CBS News’ delayed 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador’s CECOT prison spurred the equivalent of a “hostage standoff” between Bari Weiss and the correspondent who reported the story.
Weiss, the editor-in-chief, and correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi were at a weeks-long impasse over the segment, according to a report Wednesday in Puck.
Weiss, who halted the segment just before it was about to air last month, felt that it lacked “critical context” and an on-the-record comment from a Trump administration official. But Alfonsi, 53, stood by it.
What one source compared to a “hostage standoff” played out between intermediaries, with Weiss, 41, inquiring about updates but Alfonsi holding firm. When the two met last week, the situation was tense.
When Weiss’ deputy, Adam Rubenstein, began talking to Alfonsi about one area where Weiss felt the story needed more—the significance of one prisoner’s tattoo—Alfonsi yelled at him: “You don’t get to produce me!”
Along with calling Rubenstein “a mouthpiece” for the Trump administration, Alfonsi questioned his experience in television news production. Rubenstein told her not to take anything personally, prompting Alfonsi to almost leave the meeting, according to Puck.
The 60 Minutes segment ran on Sunday unchanged, though Alfonsi did make two additions to the post-script about the criminal convictions of prisoners (according to ICE) and one prisoner’s tattoo. She also prefaced the segment by referencing the show’s attempts to obtain comment from Trumpworld figures like Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan.
That the segment did not include a comment from a Trump administration official spurred criticism of Weiss by Alfonsi’s supporters and of Alfonsi by the CBS front office, according to the report.
Author Dylan Byers concludes that the “vast majority” of CBS News insiders who spoke with him consider Weiss “a threat to the integrity and legacy of the network, either because of her politics or her managerial shortcomings.”
“Bari, meanwhile, can barely contain her contempt for employees she regards as mediocre at best and treacherous at worst,” he added.
Weiss did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, nor did representatives for CBS News.
Weiss was named to the role by nepo-billionaire David Ellison, who leads CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance. She has been aiming to make the network more palatable to conservative audiences, but the means toward that end have come under scrutiny from within.
Status reported Tuesday that Weiss had been criticizing Alfonsi in on-background conversations with reporters, and a 60 Minutes staffer had taken issue with Weiss’s approach.
“The reality is the 60 Minutes staff are the best of the best,“ the staffer said. “Of course, there’s going to be friction when Bari walks in acting like she owns the place. These are the people who built it. You don’t gain and build trust when you insult us, come in and say we’re biased, don’t learn the place [and] how we work, the fact-checking and research involved.”
