The executive producer of iconic American news show “60 Minutes” resigned this week, citing a loss of editorial independence stemming from political pressure.
Defenders of the nation’s First Amendment right to free speech have sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s vicious crusade against news outlets he doesn’t like.
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Bill Owen, who produced the show for CBS News, said he was stepping down because “it has... become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”
Trump objected to a “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian president’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, and has pressed his Federal Communications Commission to investigate the network.
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In October 2024, then-candidate Trump sued the network over another “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic presidential opponent in that year’s election, former Vice President Kamala Harris. He is seeking $20 billion in damages. (Yes, billion with a “b”.) The case is now in mediation.
Trump had accused the news program of “fraud,” airing “defamatory” segments, “illegally” intervening in the last presidential election, “corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions” and being a “Political Operative” that has engaged in “unlawful and illegal behavior.”
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He added that CBS should lose its broadcast license and “pay a big price.”
Complicating matters, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, is simultaneously trying to complete an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media, which requires the administration’s approval under the FCC.
US media and free-speech watchdogs have cried foul, lambasting Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone for caving to political pressure, sacrificing journalistic principles to gain approval for a merger deal and avoid litigation.
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On Thursday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said, “Shari Redstone is likely to bend the knee to Trump and settle this allegedly frivolous lawsuit.”
“Hope the money’s worth it, Shari,” he quipped.
In March of last year, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos (a former White House communications director under Bill Clinton) arguing that, in an on-air interview, Stephanopoulos harmed Trump’s reputation by claiming he was found liable for “raping” the writer E. Jean Carroll. His team’s legal argument was that under New York state law Trump’s forced digital penetration of Carroll was “sexual assault” and not “rape.”
ABC News settled out of court for a $15 million contribution to Trump’s presidential library, $1 million to cover his legal fees, and a public apology from Stephanopoulos.
“Trump’s hostility to freedom of the press is also apparent in hisfrivolous defamation lawsuits, histhreatsof regulatory retaliation against broadcasters, and his ridiculousdisputewith the Associated Press, which he sought to exclude from the White House because it did not fully embrace hisnew namefor the body of water between the United States and Mexico,” Reason magazine wrote on Thursday.
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“If the Government opens its doors to some journalists,” a federal judge ruled in that last case, “it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.’”
John Moretti
John Moretti is an author, editor and correspondent for Kyiv Post based in North America. His academic background is in Eastern European economics, international public policy and counterterrorism.
