OPINION:
Recently fired Scott Pelley is an arrogant jerk.
After the head of CBS News fired the “60 Minutes” correspondent, he told The New York Times: “I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”
That is like saying you are a dairy farmer because you have watched cows in a milking parlor.
Years of making things up have finally caught up with this piece of work.
The truth is that Mr. Pelley went to watch American heroes — the ones actually in combat. On top of that, service members were likely distracted from their mission while protecting him and other observers.
Yet Mr. Pelley acts as if he is some kind of hero. As Mollie Hemingway said, this is “low-rent Brian Williams behavior.”
More than a decade ago, Brian Williams lost his role as the anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News” after admitting that he falsely claimed that a helicopter he was on in Iraq was hit by enemy fire. Service members who were aboard the helicopter contradicted his story.
Mr. Williams was originally suspended without pay for six months. He admitted that he had “misrepresented events” and said it was “wrong and completely inappropriate” for someone in his role to say what he said at the time.
He later returned to the air on MSNBC but never went back as an NBC News anchor.
I had my own run-in with Mr. Williams. He hosted a panel of governors on education. Before the event, a free newspaper widely distributed on a university campus published an editorial denouncing my selection to the panel and falsely claimed that I hated teachers.
Much to our surprise, Mr. Williams mentioned the column as evidence of my disdain for educators, even though both my sons were attending Wauwatosa East High School in Wisconsin and my statements about educators were the opposite of what the paper claimed.
I repeatedly stated my thanks to teachers but chastised the big-government union bosses.
When we transitioned to the green room for lunch, the conversations around me made it clear that the staff and remaining panelists were filled with more liberal elites — a stark reminder of the New York and Washington corporate media bubble.
It was a reminder of how many corporate media types live in the New York and Washington bubbles. Years earlier, a story about the 2000 presidential election and the reaction at a major media outlet was my first exposure to high-stakes, ignorance-based bias.
A reporter was quoted in the story saying she could not believe George W. Bush had won because everyone she knew had voted for Al Gore.
At the time, my reaction was that these people in the media need to get out more and talk to real people. Just like today, the country was pretty evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, yet these reporters did not know anyone who was not in full support of the liberal candidate. How odd for someone who was supposedly trained to seek out the truth.
That East Coast elitism seems to have led to Scott Pelley’s fall. Well before his firing this week, he lost the role as anchor of the CBS “Evening News.” In 2017, he was on assignment for “60 Minutes” in Syria when word leaked that he was being moved off the anchor desk full time to the news magazine.
Interesting how liberals did not jump to his defense when he was bumped from the big desk.
A few years later, Mr. Pelley had to take down a social media post claiming that Egypt had issued a warrant for his arrest after CBS News could not verify his claim.
In part, the post had read, “I was disappointed last week when Egypt issued a warrant for my arrest. Apparently, the president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, didn’t like my questions about his human rights record during our 60 Minutes interview. In my view, it is a sign of weakness when a government cannot abide truthful criticism.”
A spokesman for the network had to clean up his mess with the simple statement: “Pelley’s post was in error and has been taken down.”
It was just another example of a pompous media type thinking he could make things up to feed his desire to look even more important to the public.
Like many of the late-night shows that have moved largely away from traditional humor and interviews to partisan drivel, too many corporate media shows have taken a partisan and cynical view of Republicans and even those of us with conservative viewpoints.
Instead of providing us with the news and respecting us enough to let us make our own conclusions, they feel a moral responsibility to tell us what we should conclude after hearing the news.
That is why so many Americans do not trust traditional media outlets.
Getting rid of Scott Pelley is the first of many steps necessary to restore trust in the press. I hope others have the courage to elevate truth-seeking journalists.
• Scott Walker is a columnist for The Washington Times. He was the 45th governor of Wisconsin and launched a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He lives in Milwaukee and is the proud owner of a 2003 Harley-Davidson Road King. He can be reached at swalker@washingtontimes.com.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.