Scott Pelley said CBS News' top editor, Bari Weiss, pressed for changes to a February 60 Minutes story in a way he believed would have nudged it toward President Trump's version of events. On a podcast interview released Thursday, Pelley said the requests touched a politically sensitive report about ICE operations in Minnesota, the shooting death of Renée Good and protests over immigration enforcement.
Pelley said one proposed change would have made the protesters look more violent. Another, he said, was to describe Good as driving toward the officer — a formulation he said did not fit the video evidence his team had reviewed in slow motion and stop motion. He said that in his 37 years at CBS News, he had never seen what he called a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events, and added that new management had told him to inject falsehoods and bias into the story.
The comments came during an appearance on podcast The Interview and after CBS News fired Pelley last week following a clash with Nick Bilton and his critical remarks about Weiss. The dispute matters because Weiss was installed as editor in chief of CBS's newsroom by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison after the company acquired her anti-establishment site, The Free Press, in October 2025. Some CBS staffers had already worried about her lack of television experience and what they saw as a political leaning.
CBS News pushed back, saying Weiss's request had no political motivation and that she made four points during editorial back-and-forth meant to strengthen the segment. The network said not everything she raised made it into the final piece. Pelley, for his part, said he believed the effort was not about fairness but pressure, and in a statement at the time he said Weiss knows what she said is not true.
Weiss later told CBS News staffers that management had tried to work with Pelley and find a way back, but that the two sides could not reach an agreement and had to part ways. What remains unclear is how much of the February segment was ultimately altered, and whether CBS News will say anything more about how Weiss's role is affecting coverage under the new leadership at the network.
