CBS News employees and insiders are warning that controversial editor-in-chief Bari Weiss could soon be facing a “revolt” from staff at 60 Minutes over her last-minute decision to pull a story about the Trump administration’s mass deportations, adding that the move reeked of political and corporate interference.
“Holy f***ing dumpster fire,” one staffer told The Independent, while another reporter said that Weiss likely “crossed the Rubicon” when she stepped in and yanked the story.
Weiss, the “anti-woke” founder of The Free Press who was installed by Paramount chair David Ellison as the newsroom’s leader in October, had already raised the ire of CBS News journalists and staff with many of her editorial decisions since arriving.
However, the spiking of a story that is critical of the White House – especially as Ellison continues to curry favor with Donald Trump amid Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery – may just be a bridge too far for some folks at the Tiffany Network.
“The ‘60 Minutes’ folks will likely revolt over this,” a network insider told The Independent. “Especially during football season.”
The Independent has reached out to CBS News and 60 Minutes for comment
The investigative news program had promoted an upcoming piece entitled “Inside CECOT” about the notorious El Salvador prison to which President Donald Trump’s administration has been deporting undocumented migrants, with journalist Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing inmates about the abuse they say they had suffered within its walls.
But in a post on social media on Sunday afternoon, the network notified viewers: “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.”
The piece was replaced with an innocuous report on an English family of classical musicians and an extended story about the sherpas of Mount Everest.
While other sources said the segment being pulled is “definitely fishy” and is essentially unprecedented, the CBS News staffer sounded off on the appearance of Weiss taking orders from either the White House or Ellison.
“It’s going to be fascinating to see how far Bari is willing to double down on the piece ‘not ready’ argument and or/attack Sharyn and [60 Minutes],” they said. “”It’ll be our clearest signal yet that she doesn’t represent CBS News but instead David Ellison and whatever is convenient for him politically at any given moment.”
The staffer pointed out that Ellison “obviously wants Trump’s backing to wrestle WBD’s purchase from Netflix,” adding that “murdering 60 Minutes might be an acceptable price for him.”
The decision prompted Alfonsi to email a number of her colleagues, including anchors Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper, in which she wrote: “I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, Inside CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We [producer Oriana Zill de Granados and herself] asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.”
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she added. “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.”
According to the New York Times, Weiss requested “numerous changes to the segment,” suggesting that it include a new interview with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and questioning its description of the deportees as “migrants” because they had first arrived in the U.S. illegally.
“We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department,” Alfonsi stated in her email to 60 Minutes staff. “Government silence is a statement, not a veto. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
“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 continued.
“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast,” Alfonsi noted. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
Weiss, in her own comment to the New York Times Sunday night about the nixed segment, said that her “ job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be.” She went on to state that “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,” and that she looks “forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”
Meanwhile, a CBS News spokesperson said Sunday evening that the “60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast” and the network “determined it needed additional reporting.”
As Alfonsi noted in her blistering email, prior to Weiss suddenly pulling the segment, the network had “been promoting this story on social media for days” and “our viewers are expecting it.” She further warned that if the story “fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship.”
The staffer who spoke to The Independent also chimed in to wonder if “America will be OK with the killing of the most watched news program that has dominated” the country’s airwaves for the past 50 years. “I don’t think so,” the staffer concluded.
During Monday’s broadcast of CBS Mornings, co-host Nate Burleson delivered a short report about the decision to yank the “Inside CECOT” story at the last minute, reading off portions of Alfonsi’s email as well as Weiss’ statement to the press and the official comment from a CBS News spokesperson.
On top of that, the Monday morning editorial call was expected to be tense, with staffers likely looking to press Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski for more answers about the decision.
“Monday’s editorial meeting will be a doozy,” the reporter said.
During the editorial call, meanwhile, a tired-looking Weiss appeared a bit incensed over the backlash to her pulling the CECOT story while doubling down on her decision.
“The only newsroom that I'm interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest and editorial matters, and do so with respect, and crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues and anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you,” she huffed.
“Of course, you've all seen, I held a 60 Minutes story, and I held that story because it wasn't ready. 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,” Weiss continued. “The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject two months later, we simply need to do more, and this is 60 Minutes.”
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She concluded: “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera. To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else. And that is my North Star, and I hope it's the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”
The staffer, for their part, pushed back on Weiss’ claim about demanding respectful conversations when it came to her editorial decisions, adding that her “angry tone” was not going over well in the newsroom.
“What conversation? According to Sharyn’s email, Bari wouldn’t even get on the phone with them to explain why she spiked the piece,” the staffer added.
Since purchasing Paramount in a politically fraught merger that saw the company’s prior leadership pay Trump $16 million to settle a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, Ellison has seemingly pushed the news network in a rightward direction while courting favor from the White House.
This has seemingly included the installation of Weiss atop the news division as well as the purchase of her center-right “heterodox” media outlet The Free Press for $150 million.
Since her arrival, the network has gone through brutal layoffs – which were already underway before she came on board – that largely impacted women and people of color, canceled a number of digital programs while overhauling the Saturday morning news show and promoted CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil to anchor the evening news – which came after Weiss was unable to land a high-profile external candidate to lead the show.
Weiss, who has been heavily involved in booking guests and recruiting talent since arriving, recently took heat from staff for installing herself as the on-air moderator of a town hall special with Erika Kirk, the widow of slain right-wing activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
The Saturday night event, which was seen as a massive ratings flop, was the launching point for Weiss’ new series Things That Matter, which will feature Vice President JD Vance and other prominent politicians and business leaders. The series will also include debates between ideologically opposed subjects on polarizing political and social topics.
Weiss also reports directly to Ellison and not CBS News president and executive editor Tom Cibrowski, not Paramount’s TV chief George Cheeks.
All the while, Ellison and his father – ultrawealthy Oracle founder and close Trump ally Larry Ellison – have been banking on the White House’s support as they attempt to circumvent Netflix’s accepted offer for Warner Bros. Discovery. At the same time, though, the president has used recent broadcasts of 60 Minutes to fume about Ellison’s leadership of the company.
“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before,” Trump recently groused on Truth Social. He’s also said that he doesn’t feel that the Ellisons are his “friends” anymore.
On Monday morning, it was reported that Larry Ellison upped the bid for WBD by agreeing to personally backstop the $40 billion of equity financing in Paramount’s hostile bid for the studio giant.
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