After a tumultuous week, CBS News took a major step in stopping the bleeding at “60 Minutes.”
In a memo sent Friday morning, the three remaining “60 Minutes” correspondents, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl and Jon Wertheim, said they will continue with the program. The trio strongly considered leaving in solidarity with their ousted colleagues Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon and her second-in-command Draggan Mihailovich.
Pelley — angry over the dismissal of his other co-workers — was fired Tuesday, a day after confronting the program’s new executive producer Nick Bilton at his first staff meeting. Pelley questioned the credentials of Bilton, a former New York Times journalist with no experience in television news. He also accused CBS News Bari Weiss — who oversaw the changes — of “murdering” the program.
The memo said the decision to stay should not be seen “as an endorsement of the existing power structure.”
“Here’s why we’re staying: We don’t want ’60 Minutes’ to die,” they wrote.
The dismissal of Pelley, considered the most respected journalist inside CBS News, sent shock waves through the organization and led to speculation of an exodus by the remaining three correspondents. If the veterans decided to leave, the program’s reputation faced further damage, and the challenge of producing enough stories in time for the launch of a new season in September may have been insurmountable.
In their memo, Whitaker, Stahl and Wertheim said they felt the same bewilderment and frustration that Pelley did over the firing of their colleagues.
“We want to express how sorry we are that these principled, fair and honest journalists were treated so shabbily, with such indecency,” they wrote. “Tanya deserves to be celebrated, not truly cast off. Draggan too. It was heartbreaking.”
With the program in full-blown crisis, Bilton spent the rest of the week attempting to calm the waters and retain the disgruntled correspondents. He issued a memo Thursday praising Whitaker, Stahl and Wertheim — calling them “the core of the show’s success” — and promising to uphold the editorial independence of the program.
“We will always pursue stories without fear or favor,” Bilton said. “We will always make the story the North Star — not relationships nor politics nor anything else.”
Bilton took a major step in winning the trust of the three correspondents by appointing Maria Gavrilovic as senior producer. Gavrilovic, a 19-year veteran of CBS News, worked closely with Pelley.
Pelley, Vega and Alfonsi have all charged that CBS News management under Weiss have pressed them to include falsehoods and unverified information in their “60 Minutes” reports to placate the Trump administration. Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison’s appointment of Weiss, who founded the heterodox digital news site the Free Press, came with a mandate to pull the news division to the political center.
CBS News brass has denied that any misinformation has been forced into segments. Executives privately acknowledge that discussions to include contrarian views in stories have been a source of tension.
The memo from the three correspondents called for tolerance of pushback within the operation. The most surprising aspect of Pelley’s firing was that “60 Minutes” has long been known as a place where contentious exchanges are acceptable behavior when pursuing a strong journalistic product.
“Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” the memo stated. “Collaboration and argument are the way we have always worked at ’60.’ (Founding executive producer) Don Hewitt actually encouraged loud passionate advocacy for our pieces.”
Weiss and Bilton will now be tasked with replenishing the correspondent lineup, which also lost Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor who chose not to sign a new deal with the program.
One potential candidate is Mariana van Zeller, an award-winning investigative journalist who has worked for National Geographic Channel, according to people familiar with the discussions.
