CBS News’ famous ’60 Minutes’ program has taken a hit to its credibility, with the outlet’s own employees threatening to quit over the show’s postponement of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
CBS News on Sunday pulled a “60 Minutes” report containing accounts of Venezuelan men deported by the Donald Trump administration to El Salvador’s maximum-security CECOT prison hours before it was scheduled to air, citing several reasons for the sudden decision.
In an editor’s note posted on the X program, he wrote: “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our ‘Inside CECOT’ report will air on the next broadcast.”
Citing two people with knowledge of the matter, NPR reported that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss told her colleagues over the weekend that the Inside CECOT report could not run without comment on the record from a Trump administration official.
“We found that he needed additional coverage,” CBS News also said Sunday, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, the announcement was met with fierce backlash on social media, with netizens saying CBS News had just become the mouthpiece of the Trump administration under Weiss.
“From investigative superpower to stenographer for the state”
As the network fumed over the sudden rescheduling, the correspondent who covered the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, wrote in an internal memo that Weiss “stabbed” the Inside CECOT story, despite it being approved by both CBS lawyers and standards and procedures.
“It is factually correct. In my opinion, to pull it now – after every strict internal review that has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” Alfonsi wrote in an internal communication that was widely shared by journalists and other social media users.
Alfonsi went on to say that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the White House and the US State Department responded with silence when contacted for questioning, saying, “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to the interview,’ then the government effectively gains control of 60 Minutes. We go from being an investigative superpower to being a stenographer for the state,” the CBS correspondent said flatly.
Noting that Venezuelan deportees “risked their lives” to speak to 60 Minutes, Alfonsi said the program has a moral and professional obligation to its sources.
“Abandoning them now is a betrayal of journalism’s most fundamental principle: giving a voice to the deaf,” Alfonsi said, adding: “We’ve been promoting this story on social media for days. When it goes off the air without a credible explanation, the public rightly identifies it as corporate censorship.”
“I care too much about this broadcast to watch it dismantled without a fight,” the CBS News correspondent concluded.
First broadcast in 1968, ’60 Minutes’ was included in Variety’s 2023 list of the best TV shows of all time and has been hailed as one of the most respected news magazines on American television.
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“Employees are threatening to leave”
When CBS News became a talking point on Sunday, CNN also reported that staffers at the news program had threatened to resign over allegations of censorship.
Brian Stelter, CNN media analyst, said va post at X, “Inside 60 Minutes, where journalistic independence is sacrosanct, ‘people are threatening to quit over this,’ I’m told.”
