Bari Weiss Canned 60 Minutes El Salvador Prison Story Since It Lacked Response From Trump Admin
Weiss also wants to overhaul 60 Minutes.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled the 60 Minutes episode on El Salvador’s CECOT prison because it lacked content, specifically comments from the Trump administration.
Why it matters: Her decision has caused uproar internally, with at least one correspondent arguing the call was politically motivated.
- Weiss’ note, sent to top “60 Minutes” brass — including executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich — indicates she was trying to get ahead of any confusion or controversy internally, before news about the segment change was made public.
Zoom in: Weiss argued the segment — about Trump administration deportations of Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador prison — left out comment and perspective from administration officials, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios.
- “At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT,” the memo says.
- “What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? 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.”
- On a staff call Monday morning, Weiss continued to defend her decision, arguing the piece wasn’t ready, per a source on the call.
Well, it turns out that the 60 Minutes journalists did receive comments from the White House, State Department, and DHS.
Axios pointed out that the journalists did not include any of those comments and statements as shown in the piece, which aired in the GlobalTV app in Canada.
At the end of the segment, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said DHS “declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador.”
Yeah, um, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin gave Alfonsi a 300-word statement.
Alfonsi attempted to stir the pot in a memo to her colleagues, saying, “We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
Again, Alfonsi had at least McLaughlin’s lengthy statement.
The mess has pushed Weiss to change 60 Minutes’ standards and procedures.
“The masthead is meant to drive a more streamlined hierarchy and set of processes across show and news gathering teams that are intended to prevent disparate editorial procedures and standards,” Axios reported.
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Comments
Alfonsi lied to standards & practices and the Editor-in-Chief. She should get a visit from HR and then an escort out of the building. Bari inherited a mess and clean up is always a dirty job.
It’s one thing to lie to the American people. It’s quite another thing to lie to your fellow press cult members. She will be shunned
Nah, she’s a hero to them. She lied in the interest of trashing Trump, and to them that’s the highest value. Weiss will be shunned even more than she is already.
She also has perfected her vocal fry to the envy of every sh*tlib woman.
Not only leaving out the Administration’s view, but apparently presenting these criminal aliens in a false light, as if they were choir boys snatched from the altar.
Alfonsi again shows she lacks integrity. Her arrogance entitles her to abuse journalism to mislead people to promote her agenda. Next week a hagiography of Boasberg.
SOP for “60 Leftist Minutes”
Merry Christmas ya’all
From Texas
And May Hanukkah be peaceful
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Gonzo, and, all the best for 2026! And, happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to everyone else, here. 🙂
Hanukkah is over. Monday was the last day. But may next year’s Hanukkah be a lot more peaceful than this year’s was.
It, Kwanzaa, its twin sister, is just starting. Enjoy!
Did we miss Festivus?
Somebody replaced my Pole with an Ethiopian.
For the rest of us! I still have my pole up.
Sorry I missed Hanukkah over 22nd
Who, other than a few senior citizens in nursing homes/elder care facilities, even watches the wretched, greasy and deceitful Dhimmi-crat propaganda TV program, “60 Minutes,” any more?
CBS and the show’s producers and propagandist-“journalists” narcissistically and arrogantly presume that the show has an importance and an audience reach that it plainly does not have. This contrived display of histrionics seems calculated as a ploy to gain publicity and relevance.
I stopped watching 60 minutes back when they did that fluff piece on Buddy Cianci, the mayor of Providence, going to prison for ‘being the mayor’, or so they said.
In reality, he went to prison for runnng a criminal enterprise.
It was such a biased, one sided, erroneous piece of fluff garbage, it made me realize 60 minutes wasn’t really a news program but more like entertainment instead.
I don’t think I’ve watched it since.
I thought he went to prison for pounding his wife like a chicken cordon bleu. Or was that a different staycation?
“it made me realize 60 minutes wasn’t really a news program but more like entertainment instead.”
Unca Hardin, please tell us the story again about “Jessica in The Well!”
Conservative administration fails to “respond” in 27.3 seconds…
Alfonsi: That’s it, time’s up, we run it, just like always.
Weiss: Maybe that’s really not a proper journalistic standard anymore.
Industry: 💩 hits fan NOT directed at Alfonsi…
It’s never been a standard but a well used tactic. Send someone a list of questions at 11:59pm on a Sunday. When they don’t respond by 0600 run the story and claim you asked for comment but got no response.
I suspect she will be gone early in the new year. Weiss absolutely must come down on this “journalist” to make an example to the others.
“.. . . . .the others” will not take the “example” to heart, since they have none. They all must go—ALL of them.
The dishonesty is comical. They’re carrying on like they’ve unearthed something.
e.g. “They beat us until we bled. We were hit as we were dragged off the plane, made to walk hunched over, tied up with up to five shackles.”
is a random pick from the complaints. Yes, they do. They don’t hide this. There’s lots of footage of new arrivals. They are all shackled up (they are when out of the cells), they run bent double, they sit down packed together in the middle of the cell block, any resistance at all gets a whack. They break them psychologically, deliberately.
They allow filmmakers to film them doing it. They’re completely open about the packing in cells, the terrible solitary confinement, the very limited food. They say “they will never leave”, “they will never see the sun”. It’s not meant to be nice. The bunks are solid metal. There’s no privacy. The lights are on permanently.
Whether it’s right or wrong is arguable. El Salvador would probably argue it was necessary.
The one thing it absolutely is *not* is hidden.
It didn’t ‘lack response from Trump admin’.
They LIED about there being a response.
Succeed or fail Weiss has a tough row to hoe. The current ‘journalists’ at corporate media/legacy media have long since moved away from any tether to objectivity. Instead they embraced activism cloaked in the tattered remnants of legacy media reputation. They don’t want to inform the viewers/readers of facts but instead cherry pick facts to support their favored narrative in order to advance their partisan political and ideological policy preferences. Breaking them out of the cycle some have operated in for decades isn’t gonna be easy.
“they embraced activism”
They were taught to embrace activism in “schools of journalism” before their brains were fully developed.
The “university” model of education has been fully corrupted (with a few exceptions), is not capable of being reformed, and must be replaced with something more likely to succeed.
The Left does not have a problem with Weiss’ political views. It is her JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY that has it up in arms.
Is it really canned or just waiting to finish the research (i.e. get an Administration comment on it)?
Weiss is making good on her promise to try and right that ship. Imagine having two sides to a story. What a horror. Weiss is far to the left on about every issue but tries to play it down the middle on reporting as I noticed reading her sight since it was founded. She is, to me, the definition of what a reporter should be in setting aside their prejudices to try and get the truth of a story out no matter where it leads.
I’m not sure “far to the left” is a fair description of Bari Weiss’ views.
According to Perplexity.ai:
Bari Weiss has not laid out a single, detailed immigration platform, but her public actions and comments show a consistently hawkish, enforcement‑focused stance that treats unlawful entry primarily as a criminal problem rather than a humanitarian one.
[definitely not “far to the left”]
Overall, her position is that a decent society should: protect women’s legal access to abortion, especially in medical, rape, or severe hardship scenarios; acknowledge the moral gravity of abortion; and structure law and culture to reflect both concerns rather than collapsing into partisan slogans.
[weak, but not “far to the left”]
Bari Weiss has generally been sympathetic to school choice and to parents pulling their kids from traditional public schools, especially when they are dissatisfied with the culture or curriculum. She tends to frame these moves as rational responses to ideological capture, bureaucracy, and low academic expectations rather than as attacks on public education per se.
[definitely not “far to the left”]
Bari Weiss has positioned herself as a prominent critic of contemporary gender-affirming care, especially for minors, largely through the editorial choices and framing of her outlet, The Free Press. Her views are expressed more through whom she platforms, the stories she amplifies, and the questions she emphasizes than through long, detailed position statements.
[definitely not “far to the left”]