MS NOW host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday delivered an impromptu rallying cry for journalists across the country after reacting live to the breaking news that Scott Pelley, a veteran CBS News anchor for “60 Minutes,” was fired by it’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton.
“I hope that everybody in journalism and everybody who values a free press figures out ways to outmaneuver the people who are trying to take the free press from us,” Maddow said about the network’s controversial leadership. “But it is a fully joint fight at this point.”
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss virtually vaporized what was left of “60 Minutes” this past week after taking the job last year, firing the program’s executive producer, Tanya Simon, who had been with CBS News since 1996, and replacing her with Bilton, a tech journalist.
“He’s just been installed there as part of the sort of bald-faced, Hungarian-style oligarchic takeover of that news organization,” Maddow said Tuesday live on the air, adding that “the imbalance in terms of journalistic experience” between Bilton and Pelley is “remarkable.”
Bilton fired Pelley after a contentious showdown, claiming in a termination email Maddow read portions of that Pelley refused to “find a path forward together” and chose to “ambush” Bilton with criticisms during his first meeting as the new executive producer.
“I will also just say on the free press part of this, I made a crack there talking about the Scott Pelley news as being a sort of Hungarian, oligarchic-style takeover in the media,” the MS NOW host explained. “And I mean that sort of as a joke but also sort of deadly serious.”
Catch Maddow’s live reaction below:
Maddow noted nobody is more aware how invaluable a free press is “than those who are trying to take it away,” arguing President Donald Trump has purposefully opted “to use the power of the state in order to get the media” he wants — and tasked his “oligarchic friends” to do so.
“It’s just — again, there’s no pretense,” she said. “There’s no saying this is for any other reason. There’s nothing else going on at CBS News other than what we can see is happening at CBS News. And I don’t know where Scott Pelley will land. Frankly, I hope he lands right here.”
Pelley addressed his ouster on social media Wednesday, stating “new management” had told him to insert unspecified “falsehoods and bias” into his work, which he refused to do, and that politicians are now being “invited to choose correspondents” for their interviews.
Pelley added that this “is not how honest journalism is done.”
CBS News was acquired last year by billionaire David Ellison, the son of close Trump ally Larry Ellison, after a controversial $8 billion merger between his Skydance Media company and CBS News’ former parent company Paramount Global.
Last week, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi revealed CBS News has no plans to renew her recently expired contract. Alfonsi went toe-to-toe with Weiss last year when her segment on Venezuelan migrants being sent to brutal Salvadoran prisons was pulled from its scheduled air date.
