Owens’s departure comes amid a multibillion-dollar lawsuit in opposition to the corporate from President Donald Trump.
Invoice Owens, the chief producer for CBS Information’s “60 Minutes” program, introduced earlier this week that he could be stepping down from his place as the corporate strikes to encroach on the present’s journalistic independence.
Owens — only the third person to hold the role within the present’s 57-year historical past — had been the chief producer of “60 Minutes” since 2019. His departure comes as the corporate has more and more overseen this system’s editorial decision-making, regardless of its custom of being unbiased of the community. It additionally comes amid a multi-billion greenback lawsuit by President Donald Trump dubiously alleging that CBS Information had wronged him as a candidate by making edits to an interview with then-Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harris.
Owens introduced his resignation to workers in a memo that was obtained by The New York Instances, portions of which the newspaper printed.
“Over the previous months, it has turn into clear that I might not be allowed to run the present as I’ve all the time run it, to make unbiased selections based mostly on what was proper for ‘60 Minutes,’ proper for the viewers,” Owens stated within the memo, including:
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.
Owens additionally met with workers in an in-person assembly on Tuesday to announce his departure. Tearing up and noting the strikes that CBS executives had been making to hamper this system’s independence, Owens told those who attended that it was “clear the corporate is finished with me.” He then known as the corporate’s actions a “slippery slope” towards additional capitulation to those that threatened the present’s integrity.
Along with strikes regarding Trump’s lawsuit in opposition to the corporate — 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 additionally been threatened by Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who’s seeking to promote the corporate to Skydance, which is owned by billionaire Larry Ellison. Such a sale must garner approval from the Trump administration.
Redstone complained about the editorial direction of the program in January, when it aired a section that was crucial of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The Trump White Home has made clear that it’s the coverage of the administration to punish individuals and institutions that categorical opposition to the U.S.’s function within the slaughter.
Amid this lawsuit and different actions by company media to yield to Trump, Truthout’s board president and editor-at-large Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief Negin Owliaei, and government director Ziggy West Jeffery authored an op-ed calling for motion media to oppose the administration’s authoritarianism and uplift voices suppressed by the White Home.
“Our activity is formidable, and it requires us to floor ourselves in our ideas, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit,” the trio wrote in their op-ed, including:
[Movement media] have a accountability to remind folks of what we’ve misplaced, and what we might nonetheless win. We spotlight any potential footholds that may stabilize us as we transfer towards a extra simply world.
“As a dizzying variety of company information organizations — both by way of want or greed — rush to implement new methods to additional monetize their content material, and others acquiesce to Trump’s needs even earlier than his inauguration, now’s a time for motion media-makers to double down on community-first fashions. … Journalism is only one software within the anti-fascist toolbox,” they continued. “These of us who create it should take significantly how our tasks intersect with and uplift the opposite instruments that may, collectively, allow folks to successfully manage in opposition to authoritarianism.”
Indignant, shocked, overwhelmed? Take motion: Assist unbiased media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
During the last months, every government order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core a part of a method to make the right-wing flip really feel inevitable and overwhelming. However, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to recollect in Truthout final November, “Collectively, we’re extra highly effective than Trump.”
Certainly, the Trump administration is pushing by way of government orders, however — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in authorized limbo and face courtroom challenges from unions and civil rights teams. Efforts to quash anti-racist educating and DEI packages are stalled by schooling school, workers, and college students refusing to conform. And communities throughout the nation are coming collectively to lift the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and shield one another in shifting exhibits of solidarity.
It will likely be an extended battle forward. And as nonprofit motion media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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