Looks Like Bari Weiss Is Facing a ’60 Minutes’ Rebellion

Staff at 60 Minutes and CBS News are reportedly in an uproar Monday morning, amid the fallout of this weekend’s last-minute removal of a fully reported story from the venerable news program about the notorious El Salvador prison known as CECOT, where U.S. deportees from various nations—including the highly publicized case of Maryland man Kilmar Ábrego García—have been sent, facing brutal conditions. According to reporter Sharyn Alfonsi’s now-leaked internal memo from CBS News, which was posted to Twitter, editor-in-chief Bari Weiss inserted herself to personally spike the story, seemingly anxious about stepping on the toes of the Trump administration. In addition to attempting to get the CBS News reporting team to interview white nationalist troglodyte Stephen Miller in order to add some “balance” to the proceedings, the decision of Weiss to withhold the story on the grounds of the Trump administration choosing not to offer comment is especially galling. It’s a choice that effectively cedes the entire journalistic process to the White House, telling Trump and his administration that they can kill any story they wish by simply not responding to requests for comment.

“We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department,” said 60 Minutes veteran Alfonsi in her memo. “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is 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. 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.”

Weiss, naturally, knows exactly what she’s doing in pushing back on 60 Minutes reporting stories critical of the Trump administration’s policies. Since being installed by Paramount Skydance CEO/billionaire failson/Trump booster David Ellison as the CBS News Editor-in-Chief in October, the former columnist—who had no reporting experience coming into the job—has been rubbing pretty much every person in the greater journalism world the wrong way. She’s led poorly watched town halls with the likes of Erika Kirk, the profiteering wife of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. She’s overseen the firing of around 100 staffers, primarily women and people of color, even as she’s drawn headlines for hiring a $10,000-a-day personal security team. And she’s giddily rubbed her hands at the prospect of Paramount Skydance acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, which could also put her in charge of the news operation at CNN, as if the cable news game needed to get any more ineffectual.

People are now “threatening to quit” at CBS News, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter, who shared the Alfonsi memo. In particular, the spiking of this story will draw extra attention because it happened so close to the time of publishing. CBS had already been promoting the “INSIDE CECOT” story for days on social media and TV, before Weiss reportedly stepped in with “concerns” on Saturday. Alfonsi in her statement said that she asked for a call with Weiss to discuss the situation, and “she did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.”

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” wrote Alfonsi in the memo. “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. These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless. We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”

Since its on-air acknowledgement that the “INSIDE CECOT” segment would not run, the 60 Minutes and CBS News Twitter accounts have kept right on merrily posting, making no acknowledgement of the uproar that the spiked segment has caused. Weiss, meanwhile, initially claimed that the piece will still run at some future date, although unsurprisingly offered no explanation as to what additional reporting was actually necessary, beyond a mention of “missing critical voices” … which sounds a lot like she really wants the American public to hear more of the racist rhetoric of Stephen Miller.

“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,” said Weiss in a statement, although we will remind you once again that Weiss has essentially zero actual reporting or broadcast experience of her own. “I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Somehow, we have a feeling in this case that “when it’s ready” may correlate tightly to “How much negative press CBS News receives” and “When the Trump admin says it’s okay.” Only weeks ago, Trump publicly criticized 60 Minutes in particular yet again after its airing of an interview with MAGA defector Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As of Monday morning, meanwhile, Weiss seems to have decided on an entirely new rationale for why the story was spiked: Because it had already been sufficiently reported elsewhere. Effectively throwing her own news gatherers and journalists under the bus, Weiss reportedly said on a call that because other news outlets had already reported at some point on the punitive, egregious treatment of prisoners at CECOT, that there was little reason to do so again, and as a result the 60 Minutes story was “not ready.” Isn’t it weird how the newsworthiness of such reporting dovetails neatly with whether or not Donald Trump would like the story to exist?

Here’s what Bari Weiss said on the CBS 9am call, per a source who transcribed it:

“I want to say something about trust: our trust for each other and our trust with the public.

The only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious…

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 22, 2025