CBS News abruptly pulled a heavily promoted “60 Minutes” segment about Venezuelan immigrants the Trump administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador just hours before it was scheduled to air.
“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report “Inside CECOT” will air in a future broadcast,” an editor’s note said.
In its place, “60 Minutes” aired a feature on the sherpas who work on Mount Everest.
A CBS News spokesperson told JS that the reason for the CECOT segment’s unexpected postponement was that “it needed additional reporting.” CBS News has not announced the future release date.
A page on the CBS News site that once featured a trailer of the episode now says the page “may have been removed, had its name changed, or is just temporarily unavailable.” However, a release for the episode still appeared on the Paramount website at the time of writing. (Paramount is the parent company of CBS. It recently launched a hostile bid to take over Warner Bros.)
“Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons,” the release said. “Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with some of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured inside CECOT. Oriana Zill de Granados is the producer.”
According to an internal email sent by Alfonsi, the decision to pull the segment came directly from the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, per multiple news outlets.
The story “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,” Alfonsi wrote.
“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,” the email continued.
In a statement to The New York Times late Sunday, Weiss defended the call.
“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be,” Weiss said. “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.”
The New York Times reported Weiss spoke about her decision on an editorial call Monday morning, claiming again that the story was not ready.
“The story presented very powerful testimony of abuse at [the Salvadoran prison] CECOT, but that testimony has already been reported on by places like The [New York] Times,” she said on the call, per Times media reporter Ben Mullin. “The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more.”
Weiss also reportedly requested the reporters “make every effort to get the principles on the record and on camera.”
Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press
The abrupt change in programming occurred after President Donald Trump sued Paramount over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year. Paramount settled with Trump, agreeing to pay $16 million. First Amendment advocates and some Democratic legislators criticized the settlement and warned that it could set a dangerous precedent.
Trump recently slammed “60 Minutes” for an interview with soon-to-be-retired Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Greene became a staunch critic of Trump after being one of his most ardent defenders for years.
In October, CBS News hired Weiss to be its editor-in-chief. The former New York Times opinion columnist, who built a career crusading against “cancel culture,” had no experience running a television network.
