Scott Pelley Says ’60 Minutes’ Has Received ‘No Corporate Interference’ On Stories Following New Ownership

CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley said Friday that the network’s vaunted news magazine 60 Minutes has not been unduly influenced by the recent corporate merger between Skydance and Paramount.

Pelley spoke at the 2025 Walter Cronkite Awards, where he, comedian Jon Stewart, and MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow were named award honorees.

“Twenty-twenty-five was a fraught time for 60 Minutes…our corporation was attempting to merge with another company, and it required the Trump administration’s approval to do so. A great deal of pressure was placed on 60 Minutes,” Pelley began.

“Two great news executives…Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, under pressure, was forced to resign. And then…we lost our news division president, Wendy McMahon. These were not managers; these were leaders in our profession. The most outstanding leaders in journalism I have known throughout my career, and it was heartbreaking to all of us to lose them,” he added.

President Donald Trump sued 60 Minutes over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview that he claimed put his 2024 presidential bid in jeopardy. The parent company at the time, Paramount Global, settled the lawsuit for $16 million.

The Trump-approved Paramount-Skydance merger was completed in August, with Trump’s billionaire pal’s son, David Ellison, in charge of the new operation. Ellison hired independent journalist Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, and journalists far and wide wondered how much influence the Trump administration would have over CBS News’s reporting.

“However, I will say in that season — last season — all of our stories got on the air. We got them all on the air,” Pelley said to applause. “We got them on the air with an absolute minimum of interference, nothing anyone in this room would be alarmed by. So, our company is the new Paramount, and we were all very concerned at 60 Minutes about what that meant.”

He continued, “It’s early yet, but what I can tell you is, we are doing the same kinds of stories with the same kind of rigor, and have experienced no corporate interference of any kind. “So that has been tremendous way to start this season.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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