John Oliver has blasted CBS after veteran broadcaster Scott Pelley was pushed out.
Pelley was fired last week after a dramatic confrontation during a staff meeting with newly installed 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, who has no experience in broadcast news, and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
During the meeting, Pelley accused Weiss of “murdering” 60 Minutes and claimed she had been hired to dismantle the legendary program.
Bilton later said Pelley had launched an “ambush” and shown “remarkable incivility and contempt” toward leadership before he was fired.
In a termination letter ending Pelley’s 37-year career at CBS News, Bilton wrote that he had hoped to work with the veteran journalist but was met with hostility instead.
“It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead,” he wrote.
Following last week’s events, late-night talk show hosts lined up behind Pelley to support him, the latest of them John Oliver.
On his Last Week Tonight show on HBO, Oliver quipped: “CBS News fired Scott Pelley for the crime of: being too cool in a meeting.”
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS for comment.
It comes as Paramount, which owns CBS, is set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of HBO Max.
After the deal closes, Paramount plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming platform, which would make Paramount CEO, David Ellison, Oliver’s boss.
Ellison, who was spotted at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, issued a statement praising the acquisition, saying, “From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company.”
Oliver previously told Paramount to “stay the f–-k away" from Warner Bros.
Meanwhile, in a lengthy farewell statement, Pelley accused CBS’ leadership of sacrificing 60 Minutes to appease the Trump administration.
“Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration,” Pelley wrote.
“The waste is heartbreaking.”
In a later interview with The New York Times, Pelley doubled down on allegations that the network’s new leadership was sucking up to the Trump administration.
“We have respected journalists saying that there is a thumb on the scale for one political party over another,” Pelley said in a preview clip.
“And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at 60 Minutes before, or at CBS News before.”
On Sunday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a close Trump ally, publicly criticized Pelley, calling him “completely out of touch” and arguing that his conduct would not be tolerated in a typical workplace.
“You could not get away with that behavior at any run of the mill job. It is revealing to see how blind some are to that,” he wrote.
