Background and career
Scott Cameron Pelley (born July 28, 1957) is an American author and broadcast journalist. Pelley is the author of the 2019 book, Truth Worth Telling, and a former correspondent for the CBS News magazine 60 Minutes. Pelley served as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 2011 to 2017, a period in which the broadcast added viewers. Pelley served as CBS News's chief White House correspondent from 1997 to 1999. Beginning his broadcast news career at local stations in Texas, Pelley worked for CBS News in New York for 37 years. During his career, he received numerous awards for excellence in journalism.
Born in San Antonio, Texas, Pelley grew up in Lubbock, where he graduated from Coronado High School and obtained his first job in journalism at the age of 15 as a copyboy for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Staying close to home, he majored in journalism at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, though he left school a few credit hours short of completing his degree.
From 1975 to 1978 he worked for KSEL-TV in Lubbock. From 1978 to 1981 he worked for KXAS-TV in Dallas. From 1982 to 1989 he was a producer/reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas.
Pelley's CBS career started in New York City in 1989. Later, he returned to Dallas to cover national affairs from the CBS bureau. Pelley covered the 1990/91 Gulf war, reporting from Baghdad and traveling with the XVIII Airborne Corps in its assault on Iraq and Kuwait. He was assigned to cover the 1992 presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Bill Clinton, and also reported on such major events as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Waco siege, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Pelley served as CBS News's Chief White House Correspondent from 1997 to 1999. During that time, President Clinton was impeached by the United States House of Representatives. In covering the investigation of the president, Pelley broke the news that Monica Lewinsky had become a cooperating witness in the investigation conducted by the Office of Independent Counsel.
Pelley reported on the economic collapse of 2008-09, on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on climate change from Antarctica and the Arctic. In 2009, Pelley conducted an interview with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The interview was the first with a Fed Chairman in decades and broke a long-standing Federal Reserve tradition. Pelley has reported from Iraq on the front lines in the battle against ISIS; he landed the first major television interview with FBI Director James Comey in 2014; and he conducted an interview of the nurses who treated the first Ebola patient in the United States. Pelley also conducted the only interview with one of the Navy SEALs who helped to kill Osama bin Laden. In September 2015, Pelley met Pope Francis at the Vatican ahead of the pontiff's visit to the United States, and later led CBS News' coverage of the visit. On October 15, 2023, Pelley conducted an interview with US President Joe Biden about the October 7 attacks and the ongoing Gaza war. On April 27, 2025, in the Last Minute segment of 60 Minutes, Pelley offered a tribute to Bill Owens, the show's executive producer prior to his resignation, saying that stories the show has presented since its creation have been controversial, such as those about the Gaza war and the Trump administration, most recently. Pelley stated that Paramount (CBS's parent company) had "tried to complete a merger," and that they had begun supervising the show's content, which none of the show's staff supported, while acknowledging that they had not blocked any of their stories. He concluded by saying that Owens felt he "lost independence that honest journalism requires" after Paramount's recent corporate decisions, and said that Owens proved to be the "right person" leading the show "all along." His remarks were described by Variety as a "rare instance" of the show's staff "criticizing the parent company's management of the newsmagazine".
Starting with the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990 and the 1991 invasion of Iraq, Pelley has reported extensively from many war zones. In 2006 and 2007, he filed reports on the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In his 2007 report, Pelley enlisted the help of a rebel group to organize an armed reconnaissance into Darfur. The story revealed a village that had been destroyed by government forces in their campaign of genocide. In Afghanistan, Pelley accompanied numerous units of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in combat operations and reported independently on the effects of the war on civilians. Pelley entered Kyiv to interview President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the 60 Minutes segment which aired April 10, 2022, while Kyiv was under siege by Russian forces during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
