“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley said, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” Forelle accused Pelley of being rude, and Pelley countered by saying that the network had been rude by the way it treated Tanya Simon, the show’s executive producer who was fired on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Pelley reportedly met with Weiss and Bilton - although it’s not clear if he met with them together or individually. But sources I spoke with told me Pelley was told by Weiss that he needed to write a letter of apology about his comments on Monday and warned him that he was creating a “hostile work environment.”

Then on Tuesday evening, Pelley received word that he had been fired via an email from Bilton, which several of the 60 Minute producers shared with me:

Dear. Mr. Pelley:

I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.

I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was to call you to talk and to invite you to dinner.

It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead.

Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort.

Yesterday’s performative display of hostility - enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation - demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.

I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.

Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today, we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.

Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on the behalf of CBS News Inc. ("CBS) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.

Sincerely,

Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes

UPDATE: I obtained a statement released to several members of the press by Scott Pelley, in which he claims he was asked to insert “falsehoods” into 60 Minutes stories last season.

Here are the complete contents of Pelley’s message:

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 58thseason, 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 this 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 the men and women of 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.

Scott Pelley

For more coverage on this story and other media industry news, you can also follow me at toomuchtv.beehiive.com.