The 60 Minutes Scandal That Wasn’t

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

 

I am nowhere near close enough to the deliberations inside CBS News to render a judgment on whether it was appropriate for network executives to pull a 60 Minutes investigative report on the sprawling El Salvadoran prison complex CECOT at the last minute. But neither are the many vociferous critics of editor in chief Bari Weiss. Her detractors’ remove from the inner workings at CBS News hasn’t stopped them from jumping to conclusions.

 

A casual survey of the social media landscape would lead neutral observers to conclude that Weiss’s decision to spike the segment is the gravest journalistic sin CBS News has ever committed — which, given the outlet’s past indiscretions, would be a singular feat. What’s more, Weiss was accused of having no other motive than to shield the Trump administration, which temporarily deported more than 250 illegal migrants to that detention facility, from deserved censure.

 

“It’s a really strong investigative piece squarely in the tradition of ‘60 Minutes,’” said journalist and author Chris Whipple. “If Bari Weiss thought she was burying the story, she’s done exactly the opposite. It’s become a cause célèbre.”

 

“When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship,” wrote the story’s reporter, CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, in internal correspondence that was leaked to the New York Times. “We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”

 

Indeed, internet sleuths have already created their own murder boards on which a straight line is drawn between Donald Trump’s criticism of Paramount CEO David Ellison at a North Carolina rally and Weiss’s subsequent actions, they presume, on the president’s behalf.

 

“Bari Weiss — clearly a right-winger,” said former right-winger and onetime representative Adam Kinzinger. Indeed, Weiss is “clearly in line with Donald Trump” and “has made it clear that ‘60 Minutes’ will do the administration’s bidding. This is the opposite of the free press.”

 

Weiss’s critics are right about one thing: The spiked 13-minute segment that aired for a time on Canada’s Global TV achieved an organic level of reach that it might not have generated if it had broadcast as scheduled. You can watch it yourself. Those who avail themselves of the opportunity might conclude that Weiss’s concerns about the segment are perfectly valid.

 

In a memo to staff detailing her concerns, Weiss asked whether CBS journalists could “advance” the story around CECOT by probing Trump administration officials to see whether they regret the (failed) attempt to justify the speedy deportation of Venezuelan nationals by appealing to the Alien Enemies Act. Indeed, Weiss said the report glossed over the administration’s fuller legal rationale for its deportations, which amounts to a journalistic sin of omission.

 

Weiss questioned the report’s credulous restatement of the claim that almost no detainees had criminal records, and she sought clarification about the charges against them that might have been dismissed. The CBS News chief chided reporters for failing to get a single quote from administration officials, even those whom the report impugned. Why not “push much harder” to get figures like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller on the record, neither of whom “tend to be shy”? In fact, as Axios reported, the White House, State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security all provided on-the-record comments in response to CBS News’s inquiries, none of which made the air.

 

Weiss did not summarily throw the report in the trash. Rather, she said that it needed more time to bake. And as Weiss’s memo makes clear, there is time and space to do a better job reporting out this story. What CBS News was prepared to air, however, lends credence to Weiss’s concerns.

 

In the segment CBS News was set to broadcast, prisoners are shown facing physically punishing treatment from corrections officers in the Spartan facilities. Valid humanitarian concerns are raised, and the Trump administration’s contention that all the migrant deportees it shuttled to the facility are hardened criminals is credibly challenged. The report makes leading assertions, though, which are gleaned from the lack of information the Department of Homeland Security provided about its deportation targets. “The administration considers anyone who crosses the border illegally to be a criminal,” Alfonsi said — a banal contention that irritates the immigration attorneys, criminologists, human rights activists, and University of California, Berkeley, students (which Weiss justifiably called “strange”) on whom the reporter relied for context.

 

The disturbing portrait CBS News painted of near-torturous conditions endured by CECOT inmates is unsettling, and the abuses Alfonsi’s report alleged might be the only story worth telling. But it is hard for an honest broker to gainsay Weiss’s objections to the finished product CBS News was set to air. If and when it runs, it will be a more complete story — quite possibly, one that reflects as poorly on the administration as the first iteration did.

 

That’s how the editorial process works. Stories are flagged and spiked all the time. It’s a common enough occurrence that it’s a wonder that this story about a story ever became a story at all. Indeed, it might not have been but for the object of so many left-wing hatreds occupying a role that only ever ought to be occupied by someone who wears her progressive preconceptions on her sleeve.