A last-minute decision by CBS News chief Bari Weiss to ”spike” a “60 Minutes” segment that was expected to be critical of the Donald Trump administration was hammered on MS NOW on Monday morning, with the entire ‘Morning Joe” panel expressing a mixture of disgust and alarm.
Hours before the heavily promoted segment on migrants who were yanked off the streets by ICE agents and then unceremoniously shipped to a prison in El Salvador, known for brutality and horrific conditions, was to air, CBS announced it would be postponed.
Later in the day, Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who created the report, sent a note to her colleagues, pointing the finger at the controversial Weiss, who critics say got her job — despite a lack of qualifications — by becoming a conservative darling criticizing “cancel culture.”
According to Alfonsi, ”Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. 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.”
She also added that Weiss wanted the producers to get comments from Trump advisor Stephen Miller and that the story should not run until the White House or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided comments.
However, as Alfonsi wrote, the Trump administration had been asked for comment and refused to respond.
That led the 60 Minutes journalist to write, “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.”
According to Weiss, “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. 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.”
Not one member of the MS NOW panel bought the CBS boss’s excuses.
According to Mika Brzezinski, she worked on similar segments like Alfonsi’s when she was employed by CBS News after the 9/11 attack, and there is no one way that the prison story was not heavily scrutinized before being approved for broadcast by the lawyers.
“I’ve been there and those screenings, personally, I worked there, they are a living hell,” she said. “It is the most rigorous, most difficult process, it is an important process, and every frigging word, every frame of video is picked apart by editors to make sure they are correct.”
“I mean, they promoted it “she added.
”Bllionaires are compromising the most important journalistic institutions we have left in this country,” panelist Pablo Torre observed. “The game is obvious, and in this case, Bari Weiss, who was, by the way, not a reporter, not a journalist, is cosplaying as one and is poisoning the well of one of the last bastions of investigative reporting that gets funded.”
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