60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens told the program’s staff on Monday that he would not offer up an apology as part of any anticipated settlement the company reaches with Donald Trump in his ‘meritless’ lawsuit against CBS, sources told The Independent.
Owens’ remarks — which were first reported by The New York Times — come as executives at Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, have been in talks with the president’s legal team on potentially settling his $10 billion lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that ran last October. Trump has accused the network of “doctoring” the interview with his 2024 rival to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election.
While the network has said Trump’s complaints are “completely without merit” and legal experts have described his suit as “frivolous and dangerous,” Paramount executives feel like a settlement would increase the chances of the Trump administration approving a pending merger with Skydance Media. Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone, who stands to make billions off the deal, has already reportedly “made up her mind” to settle.
“There have been reports in the media about a settlement and/or apology,” Owens told staff on Monday. “The company knows I will not apologize for anything we have done.”
A Paramount spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon have made it “crystal clear” in recent days that they strongly oppose the company settling with Trump. At the same time, the network’s staffers have grown increasingly alarmed at the prospect of capitulating to the president – who has already seen other media outlets “bend the knee” to him following his election.
“Trump’s lawsuit was a joke, but if we settle, we become the laughingstock,” one correspondent told CNN. “No one is happy,” another staffer told The Independent, adding that many employees want the news leaders to fight any potential settlement.
During the Monday meeting — which included high-profile 60 Minutes correspondents Anderson Cooper, Lesley Stahl and Bill Whitaker, who conducted the Harris interview — Owens also acknowledged that the network planned on sending over the unedited transcript of the Harris segment to the FCC. Brendan Carr, the agency’s Trump-appointed chairman, had requested the material last week.
“The edit is perfectly fine; let’s put that to bed so we can get on with our lives,” Owens told the show’s staff. The transcript was received by the FCC on Monday evening.
Trump’s complaint centers on CBS airing a preview of the Harris interview on Face the Nation that included a different version of an answer to Whitaker’s question than what was aired on 60 Minutes.
“The interview was not doctored,” CBS said in October following Trump’s lawsuit. “60 Minutes did not hide any part of Vice President Kamala Harris’s answer to the question at issue. 60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it.”
Owens was also asked whether Paramount would pay the president any money as part of the settlement, which Meta and ABC News’ parent company had recently done in Trump’s lawsuits against them. Saying it would be up to Redstone, Owens added that he had not spoken to her about any potential settlement.
Redstone, meanwhile, has also had a somewhat adversarial relationship with the network’s news division. After the Anti-Defamation League raged that a 60 Minutes story about the United States handling of the war between Israel and Hamas was “one-sided and biased,” Redstone complained to CBS News brass about the segment. Soon after, former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky was brought on as a temporary executive editor to address “perceived bias.”
This all came months after Redstone publicly backed CBS Mornings’ co-anchor Tony Dokoupil following internal backlash when he admittedly violated the network’s standards and practices during his explosive interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates over Gaza.
