Just a few days after being shitcanned for speaking too freely to the new boss (definitely not the same as the old boss), former 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley sat down with the New York Times "Interview" podcast (gift link) for his first interview since he was fired.

In the interview with reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro (yes, formerly of NPR), Pelley discussed in detail the turmoil and fuckery at CBS News wrought by Bari Weiss, and specifically the dismantling of 60 Minutes by Weiss and the show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, neither of whom has any experience at all in television. (Worse, we keep misreading his name as "Nick Bitcoin.&quot Pelley frequently grew emotional as he talked about the firings of his colleagues and the deliberately Trump-friendly direction Weiss is taking the news operation, because for Crom's sake, he's grieving the very real harm to his professional family and home. As the interview wrapped up, he joked, "Fox News is going to just run the parts where I'm crying and say I'm a lunatic."

Pelley also answered one of the biggest questions from the statement he released immediately after his firing last week, in which he said the new management had "instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story," and that he was "told to include assertions that are unverified."

That attempted interference involved a February 60 Minutes segment on ICE's invasion of Minnesota that had already been okayed to go to air. Shortly before airtime that Sunday, well after the deadline for final edits, Weiss emailed then-executive producer Tanya Simon to demand two changes: that footage of protesters be changed to make them appear more violent, and to add narration that described Good as "driving toward the officer" who killed her. Pelley refused to make those changes.

If you have an hour to watch the full video of the interview, here it is. If not, we'll write up the highlights!



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