Longtime readers of mine know that I don't often do news stories. I'm the verbal bomb-throwing opinion guy here at the PJ Media Ranch, my colleagues handle the heavy news stuff much better than I do. Once in a great while, however, I come across a story that just makes me happy. Also, this one broke around 11 PM EDT, which is prime time in my Morning Briefing work day.
CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.
Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.
“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.
The only reason that I wish this story had hit during regular work hours is because the meltdown on the left over this is going to be epic. I mean, real popcorn time stuff. I only had to check X for a few seconds to get my schadenfreude really revved up:
Some guy named Nick Bilton serving an audience of 1 (Bari) service an audience of 1 (Ellison) serving an audience of 1 (Trump). This is how oligarch-authoritarian takeover of media happens https://t.co/ZZCnkpBK1m
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) June 3, 2026
Any day that Ben Rhodes has his panties cranked up to "Extra Bunch" mode is a good one. For the record, sentences like that last one are also why I don't cover many news stories.
One thing I do a lot of is write about the horrible bias among the Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media. I've been on that beat for over two decades now, which makes me very, very familiar with Scott Pelley's work. Pelley has been redefining awful for the Columbia Broadcasting System since the early days of the George H.W. Bush administration. He has been one of the most egregiously biased people in media during all of that time.
Like all of the Dem propagandists in American media, Pelley felt that it was his duty to put whatever spin he felt was necessary on a story, all the while trumpeting that he was doing serious journalism. Also, like Jake Tapper, Pelley brought a smugness to his prevarication. He always knew that he was lying, and he knew that the people who actually thought that he was a journalist were too stupid to know that.
When I read the report of his tantrum about CBS news editor-in-chief Bari Weiss "murdering" the once-vaunted 60 Minutes I immediately thought, "I hope that this is the one time that Scott Pelley is right about something." These institutions that are revered by the left because they're integral in perpetuating Dem false narratives need to be destroyed.
Let's face it, 60 Minutes ain't what it used to be. This is from something that my colleague Scott Pinsker wrote yesterday:
If you’re over the age of 50, 60 Minutes occupies a hallowed seat in the pantheon of TV journalism. That iconic stopwatch — Mike Wallace’s swagger, and John Madden and Pat Summerall telling us to be patient, because “60 Minutes will be shown in its entirety at the conclusion of the game” (except on the West Coast, of course) — are all etched in our psyche like a tribal tattoo. The show had gravitas, grit, guts, and gumption.
If you’re over the age of 50, there’s 60 Minutes… and everything else.
But if you’re under the age of 50, 60 Minutes means absolutely nothing. It’s a lumbering dinosaur, a relic from a forgotten age. Young people associate it with mahjong, reverse mortgages, and Gold Bond Medicated Powder.
I'm over 50 and I've never liked the show. I was never a fan of Mike Wallace or his irritating nepo baby Chris, either. My personal feelings aside, 60 Minutes has been caught with its hand in the bias cookie jar on more than one occasion. CBS settled with President Trump over an interview that the "news" program deceptively edited to help Kamala Harris in 2024.
So, good riddance to Scott Pelley and, if we dare to dream, the entire hackfest 60 Minutes program. I don't like to celebrate people losing jobs, but when those jobs involve carrying water for people who are actively trying to destroy the United States of America, the circumstances are duly mitigated.
It has taken a while for Bari Weiss to get things moving at CBS News, but she's coming into her own now. She's engaged in a corporate version of draining the Swamp and it's not easy. It's looking more and more possible every day, though.
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