A News Segment Focused On Venezuelan Men Detained In A Notorious El Salvador Prison After Being Deported By The Trump Administration Has Sparked Controversy Among Viewers.
After it was blocked from airing in the United States it was showcased in Canada and online.
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled “Inside CECOT” from running on “60 Minutes,” explaining that the story was not “ready.” But correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi alleged the decision was not an editorial decision but instead “political.”
“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. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” Weiss said in a statement.
While the recently named editor in chief prevented the report from airing domestically, the episode briefly appeared on Global TV’s free website and app Monday and remained available for two hours until it was removed, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
It was quickly shared among social media users online.
CBS News did not immediately respond to requests for comment about why the report was aired in the Great White North but restricted in the United States.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in an internal email reported by NBC News.
“It is factually correct. Pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she said.
In an editorial call Monday morning, Weiss said she “held a ’60 Minutes’ story because it was not ready,” a source told the outlet.
Weiss joined CBS News earlier this year after Paramount Skydance acquired her publication, The Free Press.
Prior to ascending to the helm of CBS News, Weiss was known for leaving her job as a columnist at The New York Times after criticizing the outlet and others in the mainstream media for groupthink and partisanship.
Weiss reportedly told staffers Monday she held Alfonsi’s segment while pushing for her to get the Trump administration “principals on the record and on camera,” according to NBC News.
“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,” she said, according to that source.
However, Alfonsi said she made numerous requests for comment to the Department of Homeland Security, which referred them to officials at CECOT, who reportedly never responded.
Some have argued the piece was focused on the hundreds of prisoner subjects and not the administration, and thus was complete without comment from it.
“A free press isn’t free if stories get shelved just because the powerful won’t talk,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in a social media post. “CBS pulling the CECOT story on Venezuelan deportees sent to El Salvador’s brutal prison erodes trust. We are losing trust that government and media serve us, not the elite.”
Alfonsi said men described “torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons, where they say they endured four months of hell” throughout the segment.
Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch, said he supported the report airing for broader awareness of CECOT’s conditions after the organization published an 81-page report in November about abuses.
“We look forward to the segment airing,” Bolopion said. “The evidence is clear regardless of what airs on 60 Minutes: the Trump administration disappeared these Venezuelan men to a mega prison in El Salvador where they were systematically tortured.”
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