“60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens announced his resignation on Tuesday amid continued pressure from President Donald Trump against CBS News and its parent company, Paramount Global.
In a memo to staff as well as a meeting, which included familiar “60 Minutes” faces Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley, Owens indicated that he could no longer run the show in an “independent” fashion.
“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience,” he wrote in the memo, according to the New York Times.
‘If the people that run Paramount and CBS think they can run ’60 Minutes’ better than Bill Owens has run it, they’re wrong.’
During the emotional meeting, Owens was apparently even more forthright: “It’s clear the company is done with me.”
Longtime “60 Minutes” producer Rome Hartman described Owens’ announcement as a “gut punch.” “If the people that run Paramount and CBS think they can run ’60 Minutes’ better than Bill Owens has run it, they’re wrong,” he said.
In a memo to staff about the resignation, CBS News chief executive Wendy McMahon praised Owens for his “illustrious career” and expressed appreciation for the time she spent working with him.
“Working with Bill has been one of the great privileges of my career. Standing behind what he stood for was an easy decision for me, and I never took for granted that he did the same for me,” McMahon wrote.
McMahon claimed that Owens will remain with the show “in the weeks ahead” as executives attempt to find a replacement. According to CNN, no leading candidates have yet been identified.
CNN said Owens could not be reached for comment, and a Paramount representative declined a request for comment from the Times.
‘They did everything possible to illegally elect Kamala, including completely and corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions.’
Owens joined CBS News as a summer intern in 1988 and became executive producer of “60 Minutes” in 2019 after nearly two decades with the show. He is just the third executive producer in the show’s 57-year history.
CNN described his upcoming departure as “another major victory” for Trump, who has excoriated “CBS Fake News” for its “fraudulent, beyond recognition, reporting.”
In particular, Trump takes issue with clips of an interview “60 Minutes” did in October with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Previews of the interview and the final version that aired showed Harris give different answers to a question about Israel, prompting speculation that the network had deceptively edited the interview to minimize Harris’ notorious penchant for word-salad responses.
Trump alleged that such edits would amount to “election interference” on the part of the network.
In a Truth Social post on April 13, Trump reiterated those claims, accusing “60 Minutes” of committing “fraud” with the alleged interview edits.
“They did everything possible to illegally elect Kamala, including completely and corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions, but it just didn’t work for them. They are not a ‘News Show,’ but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as ‘News,’ and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing,” he wrote.
Trump has put his money where his mouth is regarding these allegations. Just four days before pummeling Harris in the presidential election on November 5, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the news network. Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) joined the lawsuit in February, and the damages sought in the amended filing spiked to $20 billion.
Talks between Paramount and Trump continue, and both sides agreed to a mediator earlier this month. Shari Redstone, who owns a controlling share of National Amusements, the parent company of Paramount Global, has expressed an interest in settling the lawsuit.
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