CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil pays tribute to fired 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley: Among the best in the world

CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil delivered a touching on-air tribute to his predecessor Scott Pelley, praising him as someone who “valued truth of all costs” in the wake of his high-profile firing from the network.Dokoupil, anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” ended Wednesday night’s broadcast by addressing Pelley’s sudden removal after the longtime journalist blasted editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and challenged her newly installed “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton during a contentious meet-and-greet Monday.Dokoupil praised Pelley’s decades of tireless, and oftentimes thankless, work as a correspondent that led him anywhere from Ground Zero after 9/11 to active war zones in the Middle East.“When I started at CBS, Scott Pelley was in this very chair, still doing a dozen stories a year for “60 Minutes,” and amid all of that meeting every new correspondent to share his view of the mission here,” Dokoupil said.“He believed the freedom of the press, to quote [James] Madison, was ‘the right that guaranteed all the others’.

And the stakes are always that high in that, if you made it to CBS News, you were among the best in the world.He worked every single day to live up to that standard.”Dokoupil then pivoted to a montage of Pelley’s greatest hits, narrating that Pelley was “a man from another era” who “valued truth at all costs.”When the broadcast switched back to Dokoupil behind the desk, he elaborated on Pelley’s lasting legacy — which trickles all the way down to the signage in the network’s New York City studio.

“But Pelley also made one major break from the past: he changed the signs around here.Under the ‘CBS Evening News’ logo where Scott Pelley’s own name would’ve been, he instead wrote the ‘CBS Evening News with all of us,’ Dokoupil said.“Well, Scott, from all of us, thank you.”During Monday’s fiery confrontation, Pelley took aim at Weiss and Bilton, seething that the editor-in-chief was �...