This is an amazing story of incompetence and graft at 60 Minutes.
BREAKING: Here’s the 60 Minutes Segment Trump and CBS News Executives Don’t Want You to See by Yashar Ali @ The Reset.
Hours before it was set to air last night, CBS News executives pulled the segment, but Canada’s Global TV app received it prior to broadcast.
Yesterday, CBS News pulled a story titled “Inside CECOT” just hours before it was set to air.
The report examined the Trump administration’s controversial deportation of more than 250 people — most of them Venezuelan nationals — to CECOT, a sprawling prison in El Salvador where detainees were held under severe conditions. The segment featured interviews with deportees who described brutal treatment and alleged abuse inside the facility.
The decision to pull the story was made by CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, and it triggered a firestorm within the network and, subsequently, in the public. Here’s some info on the controversy and when I update this story shortly, I will link to additional reporting, but I wanted to publish this video immediately as a version of it was taken down on YouTube.
It turns out that the network delivered the segment to Canada’s Global TV app (it has since been pulled).
As I understand it, this is only part of the overall story, but this 13-minute-long video— sent to me by a source —is what exists.
Please click on the link above to play the video. If you are wearing a MAGA hat, do yourself a favor and play the video anyway.
Reader Comment to Reset News
One of the things I just don’t get is how CBS or 60 minutes will ever regain their credibility. The entire reason that 60 minutes exists used to be that it was willing to speak truth to power. Now that it has shown itself too cowardly to do so, it serves absolutely no purpose. I’m sure CBS, just like the Washington Post, will continue to do some good work. But they have shredded all the trust the 60 minutes viewer ever had. Network news has been in sharp decline and I used to care. Now it’s good riddance, and to hell with you.
I am going to make a donation to Yashar Ali.
Inside Bari Weiss’s Decision to Pull a ‘60 Minutes’ Segment
For more background on what happened, the Wall Street Journal fills in some pieces with its post Inside Bari Weiss’s Decision to Pull a ‘60 Minutes’ Segment
CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss had a tough message for the executive producer of “60 Minutes” on Saturday: She had decided to hold a segment that was set to run the next day.
The story focused on a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, including alleged gang members. Weiss said the piece would be better served by further attempts at interviews and another voice in it, according to a transcript of executive producer Tanya Simon’s Monday meeting with “60 Minutes” staff where she recounted the events.
“It was not a ‘let’s talk about this’ kind of thing,” Simon told staff. She also said she had a good relationship with Weiss, according to the transcript, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
CBS News had sought—and received—responses from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and the State Department, according to people familiar with the matter. The segment, which was available to some viewers in Canada and seen by the Journal, didn’t include the fresh comments those agencies provided.
Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent on the piece, called the editor in chief’s decision political in a weekend email to colleagues.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct,” Alfonsi wrote to a group of colleagues including Anderson Cooper and Lesley Stahl.
CBS advertised “INSIDE CECOT” on Friday, teasing Alfonsi’s interviews with some of the deported migrants who had since been released from the megaprison and described harsh conditions.
Weiss said in the email that it was important to make “every effort” to get “the principals” on the record and on camera and that she’d shared phone numbers for Stephen Miller and Tom Homan.
Alfonsi took issue with those requests in her email. “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,” the correspondent wrote.
CBS’s “60 Minutes” has been a popular target of Trump’s ire.
Over the summer—before federal regulators approved the merger between Paramount Global and Ellison’s Skydance Media—Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit in which Trump accused the network of deceitfully editing then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview.
On Friday, Trump said at a rally in North Carolina that while “I love the new owners of CBS,” he was unhappy with “60 Minutes.”
You can also play the video here.
Sharyn Alfonsi’s Email to 60 Minutes
Oops An Accident
For some reason this won’t embed: https://x.com/David_J_Bier/status/2003291409802260727?s=20
“The canceled 60 Minutes report included an interview with a man who entered legally and never violated any laws but was nonetheless rendered to El Salvador for torture without due process. No wonder they canceled it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.