This is not the first time a sale of CBS caused problems for 60 Minutes

On April 22, 2025, Bill Owens the executive producer of CBS’s 60 Minutes resigned, “saying he’s losing the freedom to run it independently.”

He was presumably reacting to corporate meddling in 60 Minutes‘ journalism. Donald Trump was suing 60 Minutes for $20 billion over an interview they did with Kamala Harris. More important, CBS parent Paramount Global, run by Shari Redstone, was seeking approval for a merger with Skydance Media, founded by Larry Ellison. As part of the effort to clear the decks for the sale, Paramount was reportedly in mediation to settle the lawsuit with Trump, a prospect that has been bitterly opposed by Owens and others at 60 Minutes.

This is not the first time this has happened. In the mid-1990s both ABC and CBS made decisions about coverage of tobacco stories on their major news magazine programs, presumably to protect pending sales of the networks under the threat of actual of possible lawsuits.

In all three cases, independent legal experts have said the lawsuits would likely fail, but profits took priority.

The 1990s machinations are documented in the 1996 PBS Frontline documentary Smoke in the Eye. There is a helpful detailed timeline and transcript on the Frontline site. The summary below is based on the Frontline timeline.

ABC Day One

On February 28 and March 7, 1994, the ABC news magazine Day One broadcast its two-part Nicotine Investigation on reconstituted tobacco. Philip Morris sued ABC for $10 billion, alleging that the statement that it “spiked” nicotine was inaccurate. ABC settled the lawsuit on August 21, 1995, issuing a prime-time public apology and agreeing to pay $15 million to cover Philip Morris’s legal fees even though the reporting was accurate. (Indeed, in rewatching the segments today, I am still impressed on how well they describe the tobacco companies’ manipulation of nicotine in their cigarettes. It’s well worth the time to watch both segments.) Nevertheless, on July 31, the Walt Disney Company agreed to pay $19 billion for Capital Cities/ABC Inc., a merger that created the largest entertainment company in the world.

Day One Part 1 (February 18, 1994)

Day One Part 2 (March 7, 1994)

CBS 60 Minutes

In early 1993, 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman meets Jeffrey Wigand, who had been Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company’s chief scientist while producing a 60 Minutes story on Philip Morris’ “fire safe” cigarette. Bergman asks Wigand to help him interpret secret internal Philip Morris documents anonymously sent to him in late 1993. This would be the beginning of a long relationship that eventually led Wigand to be willing to appear on 60 Minutes to speak about what B&W knew about nicotine addiction and the risks of smoking. In March 1995, 60 Minutes approved Bergman’s request to to an investigation of B&W.

I was involved as a source in the Wigand story, provided a lot of information from the original B&W tobacco industry documents I had recieved, and appeared in the 60 Minutes story.

On August 1, 1995, Laurence Tisch, the CEO of CBS, announced that the Westinghouse Electric Corporation will pay $5.4 billion to acquire CBS Inc. His son, Andrew Tisch, was president of Lorillard Tobacco and testified before Congress that “nicotine was not addictive.

By mid-September Bergman, working with correspondent Mike Wallace, completes a draft of the Wigand segment, but CBS vice president and general counsel Ellen Kaden kills the story, fearing that it could trigger a lawsuit from B&W.

On October 17, 1995, 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt tells the National Press Club, “We have a story that we think is solid. We don’t think anybody could ever sue us for libel. There are some twists and turns, and if you get in front of a jury in some states where the people on that jury are all related to people who work in tobacco companies, look out. That’s a $15 billion gun pointed at your head. We may opt to get out of the line of fire. that doesn’t make me proud, but it’s not my money. I don’t have $15 billion. That’s Larry Tisch.”

In October and November, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times run stories on Wigand and 60 Minutes and on November 12, 1995, 60 Minutes aired a redacted version of the Brown and Williamson tobacco story without identifying Wigand as the source. The story included a detailed interview with me discussing of the original Brown and Williamson documents as well as identifying Merrill Williams as the person who first copied them:

At the end of the broadcast, Mike Wallace offered a “footnote”: “We at ’60 Minutes’–and that’s about 100 of us who turn out this broadcast each week–are proud of working here and at CBS News, and so we were dismayed that the management at CBS had seen fit to give in to perceived threats of legal action against us by a tobacco industry giant. We’ve broadcast many such investigative pieces down the years, and we want to be able to continue. We lost out, only to some degree on this one, but we haven’t the slightest doubt that we’ll be able to continue the “60 Minutes” tradition of reporting such pieces in the future without fear or favor.”

Over time, details of the story came out as well as Wigand’s role and on February 4, 1996, 60 Minutes ran the story.

Brown and Williamson never sued or publicly threatened to sue. CBS management blocked the story out of concern that B&W would sue and that would complicate the network’s sale.

History is repeating itself

In a 2016 CBS story on the incident then-60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager said, “that times are very different today at CBS. The company was sold soon after the tobacco incident, and he says the people who run CBS now do not try to influence the stories on 60 Minutes.” Bill Owens’ departure shows that is no longer the case.

In the same story, Fager added, “There’s still plenty to learn from what happened 20 years ago,” says Fager. “Taking on powerful institutions is the hardest part of journalism, and often the most important. Reporting stories that someone doesn’t want covered is what journalism is all about.” On that he remains correct.

Other useful videos

CBS Evening News story on Wigand, January 26, 1996:

CBS Evening News story on Wigand, January 29, 1996:

Here is the version posted on YouTube: