CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss spiked a “60 Minutes” segment scheduled to air on Sunday that featured accounts of men who were deported by the Trump administration to the notorious Venezuelan torture prison, CECOT.
Weiss said that the segment is postponed, primary because there was a lack of response from the White House to the story, and will be rescheduled when the administration weighs in.
“We determined it needed additional reporting,” was the CBS News response.
According to the correspondent who reported the story Sharyn Alfonsi, “we requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department.”
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote. “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.”
Alfonsi, said in an internal memo that “the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship.”
“Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story,” she wrote. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”