CBS News abruptly pulled an investigative “60 Minutes” segment on the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison after the Trump administration refused to grant an interview, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The decision came directly from the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, according to an internal email sent to producers from the segment’s correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, who called the decision tantamount to handing the White House a “kill switch.”
“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 wrote.
The team had sent questions and requested comment from the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for the story, according to the email. But the administration declined to grant the journalists an interview.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
“The 60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” a CBS News spokeswoman said in a statement. “We determined it needed additional reporting.” The network did not respond to a request to comment on Alfonsi’s statement about Weiss’ intervention and the rationale. Alfonsi did not respond to a request for comment.
The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” was set to cover the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons. The network had teased the segment for days, but by Sunday the trailer and promotional materials had been removed from CBS News’s website.
The original preview said that Alfonsi spoke with released prisoners, who describe “brutal and torturous conditions” inside the prison.
In the email to her team, Alfonsi wrote that she learned Saturday that Weiss killed the story, which she says was screened five times and cleared by both the standards and practices department and the network’s attorneys.
Weiss was named CBS’s top editor this fall after David Ellison’s newly formed Paramount Skydance bought The Free Press, the opinion website she founded, for $150 million. While the two properties are still technically separate, Weiss runs both. Her early days at the network have been marked by rapid changes at the network, including restructuring, layoffs and a town hall in which Weiss interviewed Erika Kirk.
In the email, Alfonsi said the sources in the segment “risked their live to speak with us.” She added: “We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories.”
“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 a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote in the email.
“It is factually correct,” she added. “In my view, pulling it now — after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
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