“60 Minutes” Head Bill Owens Exits Role Amid Corporate Changes to the Show

Bill Owens, the executive producer for CBS News’s “60 Minutes” program, announced earlier this week that he would be stepping down from his position as the company moves to encroach on the show’s journalistic independence.

Owens — only the third person to hold the role in the show’s 57-year history — had been the executive producer of “60 Minutes” since 2019. His departure comes as the company has increasingly overseen the program’s editorial decision-making, despite its tradition of being independent of the network. It also comes amid a multi-billion dollar lawsuit by President Donald Trump dubiously alleging that CBS News had wronged him as a candidate by making edits to an interview with then-Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harris.

Owens announced his resignation to staff in a memo that was obtained by The New York Times, portions of which the newspaper printed.

“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience,” Owens said in the memo, adding:

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.

Owens also met with staff in an in-person meeting on Tuesday to announce his departure. Tearing up and noting the moves that CBS executives were making to hamper the program’s independence, Owens told those who attended that it was “clear the company is done with me.” He then called the company’s actions a “slippery slope” toward further capitulation to those who threatened the show’s integrity.

In addition to moves relating to Trump’s lawsuit against the company — initially a $10 billion suit, now a $20 billion suit that many legal experts have said is not going anywhere — the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” has also been threatened by Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who is looking to sell the company to Skydance, which is owned by billionaire Larry Ellison. Such a sale would have to garner approval from the Trump administration.

Redstone complained about the editorial direction of the program in January, when it aired a segment that was critical of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The Trump White House has made clear that it is the policy of the administration to punish individuals and institutions that express opposition to the U.S.’s role in the slaughter.

Amid this lawsuit and other actions by corporate media to yield to Trump, Truthout’s board president and editor-at-large Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief Negin Owliaei, and executive director Ziggy West Jeffery authored an op-ed calling for movement media to oppose the administration’s authoritarianism and uplift voices suppressed by the White House.

“Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit,” the trio wrote in their op-ed, adding:

[Movement media] have a responsibility to remind people of what we have lost, and what we could still win. We highlight any potential footholds that might stabilize us as we move toward a more just world.

“As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations — either through need or greed — rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes even before his inauguration, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models. … Journalism is just one tool in the anti-fascist toolbox,” they continued. “Those of us who create it must take seriously how our responsibilities intersect with and uplift the other tools that will, together, enable people to effectively organize against authoritarianism.”