The former executive producer of “60 Minutes” took a moment Monday night to sound the alarm about what’s happening to the long-running news magazine and the people currently running CBS News under its newest executive producer.
“CBS News and 60 Minutes are institutions, and partisans and ideologues should not be employed,” said Bill Owens, who ended his tenure as head of 60 Minutes after seeing new efforts by CBS News parent Paramount to disrupt the show. Owens made the remarks at an awards ceremony held by the New York Press Club following efforts by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss to overhaul the program and install former technology writer and documentarian Nick Bilton as the program’s new leader.
To that end, Weiss and her team ousted Owens’ successor, Tanya Simon, program editor-in-chief Dragan Mihailovic, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. “All of the senior leadership at 60 Minutes was fired at the same time,” Owens said while accepting the Gabe Pressman Truth to Power Award. “No cause was indicated.”
The decision to remake a show may not be an easy one to make. On Tuesday, “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley slammed Mr. Bilton and Mr. Weiss during a meeting with the magazine’s staff. Perry ridiculed Weiss and Bilton’s qualifications to manage the show and demanded an explanation why their colleagues were fired. And he accused Weiss of “murdering” the program.
“They were fired by people who don’t know what we do and don’t really care,” Owens said.
Owens said his former colleague was simply standing up for what’s right and may have been channeling past 60 Minutes correspondents like Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace and Maury Safer. “Scott can smell fraud from a mile away,” Owens explained, noting that Perry feels “what happened was outrageous.”
Weiss, a former opinion writer for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, left his former place after describing the place as too sensitive to criticism via social media. “Stories are chosen and told in ways that satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than allowing a curious public to read about the world and draw their own conclusions,” she wrote at the time.
After retiring, Weiss founded and heads Free Press, an opinion publication that expresses “anti-woke” sentiments and is tagged as more emotionally conservative. It has proven popular among business executives. She was named head of editorial operations at CBS News last year by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who bought The Free Press for $150 million.
Weiss has also expressed strong pro-Israel views, and Owens claimed Monday night that her support for Israel led to the departure of several CBS News staffers who felt they were not allowed to cover all aspects related to the Middle East conflict.
When Ellison’s Paramount took over, Owens said, “My colleagues at 60 Minutes were told to their faces that they would be able to report the news as they always have, and that’s not happening.”
