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CBS News pulled a 60 minutes a report on the CECOT prison in El Salvador just hours before its scheduled broadcast on Sunday, saying it would be broadcast later.
“The lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated,” the show posted on social media. “Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will be broadcast in an upcoming broadcast,” the program posted on X and other social media platforms three hours before its broadcast.
A CBS News spokesperson said in an email that the segment “needs additional reporting.”
The New York Times, citing a copy of a memo written by Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent who reported the segment, said CBS removed the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was reviewed five times and approved by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.
“This is factually correct. In my opinion, removing it now, after all rigorous internal checks have been carried out, is not an editorial decision, it is a political decision.”
She told the newspaper on Sunday evening: “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss. »
CECOT is a mega-prison in El Salvador where the United States has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants without trial. He was condemned by human rights groups for his harsh conditions.
CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance PSKY.O. Skydance Media, led by David Ellison – the son of Larry Ellison, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump – acquired Paramount in August. David Ellison helped win regulatory approval for the deal by promising that the CBS network would reflect the “diverse ideological perspectives” of American viewers.
Before the deal, Paramount paid 16 million US dollars to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump in 2024 for a 60 minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who he said gave a distorted view of her White House rival.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has stated that the regulation and regulatory review are not related.
Weiss requested a significant amount of new material
CBS removed a link to the “Inside CECOT” segment page on Sunday. The page, which previously had a trailer, now says: “The page could not be found.”
However, a description on his Paramount Plus website earlier indicated that the segment was scheduled to air Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET, with Alfonsi speaking to the recently released deportees about the “brutal and torturous” conditions they endured in the prison.
Weiss raised several concerns regarding 60 minutes producers on Alfonsi’s segment and requested that a substantial amount of new material be added, The New York Times reported, citing sources.
She suggested adding an interview with White House official Stephen Miller or another senior Trump administration official, according to the report. Weiss further questioned the use of the term “migrants” to describe the deported Venezuelan men, emphasizing that they were in the United States illegally, the report added.
In his memo, Alfonsi said his team had solicited comments from the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
“If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to publish a story, we have effectively given them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find embarrassing,” Alfonsi was quoted as saying.
CBS News and Alfonsi did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report outside of normal business hours.
The move comes as the network undergoes changes under the leadership of Weiss, who was tapped to lead CBS News in October after CBS parent company Paramount Skydance acquired the online publication she founded, The Free Press.
Weiss, a former opinion editor at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, was seen by some analysts as a controversial choice because she had never run a television newsroom or produced broadcast news content before.
On December 10, she appointed Tony Dokoupil as the new presenter of her flagship product CBS Evening News segment, replacing the anchor double team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.
