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CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss defended her decision to abruptly pull a 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador's maximum security prison, CECOT, and President Donald Trump's administration's deportation drive to CBS News staffers during an editorial call on Monday (December 22).
“I held a ‘60 Minutes’ story and I held that story because it wasn’t ready,” Weiss said, according to the New York Post.
CBS had announced Sunday (December 21) afternoon that it planned to pull the 60 Minutes segment, which teased an inside look at "brutal and torturous conditions" at CECOT, the megaprison where Trump's administration has sent hundreds of deported migrants without trial since taking office for his second of two non-consecutive terms in January. Weiss reportedly made the decision just three hours prior to 60 Minutes' broadcast, claiming the segment "needed additional reporting" and suggested the episode would benefit from an interview with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, according to the Daily Beast.
Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent responsible for the CECOT story, said Weiss "spiked our story" and claimed the decision was political, not a journalistic judgment, in an email to colleagues on Sunday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Weiss said the topic “has already been reported on by places like the [New York] Times, 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 claimed that she wanted to run a newsroom in which editors can have "contentious disagreements" while striving for "the best intent of colleagues."
“The only newsroom that I’m interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect and crucially where we assume the best intent of our colleagues,” Weiss said on the editorial call on Monday, according to the New York Post.
CNN's Brian Stelter reported that several 60 Minutes staff members threatened to quit after Weiss pulled the segment.
"Inside @60Minutes, where journalistic independence is sacrosanct, 'people are threatening to quit over this,' I'm told," Stelter wrote on his X account, reposting 60 Minutes' editor's note, which stated, "The broadcast lineup for tonight's edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report 'Inside CECOT' will air in a future broadcast."
Weiss co-founded the conservative-leaning website The Free Press before being named CBS News' editor-in-chief in October.
