The best producer of ’60 minutes’ leaves, saying that he had lost independence

CBS News entered a new tormentary period on Tuesday after the “60 -minute” executive producer Bill Owens said he would resign from the long -standing program on Sunday because he had lost his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary statement, Owens – only the third person to manage the program during his 57 years of history – told his staff in a memo that “in recent months, it has become clear that I would not have been allowed to perform the show because I have always executed it, to make independent decisions according to what was good for 60 minutes” for the public. »»

“So, after having defended this show – and what we defend – from all angles, over time with everything I could, I retire so that the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the New York Times.

“60 minutes” has faced increasing pressure in recent months with the two Trump presidents, who have continued CBS for $ 10 billion and accused the “illegal and illegal behavior” program and its own business property at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

The controlling shareholder of Paramount, Shari Redstone, is impatient to guarantee the approval of the Trump administration for a sale of several billion dollars of his company in Skydance, a company led by the son of the technological billionaire Larry Ellison. She expressed the desire to settle the case of Mr. Trump, who stems from what the president called an interview with a misleading modification in October with vice-president Kamala Harris who was broadcast in “60 minutes”.

Legal experts have rejected this prosecution as foundation and far -fetched, and Owens said in February that he would not apologize for potential regulations. Many journalists from CBS News – The former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace – believe that a regulation would constitute a capitulation to Mr. Trump on what they consider standard reproaches on editorial judgment.