Scott Pelley joins 60 MINUTES SPORTS as one of the most experienced reporters in broadcast journalism. Pelley was named anchor and managing editor of the CBS EVENING NEWS in May 2011. In its first season, The CBS EVENING NEWS with Scott Pelley won a Peabody award and in its second season continues to be the fastest growing network evening news broadcast.
His extraordinary list of interview subjects includes: President George Bush; two unprecedented interviews with Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, during the recent economic upheaval known as the Great Recession. It was the first time in decades that a sitting Federal Reserve Chairman allowed an interview. Pelley also has interviewed Justice John Paul Stevens; Afghan President Hamid Karzai; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and the astonishing story of Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon who survived the explosion that caused the Gulf oil spill - a story that won a DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton and two Emmys.
Before becoming chief White House correspondent, Pelley was assigned to the 1992 presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. Prior to that, he served as a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas, where he covered many of the biggest domestic stories, including the Oklahoma City bombing and the trial of Timothy McVeigh. He also reported on the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Los Angeles Northridge earthquake, the Branch Davidian raid near Waco, Texas, Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo and NASA's shuttle missions.
Pelley joined CBS News as a reporter based in New York in 1989.
All told, Pelley and his team's distinguished body of work have received a DuPont- Columbia Silver Baton, three George Foster Peabody awards, 20 national Emmy awards, five Edward R. Murrow awards, a George Polk and a Loeb award, as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Writers Guild of America. Twenty-one of those awards have been earned for his work over the past five years on 60 MINUTES.
Pelley serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, the refugee relief agency headquartered in New York City. He is co-chair of the IRC's Board of Overseers. He was inducted into the Texas Tech University alumni Hall of Fame and serves on the board of the university's School of Mass Communications.
Prior to his time at CBS News, Pelley was a producer/reporter for WFAA-TV Dallas/ Fort Worth (1982-89), KXAS-TV Dallas/Fort Worth (1978-81) and KSEL-TV Lubbock, Texas (1975-78). He began his journalism career at the age of 15 as a copyboy at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper.
Scott Pelley was born in San Antonio, Texas, and attended journalism school at Texas Tech University. He and his wife, Jane Boone Pelley, have a son and a daughter.