Bari-Kiri

Scott Pelley's Self-Disembowelment

Scott Pelley of CBS News and 60 Minutes, committed Bari Kiri this past week.

He publicly disemboweled himself when he excoriated CBS News boss Bari Weiss, and her newly appointed executive producer of 60 Minutes. Pelley said, basically, they’re the Visigoths that have sacked and burned CBS News, and that they weren’t qualified to even shine his journalist’s shoes.

Admittedly, Weiss’ choice of an obscure newspaper guy, author and screenwriter to head up 60 is an odd choice. But, and it’s a big but, it is HER choice and SHE is the boss.

It certainly doesn’t take a highly paid, vain and shall I say, boring, network correspondent to know, that if you berate your bosses and leak the berating to the New York Times, your days of employment will be severely if not permanently curtailed.

Of course, when Pelley got canned, the mainstream media world donned sackcloth and ashes. They said he was standing up for big J journalism, that he was at the wall, fending off Bari and her barbarians. It was a Pelley pity party.

Here’s my take.

There’s no doubt Bari Weiss is in the process of blowing up CBS News and even the sacred 60 Minutes. She wasn’t paid $150 million by nepo-baby David Ellison to sit back and let CBS continue to sink into the quicksand of broadcast TV.

But, Pelley’s claim that Bari Weiss is “murdering” the vaunted journalism of CBS News and of 60 Minutes, made me laugh.

When I was at CBS, the 60 Minutes boss was a guy by the name of Jeff Fager. Fager was only the second executive producer in the show’s history, suckled by the program’s founder, the TV news legend, Don Hewitt.

So, do you remember the world headline-making arrest in 2011 in New York City of Dominque Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and a favorite to be France’s next president? He was nabbed at JFK as he was about to leave on a plane back to Europe, and was charged with the sexual assault and attempted rape of a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel.

It was a huge, international cause celebre.

Given that the alleged crime occurred in Manhattan, the case fell into the lap of that borough’s district attorney, Cy Vance, Jr., the son of the famous US statesman, Cyrus Vance.

With me so far?

Weeks went by with no comment from Vance, Jr. Everyone was asking, would he prosecute or would he drop the charges against Strauss-Kahn? Vance wouldn’t utter a word about the case.

Finally, he announced he was dropping the charges and would hold a news conference to explain everything.

Dozens of reporters from all over the world gathered in his media room, and just as he came out to the podium, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck.

Everyone scattered and the news conference ended before it began.

I thought for sure Vance would reschedule.

I was shocked when his office said, nope, we’re done, we’re not gonna talk about the case.

That didn’t sit well with me, we had questions why the charges were dropped and we were promised answers. So the next day, I dispatched one of my reporters to wait for Vance as he returned to his Manhattan apartment, to ask him why he let Strauss-Kahn go free. The D.A. blew past my reporter and fled into his home.

Wouldn’t you know, I got a scathing phone call from Vance’s press person, livid that I dared stake out a publicly elected official at his residence. We screamed at each other and the call ended on a sour note.

It didn’t take long for my boss to get a call from Jeff Fager, demanding I apologize to Vance’s office.

Why? Because given his pedigree, 60 Minutes was interested in doing a profile of Cy Vance, Jr., and was now being told there was no way he would do it, and of course, it was all my fault.

I told my boss, let me call Fager and explain, journalist to journalist, why I did what I did and I’m sure he’ll understand.

I should have known better. Fager wouldn’t even take my call. That’s because in 60 Minutes world, no one else’s journalism counts.

So, in the end, because 60 Minutes reigned supreme, I was forced to eat crow and make amends with Vance. The irony is, I don’t believe they ever did that Vance profile piece.

That’s just a small example of the monumental self-righteousness that is deeply embedded in the DNA of 60 Minutes and in those who work there, and you saw it again this past week with Pelley’s arrogance.

Look, maybe Bari Weiss made a huge mistake in her choice for new leadership at 60 Minutes. Pardon the cliche, but only time will tell.

But, it was her choice to make, not Pelley’s.

Pelley should have swallowed his conceit and stayed on, to try to influence the new leadership’s decisions, to champion the standards he so profusely pontificates about.

If Scott Pelley cared, I mean really cared about his colleagues, who still have to make a living under the new regime, he would have voiced his concerns in private.

Instead, he haughtily threw himself under the bus, and in doing so, he left Bari and her new driver in the fast lane with a full tank of gas.