Scott Pelley says Bari Weiss wanted 60 Minutes to say Renee Good was ‘driving toward officer’

Scott Pelley was fired from CBS 60 Minutes last week. Photograph: Charles Sykes/AP View image in fullscreen Scott Pelley was fired from CBS 60 Minutes last week. Photograph: Charles Sykes/AP Scott Pelley says Bari Weiss wanted 60 Minutes to say Renee Good was ‘driving toward officer’ Fired journalist accuses CBS News chief of interfering with report because it echoed what Trump said of the shooting Fired CBS 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley has accused editorial management at his old network of interfering with a broadcast segment looking at an immigration officer’s killing of Minneapolis protester Renee Good in January. The veteran broadcaster, who was recently dismissed from the show, said CBS News’s editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had sent an email to his supervisor requesting changes be made soon before the airing of the segment in question. In an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, the 68-year-old Pelley accused Weiss of injecting “falsehoods and bias” into programming. Pelley told the outlet: “Two of the things in the email include, ‘Can we make the protesters look more violent?’ Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.” Pelley maintained that was the direction contained in the email even though video of Good’s shooting did not support such a conclusion. A CBS News spokesperson told the Times in response to Pelley’s statements that Weiss had made four points in an email exchange on the segment that had “no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible”. “Not everything she raised made it into the final piece,” the statement added. Pelley’s accusation comes amid turbulence at the vintage TV news show that has seen 60 Minutes executive producer Tanya Simon replaced and several correspondents and producers leave over questions of editorial independence. Three of the show’s veterans – Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, – are staying on. Newly-installed executive producer Nick Bilton, a former Vanity Fair journalist and filmmaker, told staff in a memo that “the foundation of 60 Minutes is journalistic independence. “We will always pursue stories without fear or favor.” Pelley’s accusations to the Times followed a heated exchange at a meeting on Monday in which he accused Weiss of “murdering” the show. He was fired soon after. In his latest salvo, Pelley said he was concerned that Weiss “had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News”. He also called her lack of TV news experience “red flags to me”. Pelley also said that Bilton’s mission to modernize the 58-year-old show ignored changes that were already in play. “Of course we have to reach out to a younger and younger audience, but their argument about joining the internet age is just disingenuous,” Pelley said. “It’s almost as if