Outrage after CBS pulls 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador’s Cecot prison

CBS News was dealing with internal and external uproar on Monday after it pulled at the last minute an investigation for its flagship 60 Minutes show into the harsh prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans from the US earlier this year.

The episode about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X late that afternoon, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”

Outrage followed, including from the key correspondent on the planned segment, Sharyn Alfonsi. She had interviewed some of those recently released about the “brutal and torturous” prison conditions. The Paramount Plus website had said on Sunday the segment was scheduled to air at 7.30pm ET that evening.

Bari Weiss, controversially appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News in October despite a lack of experience and fears of politicization at the storied TV network, after owner Paramount acquired her conservative startup the Free Press, addressed the issue on Monday morning.

She spoke at the company’s morning staff call amid reports that journalists at the news channel were threatening to quit and as parent company Paramount Skydance tweaked elements of its offer in the corporate battle to gain control of Warner Bros Discovery, which owns news rival CNN alongside its movie and streaming assets.

Weiss said: “I held that story and I held it because it wasn’t ready.” She said the story presented “very powerful testimony” of abuse at Cecot but the issues had already been reported and it needed more. However she then said: “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principles on the record and on camera.”

This expanded on points made by a CBS News spokesperson on Sunday that the segment “needed additional reporting” and on reporting by the New York Times that the piece should include interviews with relevant leaders from the Trump administration. Alfonsi had previously said the administration did not provide comment despite multiple requests and invitations from 60 Minutes.

Weiss said the public was already aware of what happened at the prison, after the Trump administration accused more than 200 Venezuelan migrants in the US of being gang members and sent them to El Salvador without legal due process and on questionable evidence, in a deal with the authorities there to hold them in a notorious prison for terrorism suspects.

Weiss’s address to staff on Monday echoed points made by a CBS News spokesperson on Sunday that the segment “needed additional reporting” and the reporting on pressure to include White House voices.

Alfonsi said in a private note to her CBS colleagues on Sunday that the episode “was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. 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.”

Elsewhere in the note, Alfonsi said her team had requested comment from the White House, the state department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “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,” she said. “We have been promoting this story on social media for days.” She had directed those seeking further comment from her to approach Weiss.

Backlash from outside CBS was also swift. Weiss’s appointment had already prompted concern that she would push news coverage to the right. But also that there was corporate politics at work as the merger of Paramount with Skydance in July had needed regulatory approval and now Paramount Skydance’s rival bid to Neflix’s for Warner Bros Discovery is a deal that also needs approval from Trump administration regulators.

“What is happening to CBS is a terrible embarrassment and if executives think they can build shareholder value by avoiding journalism that might offend the Mad King they are about to learn a tough lesson,” the Hawaii US senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat, wrote on X, with oblique reference to Donald Trump’s increasingly autocratic agenda and related opposition. Schatz added: “This is still America and we don’t enjoy bullshit like this.”

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts saw the shadow of corporate dealmaking.

He said in an X post that it’s a “sad day for 60 Minutes and journalism”, and added that the Trump administration’s involvement in approving Skydance’s $8bn deal to buy Paramount had previewed the decision.

The media commentator Kara Swisher posted on Threads that: “This is entirely to please Trump, who has voiced criticism of 60 Minutes under the new owners, who are the definition of rank amateurs, emphasis on rank.” And she added a reference to Weiss’s push as reported by the New York Times for CBS to interview White House deputy chief of staff and anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller as part of revising the segment.

“This Stephen Miller interview suggestion is idiotic in the context of this story – doing another piece with him later is fine, but to add him here after the administration declines to officially have comment is a suck up gimme,” Swisher wrote.

Additional reporting by Jeremy Barr