Ex-60 Minutes producer Bill Owens says bosses discouraged him from covering Gaza and Trump | US news

Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens said in his first public statement since his sudden resignation in late April that he faced intense internal pressure from his corporate bosses to avoid some stories that had the potential to cause backlash for parent company Paramount.

60 Minutes in January I ran a segment It features former State Department employees who resigned because of how the Joe Biden administration handled the war in Gaza. The segment faced backlash from pro-Israel organizations and discouraged Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, who is a strong supporter of Israel.

“He didn’t like the story,” Owens told an audience at Colby College in Maine on Friday evening. accepted an award Awarded for journalistic courage.

Owens says he was then told basically: “You’re not going to write another Gaza story, are you?” Although Redstone did not call him directly, he said “this message was conveyed to me by people in authority over me.”

The show continued to tell the story. “When I said we were going to do another piece in Gaza, it was like hitting a hornet’s nest,” he told the crowd. “This idea that we’re making stories [lacked] The apparent balance – this is completely wrong.”

Owens also said he was encouraged to reduce news about Donald Trump. “They were very worried about the Trump issue,” he said. “I remember at one point I got a call from someone who was trying to be a middleman: ‘Do you need to mention Trump’s name so often?’

Owens said he was unimpressed by the pleas. When he faced pressure to apologize for the way 60 Minutes edited his interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of conservative backlash and a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump, he made clear he would not do so.

“I said I wasn’t apologizing for anything. We didn’t do anything wrong,” he recalled. “We did nothing wrong. 60 Minutes is not perfect. 60 Minutes has made mistakes in the past, and we’ve always owned up to those mistakes.”

Owens said he eventually decided he couldn’t keep his job any longer and quit in April.

“All I could do was blow myself up professionally to create a blast radius around 60 Minutes to get people’s attention that this was happening,” he said.

Owens emphasized that he believed these were attempts at corporate censorship, especially as Paramount sought the approval of Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, to approve the company’s merger with Skydance Media. He said he was under the impression that he would be blamed if his actions and reluctance to apologize jeopardized the merger and harmed the network.

Internally, Owens dissuaded 60 Minutes employees from resigning in protest of his departure, which came months later. Susan Zirinsky’s selection to monitor standards in the network.

“There were a lot of people saying, ‘We’re going with you,’ and I said, ‘No, you sit down,'” he said.

Like CBS News executive Wendy McMahon, who resigned in protest in May, Owens opposed the company’s intention to settle the lawsuit. The company did so anyway in July but did not apologize to Trump. Although Redstone has officially withdrawn from settlement talks, he has previously indicated to Paramount’s board that he supports a deal.

At Friday’s event, Owens was interviewed by PBS NewsHour co-host Amna Nawaz. He asked her if she had achieved her goal of drawing attention to her concerns at CBS and stemming the tide.

“I wonder if any of you wish I had stayed,” he said.

Owens had been with CBS News since 1988 and became an executive producer of the Sunday newsmagazine program in 2019. While he said he did not know Bari Weiss, who was recently appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News, he noted that she had no reporting background and encouraged her to keep 60 Minutes.

“She was an opinion writer. She was obviously a very smart woman, but she didn’t go out and cover the news like she would want anyone to,” Owens said. “I hope he realizes that the best group of television journalists are working on the most successful television show in American history… I hope he realizes that this is something that needs to be protected.”

Although he didn’t have any details to share, Owens told the crowd he plans to re-enter the news business and is in talks with potential journalism funders.

“I’ll definitely be back in the game,” he said, also hinting that he might “write something.”

The award given to Owens honors abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy, who was killed by a mob in 1837. Feeling himself unworthy of the award, Owens told the crowd that his biggest fears for his country were “apathy” and “cowardice.”

“I think more people need to stand up,” he said. “You either do the right thing and accept the consequences, or you don’t and then live with the consequences.”

A Paramount spokesman declined to comment on Owens’ remarks.