CBS News’ editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, pulled a “60 Minutes” segment featuring the accounts of Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a last-minute move that has since been condemned as political.
The decision was announced just three hours before the story was expected to air on Sunday. The webpage for the episode has been removed. Promotional material of the segment has also been taken down.
According to the New York Times, Weiss asked for numerous changes to the segment, such as an interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of President Trump’s mass deportation plan, or another top government official. Weiss also reportedly disapproved of using the word “migrants” to characterize the Venezuelan men who were deported to CECOT, stressing that they had entered the United States illegally. NPR reported that Weiss told her colleagues they could not run the show without an on-the-record-comment from a Trump administration official.
Weiss also argued in a memo to “60 Minutes” staff on Sunday that they should include a voice “arguing that [Trump is] operating within the bounds of his authority.”
“There’s a genuine debate here,” she said.
Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the story, has since denounced the move as overtly political. In an email to colleagues, Alfonsi said that the story had been“screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices.” Alfonsi said that she had asked Weiss for a call to discuss her decision, but was rejected.
Alfonsi also said that she had reached out to the White House, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security but never received a response. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote.
“These men risked their lives to speak with us,” she continued in her email. “We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories.”
Many have since pointed to Weiss’ thin journalism resume despite occupying one of the most important positions in American newsrooms. In fact, Weiss has little to no actual reporting experience, only becoming CBS’s editor-in-chief after David Ellison, the owner of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, bought her news and opinion website, The Free Press, for $150 million. Before that, Weiss was an op-ed writer at the New York Times.
Mother Jones and other news organizations have reported extensively on the severe beatings, humiliations, and medical neglect endured by the men sent to CECOT, as well as the key detail that most of the men detained lack any significant criminal history. Instead, Noah Lanard and Isabela reported in March, these men were often targeted for their tattoos, none of which were related to the gangs the Trump administration accused them of being members of.
