Pelly canned from CBS for insubordination | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Headline from the Babylon B sixty minutes the news program sixty minutes begins search for new pompous blowhard. It's gonna be uh, tough shoes to fill, very big shoes to fill. Now that Scott Pilly, maybe I should do the entire topic as Scott Pelley speaks. Man, that's annoying. I could see. That's straining the jaw. I guess some people just like I think he's from Texas though. Anyway, So Scott Pelley described by Scott McKay in a piece as puffy and fussy Scott Pelly, puffy and fussy Pelly, Puffy Pelly. Yeah, we'll do that. Pelly has been terminated by sixty minutes a CBS News property and this is once again the end of journalism as we know it, or it is a PR stunt, and I think it's a PR stunt. I do I believe that's this. I think this is Pelly's plan. Pelly is looking for the Stephen Colbert treatment, right. He wants to be able to parlay the martyrdom scandal into an audience on his substat or YouTube or wherever he's going to land. Right, So you want to you want to get a lot of you know, uh, what we call in the business earned media, which is just TV coverage. You earn the you earn the media coverage versus paying for it through advertising and stuff like that. So you you know. You you jin up this issue, you present yourself as the righteous party and you've been wronged and you're the martyr, and then you have this rally around the victim effect that occurs, and then you parlay that into an audience transfer over to a sub stack or a podcast or something. Right now, will it succeed? I don't know or is he? I think he would probably be better suited to just go to like miss Now formerly known as MSNBC. I think that's where he probably will head. In fact, I saw a tweet from uh Rachel Maddow on mis now and you know, she was like, we should get Scott Pelley over here, Like, yeah, of course you should. So what's going on? I'm gonna run through some of the background here, but the there are a couple of different elements to this tale, But there is also a much larger issue at play, okay, and it is kind of reflected in the topic that I covered and did not actually plan to cover as much as I covered in the last two hours with this, you know, cane Gate and Michael Wattley. But there is a unifying thread here, and I always try to find like what is the like zoom out, what's the bigger picture? You know, what are what are the underlying issues that are going on here that make this thing into this thing? Right? And I think the common through line here is. Essentially what used to be called liberal but now just sort of democrat, because the Democrats now encompassed not really any liberal ideas. It's now just like progressive and far left. And they have this h let's see, how can I say this. I'll just say it like this. They're very mad, They're not in control. They're losing their grip on some of the institutions that they have controlled for a while, and the media is one of the most important institutions. And I think that is really reflected in the Pelly story. But it is also kind of sort of reflected. There's a little bit of that going on in the Wattley story, in that they are trying to advance a narrative and inject this story into the race and make this a thing because they control the media and they want people to know about this very important story, right, And so that's why I mock them, because like, this is stupid. This is a stupid story. Now with Pelly, I think it is it's more pronounced because sixty Minutes has this long history, right, They've been around since nineteen sixty eight, Scott Pelly has been there for like I don't know what, twenty years or something. And because it's sixty minutes and it has this long history and this reputation and in a lot of sectors it has respect that. So now it's this bigger deal. It has a bigger audience. Obviously, I think their audience was somewhere around I mean, they've been and this is the problem is that they've been losing audience for years. And so when CBS was bought by sky Dance and they brought the head of sky Dance, Larry Ellison, brought in Barry Weiss, who, by the way, is not a conservative, she's a liberal like she's a like two thousand's liberal. And so she was brought in. To try to rebuild CBS News into something else because I think the guy built in who is in charge of sixty Minutes now, he said it's a melting ice cube and he is correct on that. So you have to find ways to stay relevant, got to find new ways to reach new audience, right and for old veterans of the industry, they don't want anything to change and all of that. Sure, However, part of this is a pushback and an anger that they don't get to control the messaging. Okay, so kind of keep that larger issue in mind as we go through some of this. So let me start with the ap story on this. This is sixty Minutes. Harry Reisner announced on September twenty fourth, nineteen sixty eight, introducing his new CBS News show alongside fellow correspondent Mike Wallace. It's kind of a magazine for television, He added, we do think this is sort of a new approach. More than a half century and fifty eight seasons later, that same term new approach is being deployed by CBS News leader Barry Weiss to explain her sweeping changes at the most renowned news program in TV history, firing the top producer and two correspondents, among others, and installing a new chief with no TV broadcast experience. Now, one of the show's most famous faces. So TV broadcast experience. The guy's a documentarian, Yeah, the guy in charge. So it's not like he has no experience with the visual media, you know, it's just no TV broadcast experience. Now, one of the show's most famous faces, Scott Pelley, is gone, too, fired after a tense confrontation with bosses. Yes, a confrontation that he initiated, and he was the only one who was confrontational. He was the one that made it tense. This was all of his own doing. He did this right. Going back to the original comments from Harry Reasoner when they launched, he said, we realize, of course, that new approaches are not always instantly accepted. Weiss's new approach has been greeted with biting criticism from some corners, says the AP, which one's AP, which ones? Which corners? Would that be? Some corners? Which corners? They don't tell us. Moreover, the turmoil has become a top new story in itself, with competing narratives flying, none of them flattering to CBS News. See so again, this is the associated press crafting the narrative, telling you what the truth is. This is the story, right, They're telling you essentially what to think that this is the story, and none of this is flattering to CBS. I'm not so sure I agree with that, but let's proceed. The show is suddenly down four correspondents. Three have been dismissed, including Pelly and Anderson. Cooper left on his own accord he retired. He's also doing workover at CNN all the time. There have also been unsettling accusations launched by Pelly, which is interesting to note because the AP, whenever they say anything that Donald Trump says, they always say Trump says without evidence, blah blah blah. But they don't say that for Pelly because Pelly's making accusations but he provides no evidence of any of the accusations, but they don't say that. They don't tell you that there's no evidence, which they always tell you when it's drum. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eye of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are visit Creative video dot Com. Steve says Scott Pelly has always been smug and condescending, sitting there with his glasses in his mouth during interviews thinking either it makes him look or sound more intelligent than he really is. He's the epitome of anchorman. Uh yeah, he apparently. There was a story. I saw somebody who worked with him and they were telling they were saying like he demanded that the camera he was doing like fill in I guess at some point, and so he had to tell the camera operators like make sure you zoom in on me as I. Take my glasses off. This is one of the elements of TV news that I think people outside of the industry don't ever really think about. But there are things that people do as part of TV news that are simply done for the lens. Consultants come in and tell people things. This is what you need to do, they'll say, interact with the background or your surroundings. That's why you'll see like there was this big push probably about ten years ago. You started seeing people like if they were talking about like, oh, they're gonna be debating a new basketball arena, and the reporter would be out there with a basketball, like, let's use props everybody. We're gonna use props. That's gonna get people watching. I'm not kidding. Here's another one, sit up, stand down or sorry, stand up or sit down. So TV news stations will bring in This is a true story. ATV news station brought in a consultant to try to figure out how to improve the ratings whatever whatever, and then they're like, oh, all of your anchors are sitting behind a desk, so let's have them all stand up. Oh and by the way, the news directors fired, So they fire the news director, bringing the consultant. The consultant then looks around and says, your anchors are sitting down. We're gonna have them stand up. It shows that they're more active and engaged, gives them energy. Whatever, it's gonna stand out and look different whatever. So they make everybody stand up. They take away all of the tables and they take away all the chairs and now everybody's standing up, and then the ratings don't improve, so they fire that consultant. They bring in another consultant, and the consultant comes in and says, okay, number one, fire your news director. That you just hired fire that one, and I see everybody is standing up. We need to sit down. Come on, this is more of a casual thing. It's gonna see, it's gonna convey like familiarity and we're just taking things easy. Whatever. It's just rationalizations. They just come up with different ideas to justify the paycheck as being a consultant. Right, Like those who can do, those who can't teach, and those who can't teach consult right. So like so much of TV news is driven by that kind of thinking. Okay, I think it all started going downhill when they started referring to their newscasts as shows when they say, oh, the five o'clock show, and I would hear that and be like, oh, it shouldn't be a show. But this gets back to like one of the things that I had a college professor in the mass calm department at Winthrop, and he told me and the rest of the class. He said, the nice thing about TV is that you get to use pictures and video, right. The downside is that you have to use pictures and video. See, in radio, we don't have that luxury. We're just spoken word. So and the example he gave was like, if I'm on the radio and I want to fill up a swimming pool full of jello, I can just say that, and now you've got an image in your own mind about what that looks like. Right, But on TV, I have to show that to you. I've got to show you the pool of jello. And that's why you have so much video from house fires and apartment fires is because I could show you the flames. Look at the flames. Oh my gosh, look at those flames. Wow, they're so flamey. Yes. Anyway, back to the Scott Pelley story, new management has instructed me. This is one of his accusations. New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. He offers no evidence of this. He makes the accusation, provides no evidence of it, doesn't even tell us what that story is, and the ap does not give him the qualifier of Pelley asserted or accused without evidence. Yet they do that all the time for Republicans. I've been told to include assertions that are unverified. Again, no evidence to support that claim. CBS denied the charge, saying there's no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Barry Weiss. The only interference is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom. So what is he really arguing. Then Let's assume that he was told, you have to bring in some other side of this story. You have to you have to put this other information into your story. And he believes that the other information is bias or false or unverified. Okay, So that's the assumption we'll work off of for this hypothetical. So who's making that who's telling him to bring this stuff in? Well, that would be his editor, right, that would be the people in the newsroom. And by the way, that's what a newsroom is supposed to do. You are supposed to have these debates in the newsroom because it fleshes out the story. If you have a news operation where nobody ever pushes back, no one ever says, hey, there's another side to this story that you may. Have ignored or maybe you think is not true. However, if you cannot disprove it, then you need to include this information in your story. Those sorts of debates happen in any healthy newsroom. That's why you want a diversity of thought in the newsroom, and that's what I think Pelly and a lot of these reporters are not interested in. They don't want diversity of thought. They want to be able to set narratives, drive the news cycle, and have no accountability for it. I want to play for you a clip. From brit Hume on with John Roberts on Fox News about the Pelly situation. You and I, most other people in this country have at times worked for people with whom we disagree on occasion. Absolutely right, John. I've worked in this TV news business for more than a half a century, and I worked for a lot of different bosses, many of whom I liked and admired, a few who I did not. But I have always found a way to work with every one of them as best I could. I never thought myself some great guardian of journalistic integrity who wasn't open to the ideas of others with whom I might, at least at first disagree, And I've never had a problem finding a way to do the work in a way that would please me and please whatever boss I had, or at least satisfied them. These sixty minutes correspondence led now by Scott Pelley seemed to think that they've they are the guardians of journalistic integrity, and certainly there are stars on that show. But John, it's worth remembering what that show is, how that show works. Like all these television magazine shows as prominent as the correspondents who narrate them an impure on camera seem to be those shows are producer driven, and these correspondents become famous largely because of the good work that is done by producers who go out and do the interviews, supervisor shooting in, the editing of the pieces and so on, writing as well, and the correspondents come in to do a couple of interviews, narration and appear on camera, right, So they get to be pretty big stars that way on a show John, as you well know, which has for at least a significant part of the year, the best lead in in television, which is to say, the NFL on Sunday. So I think these people are a little self important, to say the least. Well, it appeared as the management was willing to look past that very public dressing down of Nick Bilton, who is the new executive producer. He said this letter to Pelley, he said, quote despite yesterday's misconduct, I hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you're not interested in such a path. Your antipathy to the future of the show has come true loud and clear, and I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News Incorporated, to inform you that your employment with CBS has terminated for cause effective immediately. Seems that Pelley's strategy here with Scorched Earth. Well, you know, it would have been one thing. This new executive producer at CBS had taken the helm and begun to put things together that Pelly found objectionable. But he hadn't done anything yet. He was just newly appointed, and Pelley seemed to think it was his job to take out after this guy without ever even giving him a chance. And even if that were the case, you have to remember in life that the boss is still the boss. And you know, if you're supporting an employee, you don't get to run the place. You know, in my life, three things that I have learned, and that is no employee is bigger than the corporation. We are all just penciled in and the graveyards of America are filled with people who were deemed irreplaceable. You're irreplaceable, and you're irreplaced. Particularly they're deemed irreplaceable by themselves. True. That good to be with you, my friend. Thanks so much, appreciate it. Thanks John, I see that so much wisdom in that exchange. I have said for years, like, this is not my job. This is wbt's job. They have hired me to do this job. It's not mine. Okay, Never mistake the brand for the platform. WBT owns this platform. Yes, I have the Pete Calender show brand. I can control that by the show that I do. But whenever those two things are in conflict, people get into a lot of trouble when they start thinking that their brand is bigger than the platform, and it never is. So so much. Yeah, every job as a shelf life, every one of them. This is from Scott McKay. Oh and before I forget, because I forgot, last segment to the larger issue of the left controlling these institutions, right and why they are screaming bloody murder over like this is like Stephen Colbert and his you know they're silencing me and all of that no, you're hemorrhaging money ten million dollars a year and your show is unwatchable. Right, These are metrics that the platform looks at. Right, you used your stage that wasn't yours, but was built up over decades by people before you. You gutted it, and you wear its hide as a skin suit, and then demand people respect the skin suit that you are wearing. Right, And that is what is happening with this situation as well, in my opinion, Like whatever reputation sixty Minutes had had been built over, you know, fifty years whatever, and now I stopped watching sixty Minutes a long time ago, and they've made many egregious errors, always in favor of Democrats and against Republicans. So I like I've recognized what they're up to years ago, as a lot of you have also, as a lot of Americans have they because their ratings have declined. Now I think there's somewhere around eight million viewers and it's a once a week show and they're not cranking out any additional content. That's a problem. You have to create content. But they are demanding respect for the institution that they gutted and took over, and they haven't earned it. That respect was built up because the institution was built by better people than them or than they. This is from Scott McKay. Sharon Alfonsi was fired. She was a correspondent on sixty Minutes who utterly stunk at her job. She was the reporter who, two days after JD Vance, went to Munich and delivered a landmark speech about the clear disconnect between the stated values of Western civilization that NATO is supposed to protect and the execution of those values by increasingly authoritarian socialist governments in Europe. Alfonsi delivered a decidedly favorable report on German efforts to suppress online speech. The government doesn't like you. Remember that story, I do. It was a bizarre story. Alfonsi voiced it like there was nothing particularly untoward in breaking down people's doors and pilfering their phones and computers as a consequence of trolling stupid Green Party communist politicians on Facebook. From the text line, Wes says, Pete, I have not watched one minute of sixty Minutes since the paperwork against George W. Bush had a font that did not exist at the time. Yeah, younger people would not even know what this is a reference to. This was the forged documents to attack George W. Bush. They had to apologize for. That, although to this day Dan Rather claims he still believes it, believes it was true. Bob says, the repositioning at sixty minutes is not new. Pelly's timing of his outrage is curious. Well, he had a I think he was his contract was coming due. And look, I don't think CBS is crying over his exit, you know, And I think the more people that leave, the better for CBS. In sixty minutes, right, they are attempting to change the direction of CBS News, which has been some of the they've done some of the worst types of partisan reporting over the last decade. And so Barry Weiss, once again a liberal Obama supporting, Democrat supporting a former columnist for the New York Times. Right, she got run out of the New York Times because she pointed out to the New York Times like, wow, there's like this, there's a lot of like anti semitism here, right, And they were like. You must leave, You're too supportive of Israel. That kind of thing. That was it. They ran her out, this new guy that she hired Nick Bilton as the new executive producer of Sixty Minutes. His resume, according to Scott McKay at The American Spectator, says, it's more interesting than anybody else at that show, if for no other reason than Martin Scorsese has, to my knowledge, never asked any of them to write the screenplay for a movie. He's a veteran investigative journalist, This guy, Nick Bilton is, and he shows up and at the very first staff meeting, he gets accosted by Puffy Fussy Pelly, who says, Barry Weiss is murdering sixty Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she's been doing exactly that. She has no qualification for the job. You have slender qualifications for this job. He's telling this to his boss, So he's in front of the entire staff, talking crap to the boss, personal attacks on the boss and the boss's boss. He says, the changes that she's made at Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be better? So apparently Builton then leaves. He's like, obviously this is like, you know, Pelly's out of control whatever, and so he leaves, and you know, and then they are all like. Oh, captain, my captain. They're standing on desk, they're all applauding Scott Pelly and all this. Builton leaves. He then apparently reaches out to Pelly and says, hey, why don't we talk. Pelly refuses, and then he writes him a letter and he's like, well, okay, given the communication from the meeting, and then in your emails or whatever, you been insubordinate and so you're fired. And yes, that's how that happens. You don't get to talk trash to the boss in front of the entire staff, like, I guess that needs to be said. What about my freedom of speech? You have the freedom to say it, and they have the freedom to fire you, which is exactly what they did. Noah Pollock, he is a senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Education. He said liberals fervently believe that every institution in America exists to serve the liberal cause. If one doesn't, it must either be destroyed or captured. But the worst scenario for them is when a captured institution is freed from liberal control. History is only supposed to move in one direction, and that's when you get the big tantrums. I agree, and that's what this is. So the built in hire also coincided with this woman, Alfonse getting let go, along with another one of the on air correspondents and a producer and so yeah, Dragon Mihailovich, who was the number two for Bilton's predecessor as the executive producer. So an assistant to the executive producer. I guess this was a woman named Tanya Simon, whose father Bob Simon, worked for CBS News for about a billion years. So they let her go. Maybe she wasn't very good at the job. It's a big changing of the guard, says Scott McKay, and it got up in the fields of one very puffy, fussy Scott Pelley, who opened up with both barrels on Builton at a staff meeting where the latter introduced himself to the Part of the disagreement seems to be that Bilton would like the sixty Minutes team to actually do their jobs when they come to work. Outrageous, I know. Bilton has suggested that he'd like the program to generate more content. The show was. This is what he said he told Variety last week. Variety Magazine, he said, quote, the show was on the air one day, one night, one hour a week, and to me, there is an incredible opportunity to take the show and do a lot of things with it. And that's what's got them all huffy, puffy and fussy at CBS or at sixty minutes. We only do one hour once a week. Surely we cannot do more than that. I mean, think about it. They like they have a platform paramount, plus right, they've got platforms to distribute content. I'm assuming that sixty Minutes can actually do so. These people will brag again and again that they've got the highest rated TV news show in the country, but it's only because the show has a lead in of the NFL football games for half a year, and the other half of the year it's got high end golf tournaments more often than not. And they've changed utterly nothing about sixty minutes in half a century, other than getting some of the fossils. Off the air. So I mean, yes, they have done one. They retire, Yeah, so I'm fine with it. Good riddance, good luck to Scott Pelly. I'm sure he'll have a place on MSNBC. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to vpetecallanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.