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‘60 Minutes’ Boasts About Ratings After Segment Spiking Saga

CBS is boasting about the ratings of Sunday’s ‘60 Minutes’ episode despite the uproar it triggered in the newsroom.

CBS is choosing an odd moment to brag about 60 Minutes’ ratings. The network’s communications arm announced on X Tuesday night that its flagship program is up 12 percent in viewers for the 2025 season, drawing 10.4 million viewers on Sunday. That broadcast, of course, is the one that sparked uproar among 60 Minutes staff after new MAGA-curious editor-in-chief Bari Weiss made an eleventh-hour call to pull a segment on the El Salvador megaprison that held Venezuelan men deported by President Donald Trump. Apparently unconcerned by the awkward timing, CBS touted 60 Minutes as this week’s top non-sports primetime program and said it had logged 34.8 million video views. Weiss, 41, whom Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison appointed as CBS News’ editor-in-chief in October, told 60 Minutes staff that she shelved the report on the prison because it required more reporting, urging them to get Trump administration officials on the record. But Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent on the story, called Weiss’s decision “political” in an internal memo, and some staff are reportedly threatening to quit over the boss’s move. The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS for comment.

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Erkki ForsterNight News Reporter

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