Bari Weiss, two months into her post as CBS News‘ editor-in-chief, was responsible for spiking a “60 Minutes” segment on the “brutal and tortuous conditions” at a prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported alleged illegal immigrants for detention, according to reports.
The CBS News program abruptly announced on Sunday — three hours before airtime — that it was delaying the segment for a future airdate. The report, as previously announced, was to have featured correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing deportees who the Trump administration has sent to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador.
Weiss, after requesting “numerous changes to the segment,” spiked the report on Saturday, the New York Times reported. Among Weiss’s suggestions: that the piece should include an interview with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller or another senior Trump administration official. Weiss, according to the Times, gave Miller’s contact info to the “60 Minutes” team working on the CECOT segment; Alfonsi said she already requested comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and the State Department.
Alfonsi, in an email to CBS colleagues Sunday that was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, wrote, “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.”
Alfonsi also wrote, “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.”
Staffers at “60 Minutes” are “threatening to quit over this,” CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter tweeted.
CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident came after President Trump two weeks ago complained about what he perceived was unfair treatment by “60 Minutes” — and asserted that since David Ellison and his father, wealthy Trump supporter Larry Ellison, close the deal to acquire Paramount (parent of CBS), “60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
Last week, Trump blasted the Ellisons again over “60 Minutes,” writing in a Dec. 16 post on his Truth Social account, “For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!”
In an announcement Sunday, “60 Minutes” shared an “Editor’s Note” that said: “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of ‘60 Minutes’ has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.” The statement was posted on social media around 4:30 p.m. ET Sunday. The episode was slated to air at 7:30 p.m. ET on the East Coast (or following the conclusion of NFL coverage on CBS).
Asked earlier why the segment was postponed, a CBS News spokesperson said, “The ’60 Minutes’ report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast. We determined it needed additional reporting.”
According to the U.S.-based National Immigration Law Center, in March and April 2025, the U.S. government sent more than 280 young men to CECOT, “a foreign jail notorious for torture, in secret, with no notice to their loved ones or attorneys. There, they were held incommunicado and tortured.” Four months later, 252 of the men were released from the prison and “sent to their native Venezuela (notably, a country that a number of the men had originally fled, fearing persecution),” according to the organization.
Earlier this month, Trump slammed Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” interview that aired Dec. 7 with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), the one-time Trump supporter who has recently been critical of the president on a range of issues. The president wrote on Truth Social that the “Trump-hating” Stahl interviewed “a very poorly prepared Traitor, who in her confusion made many really stupid statements.”
Trump continued: “My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.” Trump also pointed out that Paramount Global, seeking to complete its deal with Skydance Media, this summer paid the president $16 million to settle his lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview in October 2024 with Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was deceptively edited and thus caused him personal harm and represented interference with the 2024 election.
David Ellison in October announced a deal reportedly worth $150 million to acquire Weiss’ contrarian outlet The Free Press. He also appointed Weiss as CBS News’ editor in chief. Industry observers speculated that was intended to improve CBS News’ standing with Trump and the MAGA movement.
Meanwhile, just a few months after closing the Skydance-Paramount deal, David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, attempting to convince shareholders to reject WBD’s deal with Netflix, which is set to acquire the Warner Bros. studios operations and HBO Max.
Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” in place of the report on CECOT, aired a segment from correspondent Jon Wertheim, described like this: “Jon Wertheim travels to Nottingham, England, to visit the Kanneh-Mason family — seven siblings, each still under 30, all celebrated classical musicians whose talent is truly music to the ears. Supporting one another in harmony as they take to the world’s stage, this extraordinary septet, as Wertheim discovers, is an orchestra greater than the sum of its parts.”
The Dec. 21 episode of “60 Minutes” also featured a double-length segment on “The Sherpas of Everest,” for which correspondent Cecilia Vega trekked to Everest Base Camp guided by a 19-year-old sherpa.
