CBS Delays ‘60 Minutes’ Segment; Correspondent Calls Decision Political
CBS News delayed a planned and heavily promoted ‘60 Minutes’ segment at the last minute this weekend, triggering internal criticism and accusations over editorial independence at the network.
The segment examined an El Salvador prison (CECOT) where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. The network announced that it would not air the piece just three hours before the broadcast.
CBS News’s new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said the segment was not cancelled, but postponed because it needed additional reporting. The correspondent who reported the story called the decision a “political one.”
The dispute comes months after CBS’s parent company Paramount Global was acquired by Skydance Media, which installed Weiss as CBS’s new editor-in-chief and acquired her news and opinion site The Free Press for $150 million. It puts ‘60 Minutes’ at the center of another dispute about media independence and bias.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
After Weiss reportedly requested numerous changes to the Venezuela story and ultimately decided not to air it Sunday, CBS Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi wrote in an internal email that her reporting was “factually correct” and added, “In my view, pulling it now…is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Alfonsi said the report had been screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and standards editors before it was pulled.
Weiss said at a Monday morning team meeting that she made the decision to hold the story “because it was not ready. While the story presented powerful testimony of torture at CECOT, it did not advance the ball—the Times and other outlets have previously done similar work.”
Weiss also reportedly suggested adding an interview with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — even though the Trump administration had previously declined to comment — and questioned the reporter’s use of the term “migrants” to refer to the Venezuelan deportees.
Weiss reportedly said at the meeting: “And this is ‘60 Minutes.’ We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera. To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else, and that is my North Star, and I hope it’s the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”
Alfonsi responded that government officials’ refusal to comment should not prevent publication, warning that it would effectively give administrations a “kill switch” over unfavorable coverage.
Tanya Simon, ‘60 Minutes’ Executive Producer, said in a private meeting with colleagues that she stood by the investigation but could not allay Weiss’s concerns.
“In the end, our editor in chief had a different vision for how the piece should be, and it came late in the process, and we were not in a position to address the notes. We pushed back, we defended our story, but she wanted changes, and I ultimately had to comply.”
Crucial context: ‘60 Minutes’ has for decades guarded the show’s editorial independence aggressively, even from CBS News executives. It has routinely pushed back hard against any interference in its reporting or stories and has effectively operated separately from the rest of the newsroom.
BIG PICTURE
The latest dispute comes months after CBS News’s parent company Paramount Global was acquired by Skydance Media — a deal approved by the Trump administration.
A couple weeks prior to the approval, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit that he brought against ‘60 Minutes’ for what he considered biased editing.
While Skydance leadership has pledged to protect editorial independence, some CBS journalists have been worried about the new ownership, given Trump’s ties to its billionaire owners.
At the same time, CBS News has long been perceived of having a liberal bias, and one of the goals of hiring Weiss was to ensure more balanced coverage.
President Trump originally praised Paramount’s hiring of Weiss to run CBS News; but at a rally in North Carolina Friday night, he complained that “‘60 Minutes’ has treated me worse under the new ownership.”
Meanwhile, Paramount Skydance is attempting a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — which previously announced a deal with Netflix for a nearly $83 billion merger. On Monday, billionaire Larry Ellison said he would personally guarantee more than $40 billion in Paramount Skydance’s offer, easing concerns from the Warner Bros. board that the company wasn’t financially competitive. Either deal would face intense antitrust scrutiny by the U.S. government and abroad.