60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens announced he was leaving the CBS News show because he didn’t feel as if he could have the editorial independence any longer. Lesley Stahl hopes that message resonates with management.
“Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it,” Bill Owens wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday. “To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience. So, having defended this show- and what we stand for – from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.
“The show is too important to the country, it has to continue, just not with me as the Executive Producer,” he concluded.
The comments come after CBS News and parent company Paramount Global have considered settling a lawsuit from President Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris. Some have called the lawsuit frivolous, but Paramount Global is in the midst of a proposed merger with Skydance, which would need Trump administration approval to be completed.
In an interview with Variety, Stahl said that there has been “interference” in the network’s newsgathering process and says that it isn’t “the way companies that own news organizations should be acting.”
She added that she hopes the stand Owens has made will be a wake-up call to the network’s executives.
“We hope that this message reaches our bosses, that we have a reputation to uphold,” said Stahl. “It’s one of the reasons that CBS News is valuable. It’s what 60 Minutes stands for, and we can’t lose that. We can’t afford to lose that. We have lost our boss because of it. It’s just crushing.”
Stahl concluded that she hopes that the “sacrifice” made by her CBS News colleague will be “a message that resonates” and that it will lead to changes by the company going forward.
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