Scott Pelley, the fired former CBS News anchor, former 60 Minutes correspondent, former CBS Chief White House Correspondent, winner of 51 National Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and too many other honors to list here, will appear in Sonoma November 7 at the Sonoma Speaker Series. He is one of a long list of noted upcoming speakers, ranging from John McEnroe to James Comey.
Pelley, noted for his aggressive pursuit of truth, was fired by CBS News in June following a contentious staff meeting with Bari Weiss, who had been earlier anointed as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News, despite a total absence of broadcast experience. Weiss was a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times op-ed staff writer, and had a contentious relationship at the Times, charging the paper was guilty of bowing to social media critics. After departing the Times, Weiss founded a Substack newsletter and media company called The Free Press, which was subsequently bought by Paramount Skydance for $150 million in October of 2025. Skydance CEO David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry Ellison has donated tens of millions of dollars to Trump campaigns, completed the merger-acquisition of Paramount Global – owner of CBS News – in August of 2025, and then installed Weiss as Editor-in-Chief.
Following the appointment of Weiss, CBS began laying off employees – reportedly as many as 100, including eight on-air female hosts – and Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes investigative story on the “Terrorism Confinement Center” in El Salvador where ICE-expelled undocumented American immigrants were being sent.
Following his firing, Pelley wrote, “There was a thumb on the scale for the President’s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.”
Pelley is the latest in a string of prominent speakers to be featured at the Sonoma Series, including Liz Cheney, Janet Napolitano, Jerry Rice, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Van Jones, David Brooks, Diana Nyad, Steve Kerr, Huey Lewis, and more. Following Pelley, upcoming speakers include writer, editor and historian Evan Thomas on December 7, tennis legend John McEnroe on January 11, former First-Daughter Chelsea Clinton on February 8, actor Henry Winkler on March 22 and former FBI Director James Comey on June 7.
The Sonoma Speaker Series is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization, co-founded by Kathy Witkowicki and former NPR staff members John McChesney and Alex Chadwick. The speakers are usually interviewed in conversation with professional journalists on the organization’s Board, and appear at the Hanna Center auditorium in Sonoma. Tickets are sold online at Sonomaspeakerseries.com. Tickets go on sale at 8.a.m. on Monday mornings precisely four weeks before each event, and frequently sell out within hours, or even minutes. At press time, the Scott Pelley appearance had sold out, but a waiting list is sometimes available.
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