A 37-year CBS News veteran is preparing to torch his former employer in a tell-all memoir, and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss is squarely in his crosshairs.
Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of “60 Minutes” who quit the program last April over what he described as corporate interference, calls CBS “the worst-run media company in the history of America” in a 22-page book proposal obtained by Breaker and reported by The Daily Beast on Friday.
Owens, who had worked at CBS News since 1988, reserves particular scorn for Weiss, the Free Press founder installed atop CBS News last October by new Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison. In the proposal, Owens dismisses her as “an opinion writer who has made a name for herself by having a lot of opinions.”
He also mocks her onboarding instincts.
“In her first week at the helm, she asked each journalist to do some homework. Write a note to her about everything you are working on – her version of – what did you do over summer break, children?” Owens wrote.
The memoir promises to “blow the lid off the inner workings” of the network, according to Breaker.
Owens also unloads on Paramount’s decision to pay President Donald Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed had been misleadingly edited.
“There wasn’t a lawyer alive who believed the case had merit, and I didn’t want to set a precedent by handing over all of our interviews to the candidate who was pointing a gun at us,” Owens wrote.
He branded the payout “corporate cowardice,” writing that Shari Redstone, Paramount lobbyists and CEO George Cheeks “desperately wanted to capitulate” over the objections of the legal team.
The book lands at a bruising moment for the network.
“CBS Evening News” under anchor Tony Dokoupil, whom Weiss promoted in January, has repeatedly fallen below the 4-million-viewer threshold that Variety described as a critical demarcation point for the Paramount Skydance news division.
Owens is not the first CBS veteran to go public. Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley was fired on June 2 after a heated confrontation in which he accused Weiss of “murdering” the marquee program. Deadline confirmed this week that Pelley has since signed with Creative Artists Agency.
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