Jonathan Leaf writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a recently fired “60 Minutes” reporter.
A week ago, former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley arrived for a meeting with his new boss, Nick Bilton, on the CBS News show at which they both work. Pelley took this as an opportunity to lecture and browbeat Bilton. In the meeting, which was recorded and leaked to the press, Pelley publicly accused those whom he works for as lacking credentials as journalists. Singling Bilton out, Pelley said that he had “slender qualifications” for the job of producing 60 Minutes. Necessarily, CBS fired Pelley the next day.
In his posture against Bilton, Pelley portrayed himself as possessing the journalistic credibility his new boss lacked. This is a little like Jeffrey Epstein calling out the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit for their lack of caring about underage girls.
I make this claim based on personal experience.
Let me explain. Ten years ago I received a phone call out of the blue. It was from a genuinely distinguished journalist, Irish-American investigative reporter and filmmaker Phelim McAleer. Phelim was calling me to ask if I wanted to collaborate on a piece of documentary theater. The project was inspired by the true story of Steven Donziger and his legal fight with the oil giant Chevron.
Seven years before, Pelley had presented a laudatory profile of Donziger on 60 Minutes. In Pelley’s accounting, Donziger was a brave and capable attorney who had exposed Chevron for the horrible damage that it had done to the virgin tropical forest of Ecuador and the indigenous people living there. …
… But in the following seven years another story was revealed. It turned out that Donziger had engaged in blackmail, pandering, fraud, conspiracy, and bribery. Moreover, it was shown that Chevron had reached prior agreements with the Ecuadorian government which absolved it of any responsibility for a future clean-up from the oil spills that were the subject of Donziger’s litigation.
