‘GREED’: Drudge Brutally Torches CBS News Chief Shari Redstone for 60 Minutes Crackdown

(Evan Agostini/Invision/Alex Brandon/AP photos)

The Drudge Report brutally roasted Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS News’ parent company Paramount Global, at the top of its homepage Wednesday and Thursday.

Below a headshot of Redstone, the world-famous news aggregator linked to critical articles about her role in forcing out 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens with declarations like “WOMAN WHO DESTROYED CBS NEWS,’ ‘REDSTONE GREED ENDING LEGACY,” “’60 MINUTES’ SACRIFICED FOR SALE,” AND “FREE SPEECH BATTLE OVER TRUTH.”

Owens resigned from his position on Tuesday, writing in a memo to staffers that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he continued.

The New York Times provided more context on the events that led to Owens’s ouster:

“60 Minutes” has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President [Donald] Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

…

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News — the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment.

A representative for Paramount declined to comment.

Mr. Owens’s relationship with executives at CBS and Paramount frayed in recent months, and he has bristled at what he considered a series of intrusions into his editorial decisions, according to three people briefed on internal discussions who requested anonymity to share sensitive details.

Ms. Redstone complained to CBS executives in January about a “60 Minutes” segment on the war between Israel and Hamas, and a day later, the company appointed a veteran CBS producer, Susan Zirinsky, to a new role overseeing the news division’s journalistic standards.

— —