Tensions surfaced in the CBS News newsroom over the weekend after newly appointed Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss declined to air a “60 Minutes” segment on El Salvador’s maximum-security prison.
The feature “Inside CECOT,” originally scheduled to air Sunday afternoon, was headed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. In a memo to her colleagues explaining her decision, Weiss said the episode lacked voices to balance the story and content to elevate it above other news outlets that have reported on an already heavily covered topic.
“If we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice,” Weiss said in the email, per Axios. “If we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered, we need to advance it.”
The story focuses on the Trump administration’s controversial methods for addressing the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration during the Biden administration. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump used wartime authority to deport more than 250 alleged Latin American gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. Alfonsi apparently interviewed multiple men who were deported.
“The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories,” Weiss said in her email. “In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.”
Weiss stated that simply quoting press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who described the deported men as criminals, does not sufficiently outline the White House’s perspective.
“We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument,” she continued. “The admin has argued in court that detainees are due ‘judicial review’ — and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here.”
But in an email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues, Alfonsi rejected Weiss’s reasons. In her email, which was obtained by The New York Times, Alfonsi said the story was postponed not for editorial reasons but for political ones.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now — after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she said. Regarding the topic of additional voices, she mentioned that several branches of the Trump administration were contacted for comment, but none responded.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. 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 added.
Weiss’ new role at CBS News had already led to some controversy, as some observers on the left argued that her hiring would be beneficial to the Trump administration. Trump, however, has said that isn’t true. In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump said he’s being treated worse by the news outlet than before Weiss took the reins:
“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. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!”
In her email, Weiss concluded that she had obtained U.S. homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and White House “border czar” Tom Homan’s contact information to use for the story and that her “general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.”