As you know, when Paramount Skydance acquired the television station CBS, Bari Weiss, still editor of the Free Press, was also appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News. I worried about that, as CBS has a long reputation for quality news, and I couldn’t see Weiss—whose Free Press site seems both center-right and lacking gravitas as well as reportorial quality—actually improving CBS News. But we’ll give her a chance. So far, she’s blown it, but it’s early days.
Weiss is new on the job, but is already putting her fingerprints on the broadcast news, and not in a good way. First, she held a Town Hall in which Weiss (unusual for an editor) appeared as an interviewer questioning Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk. It was a debacle, with Weiss not pressing Erika and letting her spew Christianity all over the show. (We’re promised more town halls with Weiss in the future.)
Now, according to several sources, including the NYT article below, Weiss has done something even more serious: she had a segment of the excellent news show “60 minutes” pulled—and apparently for ideological reasons, Click below to read, or find the article archived free here.
Here’s an excerpt:
In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.
CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”
But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by 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.”
Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “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.”
Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia about Alfonsi, who’s been with the show for a decade:
Sharyn Elizabeth Alfonsi (born June 3, 1972) is an American journalist and correspondent for 60 Minutes. She made her debut appearance on the show on March 1, 2015. In 2019, she received the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award journalism award and has reported from war zones in Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan.
More clues as to why the story was spiked:
The segment was focused on Venezuelan men who were sent by the Trump administration to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador. In a news release on Friday promoting the segment, CBS News said that Ms. Alfonsi had spoken with several men now released from the prison “who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.”
Ms. Weiss first saw the segment on Thursday and raised numerous concerns to “60 Minutes” producers about Ms. Alfonsi’s segment on Friday and Saturday, and she asked for a significant amount of new material to be added, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.
One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.
Ms. Weiss also questioned the use of the term “migrants” to describe the Venezuelan men who were deported, noting that they were in the United States illegally, two of the people said.
In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “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,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote.
This is ludicrous. The story was vetted five times and cleared by CBS sttorneys. The team working on the story asked for comment from the three most relevant agencies: the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. They refused to participate. That would have been enough to add to the story: three “no comments”. But Weiss stuck her nose in and helpfully supplied Alfonsi with yet another administration official, a deputy chief of staff in the White House. (Did Weiss know what that person would say? If so, how?) It’s not the job of the reporter to keep asking administration officials until they find a cricial comment. Alfonsi is right: this appears to be Weiss’s attempt to get someone to badmouth or contradict the story. Alfonsi added this:
“We have been promoting this story on social media for days,” Ms. Alfonsi added. “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.”
“I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight,” she wrote.
Reached on Sunday evening, Ms. Alfonsi said, “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss.”
Here, from “X”, is Alfonsi’s full email to the “news team,” presumably those people who worked on the story (click screenshot to go to site, Stelter is CNN’s chief media analys):
Alfonsi is clearly pissed off, and is going to fight (given Weiss’s position, Alfonsi will probably lose). But the whole thing smacks not only of censorship, but of Weiss’s attempt to micromanage “60 Minutes” stories, makng sure the Trump administration can weigh in publicly. That’s not what reporting should do., Alfoni’s memo and stand is proper, and is that of a working reporter. Weiss has little experience with this end of reporting, and she screwed up by desperately trying to get someone from the Trump administration to criticize the story. Weiss’s overweening ambition to build news organizations is already starting to do her in. If she keeps acting this way towards CBS reporters, they will leave and the station will be left with a bunch of neophytes. (Some CBS employees are already threatening to quit.)
If you want other versions of this story, you can find them at CNN, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News, which adds a response from Weiss:
“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,” Weiss said in a statement.
Weiss should never have taken this job, for I foresee a lot of micromanagement that is not to the taste of the newspeople themselves. She is is clearly not ready to be CBS’s news editor-in-chief, and we may have to watch the news division go down the tubes before Weiss learns enough to manage the news section properly.
h/t: Douglas, David
Getting a story spiked hurts – and I think the 60 min reporter is angry for ego reasons.
My editors are obvious lunatics who let me off my leash to loudmouth away at will … but the one or two times my articles have been spiked…. it is hard to not take it personally.
D.A.
NYC
-themoderatevoice
-jihadwatch
-various Jewish newes
-Forbes magazine
Meanwhile, the Ellisons, via Paramount Skydance, are renewing their bid for Warner Bros Discovery, which would allow them to censor CNN as well.
Didn’t know she was so MAGA. Would have surmised she mostly wanted to ban anti-Israel content.
It only became clear after Trump was re-elected. I’ve cancelled my Free Press subscription.
60 Minutes and CBS News is unwatchable. There will be a lot of blood on the floor if the news division is to be relevant again. Look at CNN, new owners, very few changes…CNN continues to lose viewers.
As a former news executive, I would have pulled the segment Thursday, not hours before air. That Ms. Weiss doesn’t have television experience is not significant. Formats differ, journalism principals are the same. To call an illegal immigrant a “migrant” is misleading the viewer, which is a willful act.
The truth is, one can not change the culture of CBS News with the same people (like Leslie Stahl) and practices that led it to mediocrity. Good luck Ms. Weiss.
Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?
Population Division Department of Economic and Social Affairs
United Nations Secretariat
21 March 2000
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/unpd-egm_200010_un_2001_replacementmigration.pdf
Bryan, I’m going to assume your point is the U.S. needs immigration, specifically working age people, to sustain its economy and population. Point taken. But a country doesn’t need illegal immigrants to achieve that goal. My original point that legal (good) and illegal (bad) immigrants are two different things.
I don’t have much to add – The United Nations is proposing and likely practicing “replacement migration”.
This “migration” will be according to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
It is clear from their literature what that means in practice.
It is clear from their literature what that means esoterically.
Got it. Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully, this study will be updated.
A country doesn’t need to maintain its population. Why would it? A smaller population means cheaper housing, less traffic congestion, all sorts of good things.
As for the economy, large numbers of jobs will be automated in the next decade or two. Taxi driver and delivery driver are two that will shortly disappear, replaced with self-driving vehicles. Many jobs revolving around the generation of “paperwork” are being replaced by AI.
And then there are humanoid robots: AI intelligence tied to capable robotic arms that can do a vast range of tasks, such as cleaning and cooking to fruit picking. It’s unclear how far off they are (consider a robot that can be programmed to do all nursing tasks, more reliably than a human nurse), but I’ve not seen a properly constructed argument that we do need migrants to maintain the economy.
I am not sure what to think here.
True, the segment was ready to go out after having checked all the boxes, and it should have aired and Weiss should not have interfered with that practice. Let that one go out. Her role might be to try to steer the development of segments to exhibit dissenting points of view, but spiking a segment that is ready to go out is not good for morale.
But what is wrong with re-grouping, rolling up your sleeves, and seeing about adding a comment from the White House deputy chief of staff after Weiss seemed to promise that this person would comment? If they refused, then 60 minutes could say that four, rather than three contacts from the White House refused to explain their policies. If they did provide a comment, then see about putting it in for balance. 60 Minutes could (and should) then factually contextualize that comment as being either a pile of dog crap or a salient alternative point of view. If it is found to be dog crap (my expectation, tbh), then Weiss had goddamn better not interfere further.
I’m willing to give her more time. It’s possible that she is a micromanager, which will p*ss everyone off, particularly if the existing team is used to making its own editorial decisions. If so, she probably won’t last. But it’s also possible that the existing team, too, needs to adapt. Bringing an existing team under new leadership is fraught with peril. Time will test the mettle of all involved.
Regarding this particular case, the story was most likely in preparation for months before Weiss joined CBS News. She should have let it go out as planned. It was definitely bad for morale.
Watching from outside what’s happening in the Usa is really discomforting. It will take time but there will be a price to be paid, although I don’t think we will see Trump (without Melania) poisoning himself in a bunker.
Just because it was fact-checked and vetted, especially at CBS, doesn’t mean it was honest. From what I’ve heard of the segment, it was definitely of the “Maryland man” flavor. All the injustice of these men being deported to El Salvador, but nothing about the crimes they committed or why it was they couldn’t be sent back to Venezuela. You should give her the benefit of the doubt and remember that she has critics merely because of who she is, and that one of the issues she is trying to fix is the terrible bias in the MSM.
Sorry, but please don’t tell me what do do.
Yup
TPS, or Temporary Protected Status, was offered to Venezuelans on two occasions, in 2021 and 2023. It was ended earlier this year, reinstated by a court, and is still being litigated. I don’t know the legal disposition of the men deported to the Salvadoran prison, but some of them might have entered the US legally, making “migrant” an apt description.
Sorry but 60 minutes has a history of emotional manipulation and “facts” can be presented in different ways.. I will wait to see how this ends and how cbs news changes. You have a bone about religion which I understand but that shouldn’t get you on the preachie high horse
Reports with all the same details are appearing all over the place at the same time – this brazen abuse of power must go all the way to the top.
It is simply impossible that the agitation was planned and coordinated using the mythical Vertically Integrated Messaging Apparatus and Institutional Array that manipulates emotions along a dialectical trajectory — promoting objectives of Leftism, while identifying pockets of resistance among the enemies of the people with false consciousness and incorrect political opinions that refuse compliance with Mass Lines.
I haven’t watched television in 30 years, so I truly don’t know the answer to this. But is 60 Minutes still relevant in the way it was back when my grandmother would refuse to take my call if I mistakenly phoned during or shortly before it went on the air?
I don’t watch television either. But I think it is as good an excuse for not doing something that one does not like to do as it ever was 🙂
I had some respect for Bari after leaving the NYT and fighting wokeness on the left and the slanted coverage of Israel after they were attacked. But she was the wrong person for this job and her second call after a nauseating interview with Mrs. Kirk is to capitulate to Trump threats and completely denigrate one of the few remaining traditional news outlets with a storied history of independent news reporting? She just stabbed CBS in the back by discrediting it. For all that false bravado before, it looks like cowardice and appeasement now. Fire her!
Maybe traditional news truly is dead.