FCC Chair Takes Swipe at Scott Pelley After 60 Minutes Exit

When a government official weighs in on a personnel dispute at a major news organization, you know the temperature in the room just got a lot hotter. That’s what happened on Sunday, June 7, when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took to X to comment on the fallout from Scott Pelley’s firing from 60 Minutes—and his take didn’t pull punches.

Carr’s message was blunt: legacy journalists are out of touch, and that’s precisely why trust in media has eroded. He argued that Pelley’s behavior—which led to his termination after 37 years at CBS—wouldn’t fly in any ordinary workplace. The timing mattered too. Pelley had just given his first on-camera interview about the firing to Lulu Garcia-Navarro at The New York Times the day before, and in that sit-down, the veteran newsman didn’t hold back about what he saw happening inside CBS News.

Pelley’s account painted a picture of a network in turmoil. He told Garcia-Navarro that Paramount leadership needed to hear from respected journalists that there was“a thumb on the scale of one political party over another”and described a“subtle political bias”he’d never witnessed in his decades of reporting. His firing came after a confrontation with Nick Bilton, 60 Minutes’new executive producer, who labeled Pelley’s remarks an“ambush”in a subsequent memo. The clash reflected deeper tensions at the network, which saw Bari Weiss, a controversial media figure, join as CBS News editor-in-chief in October.

What’s striking isn’t just the high-profile clash or the government official’s criticism—it’s what insiders say is happening behind the scenes. Sources told Us Weekly that morale at CBS has become dire, with staff uncertain who to trust and unable to work effectively in an environment poisoned by suspicion and infighting. That’s the real story: not whether Pelley was right or wrong, but that a storied news organization appears to be tearing itself apart.

Carr’s comments reflect a broader frustration with media institutions, but they also highlight a crucial irony. A government regulator criticizing a journalist for being“out of touch”while that journalist raises concerns about political bias at a major network—that’s the kind of moment that should make everyone, regardless of politics, squirm a little.