CBS News anchor Scott Pelley blamed parent company Paramount for pushing out 60 Minutes’s executive producer Bill Owens.
The hit Sunday program has run for almost 60 years and has only had three executive producers — until last week, when Owens made the shock announcement that he would resign from the show after 26 years, the last six spent as executive producer. Pelley commented on the matter at the end of Sunday’s episode, saying Owens’s resignation “was hard on him and hard on us.”
“But he did it for us and you,” Pelley said. “Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial: Lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.”
President Donald Trump is in the middle of a lawsuit against CBS News. Trump’s grievances came after the program hosted then-Vice President Kamala Harris for an interview a month before the election. Trump claimed the edits to Harris’s interview were “the biggest scandal in broadcast history: They actually took her answer out and gave her a different answer after it was shot.” The president is suing the network for $20 million over the dispute.
At the time, Pelley said he had plans to conduct the sit-down interview with Trump ahead of the election. The Trump campaign denied Pelley’s claims.
“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. No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along,” Pelley said.
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The merger between Paramount and Skydance was announced last summer. David Ellison, the founder of Skydance and son of Larry Ellison, would become the chairman and CEO of New Paramount.
Trump has continued to criticize 60 Minutes for editing Harris’s interview and featuring episodes on his longtime critics, such as actor George Clooney.