Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” report on violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank aired Sunday night, but only after a “contentious” editing process with CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, according to the media outlet Status.
Status reported that screenings of the piece grew so “heated” that Stahl privately discussed quitting the show. She never threatened leadership with a formal resignation, Oliver Darcy of Status reported.
Weiss and her deputy, managing editor Charles Forelle, joined screenings late last week and gave “extensive feedback,” Status reported. Weiss became “very, very hands-on,” one person familiar with the matter said. The precise nature of her objections is unclear, Status said, but they were not limited to a single factual assertion and were much broader.
In one conversation, Forelle suggested “tabling the story for a later date,” since it was late in the week and a delay would give leadership more time to work through their feedback, according to Status. Stahl contended “that with network leadership present in the meeting, they should just work through the various points of feedback then.”
The work stretched into Saturday, Status reported. Listings for Sunday’s broadcast, usually published Friday, weren’t made public until late Sunday morning.
“They didn’t know if it was going to air because the screenings got so heated,” one person told Status.
People familiar with the situation likened the confrontation to the CECOT episode,Status reported, in which Weiss abruptly held a report shortly before airtime because she wanted the Trump administration to have more of an opportunity to comment. The administration never did, and correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi accused Weiss of “politically motivated editorial interference.”
Status also reported a separate incident last week in which network leadership pushed back against a correspondent over the inclusion of a key piece of context about the war in Gaza in a report about the Oct. 7 terror attack.
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