CBS News names longtime insider Tanya Simon to lead ‘60 Minutes'
Simon, daughter of the late '60 Minutes' correspondent Bob Simon, has been running the news magazine on an interim basis since Bill Owens abruptly quit in April amid a lawsuit from Trump over a controversial interview with Kamala Harris.
3 Tanya Simon has been named the new executive producer of '60 Minutes.'
CBS via Getty Images
Advertisement
She is only the fourth executive producer to run the news magazine since it launched in the late 1960s under Don Hewitt's lead.
Her appointment comes as CBS News owner Paramount is trying to seal a deal with Skydance Media that requires approval from the FCC.
Skydance – the Hollywood studio behind big-screen hits like 'Mission: Impossible' – made promises this week to FCC Chair Brendan Carr that it will eliminate DEI practices at CBS News and appoint an ombudsman to root out media bias at the network.
Advertisement
3 Former CBS News executive producer Bill Owens.
Variety via Getty Images
Trump, meanwhile, boasted that he expects to receive an additional $20 million from Skydance in advertising and public service announcements once it takes control of Paramount, confirming an exclusive report by The Post.
That would stack on top of CBS News' $16 million payment to settle a lawsuit from Trump over the controversially-edited '60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris.
Owens had opposed settling Trump's lawsuit.
Advertisement
Simons has worked at '60 Minutes' for 25 years and her appointment was strongly supported by prominent staffers.
3 CBS correspondent Bob Simon embracing his wife Francoise and daughter Tanya.
Getty Images
All seven of the current correspondents at '60 Minutes' — Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi, Jon Wertheim and Cecilia Vega — signed a letter in May urging Paramount to officially make Simon the show's executive producer, according to the Status newsletter.
Advertisement
'Tanya Simon understands what makes '60 Minutes' tick,' Tom Cibrowski, president and executive editor of CBS News, said in a statement Thursday.
'She is an innovative leader, an exceptional producer, and someone who knows how to inspire people.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Trump gave the USOPC cover on its transgender athlete policy change. It could end up in court anyway
In its push to remove transgender athletes from Olympic sports, the Trump administration provided the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee a detailed legal brief on how such a move would not conflict with the Ted Stevens Act, the landmark 1978 federal statute governing the Olympic movement. That gave the USOPC the cover it needed to quietly change its policy, though the protection offers no guarantee the new policy won't be challenged in court. Olympic legal expert Jill Pilgrim called the Trump guidance 'a well thought-out, well-reasoned set of arguments for people who want to look at it from that perspective.' 'But I'd be pretty shocked if this doesn't get challenged if there is, somewhere along the line, a trans athlete who's in contention for an Olympic team or world championship and gets excluded,' said Pilgrim, who has experience litigating eligibility rules for the Olympics and is a former general counsel for USA Track and Field. The USOPC's update of its athlete safety policy orders its 54 national governing bodies to rewrite their participation rules to ensure they are in sync with the executive order Trump signed in February called 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports." When the USOPC released the guidance, fewer than five had rules that would adhere to the new policy. Among the first adopters was USA Fencing, which was pulled into a congressional hearing earlier this year about transgender women in sports when a woman refused to compete against a transgender opponent at a meet in Maryland. One of the main concerns over the USOPC's change is that rewriting the rules could conflict with a clause in the Ted Stevens Act stating that an NGB cannot have eligibility criteria 'that are more restrictive than those of the appropriate international sports federation' that oversees its sport. While some American federations such as USATF and USA Swimming follow rules set by their international counterparts, many others don't. International federations have wrestled with eligibility criteria surrounding transgender sports, and not all have guidelines as strict as what Trump's order calls for. World Rowing, for example, has guidelines that call for specific medical conditions to be met for transgender athletes competing in the female category. Other federations, such as the one for skiing, are more vague. White House lawyers provided the USOPC a seven-paragraph analysis that concluded that requiring 'men's participation in women's sports cannot be squared with the rest of the" Ted Stevens Act. 'And in any event, permitting male athletes to compete against only other fellow males is not a 'restriction' on participation or eligibility, it is instead, a neutral channeling rule," according to the analysis, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. Once the sports federations come into compliance, the question then becomes whether the new policy will be challenged, either by individual athletes or by states whose laws don't conform with what the NGBs adopt. The guidance impacts everyone from Olympic-level athletes to grassroots players whose clubs are affiliated with the NGBs. Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said it will not be hard to find a transgender athlete who is being harmed by the USOPC change, and that the White House guidance 'will be challenged and is highly unlikely to succeed.' 'There are transgender women. There are some international sporting organizations that have policies that permit transgender women to compete if they meet certain medical conditions,' Minter said. 'Under the Ted Stevens Act, they can't override that. So, their response is just to, by brute force, pretend there's no such thing as a transgender woman. They can't just dictate that by sheer force of will.' Traditionally, athletes on the Olympic pathway who have issues with eligibility rules must first try to resolve those through what's called a Section IX arbitration case before heading to the U.S. court system. Pilgrim spelled out one scenario in which an athlete wins an arbitration 'and then the USOPC has a problem.' 'Then, it's in the USOPC's court to deny that person the opportunity to compete, and then they'll be in court, no doubt about that,' she said. All this comes against the backdrop of a 2020 law that passed that, in the wake of sex scandals in Olympic sports, gave Congress the power to dissolve the USOPC board. That, combined with the upcoming Summer Games in Los Angeles and the president's consistent effort to place his stamp on issues surrounding sports, is widely viewed as driving the USOPC's traditionally cautious board toward making a decision that was being roundly criticized in some circles. The committee's new policy replaces one that called for reliance on 'real data and science-based evidence rather than ideology" to make decisions about transgender athletes in sports. 'As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,' CEO Sarah Hirshland and board chair Gene Sykes wrote to Olympic stakeholders last week. 'The guidance we've received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness.' The USOPC didn't set a timeline on NGBs coming into compliance, though it's believed most will get there by the end of the year. ___ AP sports:
Miami Herald
3 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Trump says he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. But do Americans think he should?
The vast majority of Americans oppose granting clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell — something President Donald Trump has not ruled out, according to new polling. In the latest YouGov/Economist survey, 64% of respondents said they do not think the president should pardon Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein. (page 57) Just 4% said they believe Trump should pardon her, and about one-third, 32%, said they were not sure. On this question, there was a broad consensus across the political spectrum, with 75% of Democrats, 60% of independents and 59% of Republicans opposing a pardon. The survey, which sampled 1,777 U.S. adults July 25 to 28, has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. It comes after Trump — dogged by controversy over his administration's handling of an investigation into Epstein — has left open the possibility of extending clemency to Maxwell, who is cooperating with federal investigators. The poll also follows a report from The Wall Street Journal about 'bawdy letters' sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday, including one from Trump, who has strongly denied writing the letter. It reportedly included a hand-drawn naked woman with the text 'may every day be another wonderful secret' and 'enigmas never age.' Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit over the report. 'I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about,' he told reporters on July 25. Three days later, when asked about a possible pardon, Trump said, 'I'm allowed to give her a pardon but nobody's approached me with it. It's in the news…but right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it.' Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking a minor, conspiring to entice minors to travel for illegal sexual activities, and related charges. New York prosecutors alleged that, between 1994 and 2004, she helped Epstein 'recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse' underage victims. She is appealing her conviction. Department of Justice officials have recently granted Maxwell — the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell — a form of 'limited immunity' to answer questions about Epstein, according to NBC News, citing an unnamed official. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed her in Florida on July 23 and 24, after which he vowed to 'share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.' 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people,' David Oscar Markus, Maxwell's attorney, told reporters, according to NBC News. 'She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back. They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything.'
San Francisco Chronicle
3 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump gave the USOPC cover on its transgender athlete policy change. It could end up in court anyway
In its push to remove transgender athletes from Olympic sports, the Trump administration provided the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee a detailed legal brief on how such a move would not conflict with the Ted Stevens Act, the landmark 1978 federal statute governing the Olympic movement. That gave the USOPC the cover it needed to quietly change its policy, though the protection offers no guarantee the new policy won't be challenged in court. Olympic legal expert Jill Pilgrim called the Trump guidance 'a well thought-out, well-reasoned set of arguments for people who want to look at it from that perspective.' 'But I'd be pretty shocked if this doesn't get challenged if there is, somewhere along the line, a trans athlete who's in contention for an Olympic team or world championship and gets excluded,' said Pilgrim, who has experience litigating eligibility rules for the Olympics and is a former general counsel for USA Track and Field. The USOPC's update of its athlete safety policy orders its 54 national governing bodies to rewrite their participation rules to ensure they are in sync with the executive order Trump signed in February called 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports." When the USOPC released the guidance, fewer than five had rules that would adhere to the new policy. Among the first adopters was USA Fencing, which was pulled into a congressional hearing earlier this year about transgender women in sports when a woman refused to compete against a transgender opponent at a meet in Maryland. One of the main concerns over the USOPC's change is that rewriting the rules could conflict with a clause in the Ted Stevens Act stating that an NGB cannot have eligibility criteria 'that are more restrictive than those of the appropriate international sports federation' that oversees its sport. While some American federations such as USATF and USA Swimming follow rules set by their international counterparts, many others don't. International federations have wrestled with eligibility criteria surrounding transgender sports, and not all have guidelines as strict as what Trump's order calls for. World Rowing, for example, has guidelines that call for specific medical conditions to be met for transgender athletes competing in the female category. Other federations, such as the one for skiing, are more vague. White House lawyers provided the USOPC a seven-paragraph analysis that concluded that requiring 'men's participation in women's sports cannot be squared with the rest of the" Ted Stevens Act. 'And in any event, permitting male athletes to compete against only other fellow males is not a 'restriction' on participation or eligibility, it is instead, a neutral channeling rule," according to the analysis, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. Once the sports federations come into compliance, the question then becomes whether the new policy will be challenged, either by individual athletes or by states whose laws don't conform with what the NGBs adopt. The guidance impacts everyone from Olympic-level athletes to grassroots players whose clubs are affiliated with the NGBs. Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said it will not be hard to find a transgender athlete who is being harmed by the USOPC change, and that the White House guidance 'will be challenged and is highly unlikely to succeed.' 'There are transgender women. There are some international sporting organizations that have policies that permit transgender women to compete if they meet certain medical conditions,' Minter said. 'Under the Ted Stevens Act, they can't override that. So, their response is just to, by brute force, pretend there's no such thing as a transgender woman. They can't just dictate that by sheer force of will.' Traditionally, athletes on the Olympic pathway who have issues with eligibility rules must first try to resolve those through what's called a Section IX arbitration case before heading to the U.S. court system. Pilgrim spelled out one scenario in which an athlete wins an arbitration 'and then the USOPC has a problem.' 'Then, it's in the USOPC's court to deny that person the opportunity to compete, and then they'll be in court, no doubt about that,' she said. All this comes against the backdrop of a 2020 law that passed that, in the wake of sex scandals in Olympic sports, gave Congress the power to dissolve the USOPC board. That, combined with the upcoming Summer Games in Los Angeles and the president's consistent effort to place his stamp on issues surrounding sports, is widely viewed as driving the USOPC's traditionally cautious board toward making a decision that was being roundly criticized in some circles. The committee's new policy replaces one that called for reliance on 'real data and science-based evidence rather than ideology" to make decisions about transgender athletes in sports. 'As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,' CEO Sarah Hirshland and board chair Gene Sykes wrote to Olympic stakeholders last week. 'The guidance we've received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness.'
