Did Bari Weiss give the White House a “kill switch” on honest reports from CBS News? Or did she yank the chain back on one of its most biased platforms to remind everyone that times have changed?
One can imagine which narrative the Protection Racket Media will flog.
Weiss issued a last-minute order to yank a 60 Minutes exposé on Donald Trump’s decision to partner with El Salvador on deporting criminal illegals, citing the need for more reporting and better balance. All of the usual suspects have been losing their minds ever since:
CBS News pulled a segment on Trump administration deportations of Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador prison from “60 Minutes,” causing staffers and media onlookers to question whether the decision was politically motivated. …
Driving the news: “60 Minutes” announced on social media around 4:30pm ET Sunday that it was dropping the segment, called “Inside CECOT,” from that evening’s broadcast lineup, but said that it would air at a later date.
- Sharyn Alfonsi, the segment’s correspondent, alleged in an email to colleagues that she learned Saturday that new CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had “spiked our story” after Trump officials refused to be interviewed, per multiple reports.
- “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote, per a copy of the email that journalist Liam Scott shared on X.
I’ve watched 60 Minutes and CBS News’ practical application of “standards and practices” for decades. This is not the flex that Alfonsi thinks it is. Twenty-one years ago, CBS News and 60 Minutes II ran a prime-time hit piece on George W. Bush based on fabricated documents in an attempt to influence a presidential election. “Rathergate” only cost CBS some embarrassment and retractions, and perhaps a momentary blip in sponsor support. Almost exactly twenty years later, they botched a re-edit of their softball interview with Kamala Harris so badly that the manipulation was once again easily exposed by critics and commentators. That escapade cost Paramount $16 million to settle in a lawsuit Trump filed, who most definitely preferred direct action more than Bush did at the time.
And, of course, we have seen an avalanche of other corrupt and false reporting in between, as well as before and after both incidents. So, yeah, attorneys and S&P at CBS don’t have a track record that screams credibility,
Weiss issued a statement that basically lectured Alfonsi about who decides when stories are ready to air, and it ain’t the old-guard narrative minders:
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “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.”
Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. 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.”
What about the “kill switch”? As it turns out, Weiss takes the title of “editor in chief” seriously. She reviewed the segment earlier in the week, and determined that the reporting was incomplete and didn’t give enough context on the administration’s policies and decisions on CECOT. Apparently, the producers didn’t make the changes necessary for Weiss to approve it for air:
Ms. Weiss first saw the segment on Thursday and raised numerous concerns to “60 Minutes” producers about Ms. Alfonsi’s segment on Friday and Saturday, and she asked for a significant amount of new material to be added, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.
One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.
Ms. Weiss also questioned the use of the term “migrants” to describe the Venezuelan men who were deported, noting that they were in the United States illegally, two of the people said.
“Migrants”? They were illegal aliens – hence the deportations. One may suspect that the anodyne term “Venezuelan men” might hide some other affiliations of a less legal nature, since the CECOT deportations came at the front end of the effort to find members of transnational trafficking criminal enterprises such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13. Weiss may well have wondered that as well.
The “kill switch” comes from a supposed White House refusal to cooperate with reporters on this story. Axios highlighted this claim from Alfonsi’s e-mail to colleagues:
- Sharyn Alfonsi, the segment’s correspondent, alleged in an email to colleagues that she learned Saturday that new CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had “spiked our story” after Trump officials refused to be interviewed, per multiple reports.
Gee, I wonder why the White House refused to cooperate with a 60 Minutes story about “Venezuelan migrants”? One also has to wonder whether these officials actually refused to cooperate, or whether Alfonsi used the tried-and-true manipulative strategy of waiting until the last minute to request interviews by an impossible deadline as a way to have this ass-covering narrative in place to defend the hit piece. If so, then Weiss didn’t give the White House a “kill switch” as much as she imposed an actual ‘standard’ on the practice of news reporting.
If Alfonsi did offer a reasonable period for response, then the concern over potentially creating a “kill switch” for politicians is more reasonable. However, based on the reporting that CBS News generally performs and 60 Minutes in particular, a kill switch is not just a good idea, but it also should get exercised a lot more often.
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