’60 Minutes’ Rebukes Paramount Over Producer’s Exit
Written by djfrosty on April 29, 2025
On Sunday night (April 27), 60 Minutes was coming to a close with its “Last Minute” segment. Host and correspondent Scott Pelley began, “A note on Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes and until last week, our boss.” Owens resigned in a memo to the staff last week, citing a lack of journalistic freedom as the show’s parent company Paramount is cozying up to President Donald Trump while attempting a high-profile corporate merger.
As a montage of photos of Owens played, Pelley spoke about how much Owens’ presence and work was valued by the staff and correspondents at 60 Minutes before calling out Paramount. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires,” Pelley said. “No one here is happy about it.”
Owens’ decision to leave 60 Minutes as just the third producer in the 60-year history due to not being able “to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience” in the wake of Paramount Global attempting to placate Trump as he sued CBS News last November claiming that the news program tried to influence voters by airing two different edits of Vice President Kamala Harris’ remarks on the show. In January, CBS put in a new layer of editorial supervision presumably to vet standards. That and other changes prompted Owens’ decision to resign. “Bill resigned on Tuesday. It was hard on him and it was hard on us,” Pelley said. “But he did it for us.”
The move by Pelley reflects the mood of others working on 60 Minutes. Correspondent Lesley Stahl voiced her displeasure last week in an interview with Variety. “I have been made aware of interference in our news processes, and calling into question our judgement,” she said, adding: “That is not the way that companies that own news organizations should be acting.” Pelley has spoken out against CBS’ mismanagement before, alleging that he was removed from their evening news coverage due to questioning the workplace culture of the newsroom. It also falls in line with MSNBC anchors such as Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace to publicly question the network’s attempt at hiring former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel as an analyst.