Former CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley sent a bold message about Donald Trump‘s lawsuit against the network during an appearance on 60 Minutes—and the journalist didn’t mince words with his blunt declaration.
On Saturday, June 7, Pelley, 67, sat down with Anderson Cooper, 58, to speak about the lawsuit targeting CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global.
The interview came right after CNN aired a live broadcast of the Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney. In the production, Clooney portrays the late journalist Edward R. Murrow, who famously challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy’s tactics during the Red Scare.
“The most important thing is to have the courage to speak, to not let fear permeate the country so that everyone suddenly becomes silent,” Pelley told Cooper.
“If you have the courage to speak, we are saved. If you fall silent, the country is doomed,” the journalist continued “It is the only thing that’s gonna save the country. You cannot have democracy without journalism. It can’t be done.”
Perhaps most notably, Pelley addressed Trump’s current lawsuit with Paramount Global, and he didn’t hold back with his opinion.
Cooper asked Pelley how damaging it would be if there were a settlement and apology in the Parmount Global-Trump case.
He bluntly replied that it would be “very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the reputation of those companies.”
Recently, 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl echoed Pelley’s sentiments when she called out CBS for how it is handling the Trump case.
“To have a news organization come under corporate pressure—to have a news organization told by a corporation, ‘do this, do that with your story, change this, change that, don’t run that piece.’ I mean, it steps on the First Amendment, it steps on the freedom of the press,” Stahl said on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, per Fox News Digital. “It steps on what we stand for. It makes me question whether any corporation should own a news operation. It is very disconcerting.”
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