Because of President Trump’s lawsuit, 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens abruptly quit this morning. You see, because of the lawsuit, 60 Minutes will lose its journalistic independence and Owens just couldn’t have that.

CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said that he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program because he had lost his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary declaration, Mr. Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, 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.”

His memo is quite something. 

Bill Owens’s full memo to “60 Minutes” staff: pic.twitter.com/tHQvAajVRm

— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) April 22, 2025

He wanted to continue making editorial and “journalistic” decisions based upon what HE thought was right for 60 Minutes and based upon what HE thought was right for the audience to see and hear. 

As we’ve written multiple times and many are well aware of, 60 Minutes has always had an agenda and much of their reporting, especially in the last decade, has been decidedly one-sided. Lesley Stahl telling President Trump that the Hunter Biden laptop couldn’t be verified is just one of the many many examples of their bias. 

Needless to say, they didn’t do themselves any favors with the Kamala Harris interview. That interview was a train wreck even AFTER the massive editing they did. However, many believe the editing was also done to try and help Kamala look more favorable to the viewers. 

Owens’ comment about losing independence appeared to allude to the Trump suit hanging over the network. According to the New York Times, which first reported on Owens’ resignation, Owens said earlier this year that he would not apologize for the Harris segment as part of any settlement with the president.

CBS parent company Paramount Global is reportedly considering settling the suit ahead of a planned merger with Skydance Media in hopes of preventing potential retribution by Trump’s FCC, which has the authority to halt the multibillion-dollar transaction. Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, is reportedly in favor of settling with the president. 

Many media observers don’t want CBS to settle the suit, which critics have called a hyperbolic reaction to a typical editing decision.

Oh yes, that was quite the editing decision. 

Remember Kamala’s word salad answer about Israel on 60 Minutes? It’s gone.

This is what many Americans will now see. pic.twitter.com/H4w7btDv6x

— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 8, 2024

That wasn’t the only time that 60 Minutes jumped all the sharks and aired episodes blatantly biased towards their chosen narratives. They gingerly tip-toed around the Covid origin story, aired a helpful episode propping up Christopher Wray, went after Ron DeSantis, advocated for censorship, issued a sob fest about USAID, and blatantly chose Gaza over the hostages. 

And now we have Bill Owens quitting, while whining about how his journalistic integrity and independence has been compromised. That’s epically funny coming from the guy who was the producer for the Dan Rather garbage story on President Bush’s Air National Guard service. As Powerline noted, that sixty-first minute showed that the entire premise behind the story was based upon forged documents. 

That fictional story that masqueraded as news led to Dan Rather’s firing. Is that what Bill Owens means by journalistic independence? 

Keep in mind, CNN has settled quite a number of lawsuits over the last few years. ABC News has as well. So its pretty rich for Jake to issue a warning to CBS about not settling. Then again, much of the mainstream media is clueless as to why their brand is tanking. 

So sad to see the owners of CBS, a news organization whose correspondents have risked their lives covering wars, upheavals and dictators abroad, knuckle under to authoritarianism at home. CBS journalists deserve better from their bosses. https://t.co/F74WicQMTJ

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) April 22, 2025

All we ask is for some objective and balanced reporting. Yet the media along with 60 Minutes have had their thumbs on the scale for a very long time. 

Bill Owens was the 60 Minutes producer for over 37 years. He’s also been producing the CBS Evening News show for quite some time. Both shows have been losing viewers. 

So, Bill Owens’ woe is me memo aside, did he quit before he got fired? It seems possible. 

Either way, he out. And his memo proves he just doesn’t understand why we don’t trust the media anymore. 

Feature Photo Credit: Stopwatch via Flickr, cropped and modified