Scott Pelley, anchor and managing editor CBS Evening News, speaks at the CBS Television Network’s 2011 Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., August 3, 2011. (Fred Prouser/Reuters)

Scott Pelley’s pious defense of journalism is contradicted by the slow-motion implosion of CBS’s marquee news program.

CBS News’ Scott Pelley launched into a self-satisfied tirade recently, sermonizing on the greatness of his profession and the wickedness of its critics.

Yet in playing the pious minister, the network correspondent achieved the opposite of his intended goal. Rather than advocate on behalf of his colleagues and the industry as it currently operates, he merely reminded everyone why the public loathes journalists and their employers.

After all, it’s hard to sympathize with an industry whose members hold such high opinions of themselves despite their evident flaws, chronic shortcomings, and occasional ethical failures.

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“Our sacred rule of law is under attack,” Pelley warned students at Wake Forest University. “Journalism is under attack, universities are under attack, freedom of speech is under attack, and insidious fear is reaching throughout schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts.”

He added, “We are the vanguard against ignorance. We are the guardians of fact. Our job is to shine a light in dark places — and to speak the truth even when it’s unpopular.”

Pelley’s lecture calls to mind Margaret Thatcher’s quip: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” The commencement address also calls to mind an issue far less endearing than the Iron Lady’s wit: the slow-motion implosion of CBS’s flagship program, 60 Minutes, where Pelley serves as a correspondent.

Once the gold standard for investigative journalism, 60 Minutes is now a shadow of its former self, marked by smug bloviating, sloppy and sometimes outright false reporting, and a near-total loss of credibility. Like Pelley’s speech, the program is less about the facts and more about glorifying on-air personalities and promoting preferred partisan narratives.

Recently, Pelley used precious airtime to commemorate the resignation of former executive producer Bill Owens, a man you’ve never heard of who got into a disagreement with corporate executives you’ve also never heard of, nor ever will. What happened was straightforward, niche office politics: Paramount Global’s intended merger with Skydance Media, which will require approval from the Trump administration, could mean a loss of editorial independence for 60 Minutes — or so Owens reasoned in a staff memo. It’s hardly the stuff of national news.

Yet, the way Pelley announced it, Owens had been nailed to a cross to die for our sins.

“Bill covered the world, covered combat, the White House,” Pelley eulogized during one of his regular appearances on 60 Minutes. “His was a quest to open minds, not close them.”

“It was hard on him and hard on us. But he did it for us and you,” Pelley reflected. “No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.”

The navel-gazing and insular worldview could be forgiven if the final product were exemplary, but it is not. Quite the opposite. It has, over the past three, four, maybe five decades, become notably, if not infamously, slipshod, a significant fall from its once lofty perch within the industry.

Let’s run down the list.

In 1986, 60 Minutes aired footage purporting to show unintended acceleration in the new Audi 5000. The footage of the alleged manufacturing defect came from a rigged test, featuring a car whose transmission had been altered. Audi suffered a sales decline, and CBS never apologized.

Then, in the mid-1990s, there was the Brown and Williamson affair, where 60 Minutes delayed and nearly buried an exclusive interview with Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco-industry whistleblower. The show eventually followed through with the interview only after being shamed by the Wall Street Journal. There was a movie about it and everything.

In 1999, 60 Minutes aired a segment alleging that a San Diego Customs Service office was intentionally ignoring drug smuggling. The story relied on “secret memos” from the office’s chief, Rudy Camacho. It was revealed later that a disgruntled former employee had forged them. Camacho sued CBS for defamation and settled out of court. CBS issued a retraction and apology, marking the second of its kind for the program in just four months. The network had apologized earlier, in the winter of 1998, after it was discovered that a separate segment on drug smuggling had included fake locations and paid actors.

In 2004, 60 Minutes presented forged memos alleging that George W. Bush had gone absent without leave during his service in the National Guard. Experts flagged the forgeries; an independent review forced resignations and an on-air apology. Plenty of ink has been spilled already on this particularly egregious effort to upend a U.S. presidential election with disinformation.

Later, in 2009, 60 Minutes ran a segment on cybercrimes featuring a photo of a supposedly fearsome team of “Russian hackers,” including one known only as “Tempest.”

“Russian authorities tend to look the other way, which explains why members of the cyber gangs have no fear. They even show their faces on the internet,” the report warned as the camera lingered on a photo of baby-faced teens. “One of the hackers, who calls himself ‘Tempest,’ is just 14 years old and working full time.”

The photo CBS used was a picture of Finnish schoolchildren, much to the amusement of Finnish media. 60 Minutes issued an on-air correction, apologizing for the error.

In 2012, CBS correspondent Bob Simon claimed that a security fence erected by Israel to protect its citizens from attacks from the West Bank following the second intifada “completely surrounds Bethlehem, turning the ‘little town’ where Christ was born into what its residents call ‘an open air prison.’” It’s simply false. At the time that segment aired, the fence was located north and west of Bethlehem. The rest of the city had no such barriers. CBS never aired a correction or issued an apology, despite its errors being publicized in the Wall Street Journal.

In April 2021, 60 Minutes falsely accused Governor Ron DeSantis of a pay-to-play vaccine-rollout scheme, suggesting that the Publix supermarket chain was awarded an “exclusive” vaccine-distribution deal as part of a scheme involving political donations. The entire report was bunkum. Even prominent Florida Democrats denounced the show’s so-called reporting. Palm Beach Mayor Dave Kerner, a Democrat, condemned the segment as “intentionally false.”

There are the little things, too, including in 2014 when, for a segment about Tesla electric vehicles, 60 Minutes dubbed in the sound of a gasoline engine over footage of the silent Model S. CBS chalked up the matter to an “audio editing error,” removing the clip online while defending the rest of the segment, which, funnily enough, was anchored by Pelley.

More recently, Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes’ crackerjack reporter, infamously contradicted Donald Trump for saying things that were either true at the time or confirmed later. For example, Stahl declared in a 2020 interview that there was no “real evidence” the Obama administration had spied on the Trump campaign.

“You know this is 60 Minutes and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Stahl said.

“Lesley,” a somewhat gob-smacked Trump responded, “they spied on my campaign.”

“But we can’t verify it,” Stahl insisted.

“It’s been totally verified,” Trump said.

“No,” Stahl declared.

The Obama administration absolutely spied on the Trump campaign, a fact well known and well documented long before the Trump interview.

Elsewhere in the same October 2020 interview, Stahl claimed that it could not “be verified” whether Hunter Biden indeed owned the infamous Hunter Biden laptop. She also said that allegations that the Biden family, including Joe Biden himself, had engaged in an international influence-peddling scheme had been “discredited.”

“It’s very important,” Trump said, “to find out whether or not a man is corrupt, who’s running for president. Who has accepted money from China, and from Ukraine, and from Russia. Yeah, I think that’s an important issue.”

Responded Stahl, “All these things have been investigated and discredited.”

They had not been. Had they been, it would have marked an incredible turnaround time for a thorough investigation of the claims, considering the 60 Minutes interview was taped only six days after the New York Post initially broke the story of the infamous laptop.

“It can’t be verified,” Stahl told Trump.

“Of course it can be verified,” Trump persisted.

“It can’t be verified,” Stahl said again.

“What can’t be verified?” asked Trump.

“The laptop,” responded 60 Minutes’ marquee journalist.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys later confirmed that the laptop belongs to their client. As it turns out, the story could be verified; it just required a little work.

Scott Pelley proclaimed that journalism — truth itself — is under attack.

Yes, but from whom?