Top Media Reporter Says ’60 Minutes’ Could Lose Entire Staff in a ‘Matter of Weeks, if Not Days’

Puck’s Dylan Byers told MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera on Wednesday that 60 Minutes could see a mass exodus of all “existing talent” on the show within the next few weeks.

During a discussion about the firing of Scott Pelley after the longtime CBS personality lobbed a number of insults at network editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and newly-installed 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton during a show-wide staff meeting on Monday, Cabrera asked Byers to “Talk to us about just how striking both this firing is and to see it all play out so publicly.”

He replied:

Well, it’s incredibly striking, and it comes on the heels, of course, not only of the firings of Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, but also the departure of Anderson Cooper. And no one has left the building at 60 Minutes without some version of what Scott did, some sort of criticism toward the new management, and indeed the new ownership about the direction of the show. And Scott was only the most vocal among them.

And the real problem now for 60 Minutes and for Bari Weiss is that he is being extremely vocal. As that statement you mentioned that he put out this morning, he is now accusing her of [INAUDIBLE] in their meeting. And it is very difficult to see how this new leadership is able to usher 60 Minutes as it has existed in the past into the future. We only have three remaining correspondents there. I know that they currently are deliberating over what they are going to do. It’s very possible that we’re going to arrive at a moment here in a matter of weeks, if not days,  where there is no existing talent left at 60 Minutes and they are going to have to build this back up from scratch.

Weiss told her CBS colleagues on Wednesday that Pelley had “broken” the “foundation” of “trust and mutual respect” on Monday and that her team’s “attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back” were not successful.

Pelley subsequently accused Weiss of lying about the meeting she held with him, Bilton, and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski on Tuesday.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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