FCC boss Brendan Carr slams Scott Pelley as ‘completely out of touch’
FCC Chief Brendan Carr went after journalist Scott Pelley for making this claim in his recent claim New York Times profile that it “hadn’t occurred to him” that he would be fired from “60 Minutes.”
“One of the reasons trust in the media is so low is because many traditional journalists are completely out of touch,” Carr wrote Sunday morning on
By “that behavior,” Carr means Pelley’s recent and very public distaste for the new regime at CBS News and “60 Minutes.” It was reported that Pelley lashed out at the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, on May 25, telling the former NYT tech columnist that he had “slight qualifications” for the job. Bilton was recruited to “60 Minutes” by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who accused Pelley of “killing” the show through its leadership at the same meeting.
On June 2, Bilton released a letter claiming that CBS News and Pelley failed to reconcile and that Pelley was fired from ’60 Minutes’.
“Your antipathy towards the future of the show has come through loud and clear,” Bilton wrote. “And I have heard you. I am therefore writing to inform you on behalf of CBS News that your employment with CBS will be terminated with immediate effect.”
Elsewhere in his NYT interview, Pelley suggested that Paramount-Skydance, the parent company of CBS News, should remove Weiss as editor-in-chief. Pelley claimed that “television isn’t her thing” and that “60 Minutes” is in dire need of “adult supervision.”
“We have people installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no television experience. They don’t know what they’re doing,” Pelley told the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen before on ’60 Minutes’ or on CBS News. So that’s my hope: a return to common sense.”
