\u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Scott Pelley paid tribute Sunday to Bill Owens, the show\u2019s executive producer who resigned last week, saying on the air that \u201cnone of us is happy\u201d about the extra supervision that corporate leaders are imposing.<\/p>\n
Pelley made his comments at the end of the evening\u2019s CBS News telecast, saying that in quitting, Owens proved he was the right person for the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard on him and it was hard on us,\u201d Pelley said. \u201cBut he did it for us \u2014 and you.\u201d<\/p>\n
His on-air statement was an unusual peek behind the scenes at the sort of inner turmoil that viewers seldom get the opportunity to see.<\/p>\n
Owens, only the third top executive in the 57-year history of television\u2019s most influential newscast, resigned last week, saying he no longer felt he had the independence to run the program as he had in the past, and felt necessary.<\/p>\n
CBS News\u2019 parent company, Paramount Global, is in the midst of a merger with Skydance Media that needs the approval of the Trump administration. Trump has sued \u201c60 Minutes\u201d for $20 billion, saying it unfairly edited a Kamala Harris interview last fall to her advantage. Owens and others at \u201c60 Minutes\u201d believe they did nothing wrong and have opposed a settlement.<\/p>\n
As a result, Pelley explained to viewers on Sunday, Paramount has begun to supervise \u201c60 Minutes\u201d stories in new ways. Former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky, a longtime news producer, has reportedly been asked to look at the show\u2019s stories before they air.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of our stories has been blocked,\u201d Pelley said. \u201cBut Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it. But in resigning, Bill proved he was the right person to lead \u201860 Minutes\u2019 all along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, \u201c60 Minutes\u201d has done tough stories about the Trump administration almost every week since the inauguration in January, many of them reported by Pelley. On Sunday, \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi had the latest, interviewing scientists about cutbacks at the National Institutes for Health.<\/p>\n
Trump was particularly angered by the show\u2019s telecast two weeks ago, saying on social media that CBS News should \u201cpay a big price\u201d for going after him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Scott Pelley paid tribute Sunday to Bill Owens, the show\u2019s executive producer who resigned last week, saying on the air that \u201cnone of us is happy\u201d about the extra supervision that corporate leaders are imposing. Pelley made his comments at the end of the evening\u2019s CBS News telecast, saying that in quitting, Owens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}