“60 Minutes” Rattles Viewers with Stunning Closing Segment, Implies That Trump Administration Is Pressuring Their Coverage

• 60 Minutes amazed viewers connected Sunday nighttime by ending with a conception astir their enforcement producer, Bill Owens, who resigned past week.

• Correspondent Scott Pelley spoke retired connected Owens’ departure, implying that CBS News' genitor company, Paramount Global, had been influencing the show's sum successful bid to appease President Donald Trump.

• Paramount is presently trying to implicit a multi-million dollar merger with Skydance, which would necessitate regulatory support from the Trump-appointed FCC.

Following the astonishment resignation of 60 Minutes enforcement shaper Bill Owens, the quality magazine's Sunday nighttime broadcast ended with a conception implying that President Donald Trump and his medication person had an inappropriate power connected the show. 

Correspondent Scott Pelley, successful a conception of “The Last Minute,” insinuated that the show’s genitor company, Paramount Global, had started to propulsion backmost connected immoderate of their much hard-hitting segments — particularly those astir the existent administration.

Related: Elon Musk Calls for 60 Minutes Journalists to Get a 'Long Prison Sentence'

The institution is presently successful the process of completing a large merger with Skydance, and needs the Trump administration’s regulatory approval.

“Stories we pursued for 57 years are often arguable — lately the Israel-Gaza warfare and the Trump administration,” Pelley, 67, told viewers. “Bill made definite they were close and fair. He was pugnacious that way, but our genitor company, Paramount, is trying to implicit a merger. The Trump medication indispensable o.k. it.”

“Paramount began to supervise our contented successful caller ways,” helium continued. “None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt helium had mislaid the independency that honorable journalism requires.”

Related: Under Bill Owens, '60 Minutes' Is Here to Stay (Exclusive)

In his resignation memo obtained by aggregate outlets connected April 22, Owens claimed that helium had mislaid the quality to “make autarkic decisions” regarding the amusement and “what was close for 60 Minutes, close for the audience.”

“Over the past months, it has besides go wide that I would not beryllium allowed to tally the amusement arsenic I person ever tally it,” helium continued. “Having defended this amusement — and what we basal for — from each angle, implicit clip with everything I could, I americium stepping speech truthful the amusement tin determination forward.”

In his segment, Pelley said that “no 1 present is happy” astir Owens leaving 60 Minutes. 

“But successful resigning, Bill proved 1 thing: helium was the close idiosyncratic to pb 60 Minutes all along,” the erstwhile CBS Evening News anchor continued. “It was hard connected him and hard connected us, but helium did it for america and you.”

Related: Why Does Trump Hate the White House Correspondents' Dinner? His Sour History with the Event Goes Way Back

Trump’s ongoing vendetta against 60 Minutes is a large roadblock for the Paramount-Skydance merger. The president is presently successful the midst of a suit with the show, implicit an interrogation they conducted with erstwhile Vice President Kamala Harris successful the midst of her 2024 statesmanlike campaign.

Trump filed the suit successful October 2024, claiming that CBS News edited 1 of Harris’ answers successful bid to amended her chances of winning the White House. While the web initially refused his ineligible team’s request for an unedited transcript of the interview, they did yet marque it nationalist January, pursuing a petition from the Federal Communications Commission.

Paramount’s ineligible squad has argued that the suit is an “affront to the First Amendment and is without ground successful instrumentality oregon fact,” noting that each quality shows regularly edit interviews for clarity, discourse and airtime — not successful an effort to alteration the facts.

However, successful February, The New York Times reported that Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, told the committee that she wanted to settee the ineligible conflict with Trump. While the NYT said astatine the clip that Redstone’s connection didn’t notation the Skydance woody by name, it did “underscore the information that a pending multibillion-dollar suit from the president made it hard for Paramount to bash business.”

Redstone, the lone girl of precocious Viacom laminitis and CBS president Sumner Redstone. stands to marque a important magnitude of wealth if the merger is completed.

Related: CBS Airs 60 Minutes Interview with Trump — Including When He 'Walked Out' After Complaining About Tone

Trump has made nary concealed astir his tendency to bring the instrumentality down connected 60 Minutes, CBS News and Paramount.

In an April 13 station connected Truth Social, helium called for his appointed FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, to enforce fines and portion the web of its licence implicit 60 Minutes segments connected Greenland and Ukraine.

“They are not a ‘News Show,’ but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised arsenic ‘News,’ and indispensable beryllium liable for what they person done, and are doing,” Trump wrote. “Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), arsenic headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, volition enforce the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and amerciable behavior. CBS is retired of control, astatine levels ne'er seen before, and they should wage a large terms for this.”

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When 60 Minutes launched its 55th play successful 2022, Owens told PEOPLE that helium and his squad had "no involvement successful changing the content" of the historical quality magazine, adjacent arsenic the media scenery evolves.

"60 Minutes is a spot wherever you're not going to get a partisan instrumentality connected anything," Owens said astatine the time. "I similar to archer the unit we broadcast to the full country. We're not aiming astatine anybody. We're aiming astatine the full country, San Francisco to Kansas City to Sarasota to Hartford, Connecticut."

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