About a month ago, when Bill Owens resigned as the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News, said in a statement that she remained “committed to ‘60 Minutes’ and to ensuring that the mission and the work remain our priority.”
A month later, McMahon is out, too. NBC News reported:
The head of CBS News stepped down Monday, marking the second high-profile departure from the organization within the past month as its parent company contends with a $20 billion lawsuit from President Donald Trump and an $8 billion merger. Wendy McMahon said in a memo that her time atop the stalwart news brand has been ‘a privilege and joy,’ but that the past few months had been ‘challenging.’
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon wrote in a memo to CBS News staff.
It’s worth emphasizing that there is some question about whether McMahon resigned or whether she was pushed out, but either way, CBS has obviously parted ways with the head of its news division, roughly a month after the network’s flagship news magazine lost its executive producer.
And while I’m not privy to the behind-the-scenes details unfolding at the network, it appears the turmoil stems entirely from a deeply foolish presidential lawsuit and the broader corporate interests of CBS’s parent company.
As regular readers know, shortly before the 2024 presidential election, it’s customary for the major-party nominees to sit down for “60 Minutes” interviews. Last fall, then-Vice President Kamala Harris agreed, while Donald Trump initially accepted the invitation before backing out soon after.
Harris’ interview wasn’t especially memorable — it was, however, recently nominated for an Emmy — though Trump has whined incessantly about it for nearly seven months, claiming that the program deceptively edited the segment. The Republican’s claims have already been thoroughly discredited, but his hysterics have only gotten worse: The president last month accused “60 Minutes” of, among other things, “fraud,” “illegally” intervening in the last presidential election, “corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions” and being a “Political Operative” that has engaged in “unlawful and illegal behavior.”
Trump added that CBS should lose its broadcast license and “pay a big price,” while calling on the FCC to “impose the maximum fines and punishment.”
Meanwhile, Trump also has an ongoing civil suit against CBS, in which the Republican is asking for $20 billion in damages (that’s not a typo), based on the president’s conspiratorial beliefs about the news magazine’s election coverage. In theory, it’s tempting to think the network would disregard Trump’s absurd litigation and bonkers rhetoric, but in practice, the broader corporate dimension to the story complicates matters: CBS is owned by Paramount Global, and as The New York Times recently noted, “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.” (Redstone has also, of course, expressed an interest in trying to settle Trump’s civil case, despite its lack of merit.) When Owens stepped down as the “60 Minutes” executive producer last month, he said in his departure memo, “I do think this will be a moment for the corporation to take a hard look at itself and its relationship with us.” If that examination has, in fact, occurred, there’s fresh reason to believe the network’s news division might not like the corporation’s conclusion. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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