Scott Pelley, in a statement posted on Instagram (which I’ll quote in full, as the original is locked behind a dickwall if you’re not signed in to an Instagram account):
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 58th season, 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 honest journalism 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 my colleagues at 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.
