“60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens announced his resignation Tuesday amid continuing pressure from President Donald Trump on CBS News and its parent company Paramount Global.
In a note and meeting to staff, including Leslie Stahl and Scott Perry, who met up at the familiar “60 minutes,” Owens showed he wouldn’t run the show in “independent” fashion.
“It has become clear over the past few months that I am not allowed to run shows as I always do. To make independent decisions based on “60 minutes of right,” he said he wrote in a note. New York Times.
“If the people who run Paramount and CBS think they can do better at ’60 minutes’ than Bill Owens did it, they’re wrong. ”
During the emotional meeting, Owens clearly became even more outspoken. “It’s clear that the company is finishing with me.”
Longtime “60 Minutes” producer Roma Hartman described Owens’ announcement as a “gut punch.” “If the people who run Paramount and CBS think they can do better at ’60 minutes’ than Bill Owens did it, they’re wrong,” he said.
in Notes for staff For his resignation, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon praised Owens for his “glowing career” and thanked him for the time he worked with him.
“Working with Bill was one of the great privileges of my career, and standing behind what he was standing there was an easy decision for me.
McMahon insisted that Owens would remain in the show “together weeks” as executives try to find alternatives. According to CNNno major candidates have been identified yet.
CNN said it could not request comment from Owens, and the top priority representative declined to request comment from the Times.
“They did everything they could to illegally elect Kamala, including key, completely and fraudulently changing answers to interview questions.”
Owens joined CBS News as a summer intern in 1988 and became the executive producer of “60 Minutes” in 2019, nearly 20 years later on the show. He is the third executive producer in the show’s 57-year history.
CNN described his upcoming departure as “CBS Fake News” as “another big victory” that exced “CBS Fake News” to “report beyond fraud, beyond recognition.”
Trump in particular has been troubled with a clip from “60 Minutes” interview with then-democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October. A preview of the interview and the final aired version showed Harris giving different answers to questions about Israel, prompting speculation that the network had made a seemingly compilation of the interview to minimize Harris’s infamous tendency to Ward Sallard’s responses.
Trump argued that such editing corresponded to “election interference” on the part of the network.
in True Social Post On April 13, Trump repeated these claims, accusing “60 minutes” of an interview that allegedly accused him of committing “fraud.”
“They did everything they could to illegally elect Kamala, which includes the full and corrupt main answers to interview questions, but that didn’t work for them. They are not ‘news shows’, they are illegitimate political operatives disguised as ‘news’ and they should be responsible for what they’re doing,” he writes.
Trump placed his money wherever he has his mouth on these allegations. Just four days before he thwarted Harris in the November 5th presidential election, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the news network. Rep. Ronnie Jackson (R-Texas) I took part in the lawsuit In February, the damages in the revised application were spiked to $20 billion.
Talks between Paramount and Trump continued, with both sides agreeing to mediators earlier this month. Shari Redstone, who owns the dominant share of National Amusements, the parent company of Paramount Global, has expressed interest in resolving the lawsuit.
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