How Scott Pelley Turned His Firing into a Reputational Win

Tech Glitches And Big News

Molly McPherson 0:00

We have, boy, do we have a topic. What's up, Molly Go Lightly? Oh, I love that. I love that. Okay, good. We have our sound back. Um, we're trying to stream. And you know me, I'm the first to admit we have tech issues. I am the first to admit that we have tech issues, but uh Substack is always updating their tech with all the other tech. So I'm always trying to be a little bit ahead. And it shows that I always end up behind. But we we're you guys have joined me now, so I'm so excited. All right. So we have, boy, do we have a topic this week. We have a huge topic. Uh, it was two nights ago now, I guess. Yeah, two nights ago. Uh, I was sitting um at the counter. Uh I just brushed my teeth and I was eating a cinnamon gummy bear because it was sitting right in front of me, needed to do that. Uh, and then I got the notification that Scott Pelle was fired. So I do what I often do in these situations. I have to go to someone and talk about it. I wasn't about to go on SubSec Live, though I probably could because you all would have been there. So I go to my former CBS journalist, Greg, who was sitting there. The Red Sox were still on, though. He's a Yankees fan. So he was sitting there in protest. But I saw it and I said, okay, here's the quiz. And you, and then I immediately put my phone up, as content creators are wont to do, and and asked him, okay, who got fired? And his sports head, he immediately said, is or he said sports. And I went, no, different category, broadcast. Immediately went to 60 minutes, immediately went to Scott Pelly. And of course, no one should be surprised that there's upheaval at 60 minutes, particularly with Scott Pelley and Barry Weiss and everything that's happening. So let's let's just talk about it, not from the casual observer and not necessarily from a deep broadcast level as all as well, because there's so many other people out there uh who are doing that. I like to look at these things from what we really think is happening underneath, like the layers. We know we know what it looks like uh when there's drama, and we all know that drama comes from a place. Let's find that place. I've had so many uh client calls this week, and every single one turns into a therapy session because somebody is telling me what their crisis is, and I've had some doozies this week. Oh, I've had some doozies. They are telling me everything that's happening. I'm listening to what happened because I'm gonna give them a strategy, but I'm also listening for what's going on psychologically, what's going on emotionally. Like now, why did that person say that? Why did that person do that? Why did that person do that? Because it always reveals itself, always reveals itself. And I think the Scott Pelley story reveals a lot, though I think we might all come to the same conclusion as well. Before we jump in, I want to remind you June 24th, we're gonna have our breakdown live. It's gonna be a take uh a breakdown of the takedowns uh that we see on social media. Jared, you're right. We are all part-time therapists. We are. But I now consider myself, I need a different accreditation because really PR, crisis management is therapy. I need to come up with my own accreditation for that uh because it's the human element that we want to see. Uh, okay, so again, June 24th, members only, 12 p.m. Eastern time. I will set up next week a landing page where you can reserve it and we can put it on your calendar. But right now you can manually put it on your calendar. And I have a post in our in our community. Uh, let me know some of your answers. Some of you have already given me some good ones uh that are already there. So let me know what they are. I think they're gonna be great. Okay, here

The Scott Pelley Firing Timeline

Molly McPherson 3:55

we go. So let's talk about Scott Pelley and the lie. The dueling statements contain a lie, and we need to find out who's lying. We need to get to the bottom of it. Now, let me know in the chat. Are you guys following along on the Scott Pelle story? Even if you don't find an interest in it, surely people are interested in public statements showing a lie, revealing a narrative, correct? Oh, I see a lot of hearts there. Good. A lot of hearts coming on that. Okay. So let's let's look, let's look for the lie. Okay, if we if we can. Let's look for the live. All right. What we have on Tuesday, we have two people in the same room having a conversation. One of them says, one person in this group is saying they are trying to find a way back. The other said, calm BS on that statement. That is not a true statement. And it's not once, not for a second, is one person standing for this because they are saying that this person lied to an entire newsroom. And that's a tough place to have an ethical truth or lie scenario take place because two people cannot be telling a truth about a lie. If we think about it that way. Okay. All right. So now let's talk about Scott Pelley and his 37-year career ending in a conference room. How many of you remember Scott Pelley starting on 60 Minutes? I remember when Scott Pelly joined. And the sad thing is, when he joined, I remember thinking, oh, Scott Pelly's new. And can I tell you 37 years later, when I think of Scott Pelly in 60 minutes, he's the new guy to me. Oh, how crazy is that? Scott Pelley is still the new guy. And now Scott Pelly, and now Scott Pelley's gone. Oh my God. Everyone, let's get into it. Pull up a chair if you're not already sitting in a chair right now. All right, let's look at the timeline in terms of what happened, because not everything started with Scott Pelley and what we all saw happen uh two nights ago, and we got notified that he lost. Okay, so we have the CBS News editor-in-chief who is Barry Wise. So she came in, which seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only last October. And she came in under the new ownership under Paramount Sky Dance. And the name associated with that is now David Ellison. And that is the person who owns it, runs the company. So in a short window, she has made a series of moves at CBS that have been head scratching at best, but absolutely disastrous at a level of dismantling a brand in the eyes of many people and many viewers. I got my start at a CBS affiliate. My very first job in television news or television was at WCCO, which is CBS affiliate. And those of you know Greg, my Greg, he just retired, longtime CBS anchor. So CBS has always kind of been in the background, but now it's a completely different place. So then she pushed out the show's executive producer, Tanya Simon. She was a 60 minutes lifer, which is common in the 60 minutes realm. She also removed two air on-air correspondents. And now we have a new executive producer named Nick Hilton. Suzanne, I think she was told what to do and is doing it. Um, you think? Because she does not have broadcast news experience. She doesn't. And I agree with you. Where you're going here? She was brought in for a reason. She was brought in to do a job. And the problem with a lot of people at CBS is they thought the job was to do journalism, was to do ethical journalism, report on the stories that people care about. It seems to a lot of people at CBS that's not the case. I will say on background, I spoke to a CBS producer. A producer's not a high-end uh big money anchor. They're just trying to keep their job. And there's a lot of misery, a lot of misery there. That's happening there. Now, let's talk about Builton. So he's a British documentary filmmaker and a former tech columnist for the New York Times. He made fake famous. He worked on the Elizabeth Holmes documentary. And I gotta be honest, I love all the Elizabeth Holmes documentaries. They're all good. Uh, and he has, and I'm not editorializing here because this is part of the story. He does not have any background in broadcast journalism. Now, let's pause on that for a moment. Can you imagine someone coming in at the helm of 60 Minutes without broadcast journal experience? New reporters coming into local news stations have broadcast journal experience. And this person doesn't. That's going to matter at an institution. I'm gonna call it that. I'm gonna, it matters at an institution like a 60 Minutes. Okay. And also, could you imagine? This is Scott Pelley going scorched earth. Could for those of you who remember, could you imagine if this happened during the Mike Wallace era? What would be going on there? Ooh, ooh. Okay, now for the people in the building, this matters. So why this matters with the Scott Pelley story is this is why it doesn't just start with Scott Pelley. You can imagine the amount of people who are struggling with this person in that seat. Television is my center. I mean, since going back to uh into my childhood, it was my thesis uh for graduate school, you know, for my for my final project. I'm gonna jump in right now with the bluff, the bottom line up front. CBS is not being managed right now to be an independent broadcast entity to do good journalism for the sake of doing good journalism. It's a business entity. And they just happen to have a product that's journalism-like. It really is. Even though you have journalists in there who are trying to do the job, this is really what it's up

New Leadership And 60 Minutes Upheaval

Molly McPherson 10:04

against. It's institutional journalism up against the business of journalism. And that's what we have here. And Scott Pelley happened to have everything kind of, it all just kind of blew up under Scott Pelley, but it's really beyond Scott Pelley. Wouldn't you all agree in there? All right. So now, before Pelle even gets in the scene, we already have a lot of this, a lot of this chaos that's happening. But let's bring it up to Monday. So we have the all-staff meeting with the purpose of introducing Built into the team. Could you imagine that room? Could you imagine what it would be like? Now, my Molly editorial editorializing here. We have the facts, we have what happened, but I also think there is so much of a bait. I feel there's a lot of baiting here that's happening. In other words, a Barry Weiss is setting up a chessboard for things, not that she could predict what's gonna happen, but not surprised in the least that things are gonna happen. People at 60 minutes, and really CBS Morning and CBS Evening News, all of it. There's going to be a breaking point somewhere in some meeting. And this was the meeting. And it went to a 37-year veteran who Molly Kills still considers a newbie at 60 minutes in Scott Pelley. Okay. Now Bilton stood up and tells the staff that Barry Weiss and Bilton want to get this right, that Weiss, quote, loves the institution. That is the moment that Scott Pelley interrupts and he pushes back hard in front of everyone. And there is an audio recording because, of course, there's an audio recording of this. But he said in this meeting, quote, she's murdering 60 minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she's been doing exactly that. And then went on to question Builton's qualifications to his face in the meeting that was supposed to be Builton's welcome. Now, on the surface, we could certainly give Barry Weiss a little bit of the benefit of the doubt here, right? That she was there in good faith for the betterment of 60 Minutes. But Scott Pelley and others there said, uh, we're gonna clock you on that one. That's that's not the fact. All right. So now, and and Scott Pelley, honestly, think about it. Does he have a problem? So, like Nikki's saying, good for him. And if you were to look on social media at the feedback that happened there, many, many, many people are saying, good for him. Uh, in my post, uh, I put brava Scott Pelle. And fun fact, someone who liked my post, Sarah, Jessica, Parker. To some that may not matter, but to my Sex and City fans, that matter. Uh, I think Scott Pelley is getting the biggest reputational boost of his entire career by this firing, even though it's out of his hands. But his choice to push back in that meeting was a professional move, which says so much more, I think, about his journalism standards than probably 37 years of his journalistic career. So this is now this is Pelle's truth. Okay, so this is what he is saying. Um, he's a journalist, he's used to asking hard questions of people in power. In a literal sense, it is his literal job to do that. And one of his former colleagues, Sharon Alphonse, said exactly that. She said that she was fired for asking questions. So Scott Pelley is just following suit. And but here's where you have to separate two things that are very easy to blur together. And that is the content of what Pelley said. And then there's the conduct of how he said it and to whom he said it. The content is entirely defensible. I think we all in this chat in this community, it's entirely defensible. And Kirk's saying, don't sleep on the idea that that Pelly knew what he was doing and use the opportunity to escape his CBS contract and not compete clause. Now, certainly there's that, Kirk. Um he said what he said. Is it likely that it could be premeditated based on the facts that we have? Yeah, I absolutely think so. I don't think Scott Pelley walked into that meeting going, doo, doo doo, we're going to a staff meeting, rah-rah, 60 minutes. What are we going to talk about? Six minutes. No, that guy came in hot. And I would assume had his next steps already there. He already was pulling the cord. He knew what the consequences could very well be. And by being fired, and based on his quick responses, it seems like that probably is the case. Does that take away from the nobility of what he did? I say not necessarily, honestly. I think it still shows, you know, a strength there. But what he did, how it closed the door to his 60 Minutes career, opened a door to the Scott Pelley legacy, but also opens a door for Barry Weiss and the new 60 Minutes. And really for Barry Weiss. I can't even say Builton because he's so new, but really Barry Weiss. Because his conduct and what he was called out for, they were able to call him out for it. So I want to read parts of the letter that Nick Bilton, who's now the executive producer of 60 Minutes, and wow, what a run he's had so far in his job. All right. So here's a letter, and let me read parts of it. And you tell me when we read this letter and you hear this letter, is this a letter that we think was written knowing it would be leaked to the public, dear Mr. Pelle? I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team. Joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career, and I'm grateful to be working alongside the people who've contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. While I'm new to 60 Minutes, I've devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling.

The All Staff Meeting Blowup

Molly McPherson 16:25

All fair and all accurate. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minute Veterans with you among them. Fawn fun. This is where it gets interesting. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was to call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment, not it was, but it is, uh, present tense. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you high going to past tense. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with the staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. Contempt is my new favorite word nowadays. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday's performative, performative display of hostility, M-dash, enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil private conversation, demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I'm here to deliver first in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal. Despite yesterday's misconduct, I'd hope that in sitting down with you today, we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path. Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear, and I have heard you. Oh, period, double space. And I've heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News Inc. to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately and closes your former termination letter. Sign Nick Bilton, executive producer, 60 Minutes. Right, Nikki. Not to make headlines about newsroom John. Drama. And then we'd leak the letter. Exactly. So this is the door that Scott Pelley opened for Nick Bilton to write a letter like this. Because Nick Bilden made it about the conduct of Scott Pelley. And Scott and any correspondent, I mean anyone actually from a team, a journalist team, whether they're on air or not, producer, a journalist in the building. If they're going to do it and call some, say, say that someone is murdering 60 Minutes and calling them out like that. Well, per policy, grounds to be fired, correct? Which, which Scott Pelly obviously knew. So he walked right into that door and gave them, and then gave them this opening. However, um uh it also opened up other doors. So I think a lot of this, though, may seem very um happenstance. I think a lot of this was almost scripted. We all know what's what's going on here. All right, now the conduct of Scott Pelley is what gave CBS the opening. But does that matter? Okay, because the very next day, okay, so CBS fires him for cause. 37 years at the network ended in one meeting for Scott Pelley. All right, now moving on. What this letter is from Builton is an HR letter. There's no doubt about it. But it's very personal. Because isn't it interesting that part of Scott Pelle's termination letter is to saying, you've been going to dinner with me. Like that's why you're getting fired because you did not go to dinner with an executive uh producer. So this is personal. So much of this is personal. And it's very much so. A la quiz time, name the movie. Name the movie where the protagonist in the movie said to someone who was more business-minded, it may be, it may not be personal to you, but it's personal to me. Who said that? Nora Ephron movie. Anyone can come back to that? Two people sitting down at a table over coffee. Let me know. I know someone in this chat is gonna come up with my example. All right. So now the word performative too, that is a chosen word because it's not saying that Scott Pelley is angry. It says that Scott Pelley is performing. Performative, not hop, not heartburn, good guess herb, Nikki Conrad. Nick and Nikki, Nikki Conrad, ding ding, ding. You got mail. Meg Ryan playing Kathleen Kelly, talking to Joe Fox. Thank you. Oh, look at you guys. Lauren, Elizabeth, Wren. You all got it, right? You all got it. All right. But that's what it is. This is personal, but it's also a setup. That's

The Termination Letter And Its Subtext

Molly McPherson 21:02

what it was. This is a setup. And and it's also, you know, it's reframing the Scott Pelley confrontation as more theater. It's like the skeleton key for CBS, but but it also gives Scott Pelley more of that moral high ground of what he's standing up for. If you're gonna be perform, I'm gonna perform for journalism and ethics. Because new leadership, shaking up the institution, the veteran comes in and says, no, not on my watch. Does anyone think that Scott Pelley, who's being heralded as a journalistic hero, we may have to replace the Edward R. Murray Awards with the Scott Pelley Awards? Fun fact Greg just was nominated for four Edward R. Murrow Awards. I'm very proud of him for a story that he did this year. Very proud. What about Scott Pelley? I sense one of you in the comments here already thinks this. Do we think Scott Pelley was? Also being very strategic in what he was doing. Let's talk straight about Scott Pelly right now. There's certainly a noble cause in what he was doing. But does anyone else, because I already know someone else in the chat thinks that. First Colbert exit. Now this. Now, yeah, and Colbert Colbert. You know, Colbert did not pull a Pelly. Stephen Colbert, Colbert could have pulled a Pelly and he didn't. He stuck it out all those months. And then invited Ryan Reynolds onto a show. Mistake. Mistake. Now let's talk about the statements. And because we have multiple statements about the same event. Total contradictions happening here at once. And the way each one is built tells you what each person is trying to protect. So let's start with Pell's written statement. Because it be because it came first and it's doing a lot of work. Perhaps it was written ahead of time. He had it just sitting there. So his statement maybe at some point was a holding statement because he knew this was going to go. Because Pell didn't just say, I got fired and I'm upset. He reframes everything. And here's the core of it: Quote, for my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into politically, into a politically sensitive story. I've been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. And quote, stop and notice what he does there. He's taking a story that is being framed by Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton as Diva veteran loses temper in a meeting and turns it into principal journalists, refuses to corrupt the news and gets punished for it. If the museum still existed in Washington, D.C., my first visit as a kid in Rosalind, Virginia, and then it moved downtown, and boy, was that a phenomenal museum. And it makes me so sad that it's not there anymore. That would have been a statement for the museum, like written for the museum. Fun fact, Amali fact that I'm injecting in here. When I was writing uh for a newspaper uh as a stringer, I had a front page, it was a front page story, and it was in the museum. And I made my friend, or actually, I think my friend happened to be there that day on a school trip. And I said, you must go to the museum and take a photo, because they have they have the front pages from every state. You have to take a photo. My front page. Museum, anyway. RIP, the museum. But he took his statement, and his statement is about principal principled journalism. He flipped it. And that when we think of PR, he's a journalist, but that's a PR move. That's plain and simple. That's a PR move. That's when you flip the script. And so whether it's true or not, and I think, do we think what Scott Pelley is saying is true? It really feels like it, because we've had other stories like that. With the, oh, I don't have it at the tip of my tongue, but was a story about what's happening helped me with the ICE detention camps. Uh, and and and they and Barry Weiss pulled it and pulled that story and then kind of re kind of rejiggered it and then put it back out there. This is not a far reach to believe Scott Pelley in his statement. It's not a far reach at all. And here's a next line in his statement. And it's very specific because it is designed to stick. We'll call this our museum line, our museum quote. Quote Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60-minute interviews is not how this is done. End quote. Wow. That's a statement. That's an accusation. It makes you wonder if true, could be, are correspondents cooperating and falling in line with Barry Weiss? That's a headline that he's that's a massive headline that he's putting out there. An accusation. Next, quote, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all. He did not say almost. He said 19 minutes. Very broadcast news. Very Joan Cusack running the videotape from the editing room to the control room to put it in for Holly Hunter. Back to our movies. He has the 19 minutes. He knows exactly

Pelley’s Statement And PR Strategy

Molly McPherson 26:59

what he's talking about there. This is not by accident. This is a man who's a journalist. He knows how a quote travels. And here's the move I want you to clock as we watch this play out. In that entire written statement, uh, long as it is, Pelle never once names Weiss or Bilton. Never. He says new management. And that is a choice because, and this is why it's so smart. And here is a brilliant public relations crisis management move. The accusation from Nick Bilton in his letter that Scott Pelley did not go to dinner with him, which is personal. Yes, back to it. Who said I think Lauren, very godfather? You're right. You're right. It's not personal, it's business. Scott Pelley is Michael Corleone. It's business. By not naming them, by naming them as new management, makes it business. He's, he's, he's, he's trying to blow up their personal claims because naming them would have made it a personal grievance, would have put Pelle against Builton and Barry. And then when you do that, when you make it personal, and this is crisis management, this is crisis management 101 in my world. When things are personal, that's when the crisis happens. And what I tell clients all the time, when you this week, twice I did it this week, when you react, I'm not, and I didn't say it this harshly, but I can say it with you guys. When you react with emotion, there's more of a bite to it. One. And people pick up on that. They pick up the bite, but also it diminishes you. Any fight you had, any, any, um, any advantage you have, you lose because you bring it right down here. Now you're equal. Because it's personal. He said, she said, he said, he said, she said, she said. You're just keeping you're by making it personal, you lose your footing. Scott Pelley removed that and kept a business, which is why it's so brilliant. Remember that. That's the move. If Scott Pelley, honestly, is gonna get kudos for anything. The nobility of what he did for journalism is great, but I'm gonna give him his props for his PR for how to for how to manage this. So let's look at the political undertow now as well as we wrap. So back in 2024, President Trump sued 60 Minutes, if you remember, over an interview with Kamala Harris. Uh, and the legal experts called the lawsuit week. If you remember that, let's all come back in time, right? Do we all remember when that happened? So much has happened. It is impossible to keep up with all of it. But our job is not to forget those things. Because in crisis management, it is my job to remember those things. Because in order to keep the path, when you keep the past in the story, it tells you and shows you how you can identify patterns. Patterns is how you find out where the truth lies and where the lie lies and where the crisis sits. So when that happened, the Paramount's previous owners settled it in 2025 instead of fighting. And if you remember, this is a time when Ellison was seeking the federal approval because of the acquisition of Warner Brothers. So everything, now we're going back, it's not personal, it's business. Barry Weiss and Barry and Bilton want to keep making this personal to make Pelly look bad. Pelle is saying, this has been about business all along. It's always been about business. So when, so that's why when he said the new management, he's bringing in that political story and he's making it political as well, which is brilliant. He's making it a company that already settled with the president once. And now the president's still the president's type of agenda, or cowering to the president, doing things in good favor to our president is the reason, the motivation behind everything that they do at 60 Minutes. So then 60 Minutes respond. So now we have another kirk. Even Megan Kelly, I love that. Even Megan Kelly, what a great way to open that. Called out Bilton's termination letter as whiny. Oh, I don't want to agree with Megan Kelly. Don't make me a girl agree with Megan Kelly. But yeah, it was whiny. It was performative irony. That letter was performative. Okay, so now Barry Weiss jumping in. And did she write all this at the last minute based on response? No. When you bait a situation and you plan it, you know exactly what's going to do, what's going to happen there. So Weiss gets on a CBS morning call uh yesterday. The whole newsroom is listening and she addresses the firing directly. She talks about trust and mutual respect being the foundation. How many CBS employees on that call were going, this is awful, and making faces and just also looking for new jobs while they were listening. Okay, so this is what she said quote, I'm only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect. We cannot do our work without it. The New York Times obtained that recording. Everything we're doing is performative because we know it's going to be leaked. We know it's going to run out in the press and it's going to be put in front of all of us so all of us can have opinions on it. So now let's come back home because is there another statement

Business Pressures And Political Undertow

Molly McPherson 32:40

in the story? Of course, there's another statement in the story from Scott Pelley. Was Scott Pelley ready to go? Scott Pelley is ready to go. Uh oh, before one more quote I have to add in there. Uh quote. Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and defy Okay, sorry. Oh my God, I almost missed the whole thing. I almost buried the lead here. The quote from Barry Weiss. Here we go. So again, our through line, if we were to give it a name, we're gonna call this the godfather slash you got mail portion of our analysis of our breakdown. Personal business. This is Barry Weiss's quote. Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pellion to find a way back, unfortunately, we weren't able to do so. And so we had to part ways. We did not want that to happen, but that's the path that he chose. What did she do again? She made it personal. She made it personal. And that's what Kathleen Kelly from You Got Mail, and that's what Michael Corleone from The Godfather is saying. It doesn't work. You can't do personal. Business and personal don't mix. You can't do that. So CBS is trying to paint Pelle as the problem. That is a Pelle problem. And Pelly is not taking the bait. All right. So now here's the Pelly statement in return. Quote, I am pained that the staff of CBS News was misled in the Wednesday morning conference call. These executives cannot gain the trust of the staff with lies. This is antithetical to everything we stand for and reveals contempt for what journalists do. End quote. Now, this is what brings us back to the beginning. Pelle is calling Barry Weiss a liar. Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton are calling Pelle a baby. And this is all happening at Mike Wallace's 60 Minutes. Can you imagine? Again, could you imagine Mike Wallace in this era? My goodness. So now, now where are we? Let's bring this up to where we are right now. 60 Minutes has three remaining full-time correspondents. I mentioned in my post, um, I because I had asked Greg, what does Anora O'Donnell do? So she's a part-time correspondent. I should have come up with Leslie Stahl, would have been a good name to say, or Bill Whitaker or uh John Wortham. As of right now, none of them have said publicly, but it was leaked. I believe it was leaked to NPR. I read it in NPR, but I think it was leaked to NPR, that they were all debating about what to do if they should retire en masse. Um, so there's a lot of uncertainty there. But for CBS and for Barry Weiss, from a crisis perspective, we could argue that they won the battle. They got rid of a sticky wicket at 60 Minutes in Scott Pelly. But my goodness, if you're trying to make CBS a journalistic, iconic institution, my goodness, you are losing the war on this big time. And also her saying in that quote that she's trying to find a way back, she can't even claim the high ground in any of this. By personally attacking Scott Pelley from management, you can't do it. If there is ever a time for a sterile statement out of an institution, this was the time. But they are replying in an emotional way. And I would argue you lose the battle. You lose the battle when you do that. So, in my opinion, what's not changing is this David Ellison, the CEO, met with Builton about the show's future and signed off on Pelly out the door. So this wasn't a built-in choice. These are all David Ellison choices. Everything goes back to David Ellison. Everything goes back to David Ellison, the FCC, Trump, Brendan Carr, licensing, acquisition, business, money. That's that's what it comes down to. Money. It's not journalism anymore. It's about money. Then we have the Pelly piece of it. I think by any communication measure, Scott Pelly wins by a landslide. He absolutely lends. He got the last word. All of his framing is on principle. He called the boss a liar and he made it stick with examples in the coverage. He is not going quietly. He is very good at what he does, and he's made a career out of telling stories. So he knows what he's doing. But the behind the scenes, there are so many problems happening behind the scenes at CBS Evening News. I mean, even go back to 2017, okay, history. He was in the anchor chair and he has said publicly it was because he wouldn't stop complaining to management about what he called a hostile work environment. So this is 2017. His words, quote, I lost my job because I wouldn't stop complaining to management. So this arc of the veteran who keeps agitating and getting pushed out for it is not new. It's documented. He's he's lived that move before, but winning the narrative and having your job back are two entirely different things. Scott Pelley no longer is at CBS. He's no longer at 60 Minutes. He's no longer with his platform. So it will be interesting to see where he lands if he comes up on our Substack. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. Um, but he's gonna be with everyone else. He is extremely effective in his communications, but he's extremely unemployed, too. That is where the war is being fought. And he lost his job, and what he did is not going to be reinstatement, clearly, at any point. But when the institution, which 60 minutes, is pretty much the same age as me at this point, sometimes people are ready to hang it up and they're ready to hang it up. So it will be interesting to see where it goes. So now, uh, finding a way back, uh, does what is finding a way back for Barry Weiss? What does it mean? I I think it's impossible, almost impossible to say that Barry Weiss is trying to find a way back to good journals. It's impossible. So what do you do if you're there? We've already talked about three full-time correspondents. Um Nora O'Donnell seems like someone who's gonna stick it out there. She seems like her and Gail King to me are the same. They just, they just go along to get along, type people. In Nora's defense, she has kids that have to go to who have to go to college, but still, she's at an age where, I don't know, principals would be nice. But here's a funny side note. So Tony DeCoupel, who's the anchor, CBS Evening News, okay, they named him anchor. And he has had nothing but a disaster since being named

Who Won The Narrative And Why

Molly McPherson 39:16

anchor. One funny thing, uh, I saw yesterday on Threads, I believe, Keith Oberman calling him out, Tony DeCoupol, for not sticking up, siding with Scott Pellley, and resigning. What is not said in Keith Oberman's tweet or post or uh thread is that Keith Oberman dated Tony DeCoppel's former wife. Katie Turr got her start and she has a program on MSMBC. Oh no, MS Now, because of Keith Oberman. Fun fact she was very young dating a very not young Keith Oberman. So it's funny in 2026 that Keith Oberman is like calling out Tony DeKoppel like that. I find that interesting. All right, everyone. So our takeaway right here for our for this week of the PR breakdown. I mean, we talk about PR. And who won this war hands down is Scott Pelle in the PR world. He, his messaging, his communication, his strategy, he won it. And that's the takeaway lesson to remember here. Every professional crisis that we see play out in the space, whether it's public or even if it's in your business or your work or all the clients who I deal with all the time, it has a public-facing element, whether you're 60 minutes or not. A crisis, an external crisis is that public-facing element. But everything that I talk about with clients in the middle of it, they're all, I could be talking to my girlfriends about breaking up with a boyfriend. They're all the same. Or warring spouses. It's all emotional and it's all personal. It's business, it's a crisis business, but you know what? It's always personal. And what we need to do is the more personal, though, that you make it, the bigger the crisis will be, and the bigger a challenge that it will be to get through it. That's why Scott Pelley has the win here. He's not, even though it's very personal to Scott Pelley, his response is all business. All right, everyone, that's it for this week of the PR breakdown. Thank you for joining. Thank you for your patience. I promise we are going to figure out this the substack stream on here. And uh we'll meet you again. And I will tell you in editor's note, what's changing here, even though it seems like it's a bit of a uh circus from the background, we actually have things happening. Our lives are gonna now switch from Fridays to mostly on Wednesdays. Uh, we'll be doing the 12 p.m. Eastern time, and then we're gonna be doing some evening ones as well so we can get hit people in their time zones. The PR breakdown lives are going to become my podcast. They're all gonna be one and the same. So after we have our lives, my uh every producer now who's gonna edit it, put all the sources in there, all the materials in there so they can be viewed. If in case you miss it, you'll be able to watch it again and you'll be able to um see all the examples that we have in there. We're gonna take out the chat part of it. But if you want to join for the chat, you can always join for live. But that's gonna be um our podcast for the week because we're all about efficiency here at Molly McPherson. And what we'll do is one deep dive like this, like Scott Pelly, or a little roundup of the week. Because believe me, I had five things on the platter ready to serve, because there's always something going on in our world right now. All right, everyone. Thanks so much uh for joining me this week uh on The Breakdown, uh, the PR Breakdown live. We'll see you soon. Have a great week, everyone. Bye for now.