One of this season’s most-talked-about “60 Minutes” investigations may be one that never made it to air.
CBS News caused a controversy after it pulled a report from Sunday’s episode of the long-running news program that featured the stories of Venezuelan men who were deported by the Trump administration to a brutal prison in El Salvador. But the full 13-minute segment, as originally edited by “60 Minutes” staff members, surfaced online on Monday.
The last-minute change had already set off a political firestorm. Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, said she postponed the segment because its reporting was flawed and incomplete. Her critics — including the “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, Sharyn Alfonsi — saw it as an attempt by CBS to placate the administration. CBS is owned by David Ellison, a technology heir who is trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that needs federal regulatory approval.
Now the viewing public can draw its own conclusions. After a Canadian television network briefly posted the video on its streaming app, copies were quickly downloaded and widely shared on social media.
“60 Minutes” is seen by an average of 10 million viewers a week, and it is not clear if the bootlegged version of Ms. Alfonsi’s report will eventually reach a similar audience.
But the fact that the segment is widely accessible has complicated an already challenging situation for Ms. Weiss, who is facing backlash from her newsroom. She joined CBS in October from her upstart news and opinion site The Free Press, with virtually no experience in broadcasting.
Ms. Weiss said on a Monday newsroom call that she postponed the “60 Minutes” segment “because it was not ready,” and that she looked forward to airing a new version. But with the original cut now public, any changes will be closely scrutinized for hints of political or ideological bias, possibly creating another flashpoint of her tenure. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, has sent cease-and-desist notices to platforms including YouTube and social media users that posted the “60 Minutes” video, citing copyright infringement.
Ms. Weiss requested significant changes to Ms. Alfonsi’s report on Saturday, less than 48 hours before it was set to air. She ultimately decided to postpone the segment and has pledged to broadcast the piece “when it’s ready.”
But because of the last-minute postponement, CBS News had already transmitted a version of Sunday’s episode that included Ms. Alfonsi’s segment to the network that airs “60 Minutes” in Canada, Global TV.
A CBS News spokeswoman said that by Saturday afternoon, CBS had advised Global TV to expect a revised version of the episode, which the Canadian network aired as intended on Sunday evening. But Global TV, which did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday, posted the older version of the episode on its streaming app.
Viewers are now comparing Ms. Weiss’s suggested changes with the version circulating online.
One of Ms. Weiss’s recommendations was to seek an interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff who designed Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. “We need to push much harder to get these principals on the record,” she wrote in an internal email to “60 Minutes” producers, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
In the original report, Ms. Alfonsi tells viewers that the Department of Homeland Security “declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador.” (CECOT refers to the Terrorism Confinement Center, the Salvadoran prison where the Venezuelan men were held.)
Ms. Alfonsi and her producer requested an interview with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in late November, and did not hear back, according to a person familiar with internal conversations at CBS. The “60 Minutes” team made additional inquiries with Ms. Noem’s office, as well as with the White House and the State Department, the person said.
The White House did eventually respond on Thursday, sending an email that read, in part: “60 Minutes should spend their time and energy amplifying the stories of Angel Parents, whose innocent American children have tragically been murdered by vicious illegal aliens that President Trump are removing from the country.”
That specific comment from the White House was not included in the original version of the “60 Minutes” segment that was postponed. Instead, the producers included a clip of Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, responding to a question about the Venezuelan men at a news briefing.
“These are heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators, who have no right to be in this country and they must be held accountable,” Ms. Leavitt says in the clip.
Additional written comments from the government arrived after the program’s stated deadline, and producers had planned to include those comments in an online article accompanying the segment, the person said.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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