Scott Pelley Is the Hero We Need
What we can learn from the ‘60 Minutes’ reporter who went to the mattresses.
Before we start: Later this week I’ll be answering your questions on politics, news, parenting, life, baseball, pinball, watches, backpacks, etc. in a new Triad Video Mailbag. Get your questions in today, please. Go here, read the comments, upvote the questions you like, and then leave your own question.
1. Gone in 60 Minutes
Four days after Bari Weiss decapitated the leadership of 60 Minutes, she sent her new executive producer, Nick Bilton, to meet with the remaining staff. What happened will reverberate in journalism for years.
In full view of the newsroom Scott Pelley took Bilton and Weiss (in absentia) to the woodshed.
The best account is from Oliver Darcy at Status, who had a recording, and the short version is that Pelley:
Asked Bilton to explain the firings of correspondents and reporters.
Bilton absurdly tried to pretend that he didn’t know anything about these firings.
Observed that Bilton had only the most slender qualifications for the job of EP and that Weiss had no qualifications for running CBS News.
The most important part of the showdown, however, was this:
“Bari loves this institution,” Bilton told staffers at one point during the highly contentious meeting. “She loves 60 Minutes.”
“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley countered. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that.”
Truth to power.
People sometimes ask me why I’m so hung up on Bari Weiss and the answer is that it’s because her project is essentially the same as Donald Trump’s project. She is a corrupter.
Weiss has attempted to do to journalism what Trump has done to American government: Transform an ancient, messy, imperfect—but basically functional—web of institutions into a corrupt gangland organization. To do so, both Weiss and Trump have depended on the opposition refusing to notice what they are doing and—when they do notice it—to accept ludicrous rationalizations.
Ergo: Trump turns Elon Musk and DOGE loose on USAID and says it’s about saving money. Trump directs his attorney general to indict his enemies and says it’s about stopping the weaponization of government. Trump has ICE agents assault people and says it’s about deporting hardened criminals.
Or: Weiss dismantles 60 Minutes and pretends it’s about getting more views on digital.1
Every time someone goes along with this make-believe by treating it as a valid point of you—just like, your opinion, man—they contribute to the corruption.
Here is why Scott Pelley’s stand was so important: He didn’t just refuse to be party to Bari Weiss’s lie—he stood up and exposed it. Even though she has the power and he does not.
Remember Christopher Wray? He was the director of the FBI. Trump wanted to fire him. And Wray, instead of forcing the issue, meekly resigned his office and pretended that he was preserving the integrity of his institution.
Remember John Kelly? He stood next to Donald Trump, saw exactly what kind of man he was serving, and when he finally walked away was only able to muster a couple of print interviews sharing what he knew about the man plotting to destroy American democracy.
Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Mick Mulvaney, H.R. McMaster, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Bill Barr, Elaine Chao.
All of these people saw what was happening. All of them objected to it. None of them dared say so out loud.
After all, doing so would have been poor form. Better to walk away and not get involved in any ugliness.
Authoritarianism exploits politesse.
The corrupter counts on the existing establishment normalizing her actions, hoping that they can work with her. She depends on people not noticing the plain reality and, if they do notice, politely looking the other way. Or quietly resigning. Not being unpleasant.
Throughout the 60 Minutes meeting yesterday, one of Bari Weiss’s lieutenants begged Pelley to stop asking questions because, he insisted, Pelley was being “rude.” As if civility and obeisance were the same thing.
Pelley would have none of it. He kept going. He said the things that were obviously true. He called things by right names.
2. Enjoy the Bagels
Here are things that are true about 60 Minutes, CBS News, and Bari Weiss:
60 is the most successful property—in terms of both product and revenue—in broadcast journalism.
Donald Trump has a particular grudge against 60, as evidenced by his lawsuit against the show.
Larry and David Ellison needed Trump’s approval for the purchase of Paramount and CBS News.
The Ellisons put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News for the sole purpose of placating Trump.
Trump has been publicly effusive about Bari Weiss as head of CBS News.
Weiss decapitated the show’s staff in order to bring it fully under her control in order to please Trump.
The Ellisons now need Trump to approve their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.
That’s the story. That’s what is happening. Anyone who pretends that this is about Weiss and the Ellisons “rebuilding public trust” or “reaching a broader audience” is participating in the corruption.
Just like anyone who pretends that DOGE was about reducing government spending. Or that Christopher Wray’s resignation would preserve the integrity of the FBI. Or that Elon Musk bought Twitter because he was concerned about free speech.
You see the thread, right? In every case, the corrupter counts on liberalism being too fastidious to believe the reality, or too polite to say it out loud.
We need more Scott Pelleys. More people who will say the true things, out loud. More people who, when confronted with authoritarian power, will say, “Make me.”
Our entire rationale for The Bulwark is to be Scott Pelley every day. To say the true things. No matter the consequences. Hell, that’s how I got here in the first place, after losing my job because my colleagues and I wouldn’t shut up about what Donald Trump was doing.
Come ride with us. Because it’s right. And because we’re going to win.
3. Africa
My friend Holly Berkley Fletcher has a fantastic piece explaining why government corruption is so toxic for nations:
By some estimates, corruption costs the [African] continent $150 billion annually, which is equal to 25% of GDP. The African Development Bank estimates if you add more general illicit finance enabled by weak rule of law to government-related corruption, that number rises to $580 billion per year.
Then there are the follow-on effects of creating an environment that discourages investment and robs ordinary people of the resources, infrastructure, education, and basic sustenance they need to thrive. There is the massive wealth disparity, with political and ethnic contours that often feed into deep historical animosities, as those with political connections are rewarded at the expense of those who are out. Then there are inflated stakes for political competition. Then there is violence, war, insecurity, extremism.
The US is not Africa. For one thing, its economy is nine times the size the entire African continent’s. By the numbers, the American economy can absorb Trump’s corruption, although the juxtaposition of it with things like the mass firing of federal workers, the shutdown of USAID, cuts to families with disabled children, and the slashing of funding for scientific research makes it seem all the more obscene. We have other structural advantages, like robust federalism, that mitigates the impact of corruption in the federal government.
But we can already see the beginnings of corruption’s corrosive impact on our political economy and envision how it could directly harm ordinary Americans.
Never mind that, as Jon Passantino points out in Status, the most recent season of 60 Minutes broke all previous digital records, surpassing 2.5 billion video views on social media.
Pelley is a hero in a land bereft of them. And so are you, JVL. Keep fighting!
All the anti-antis who were saying “well, we can’t say *for sure* Colbert was cancelled because of Trump, because they *were* losing money,¹ and late-night’s a relic in the digital age” need to just shut the hell up now.
60 Minutes was making money, was showing growth in making money, and had firm numbers showing growth in digital. It hasn’t been cancelled (yet), but Pelley said they were “murdering” it (after JVL said it — coincidence?). It isn’t about profits, folks. It’s about submission.
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¹ Even that assertion that the Late Show was losing money is at best debatable, by the way, when you fully load in everything it did on all platforms including network effects. It was almost certainly *at least* a break-even or profitable show for CBS.