CBS News has fired longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley after a contentious all-staff meeting in which Pelley reportedly clashed with newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton and accused CBS News editor-in-chief Barry Weiss of murdering the storied news magazine.

Bilton in a letter firing Pelley yesterday evening accused him of acting with remarkable insubility and contempt.

In his own statement, Pelley said, quote,

The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable.

The principles, I hold dear, are gone, and so I must leave as well.

The firing marks the latest and most dramatic chapter in the upheaval surrounding 60 Minutes and CBS News as Weiss moves to reshape both the nation's most watched television news magazine and the news division more broadly.

For more, we're joined now by Steve Croft.

He spent 30 seasons as a correspondent for 60 minutes before retiring in 2019. Steve Croft, welcome to the News Hour.

Thank you very much. You joined... Nice to be here. I wish different circumstances. Yeah, indeed.

We should say you joined 60 Minutes back in 1989, spent decades helping make it the most respected,

most watched news magazine and TV history. As you have watched recent events

unfold, Scott Pelley's firing the dismissal of Tanya Simon, the former executive producer,

the firings of correspondence, Sharon Alfonzi and Cecilia Vega. What has been going through your

mind? You know, I think it's been disastrous for the show, you know, for the audience,

which is not insubstantial. It's been going on for a long time. It began really with an interview

that Bill Whitaker had done with Kamala Harris, in which CBS was sued for $17 million by the Trump administration for what they called

an illegal edit.

The lawsuit had absolutely no merit.

Yet CBS and its corporate management, Paramount, decided to settle the case for $17 million.

And since then, it's just been sort of one thing after another.

The broader context, which you're speaking of, is important because CBS News is now

operating under new ownership as Paramount Skydance,

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