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David Ellison has promised 60 Minutes its editorial independence, Lesley Stahl says.
The longtime correspondent, now 84, told The New York Times that the Paramount Skydance CEO personally assured her as much during a phone call on Sunday. A source familiar with the call confirms to The Hollywood Reporter the tenor of the conversation.
The correspondent relayed the promise to 60 Minutes staffers on Monday and told the Times Tuesday. Stahl held a champagne toast at the newsmagazine program’s Midtown Manhattan offices yesterday “in an attempt to shore up morale at the program,” according to the report.
“My toast was, ‘to us,’ meaning the survivors,” Stahl said via text message on Tuesday. “Maybe ‘us’ with a twinge of survivor’s guilt.”
Fellow correspondent Jon Wertheim weighed in with a mini-speech of his own, the Times reported. Wertheim noted Nick Bilton, the show’s new executive producer, and told him that he had been dealt “a hell of a hand,” and that there are “bridges to build and fences to mend and assorted other structural metaphors.”
“But there’s a path here,” Wertheim told Bilton.
Bill Whitaker is the only other remaining 60 Minutes correspondent following the ousters of top producers and correspondents like Tanya Simon, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. Bilton directly replaced Simon; he has never worked in television news.
Bilton told THR last month that he wants to bring in new correspondents “that are specialists in different fields, and they are all going to be the best in their field, the best in the business, they are incredible storytellers, incredible investigators, fearless.”
However his brief tenure started off rocky, with Pelley calling out Bilton in his first meeting with staff, ultimately leading to the veteran correspondent’s ouster.
As the show seeks to get up and running ahead of its 59th season in the fall, the three remaining correspondents will need to get busy developing packages. The assurance from Ellison that they won’t be interfered with is likely to go a long way.
On June 4, Bilton wrote a memo to staff noting it’s been “a hell of a first week” and added, “The foundation of 60 Minutes is its journalistic independence. We will always pursue stories without fear or favor. We will always make the story the North Star—not relationships nor politics nor anything else.”
Whether the effort to stabilize things by Ellison and Bilton is enough to keep viewers engaged and staff from revolting remains to be seen.
–Alex Weprin contributed to this report.