]

To be clear: an insurrectionist using a Confederate flag pole to attack police guarding the US Capitol is dubbed a “patriot” and can receive a presidential pardon while US citizens in Minnesota exercising their 1st amendment rights to protest and assemble get executed.

[Jill Geisler @JillGeisler]

Impossible to overstate appreciation for the on-the-ground journalists in the Twin Cities covering this overwhelming series of events. Support their independent, ethical reporting under immense stress.

[Claire Lehmann @clairlemon]

The @WSJ has analysed 13 other incidents where ICE agents have fired into civilian vehicles & identify a pattern of agents boxing in running vehicles while engaging in escalatory & intrusive tactics which police are trained to avoid.
https://t.co/BmIAueohzb

[Rebecca Ballhaus @rebeccaballhaus]

WSJ identified 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles since July, leaving 8 people shot with two confirmed dead. Only one civilian was armed—with a concealed weapon that was never drawn—and at least 5 of those shot were U.S. citizens. https://t.co/WnsW5w9Oev

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In the current context, we are seeing an actual “short circuit” of #HumanRights. The right to freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and even the right to life are being restricted in the name of other so-called new rights, with the result that the very framework of human rights is losing its vitality and creating space for force and oppression. This occurs when each right becomes self-referential, and especially when it becomes disconnected from reality, nature, and truth.

[The Tribune @SLOTribune]

SLO County DA defends deadly Minneapolis ICE shooting in 2 social media posts https://t.co/xtq5LY4D4q

[Seung Min Kim @seungminkim]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota investigators say they can't access evidence after fatal ICE shooting and FBI won't work jointly on probe.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

hard to believe the ICE officer is still alive, writes the president, of an ICE officer who was not hit at all and was well enough to go run down the street to check on the woman he had killed

[Stephen Curry @StephenCurry30]

Lock in! #DubNation #17

[The Atlantic Communications @TheAtlanticPR]

Statement from The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg:

[National Press Club @PressClubDC]

3/5 If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

Only in America.... One shooting knocked out of the news by another shooting, which is now knocked out of the news by another shooting.

[KB @MindOfKB]

We interrupt the shooting at a college to bring you news of a shooting at a high school.

This is America.

[Peter Johnson @pljohnson9]

@MattFountain1 ….