If you thought there was an uproar at “60 Minutes,” that was pattycake compared to what happened yesterday.
Bari Weiss has been under assault by journalists and commentators since becoming editor-in-chief of CBS, mostly from liberals and left-leaners who are convinced she’s a crazy conservative. That’s not true, and I’ve mostly defended her, but she has made some rookie mistakes as someone who never worked in television.
So even as the headlines swirled around President Donald Trump’s decision to drop the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund – made possible because many Republicans joined Democrats in openly criticizing the fund aimed at the Jan. 6 rioters – Weiss is facing a rebellion of her own.
First she fired “60 Minutes” correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi (whose story on a Salvador prison she held, but ran intact after Trump officials wouldn’t appear), along with executive producer Tanya Simon.
Ratings for “CBS Evening News” have plunged under new anchor Tony Dokoupil, though not all is his fault – CBS failed to get him a visa for Trump’s trip to Beijing, and he had to report from Taiwan.
But “60 Minutes” has always been different, the crown jewel of the onetime Tiffany network. It operates from a separate building, across Manhattan’s 10th Avenue. Its ratings have been terrific, and the show also makes money, over $200 million in advertising for the network.
After 58 years on the air, it’s averaging an impressive 9.1 million viewers, a 9% jump over last season, and has a substantial digital presence.
But this is why I think Weiss, who I’ve interviewed, made a major mistake in hiring tech journalist Nick Bilton to run the newsmagazine.
He may be a great guy, but he, too, has never worked in the broadcast business. It’s almost like that’s a disqualification in the Weiss era.
Bilton has worked for the New York Times and Vanity Fair. He met Weiss while working on some documentary projects together.
“When you take an insider and put them inside a company, nothing changes,” Bilton told the Times. “I’m not saying that we’re going to change the show completely and drastically.”
“If you don’t disrupt, you yourself will be disrupted,” he says, according to Variety. “There is nothing I love more than picking a fight.”
But yesterday a leading member of the “60” crew, Scott Pelley, fought back hard, his voice breaking at times.
During an angry staff meeting, Pelley, a former evening news anchor, said of Weiss: “She is murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
That’s according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the Times.
Pelley was just getting started: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
Bilton responded that “I will show you…I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”
Pelley pressed the show’s new boss on why he accepted the job, “knowing that you will never be welcome here.”
That drew some pushback: “I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I’ve sat across from incredibly powerful people like you have, and none of it intimidates me.”
Weiss apparently was asked to stay away from the meeting.
Look, Bilton may have some good ideas. In the past, the network created “60 Minutes II,” which ran for seven seasons but folded after a Dan Rather segment on George W. Bush and the National Guard that turned out to be based on forged documents, and both CBS and the anchor apologized.
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So here’s the dilemma. Pelley and Lesley Stahl are the most prominent of the show’s anchors.
If Weiss fires Pelley over his comments, it will look like she can’t take criticism and is retaliating over free speech. The media will frame it as sheer intolerance on her part.
If she keeps Pelley, she’ll have to accept working with someone who has been so openly critical of her and his new boss at the show.
This battle inside CBS News over its most successful franchise is far from over.