Bill Owens, Ex-’60 Minutes’ Boss, Scorns CBS News Overhaul of Show

The former executive producer of “60 Minutes” took a moment Monday night to issue a warning about what’s happening to the long-running newsmagazine under its latest executive producer — and the people who currently run CBS News,

“CBS News and ’60 Minutes’ are institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed,” said Bill Owens, who ended his time as the head of “60 Minutes” after seeing new efforts by CBS News parent Paramount to interfere with the show. Owens made his remarks at an awards ceremony held by the New York Press Club, and in the wake of efforts by Bari Weiss, CBS News’ Editor in Chief to overhaul the program and install Nick Bilton, a former technology writer and documentarian, as the show’s newest leader.

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To do so, Weiss and her team ousted Owens’ successor, Tanya Simon, as well as the show’s executive editor, Draggan Mihailovich, along with correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. “The senior leadership at ’60 Minutes’ were all fired at once,” said Owens, accepting the Gabe Pressman Truth to Power Award. “There wasn’t any cause given.”

The decision to remake the show may not be one easily executed. On Tuesday, “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley lambasted Bilton and Weiss during a meeting of the newsmagazine’s staff. Pelley derided any qualifications either Weiss or Bilton had to manage the show, and demanded an explanation for why his colleagues were fired. And he accused Weiss of “murdering” the program.

“They were fired by people who don’t even know what we do, who don’t actually care,” Owens said.

Owens said his former colleague was simply standing up for what was right, and might even have been channeling past “60 Minutes” correspondents like Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace and Morley Safer. “Scott can smell a fraud from a mile away,” Owens explained, noting that Pelley feels “it is outrageous what happened.”

Weiss is a former opinion writer from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal who left the former place after describing a place that was too sensitive to critiques made to it via social media. “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions,” she wrote at the time.

Since her exit, Weiss has founded and led The Free Press, an opinion publication that expresses “anti-woke” sentiment and has been tagged as being more conservative in sentiment. It has proven popular with business executives. She was installed last year as the head of editorial operations at CBS News by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who bought The Free Press for $150 million.

Weiss has also expressed strong pro-Israel views, and Owens alleged Monday night that her support of Israel had resulted in the exit of several CBS News staffers who felt they were not being allowed to cover all sides of stories tied to conflict in the Middle East.

When Ellison’s Paramount took over operations, Owens said, “my colleagues at ’60 Minutes’ were told to their faces they would be able to cover the news as they always had. That has not happened.”