Prime Producer of ‘60 Minutes’ Quits, Saying He Misplaced Independence

CBS Information entered a brand new interval of turmoil on Tuesday after the chief producer of “60 Minutes,” Invoice Owens, mentioned that he would resign from the long-running Sunday information program as a result of he had misplaced his journalistic independence.

In a unprecedented declaration, Mr. Owens — solely the third individual to run this system in its 57-year historical past — instructed his employees in a memo that “over the previous months, it has change into clear that I’d not be allowed to run the present as I’ve at all times run it, to make unbiased choices primarily based on what was proper for ‘60 Minutes,’ proper for the viewers.”

“So, having defended this present — and what we stand for — from each angle, over time with the whole lot I might, I’m stepping apart so the present can transfer ahead,” he wrote within the memo, which was obtained by The New York Occasions.

“60 Minutes” has confronted mounting strain in current months from each President Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused this system of “illegal and unlawful conduct,” and its personal company possession at Paramount, the mother or father firm of CBS Information.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is keen to safe the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her firm to Skydance, an organization run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a want to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has referred to as a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Authorized consultants have dismissed that go well with as baseless and far-fetched, and Mr. Owens mentioned in February that he wouldn’t apologize as a part of any potential settlement. Many journalists at CBS Information — the previous residence of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — imagine {that a} settlement would quantity to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they contemplate standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment.