Bari Weiss’ ‘60 Minutes’ scandal is about more than one report
By blocking an approved segment on a controversial prison holding US deportees in El Salvador, the editor-in-chief of CBS News has become the main story
If the goal of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss is to put her network’s content in front of as many eyes as possible, her decision to hold a previously greenlit “60 Minutes” report on American deportees at El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison was a rousing success. In the days since the report was initially scheduled to air, digital samizdat copies have proliferated across multiple social media platforms, fueled in part by frustrations with Weiss’ censorial efforts and likely spreading far beyond “60 Minutes’” core television viewership. The episode has become a flashpoint in a larger debate over the network’s relation to the Trump administration and CBS’ obligations to the public discourse.
‘Veto power over journalism’
By refusing to run a story unless it has a White House comment, CBS under Weiss has given the Trump administration “veto power over journalism,” said media reporter Bill Carter on X. Staffers with “integrity” will “likely quit, because it isn’t a news division anymore. It’s TASS,” the Russian state news agency.
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The story being “factually correct” and having “undergone a legal review” didn’t seem to matter, said The Cut. Though Weiss is “not an especially deep thinker,” she remains an “adept mogul” who “knows how to play the Hollywood game.”
Trump’s efforts to “reindustrialize the economy or prosecute his enemies have floundered,” but his plan to “corrupt the media is starting to work,” said Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic. After the president initially lauded Weiss’ appointment atop CBS News only to complain she wasn’t “acting quickly enough to impose pliant coverage,” Weiss’ decision to hold the previously vetted CECOT story suggests it’s “not the public’s trust she’s concerned about but Trump’s.”
‘Confrontation and drama’
Alfonsi’s claim that Weiss gave the administration a “kill switch” over the network’s news reporting “sounds very bad,” said Graeme Wood at The Atlantic. But Weiss’ memo explaining her decision to CBS staff “does not say the segment should never run.” Rather, it stresses a need for “more confrontation and drama,” which is itself “more of what Weiss was brought in to CBS three months ago to provide.”