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 he faced intense internal pressure from his bosses to avoid certain stories that could generate backlash for parent company Paramount, in his first public remarks since his sudden resignation in late April.

In January, 60 Minutes aired a segment featuring former State Department employees who had resigned over the way Joe Biden’s administration had handled the war in Gaza. The segment drew backlash from pro-Israel organizations and angered Paramount’s majority shareholder, Shari Redstone, a staunch supporter of Israel.

“She didn’t like the story,” Owens told an audience Friday night at Colby College in Maine, where he accepted an award for courage in journalism.

Then, Owens says, he was basically told, “Well, you’re not going to do another story on Gaza, are you?” Although Redstone didn’t call him directly, “this message was relayed to me by people with authority over me,” he said.

The show continued to cover the story. “When I said we were going to do another play on Gaza, it was like touching a hornet’s nest,” he told the crowd. “This idea that we were making stories that [lacked] balance, at first glance – is simply wrong.

Owens also said he was encouraged to reduce media coverage of Donald Trump. “They were very concerned about the Trump stuff,” he said. “I remember at one point I got a phone call from someone who was trying to mediate and said, ‘Do you need to mention Trump’s name that often?’

Owens said he was unmoved by the pleas. When he was pressured to apologize for the way 60 Minutes edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris after conservative backlash and a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump, he made it clear he would not do so.

“I said: I don’t apologize for anything. We didn’t do anything wrong,” he recalls. “We did nothing wrong. 60 Minutes is not perfect. 60 Minutes has made mistakes in the past, and we have always acknowledged those mistakes.”

Ultimately, Owens said, he decided he could no longer stay in his job and resigned in April.

“The only thing I could do was professionally blow myself up to create a blast radius of about 60 minutes to draw people’s attention to what was happening,” he said.

Owens stressed that he believed these were attempts at corporate censorship, especially since Paramount was seeking approval from Trump’s hand-picked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to approve the company’s merger with Skydance Media. He felt, he said, that he would be blamed if his actions – and his refusal to apologize – endangered the merger and damaged the network.

Internally, Owens discouraged 60 Minutes employees from resigning in protest over his departure, which came months after Susan Zirinsky was selected to oversee the network’s standards.

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

Like CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who resigned in protest in May, Owens opposed the company’s plans to settle the lawsuit. The company did so in July anyway, without apologizing to Trump. Although Redstone had formally recused herself from settlement negotiations, she had previously indicated to Paramount’s board that she supported one.

During Friday’s event, Owens was interviewed by PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz. She asked him if he thought he had accomplished his goal of drawing attention to his concerns at CBS and stemming the tide.

“I wonder if any part of you wants to stay,” she said.

Owens had worked at CBS News since 1988, becoming executive producer of the Sunday newsmagazine in 2019. Although he said he didn’t know Bari Weiss, who was recently named executive editor of CBS News, he noted that she had no journalism experience — and encouraged her to protect 60 Minutes.

“She was an opinion writer. Obviously a very intelligent woman, but she didn’t cover the news like she’s going to ask everyone to do,” Owens said. “I sure hope she recognizes that the best group of television journalists are working on the most successful television show in American history…I just hope she recognizes that this is something that should be protected.”

Although he had no details to share, Owens told the crowd that he plans to re-enter the news business and has had conversations with potential backers of journalism.

“I’m definitely going to get back into the game,” he said, also hinting that he might “write something.”

Owens’ award honors anti-slavery publisher Elijah Lovejoy, who was killed by a mob in 1837. Owens, who said he didn’t think he deserved the award, told the crowd his greatest fears for the country were “apathy” and “cowardice.”

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

A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment on Owens’ remarks.