Imagine sitting in a diner on a Thursday morning, patiently waiting for your order to come out. A newspaper is handed to you, and you beeline for the weekly cartoon that may contain jokes that go over your head. Nevertheless, you enjoy the feeling of the thin pages and how flipping through each story feels like a new world being uncovered.
Now 19 years old, on the cusp of turning 20, and your youth is fleeting just as fast as the weekly cartoons disappear. You still flip through the paper, trying to “stay in the know,” cherishing journalism and its connectedness with humanity.
The belief that words can connect people and highlight the importance of untold stories, is a core tenant to the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism. On October 24th, Bill Owens, former executive producer of 60 Minutes and multi-Emmy winner, received the College’s 2025 award, which was founded in 1952. The event included a conversation with PBS Newshour’s co-anchor Amna Nawaz and remarks from President Greene. Owens, a 37-year CBS News veteran, was recognized for his commitment to truth and journalistic independence. He joined 60 Minutes’ management in 2007, became executive producer in 2019, and recently stepped down over concerns and threats to his editorial independence.
Greene opened the event by reminding the audience that threats to press freedom have changed but not disappeared. “While the tools of suppression may have changed — less musket and mob, more disinformation and coercion — the danger persists. Journalists around the world are still imprisoned, silenced, and sometimes lose their lives for speaking the truth. And perhaps less dramatically, but no less critical to our democracy, is the courage to defend independence and our First Amendment rights.”
Owens, who spoke publicly for the first time since stepping down from CBS, shared the moment that defined his career. From his first summer internship at CBS in 1988, taking messages and making coffee, to executive producer of 60 Minutes, Owens described his path to journalism: “The one thing that I can always do is I could write… and I got this summer internship and I remember walking into the trailer at the young Democratic and Republican conventions in 1988… My job was to work on the news desk in that trailer… If you didn’t screw up by taking a message, they let you maybe go out with a camera crew and run back tape.”
Over the years, Owens covered wars, disasters, and moments of national reckoning, always focused on conveying human stories. “I was in Darfur 25 years ago after genocide. And I was following around this one young American woman who was a nurse practitioner, and she was the only medical health there for all of the survivors… And at one point, I said to her, ‘How do you do this?’ And she looked at me, and she was sort of, I don’t want to say dead in the eyes, because she was one of the most living people I’ve ever met, but she’d seen so much. She said, ‘How do you not?’ So that’s why I found value in going and telling that story.”
As executive producer of 60 Minutes, Owens faced mounting pressures from corporate leadership and political forces following a 2024 interview with Vice President and then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, which became a crossroads for criticism from former President Trump and his allies. “We interview both candidates, they split the power. Mr. Trump said yes, the Vice President said yes, then Mr. Trump pulled out. So we decided we’re going to do it anyway… she committed to us, we committed to her,” Owens explained.
Other critics claimed the segment was “deceptively edited” and demanded the release of a transcript. During the conversation, Owens recalled a moment of intense pressure during his tenure at 60 Minutes: “We have released full transcripts before, but never at the point of a gun — which is what this was.”
He described how 60 Minutes’ legal team warned against releasing the material, citing the precedent it would set for future interviews. “All of our lawyers were like… ‘every time 60 Minutes does an interview, everybody will be suing everybody else.’ So we held firm.”
Owens added that the situation unfolded while the network’s parent company, Paramount, was in negotiations to sell itself, adding further corporate tension to the editorial standoff, leading to government involvement: … President Trump wins, his FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr — it wasn’t a subpoena, but something very similar — says, ‘You need to give us a transcript.’ Well, if the federal government says you have to do that, fine. Because we weren’t hiding anything, and we hadn’t set a precedent. So we turned it all over.”
Soon after, additional pressures emerged over coverage of the Gaza conflict. Stories highlighting State Department whistleblowers critical of U.S. policy drew scrutiny from Paramount leadership, who Owens said asked him, “You’re not going to do another Gaza story, are you?” He refused, asserting, “Of course we will, if it’s important.”
Facing repeated corporate interference, Owens realized that the editorial independence of 60 Minutes — and of journalism itself — was at risk, so he left. He clarified by saying, “This is not about me, it’s about the franchise of 60 Minutes and what it means, hopefully to the country going forward. And there’s still a lot of really talented people there… I hired half that staff and I want them to continue to be able to do their jobs.”
Students in the audience asked Owens about courage and conviction in modern journalism. He emphasized that standing by principle can take many forms, from risking physical safety in the field to protecting reporters from institutional interference. “But then we have courage in newsrooms, you have editors who stand up for order and they’re recording, even when they might be facing the pressures from their bosses,” he said, then recounted the moment when he told his son he was leaving CBS. “The night before I resigned, I told my son I was leaving CBS. He paused and said, ‘What the f- did they think you were going to do?’”
Owens then added that he has not lost that love of writing: “Eventually, I’ll get back in the game. Journalism’s in my blood.”
The event closed with Greene, Nawaz, and Owens celebrating the enduring necessity of truth in the media. From Lovejoy’s presses in 1837 to Owens’ leadership at 60 Minutes, the message was clear: journalism is not just a profession, it is a commitment to principle. Every word printed on the page, every story told, is a testament to the courage of those willing to protect it.
So the next time you walk into a diner and see a stack of untouched newspapers, pick one up. Flip through the pages. There is a whole world in there waiting to reveal itself to you, and the people who make it possible are standing guard over the truth, just as Lovejoy and Owens have, one story at a time.
~ Mia Dinunzio `28
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