A 60 Minutes segment detailing the Trump administration’s deportations to a maximum security prison in El Salvador was pulled Sunday night, stirring controversy within the news organization.
The correspondent who reported the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, accused new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of “spiking” the segment after Weiss said it needed further reporting to air.
A note from 60 Minutes said, “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.”
Alfonsi sent an email to her colleagues expressing her frustration that Weiss pulled the segment, which she called a “political” decision. She said they had reached out to relevant government sources for a response but failed to receive one and noted that her story had been cleared by the news organization’s lawyers and standards team.
Alfonsi suggested Weiss wanted government sources to be interviewed and argued that CBS News has handed the Trump administration a “kill switch” for any story it finds “inconvenient” if the network chooses to air stories without a government response. She also said the administration’s failure to respond is a “tactical maneuver” designed to “kill” the story.
“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to stenographer for the state,” she wrote.
Alfonsi said the inmates at the Salvadoran prison “risked their lives” to speak to CBS News and that the program was indebted to them for speaking.
She said pulling the story now will stir controversy.
“Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship,” she wrote. “We are trading 50 years of ‘Gold Standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
When contacted for further comment by the New York Times, Alfonsi referred all questions to Weiss.
Weiss suggested the piece was held because it didn’t include “critical voices” and was missing “context.”
“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” she told the New York Times.
Weiss gave the contact information for White House aide Stephen Miller to the show’s producers after she saw the segment and raised concerns with it, the New York Times reported. She also took issue with the program’s use of the term “migrants” for the men instead of saying “illegal immigrants.”
Weiss arrived at CBS News in October after leading the Free Press. Her arrival came shortly after her news site was bought by David Ellison, a Trump ally, and CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance.
Ellison acquired Paramount earlier this year after settling a lawsuit with the Trump administration for $16 million. President Donald Trump had brought the suit and has since said the new leadership is not treating him any better.
“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.
CBS News has been accused of skewing more conservative after Weiss took over, recently interviewing Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, for one hour in a town hall event. The CECOT story’s disappearance from the broadcast drew further controversy.
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“This CBS thing does merit an explanation right away. It’s a pretty big deal to pull a story at the request of the White House. And if that’s not what happened everyone should know that too,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) wrote on X.
Schatz added, “What is happening to CBS is a terrible embarrassment and if executives think they can build shareholder value by avoiding journalism that might offend the Mad King they are about to learn a tough lesson.”
