CBS News’ decision to pull a ’60 Minutes’ report detailing torture and other offenses at the Trump-approved CECOT prison in El Salvador is continuing to cause major headaches for the network.
On Monday, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioned the decision, noting that CBS’ parent company Paramount “needs Trump’s backing to buy Warner Bros.—including CNN,” and that the editorial move happened as these negotiations are underway. “Is that just a coincidence? This looks like corruption,” she added.
Related | CBS bows again to Trump by shelving critical '60 Minutes' story
The New York Times reported from internal sources within CBS that the network’s conservative editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who made the decision to spike the story, failed to attend five internal screenings of the report as it made its way through the editorial process. Weiss did not voice her purported concerns about the report as it developed, instead making the decision to kill the story hours before it was to be broadcast.
According to multiple sources within the network, correspondent Scott Pelley criticized Weiss’ actions at an internal meeting. “It’s not a part-time job,” the veteran journalist reportedly said.
Despite Weiss and CBS’ efforts to squelch the story, it leaked online Monday evening and may end up being watched by far more people than would have seen the network broadcast. In the piece, people sent to CECOT by the Trump administration describe conditions at the facility as torture.
Bari Weiss at Miami Dade College in Nov. 2019.
“It's a cell for punishment where you can't see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour, and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us while we were in there,” one man told reporter Sharyn Alfonsi.
Weiss, who founded the right-wing outlet Free Press before being installed at CBS, is the central figure in the scandal. Over the years, she has supported the suppression of speech she disagrees with, including a call to silence Arab professors at Columbia University. Zeteo reported that Weiss in April called the CECOT prison the “hottest campaign stop” for the year in a piece for Free Press.
At CBS, Weiss began dismantling the network’s existing standards department in November, with the complaint that it had “too much power.” But those departments exist to avoid scandals like the one she has now created.
In Weiss’ leaked internal memo to CBS employees, she pushes for the network—at nearly the last minute—to do interviews with anti-immigration administration officials and include them in the CECOT report. Most notably, she references immigration czar Tom Homan and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don't tend to be shy. I realize we've emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record,” she wrote.
Refusing to go ahead with the story unless figures like this are interviewed acted as a “kill switch” on her reporting, Alfonsi later alleged in an email to colleagues.
CBS’ parent paid out millions to Trump to settle a frivolous lawsuit, fired liberal host Stephen Colbert, installed Weiss, and is now molding its premier news program to be favorable to Trump.
The iconic network has swiftly tarnished its brand name and legacy in search of profit and praise from the right.
