Show’s leader, who resigned in April, says he was also pressured to apologize for edit of Kamala Harris interview

The former executive producer of 60 Minutes Bill Owens said he faced intense internal pressure from his corporate bosses to avoid certain stories that had the potential to generate backlash for parent company Paramount, in his first public remarks since his sudden resignation in late April.

In January, 60 Minutes ran a segment featuring former state department employees who had quit over how Joe Biden’s administration handled the war in Gaza. The segment drew backlash from pro-Israel organizations and unnerved Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, a strong supporter of Israel.

Survey responses cited in $2.7bn defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by voting technology company Smartmatic

Fox News employees expressed concerns about the network’s editorial standards and the conduct of top hosts in an internal survey conducted in the summer and fall of 2020, with one going as far as to wonder if they had sold their “soul to the devil”, according to legal filings.

The employees’ statements were excerpted in a 771-page filing released last week, made public as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.

Reporters who declined to sign new set of Pentagon rules had to clear out of world’s largest military headquarters

Pentagon reporters who declined to sign a new set of policies that press advocates and news organizations denounced as incompatible with the tenets of journalism were set to return their press badges by 5pm on Wednesday, ending decades of history of robust in-house coverage at the world’s largest military headquarters.

In the hours leading up to the deadline, journalists worked furiously to pack up their workspaces in two media rooms, with hallways filled to the brim with boxes and books and other souvenirs of decades of daily coverage.