The 60 Minutes segment that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss prevented from airing Sunday has been leaked.
The segment covers the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent some Venezuelan migrants. Canada’s Global TV aired the segment, according CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, which was later published elsewhere.
The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS and Global TV for comment.
In the segment, Luis Munoz Pinto—who says he has no criminal record—describes the scene at the prison the Trump administration deported him to.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” the college student from Venezuela who sought U.S. asylum, said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”
CBS pulled the segment about three hours before its scheduled Sunday night broadcast, saying it “needed additional reporting.”
Weiss, 41, told the New York Times: “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."
Yet Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran broadcaster who reported the segment, said it got pulled for “political” purposes.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi, 53, wrote to CBS colleagues, per 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.”
Weiss was appointed to lead the CBS newsroom in October by David Ellison, the owner of parent company Paramount Skydance. Ellison’s acquisition was approved by the Federal Communications Commission after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a suit that Donald Trump brought over a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris last year.
Ellison is now working to outbid Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery—a move that would also require approval from the FCC.
Trump, less than 48 hours before Weiss pulled the CECOT segment, complained about how 60 Minutes has treated him.
“CBS, I mean, I love the new owners of CBS. Something happened to them, though,” he told a North Carolina crowd. "60 Minutes has treated me worse under the new ownership. They just keep hitting me. It’s crazy."
Weiss had several concerns about the segment, according to the Times. For one, she said it needed an interview with a senior Trump administration official, like Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Alfonsi told her colleagues that she had reached out to the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
“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,” Alfonsi wrote.
“We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet,” she added. “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
