More drama at 60 minutes
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Not to mention that the "Trumpism" so hated by everybody has little relation to directionally right politics. Unless you take the accusations of fascism seriously. Corruption, lying, authoritarianism, all the usual complaints, have little to nothing to do with the right/left dichotomy.
Unless you take the accusations of fascism seriously.
I can’t take the fascist accusation seriously, however there is a decidedly faint odour of Bonapartism wafting about Washington as of late. I suspect the stench will become stronger once the midterms are past and “His Exalted Loathsomeness” officially becomes a lame duck.
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I relented and listened to Mr Pelley speak his side of the story. A couple highlights from the first 5 minutes:
- He's totally shocked to have been fired. So he's either lying or profoundly stupid. I guess the former.
- 60 Minutes online version received 2.3 billion views last year. Mr Pelley notes that that's one third of humanity. Because Mr Pelley lacks even basic critical thinking skills.
I'm not sure I can bear any more of this guy's elite brilliance, he's really dazzling me.
Link to video -
Difficult to listen to this sobby sanctimonious septegenarian. The "war correspondent" thing is clearly fundamental to his identity, and he expects that card to earn him unconditional credibility and respect. He is old in every possible way one can be old. But I'm sure his message is heard loud and clear by the next generation of journalists, approximately 100% of whom would crawl over one another to get a spot as a "war correspondent" for a prominent publication. But it's a sign of unique courage, too. Just ask all of them.
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The last American journalist for a prominent publication to have been killed in the line of duty was over 20 years ago in the Iraq war. Not sure how that level of statistical danger compares to the danger endured by those who commute to their jobs five days a week on the American highways.
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It would be very easy to accuse Mr Pelley of stolen valor. The reputation of war correspondents is forged by people who walk the walk to a much greater extent than he ever did, or ever might have done. They don't let the embedded Pelleys of the world face real danger when they can help it.
Your instinct is directionally right for elite American network/newspaper correspondents, but I’d separate two claims:
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“Being a war correspondent” is genuinely dangerous globally. CPJ recorded record journalist/media-worker deaths in 2024 and again in 2025, overwhelmingly driven by Gaza and other conflict zones. That danger is now borne mostly by local journalists, not famous American network correspondents parachuting in. (Reuters)
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For prominent U.S.-outlet American correspondents, the statistical death risk has recently been very low. As we said, the last clean “major U.S. publication + American + killed covering war” case seems to be Michael Kelly of The Atlantic / Washington Post, killed near Baghdad on April 3, 2003. CPJ’s Iraq retrospective says only two U.S. journalists died in the Iraq war, and Kelly was the major-publication battlefield case. (Committee to Protect Journalists)
On the highway comparison: U.S. traffic deaths are not trivial. NHTSA’s 2024 figure was about 39,254 traffic deaths, with a fatality rate of 1.19 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. (NHTSA) So a commuter driving, say, 15,000 miles/year faces a crude annual road-death exposure around:
15,000 × 1.19 / 100,000,000 = 0.0001785, or about 1 in 5,600 per year.
That’s not perfectly apples-to-apples, because the denominator for “prominent U.S. war correspondents deployed to war zones” is tiny and intermittent. But your rhetorical point is fair: for a famous American correspondent in the modern era, “war correspondent” may function more as a credibility/status credential than as evidence of ongoing extraordinary mortal risk. The people paying the real current death toll are much more often local reporters in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Mexico, etc., not the Scott Pelley class.
One caveat: danger is not just death. War reporters can face kidnapping, detention, injury, trauma, and arbitrary violence. But if we’re talking fatality statistics for prominent American outlet journalists, the “I risked my life in war zones” credential is probably doing more emotional work than actuarial work.
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How do you know a journalist used to be a war correspondent? They'll tell you.
That variation of the joke about Harvard grads is my takeaway from Mr Pelley.
Note the irony that you can have no such certainty about a soldier and how you can tell whether they've seen some shit. Because those who have, generally aren't eager to talk about it.
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I keep biting off little pieces of the Pelley interview. To give an example of how astonishingly insular his life had become in whatever cocoon allows him to continue, with a straight face, to expect pure admiration, trust, and credibility because he was a "war correspondent" - he wasn't familiar with the name "Bari Weiss" before she took over CBS. That is fucking ridiculous. The dude is a fossilized talking head with an unaccountable ego.
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I guess we'll see in a year whether the dying population of 60 Minutes viewers is growing, or shrinking. But with Pelley at the helm, it is sadly clear the direction it would have gone. I know old people are a large economic force and their eyeballs are valuable, but that level of insularity is not sustainable.
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