What To Know
- Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens publicly defended Scott Pelley.
- Owens condemned the firing of key 60 Minutes staff, including Tanya Simon and Sharyn Alfonsi.
- He also criticized new executive producer Nick Bilton’s inexperience in television news.
Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens is standing by Scott Pelley following remarks the reporter made about CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss during a heated staff meeting on Monday (June 1).
“Scott Pelley can smell a fraud a mile away,” Owens said while receiving the New York Press Club’s Gabe Pressman Truth to Power Award on Monday night, per Deadline. “He stood up the way that I did a year ago, and I couldn’t be prouder of him, and I know all the people at 60 Minutes couldn’t be prouder of him.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pelley confronted newly appointed 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton during a staff meeting on Monday. After Bilton claimed that Weiss “loves 60 Minutes,” Pelley responded, “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place, she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
Weiss announced last week that the show’s executive producer, Tanya Simon, would be replaced by filmmaker Bilton. In addition, exec producer Draggan Mihailovich and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired.
Owens, who resigned as the show’s exec producer in April 2025 after saying that he no longer could be guaranteed editorial independence, said, “They were fired by people who don’t even know what we do, who don’t actually care.” He also claimed that there is an “internal spy ring” set up by corporate “within the news division.”
Speaking on Bilton, Owens stated, “[He’s] never worked in television news and thinks that 60 Minutes can be better. He said that he had a notebook full of ideas. But he wanted to point out to staff that there needed to be a commitment to fairness, in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast.” Owens sarcastically added, “Right.”
The veteran producer also referenced the recent ousting of London bureau chief Claire Day. Owens said that Day arranged for visas for a CBS News team to enter Iran, but the idea was nixed by the higher-ups in New York because it was a “bad look.”
“It is mindblowing to think CBS News wouldn’t go to the place where war was being prosecuted by our country, but that’s where we are,” Owens said. “So it’s a pity because CBS News and 60 Minutes are institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed.”
60 Minutes, Sundays, 7/6 c, CBS