MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow blasted leaders of CBS News on Tuesday night, accusing them of “essentially bulldozing one of the great news organizations” in American history, after longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley was fired from the famed program.
Pelley, who had worked for “60 Minutes” since 2004, was let go after a tense meeting involving the show’s new executive producer and the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss. Maddow said he had confronted leadership over a “sort of oligarchic takeover of that news organization.”
In a statement, Pelley — whom Maddow called “one of the most respected journalists in America” — accused “new management” of instructing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
According to Maddow, CBS News has been undergoing “a transformation” driven by “corporate interests.” A trail of veteran correspondents and longtime producers have left the company since David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, appointed Weiss to head the operation last year.
As the MS NOW host noted, the CEO and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, are close allies of President Donald Trump’s, and some of his most prominent donors. Critics have accused the younger Ellison of softening the network’s coverage of the president and his administration to protect his family’s business interests.
“How did the people who are doing this look at themselves in the mirror?” Maddow said.
MS NOW’s Jen Psaki also weighed in on Pelley’s statement, remarking that these were “incredible words” to hear. The former Biden White House official said she wanted to call “preemptive BS” on any attempts to paint Pelley, or his fellow correspondents who have also left CBS News, as “products of the left.”
“I’m just going to say, I worked for two Democratic presidents who were interviewed by them,” she said. “I was grilled by some of them every single day. I had no idea what their politics were. They were tough as nails on every single person I worked for. They called out things that they didn’t think should be happening in government.”
You can watch Maddow and her fellow MS NOW hosts’ full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”