BREAKING: '60 Minutes' journalist Scott Pelley releases EPLOSIVE receipts proving CBS boss Bari Weiss pushed Trump's LIES about ICE's killing of Renée Good’s, when video evidence obviously said otherwise!
In a video interview with The New York Times, the just-fired 60 Minutes correspondent said he believed CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was repeatedly trying to steer coverage toward narratives favored by the Trump administration, most egregiously over the on-camera death of Good from multiple angles.
Pelley said Weiss communicated through then-executive producer Tanya Simon that the segment should portray protesters as more violent, and to describe Good as driving in the direction of the masked ICE agent.
"The video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving toward him, but that's what the president said about that and that's the way she wanted it described," Pelley, who has eyes like the rest of us, recalled.
That allegation goes to the heart of journalism. Governments make claims every day, and it’s a reporter’s job to verify them, challenge them and compare them against evidence.
Pelley said the issue wasn't as much Weiss wanting to parroting the White House’s version of events, but the analysis of events after the next-day news cycle.
"My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration," Pelley said.
He said this kind of pressure became a recurring pattern, always more from the president, more from his underlings.
“There's nothing wrong with reporting those views, but it was never enough,” he said. “It was always – more from the president, from the administration, that sort of thing. The balance was off.”
Ironically, Bari Weiss built much of her public reputation arguing that journalism should resist ideological pressure, follow the facts and challenge consensus.
Now, Pelley confirms she is pretty much doing the exact opposite, and it turns out we have a Trump-allied hack is at the helm of the venerable 60 Minutes, the jewel in the CBS News crown since 1968.
Pelley didn’t say it, but the implication is clear. If 60 Minutes, a bastion of American journalistic integrity for the last 58 years, goes down, exactly where are we in America right now?