Scott Pelley reportedly has been booted from the anchor desk at “CBS Evening News.”
The New York Post, which broke the story on Tuesday evening, said Pelley will remain with the network at “60 Minutes.”
The newspaper’s Page Six said his office was cleared out earlier in the day, while he was away on assignment.
There is no word yet on who will replace him, but CBS Money is reporting that senior national correspondent Anthony Mason will likely fill in for now.
Pelley, who joined the network in 1989, replaced Katie Couric as anchor of “CBS Evening News” in 2011.
“Scott has it all. He has the experience, the credibility and he is among the very best reporters ever to work at CBS News,” Jeff Fager, who was then chairman of CBS News, said in a statement at the time. “We like to think of CBS News as the ‘reporter’s network’ and I can’t think of anybody in this business better suited for the anchor chair than Scott.”
Pelley has drawn both praise and criticism for his no-holds-barred coverage of President Donald Trump, whom he called “divorced from reality” during a broadcast in February.
He later defended the comments.
“I don’t think we were being too hard at all; it was just empirically true,” he told Variety. “The president had said a number of things that day that were false. I think it’s incumbent upon us ― all of us, we all believe this ― to help our audience sort out fact from fiction.”
However, the show’s ratings have been down. During May sweeps, the “CBS Evening News” finished in third place, down 9 percent in year-on-year ratings and 14 percent in the key demographic of viewers ages 25-54, according to TV Newser.
In addition, both the Post and New York Daily News report that Pelley has not been getting along with CBS News president David Rhodes.
