Longtime CBS correspondent Scott Pelley lived many workers' fantasy: Telling your boss off

Media ethics expert Jane Kirtley says it is 'heartbreaking' to see the '60 Minutes' brand be 'degraded' under CBS' current management.

NEW YORK — As if Scott Pelley’s years in a glamorous, globetrotting, seven-figure dream job weren’t enough, he’s pulled off one more thing to stir your envy: a cutting takedown of his boss that went loudly public.

The “60 Minutes” correspondent’s searing rebuke of CBS management this week, in which he questioned his bosses’ credentials and motives, may have ended in his firing, but amounted to the sort of mouthing-off that workplace peons typically only fantasize about.

“That’s the American dream — to be able to tell off your boss and walk out the door,” says Zach Tyra, a 40-year-old data analyst from Jones, Oklahoma, who found a kindred spirit in the newsman, recalling his own experience with a former boss he said was clueless. “I couldn’t do what Scott Pelley did because I didn’t have the safety net or the resources or the network that he has. I couldn’t tell my boss to stick it. I just had to sit there and eat it.”

Pelley’s message may have been delivered in the measured baritone of someone polished by decades on the airwaves. But his backtalk stirred many who’ve felt the simmering rage of feeling a clueless boss was turning their days into a nightmare.

“It’s also kind of weird, like, Pelley isn’t some blue-collar hero. There’s a wide gap between, like, Pelley and your local everyday guy down at the hardware store,” Tyra says. “But I think everyone can relate to standing up for what they believe.”

A staff meeting that went deeply awry

Pelley’s dressing-down came in a Monday staff meeting with the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Nick Bilton, brought aboard by Bari Weiss, who became CBS News’ editor-in-chief in October.

The correspondent reportedly grilled Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, accusing management of “murdering” the program, a revered cornerstone of TV journalism and a mainstay of Sunday nights for nearly six decades.

“She has no qualifications for her job,” Pelley said of Weiss, according to the media news site Status, which reported he then turned his ire at Bilton. “You have slender qualifications for this job.”

In firing Pelley, Bilton called his outburst an “ambush” of “remarkable incivility and contempt.” But, with Pelley becoming a proxy for the American worker, others cheered.

Parry Headrick, who runs a public relations firm in Boston, was immediately transported to his days as a young reporter at a small newspaper, where he had been carefully chronicling the trials of people who fell ill from what was believed to be exposure to toxic waste.

He had earned the trust of one family only to find editors plastered a headline on the story that reduced the sick child to a “toxic boy” and caused Headrick to lose all faith in his bosses. He screamed at the paper’s publisher and editor-in-chief before quitting.

“I lost my goddamn mind when they did that. And the story with Pelley resonated so hard specifically because of that,” says 57-year-old Headrick, who thinks many people can see Pelley’s point of view. “There exists in most Americans the desire to speak truth to power.”

That such an outburst arose in the news business may be no surprise; journalists pride themselves as a truth-to-power, voice-for-the-voiceless bunch. Staff meetings with reporters sassing editors are common, and in newsrooms everywhere, managers have been subjected to the type of tough questions they pay their people to ask others.

The threshold for dismissal varies from place to place

The line separating acceptable discourse with fireable offense is as different in each workplace as the settings themselves, whether a dive bar or diocesan chancery.

“In the real world, there are layers of politeness and cordiality that don’t really exist in journalism,” says Headrick, who cheered Pelley “pushing back on something larger.”

Clare Haynes had a middle-management role at a nonprofit when she had her Pelley moment two decades ago. She was three weeks into a job where she thought she’d been brought aboard to institute changes that would achieve an innovative work culture. But every suggestion she made was dismissed. Her boss said his boss wouldn’t buy the idea.

“Are you saying you’re too weak to ask?” she snapped. His mouth fell open. He stared at her silently for a full minute.

Haynes survived, lasting three more years at the firm, but things were never the same.

“I didn’t lose my job, but I paid the price, being seen as maverick,” says 55-year-old Haynes, of Royal Leamington Spa, England, who now runs a coaching firm that trains executives how to handle difficult workplace conversations.

Johan Konst was working at a Swedish media company when he felt pushed to the limit seven years ago. After years of high-stress, hard-selling days pushing advertising he didn’t believe in, he finally said his piece, delivering a blunt, profanity-dotted message to his boss.

He was promptly shown the door.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” says 34-year-old Konst, of Amsterdam, who walked away with a nice severance check. “At some point, this had to happen.”

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Matt Sedensky, The Associated Press