Jun 5, 2026

Greetings from Los Angeles, and welcome back to In the Room. Go Knicks! And let me know if you can spare $176,000 for a ticket next week.

In tonight’s issue, fresh reporting on the rolling developments at West 57th Street, where Nick Bilton has convinced Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim to stick around at 60 Minutes despite their misgivings about the leadership. In the end, the trio said they would work “to build trust” with Nick—but an earlier version of their memo, which I obtained, suggests that their resentment toward Bari and the Ellisons remains potent.

🗓️ Plus, stay tuned for my partner Bill Cohan’s forthcoming interview with Lesley herself, which will run in this Sunday’s edition of his incomparable private email, Dry Powder, to which you surely already subscribe.

Also mentioned in this issue: Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, Maria Gavrilovic, Lina Khan, Cecilia Vega, Jeffrey Kessler, Shari Redstone, Nicole Seligman, Tanya Simon, Frederick Terrell, Christian Wright, Dawn Ostroff, Draggan Mihailovich, Matt Polevoy, Guy Campanile, Matt Brittin, Anderson Cooper, Martin Scorsese, and more.

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Dems vs. Ellison: Democratic attorneys general are on the cusp of taking legal action against David Ellison’s $110 billion Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery deal. A coalition of states led by California and New York is preparing to sue to block the transaction “in the coming weeks,” according to Reuters. In addition to creating new—but, let's be honest, surmountable—hurdles for the Ellisons, the suit underscores how state A.G.s are trying to occupy the Lina Khan lane in the absence of scrutiny from the Trump administration, which has taken a far more accommodating posture—at least to the executives it likes. (For a preview of how the Ellisons intend to counter the coming onslaught, read my colleague Eriq Gardner’s interview with lead Paramount attorney Jeffrey Kessler, which ran in Thursday’s What I’m Hearing.)

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The trouble with Shari: One year after the last Paramount merger, Shari Redstone’s legal headaches still aren’t behind her. On Friday, a Delaware Chancery Court judge ordered Paramount Skydance to turn over additional internal communications related to last year's merger with Skydance, a win for Paramount shareholders who have long argued that the transaction disproportionately benefited Redstone at the expense of ordinary investors. Magistrate Christian Wright said there was a “credible basis” to suspect potential wrongdoing and concluded that existing board records may have obscured Redstone’s role in the resignations of Dawn Ostroff, Nicole Seligman, and Frederick Terrell from the special committee that oversaw the deal. As Bloomberg notes, a “books-and-records challenge” like this “typically proceeds a full-blown lawsuit challenging the fairness of a deal.”
And finally…: BBC director-general Matt Brittin, a former Google executive, had lunch with the FT, and discussed his effort to guide the broadcaster amid its various existential threats.

And now, the main event…

Lesley Stahl & The 60 Minutes Guys Are Staying

In a brief manifesto, Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim acknowledged deep frustrations with the new leadership of the show, but worried that leaving now would make things even worse. An earlier draft of the memo was even more critical.

Dylan Byers

This week, as the aftershocks of Scott Pelley’s dramatic termination from 60 Minutes were reverberating across the media landscape, Bari Weiss and new executive producer Nick Bilton scrambled to mitigate the crisis through a charm offensive on the show’s remaining talent. After Pelley’s defenestration, the firings of Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper’s own impeccably timed exit, the CBS News heirloom was somehow down to just three correspondents mere months before the dawn of a new season: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim.

In the wake of the Pelley imbroglio, all three of the remaining correspondents had been considering leaving CBS, I’m told. They had strong misgivings about Bari’s decision to fire their colleagues—also including executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich—and were dubious about the new leadership’s commitment to editorial independence and the overall integrity of the show. Their potential exodus threatened to transform Bari and Nick’s acute management crisis into an institutional unraveling, structural nightmare, and quasi-historic shitshow.

Nick probably didn’t anticipate having to clean up such a massive crisis during week one, but, of course, that’s what the money is for—and, in Nick’s case, it’s $2.3 million per year for three years, according to a source with visibility into the contract. (Not bad money for a guy hired out of the screenwriting salt mines, even if he did have a Scorsese project.) In any event, Nick took the lead on crisis management and, on Wednesday, sought out one-on-one meetings with Lesley, Bill, and Jon—including a meal with Lesley that was noted in The New York Times. He also promoted Maria Gavrilovic, a longtime 60 Minutes producer who had worked closely with Scott, to the role of senior producer.

Finally, on Thursday, Nick issued a lengthy olive branch that was notably different in tone from his ham-fisted cri de coeur announcing Pelley’s ouster. In a memo to staff, he emphasized that he was committed to “journalistic independence,” including from the network’s owners, and to maintaining the integrity of the Sunday night broadcast, which he called “the best hour of television journalism anywhere.” He also praised Lesley, Bill, and Jon: “They are core to the show’s success,” he wrote. “They have sat across from the most powerful people in the world and refused to blink. Audiences trust them because they have proved it, story by story, for decades. Working with them is a privilege and every journalist’s dream.” In short, it demonstrated quite a learning curve.

The Trio’s First Draft

It appears that the charm offensive worked, to a point. In the last 24 hours, Lesley, Bill, and Jon began drafting a letter to their colleagues stating their intention to stay with the show despite profound concerns about the recent firings and the show’s trajectory under its new leadership. The final version of that memo, which leaked on social media on Friday afternoon, was clear that it was not to be interpreted as a total vote of confidence in Bari and Nick. Instead, it is a declaration from three veteran journalists that their loyalty to the craft, the institution, and the legacy of 60 Minutes outweighed their strong reservations about the people currently entrusted with its stewardship.

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In fact, the final version presented a much milder, more diplomatic message than the one that the three correspondents had originally drafted. That initial draft reads like a full-throated rejection of the leadership, accusing them of using “chilling” and “callous” tactics to silence internal opposition—adjectives that were removed from the final letter. The draft refers to the leadership as “our overlords ‘across the street,’” whereas the final version calls it “the existing power structure.” Most notably, the initial draft does not include any language about Nick, whereas the final version adds a paragraph-long vote of confidence in his efforts to rebuild trust.

“We have had a hard time deciding whether to stay at 60 Minutes, or not,” the draft letter began. “We want to protest the firings of Tanya and Draggan, strong leaders who everyone respected. As far as we can tell—because no explanation has ever been offered, they were expelled because they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity.”

As to be expected, the firings and departures at the program in recent weeks were the trio’s main preoccupation in both versions of the letter: “Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships. … Collaboration and argument are the way we have always worked at 60. Don Hewitt actually encouraged loud passionate advocacy for our pieces. It is chilling to think it’s now ‘Chop of her/his head’ for speaking up. This goes for Sharyn, Cecilia and Scott as well, all at the top of the world of TV journalism who exemplified 60 Minutes’ ethos of tough questions and honest storytelling.”

The three also took time to protest other recent departures, including former managing editor Guy Campanile, “an outstanding 60 Minutes producer whose advice on our stories was invaluable,” and senior producer Matt Polevoy, “who ran our online operations, moved us onto YouTube, was working on developing 60 Minutes Podcasts and many other projects expanding our presence on the Web: vital and necessary for our future.”

They took particular umbrage at the shabby treatment of their fired colleagues, including that of longtime producer and second-generation 60 Minutes journalist Simon. “We want to express how sorry we are that these principled, fair and honest journalists were treated so shabbily, with such callous indecency,” they wrote. “Tanya deserves to be celebrated, not cruelly cast off. Draggan too—both told You’re fired and clear out by 5p today. It was heartbreaking.”

The draft took pains to show the continued misalignment between themselves and their new bosses while justifying their decision to stay for the good of 60 Minutes itself. “The three of us protest that the 60 Minutes Seven were fired, and especially how they were treated,” the letter continued. “Nevertheless, we … have decided to stay on. We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of our overlords ‘across the street.’ That is simply, categorically not the case.”

Lesley, Bill, and Jon portrayed their decision to stay as an obligation not just to show, but to the public. “Here’s why were are [sic] staying: We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die,” they wrote. “We have been grieving because this whole mess has wounded and damaged the broadcast. We want to STAY AND FIGHT, try to repair and preserve our reputation by continuing to do tough interviews and investigations, as well as stories about space and medicine and animals, and bring our audience to places no one’s ever heard of.”

And yes, they invoked past legends and greatest hits. “We want to continue the Mike Wallace tradition of hold their feet to the fire as well as Morley’s brand of quirky off-kilter reports like his on why people in Finland like to tango! We’re staying for our teams, and all the teams. We work for you guys. The thought of abandoning you became unbearable. And of course we’re staying because this is home.”

The draft letter ended there. Shortly before going to press, however, Lesley, Bill, and Jon sent the final version of the letter to their colleagues, one that included the new, penultimate paragraph with an olive branch back to Nick, as well as a not-so-veiled threat.

“It’s early days, but we are working to build trust with Nick, and we are heartened by Maria’s promotion,” the new kicker read. “We heard all the right things in yesterday’s ‘independence’ memo. It went a long way, and now we need to see these commitments to our process and procedures in action. If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is— committing acts of independent, fearless journalism and storytelling—we’re here for it. If not, we leave.”

One has to squint pretty hard to interpret a designed leak that ends by preserving the option to quit in protest as a win, exactly. But such are the times at Bari’s CBS. Nick and Bari very clearly needed Lesley, Bill, and Jon to stay—to stanch a week’s worth of bloody headlines, but also for the show to work. The 59th season is indeed just 100 days away, to say nothing of the total multiplatform reenvisioning of 60 that Bilton has promised, a project that will require vast reserves of content and, yes, talent.

The Grill Room with Dylan Byers & Julia Alexander

Finally, a media podcast about what’s actually happening in the media—not the oversanitized, legal-and-standards-approved version you read online. Join Dylan Byers, Puck’s veteran media reporter, and Julia Alexander, a longtime media analyst, as they sit down with TV personalities, moguls, pundits, and industry executives for raw, honest, sometimes salacious conversations about the business of media and its biggest egos. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

A professional-grade rundown on the business of sports from John Ourand, the industry’s preeminent journalist, covering the leagues, players, agencies, media deals, and the egos fueling it all.

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