Staff at one of the USA’s top investigative programs are weighing a mass walkout after the network’s MAGA-curious chief allegedly spiked a chilling segment on the Donald Trump administration’s nationwide deportation drive.
“Inside [60 Minutes], where journalistic independence is sacrosanct, ‘people are threatening to quit over this’, I’m told,” CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter posted late Sunday night of the mounting firestorm.
CBS had announced earlier in the afternoon it would pull a 60 Minutes segment otherwise billed as an inside look at “brutal and torturous conditions” at CECOT, the feared El Salvadoran megaprison to which the MAGA administration has deported hundreds of migrants this year.
Bari Weiss, the network’s new editor-in-chief, allegedly made the decision just three hours before the show was due to air because it “needed additional reporting,” and suggested the program would benefit from an interview with White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
As chief architect of the Trump administration’s brutal immigration raids, it is chiefly at Miller’s direction those migrants were sent to the center in the first place.
He has repeatedly drawn fire for framing immigration as an “invasion” of criminal elements from abroad, and allegedly pushing deportation quotas that in turn have resulted in rampant violations of the Constitutionally mandated right to due process.
Founder of conservative-leaning The Free Press, Weiss’s appointment as editor-in-chief at CBS followed this year’s controversial merger between the network’s erstwhile parent company Paramount and media conglomerate Skydance.
The resulting entity, Paramount Skydance, is owned by the Ellison family, keen supporters of the Trump administration.
CBS has undertaken considerable layoffs and restructuring in the months since. Critics have particularly balked at the network’s creation of a new ombudsman role, filled by longtime conservative policy wonk Kenneth Weinstein, to evaluate allegations of bias leveled at the company, per conditions under which the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission approved the merger.
Widespread concern over the future editorial direction of CBS appeared to have been borne out earlier in November after the network was accused of buckling to pressure from Trump over what material to broadcast from a 60 Minutes sit-down with the president.
Compared against the extended 73-minute cut released online, the final 28-minute TV edit of that interview was found not to feature the president losing his temper over questions about his controversial decision to pardon a crypto-billionaire otherwise convicted of money laundering.
Also cut from the broadcast version were the president’s boasts about securing a multi-million dollar payout from Paramount over his claims the network had deceptively edited a separate interview with Kamala Harris to give the then-Democratic candidate a boost in last year’s polls.
Responding to the mounting firestorm over the pulled CECOT segment Sunday, Weiss told the New York Times that “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,” she added.
But in a leaked memo to the 60 Minutes team, veteran reporter Sharyn Alfonsi blasted Weiss for allegedly making the decision out of deference to the MAGA administration rather than a code of journalistic ethics.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote. “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.”
Alfonsi added that due requests for comment on the piece had been sent to the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and the State Department. These allegedly went unanswered, with the lack of response received as “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,” she wrote. “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Paramount, CBS and Weiss’s representatives for comment on this story.
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