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Speaker 2: Many of you have seen or heard or watched what
Speaker 2: Scott Pelley said on Sixty Minutes on Sunday evening. It
Speaker 2: was in reference to longtime executive producer Bill Owens announcing
Speaker 2: to his staff last week that he's leaving, citing corporate
Speaker 2: interference at the most watched news program in the US.
Speaker 2: Here's what he said. Quote, Paramount began to supervise our
Speaker 2: content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked,
Speaker 2: but Bill felt he lost his independence. That honest journalism
Speaker 2: requires the independence that John's journalism requires. No one here
Speaker 2: is happy about it. Joining us now with an inside
Speaker 2: look at everything happening at sixty Minutes is Lucas shad
Speaker 2: Managing editor for Media Entertainment. He joins us from Los Angeles. Lucas,
Speaker 2: I feel like everything at this point is political, But
Speaker 2: truly this story is political.
Speaker 3: What's going on here, It's all tied up into the
Speaker 3: ongoing saga at Paramount Global, which has been in talks
Speaker 3: to sell itself for eighteen months. But Scott Pelly's comments
Speaker 3: and the resignation of our I should say, the departure
Speaker 3: of Billow and they didn't technically resign, I think is
Speaker 3: the result or the culmination really of months of tension
Speaker 3: between Cherry Redstone, who is the chairperson of Paramount Global,
Speaker 3: whose family controls the company, and her news division, and
Speaker 3: that started with frustrations related to kind of Gaza coverage
Speaker 3: because Sherry is very passionate about the state of Israel.
Speaker 3: That started on CBS this morning, continued on Sixty Minutes,
Speaker 3: and then as she realized that Donald Trump suit against
Speaker 3: Sixty Minutes, which was related to the editing of a
Speaker 3: pam La Harris interview, might jeopardize the sale of the company,
Speaker 3: it just escalated. And so you've seen her both publicly
Speaker 3: and privately clashing with that news division, ultimately leading in
Speaker 3: the news of the last week.
Speaker 4: Lucas, tell us what your reporting has shown about those
Speaker 4: public and private clashes, and just how unprecedented this is
Speaker 4: to see the chair of a parent company of a
Speaker 4: news organization intervene in coverage like this.
Speaker 3: Well, there was a CBS This Morning segment in late
Speaker 3: September I believe might have been early October, but right
Speaker 3: around there where they interviewed Tanahasey Coates, who is the
Speaker 3: author of a new book called The Message, and a
Speaker 3: particular anchor, Tondakapil, was aggressive, shall we say, in talking
Speaker 3: to and questioning tanahase The News division ended up scolding him,
Speaker 3: and then Shay Redstone came out publicly and said that
Speaker 3: they made a mistake in doing so and she didn't
Speaker 3: think that his questions were over the line. And January
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes did a piece on members of the State
Speaker 3: Department resigning in protests because of the kind of US's
Speaker 3: support for Israel and some of the violence in Gaza.
Speaker 3: She didn't like that piece, and that was when she
Speaker 3: started sort of privately saying maybe we should make a
Speaker 3: change at sixty minutes. And it's really kind of it's
Speaker 3: continued from there. I mean, you asked unprecedented. I don't
Speaker 3: know that it's unprecedented. I mean people who own news
Speaker 3: companies tend to like to influence what their news outlets say.
Speaker 3: You know, some of that is just in the opinion.
Speaker 3: Some of it's not. You know, we had John Malone,
Speaker 3: who was one of the largest shareholders and Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: Discovery talk I think pretty openly after he helped or
Speaker 3: orchestrate the merger of Time, Warner and Discovery about how
Speaker 3: CNN had maybe tilted a little too far to the left.
Speaker 3: So there's it's sort of an evergreen topic. But people
Speaker 3: do seem particularly perturbed in this case, partially because sixty
Speaker 3: minutes is such a story brand and as operated with
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of independence over the years, and partially
Speaker 3: because most people think that Trump suits against sixty minutes
Speaker 3: is completely meritless.
Speaker 2: Hey, Lucas, I want to know about sixty Minutes in
Speaker 2: the future of sixty Minutes without longtime executive producer Bill
Speaker 2: Owens and with Scott Pelly making these comments on Sunday Night.
Speaker 2: I mean, is this, in your view, going to be
Speaker 2: a news program that will continue to have the influence
Speaker 2: that it's had over the last few years many years?
Speaker 3: I think so yeah. I mean, look, I view what
Speaker 3: Bill Owens and Scott Pelly have done as more warning
Speaker 3: signals there's nothing that has changed about the programming of
Speaker 3: the show, right, even though Shay Redstone wanted to know
Speaker 3: about upcoming stories about Trump. They did a piece on
Speaker 3: Trump on Sunday. Right, They're not changing their programming now,
Speaker 3: will this be different in the new regime? Are they
Speaker 3: going to hire some new producer of sixty minutes who
Speaker 3: is more pliant as part of getting their deal approved
Speaker 3: by the FCC? Theyre going to eliminate some of the
Speaker 3: journalistic independence that it is enjoyed. Those are possible. None
Speaker 3: of that's happened yet, and so I think what you're
Speaker 3: seeing is a lot of news people concerned about what
Speaker 3: could happen, and so it's very hard for me to
Speaker 3: project out what it will because at the moment, I
Speaker 3: think the brand of sixty minutes is fine and the
Speaker 3: average person has no idea that any of this happened.
Speaker 4: It's a good point, Lucas, just quickly, what did the
Speaker 4: sixty minutes employees have to say about Bill's departure.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're all they're all spooped and very sad.
Speaker 3: You know, we spoke with one of them on the record,
Speaker 3: many of them off the record or on background, and
Speaker 3: yet they're they're you know, they all revere Bill as
Speaker 3: a journalist and kind of stand behind him. And don't
Speaker 3: like this idea that their owner is meddling and what
Speaker 3: they're trying to do. I think, you know, sixty minutes,
Speaker 3: as I said earlier, has long had a really strong
Speaker 3: degree of independence, and that has meant sort of ignoring
Speaker 3: what their own and bosses want to say. And this
Speaker 3: notion that anyone is trying to take that away from them,
Speaker 3: you know, is frightening and concerning to them.
Speaker 2: All Right, Lucas, gonna leave it there. I know you
Speaker 2: got a run. We appreciate you joining us today. That's
Speaker 2: Lucas Shaw, Managing Editor, Media and Entertainment for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 2: joining us out there in Los Angeles. This is the
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