Four days after Bari Weiss decapitated the leadership of 60 Minutes, she sent her new executive producer, Nick Bilton, to meet with the remaining staff. What happened will reverberate in journalism for years.
In full view of the newsroom Scott Pelley took Bilton and Weiss (in absentia) to the woodshed.
The best account is from Oliver Darcy at Status, who had a recording, and the short version is that Pelley:
- Asked Bilton to explain the firings of correspondents and reporters.
- Bilton absurdly tried to pretend that he didn’t know anything about these firings.
- Observed that Bilton had only the most slender qualifications for the job of EP and that Weiss had no qualifications for running CBS News.
That. That is the part that just completely baffles me. Since when do random outsiders get hired to run something as consequential as a major news organization? Trivial jobs like the presidency are up for grabs, but you’d think major news orgs would be more responsible and cautious and attentive to qualifications than the voting public.
Weiss has attempted to do to journalism what Trump has done to American government: Transform an ancient, messy, imperfect—but basically functional—web of institutions into a corrupt gangland organization. To do so, both Weiss and Trump have depended on the opposition refusing to notice what they are doing and—when they do notice it—to accept ludicrous rationalizations.
Ergo: Trump turns Elon Musk and DOGE loose on USAID and says it’s about saving money. Trump directs his attorney general to indict his enemies and says it’s about stopping the weaponization of government. Trump has ICE agents assault people and says it’s about deporting hardened criminals.
Or: Weiss dismantles 60 Minutes and pretends it’s about getting more views on digital.
Because she’s a whole lot less stupid than Trump, her rationalization is more credible. Evil, but credible.
Here is why Scott Pelley’s stand was so important: He didn’t just refuse to be party to Bari Weiss’s lie—he stood up and exposed it. Even though she has the power and he does not.
Remember Christopher Wray? He was the director of the FBI. Trump wanted to fire him. And Wray, instead of forcing the issue, meekly resigned his office and pretended that he was preserving the integrity of his institution.
Followed by a long list of other examples. Surrender after surrender.
Authoritarianism exploits politesse.
The corrupter counts on the existing establishment normalizing her actions, hoping that they can work with her. She depends on people not noticing the plain reality and, if they do notice, politely looking the other way. Or quietly resigning. Not being unpleasant.
Throughout the 60 Minutes meeting yesterday, one of Bari Weiss’s lieutenants begged Pelley to stop asking questions because, he insisted, Pelley was being “rude.” As if civility and obeisance were the same thing.
Pelley would have none of it. He kept going. He said the things that were obviously true. He called things by right names.
Politeness is not always the best approach. With people like Trump, it never is.
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