When CBS News President Tom Cibrowski asked Scott Pelley if he could come by for a meeting last Tuesday, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent booked about an hour on his calendar, he says. He assumed he’d be having an extensive discussion about issues that led to his tense confrontation a day earlier with his new boss, Nick Bilton.
He didn’t know Bari Weiss, the news division’s editor in chief, would be there. But his initial reaction to seeing her was “This is terrific of her,” he told The New York Times in a wide-ranging podcast interview. He figured he'd able to ask questions, and she’d explain her sweeping changes of the previous week, in which she’d replaced the executive producer, Tanya Simon, and let go two correspondents, along with other key staffers.