‘60 Minutes’ Reporter’s Email Denouncing Pro-Trump Censorship Leaks
https://www.thedailybeast.com/60-minutes-reporter-sharyn-alfonsi-denounces-cbs-boss-for-pro-trump-censorship/?via=mobile&source=Reddit
‘60 Minutes’ Reporter’s Email Denouncing Pro-Trump Censorship Leaks
https://www.thedailybeast.com/60-minutes-reporter-sharyn-alfonsi-denounces-cbs-boss-for-pro-trump-censorship/?via=mobile&source=Reddit
35 comments
Edward R. Morrow is turning over in his grave.
It makes sense Bari Weiss went to Columbia University, probably where she learned to cave to autocrats. She is also bi but hates trans people, so she is an idiot who doesnt realize she is up against the wall right after them.
>However, reports on Sunday night suggest Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief at CBS, flexed her muscle to yank the segment off the air.
60 Minutes journalist Sharyn Alfonsi sent an email on Sunday stating that Weiss “spiked our story” and that the motivation was a political decision, not an editorial call, according to the Wall Street Journal.
>Right-leaning pundit Bari Weiss was appointed to lead CBS News after the network came under the control of David Ellison, the son of Trump-friendly billionaire Larry Ellison.
I hope the reporter is able to land a job somewhere that let’s her speak truth to power. Because she is definitely getting fired / blacklisted by fox news lite.
From the article:
” A politically influenced call by the MAGA-curious head of CBS News may have been behind the abrupt axing of an anti-Trump 60 Minutes segment on Sunday, according to an email sent by one of its correspondents.
CBS had promoted a report on 60 Minutes that covered the infamous El Salvador megaprison CECOT, which houses immigrants booted out of the U.S. by Donald Trump.
The network said the segment on the Terrorism Confinement Center—dubbed CECOT or Terrorism Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in Spanish—will now be aired at a later date instead, claiming it needed additional reporting.
However, reports on Sunday night suggest Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief at CBS, flexed her muscle to yank the segment off the air with just three hours notice.
60 Minutes journalist Sharyn Alfonsi sent an email on Sunday stating that Weiss “spiked our story” and that the motivation was a political decision, not an editorial call, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The email was posted in full on X by CNN Media Analyst Brian Stelter, With Alfonsi stating the team had asked Weiss to discuss her 11th-hour call to pull the segment but “She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.”
Alfonsi reportedly sent the email to fellow correspondents Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, and Anderson Cooper.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct,” she wrote, noting that if the standard for airing a story became the government agreeing to be interviewed, the network would lose its editorial control. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote.
Puck journalist Dylan Byers suggested the CECOT segment reflected “very negatively” on the Trump administration.
“The admin had declined to comment,” Byers posted on X. “Bari Weiss saw segment on Friday and, I’m told, decided to hold it.”
Byers also disputed the official CBS statement that the piece needed additional reporting, quoting a well-placed source who said, “It did not need additional reporting. It went through every layer of fact-checking and was reviewed by all the lawyers.”
Semaphor’s Max Tani also posted that Weiss “had concerns” about the CECOT piece airing on 60 Minutes.
“The network decided to hold the segment pending, among other things, comment or an interview with White House officials next year,” he wrote on X on Sunday.
The New York Times’ Michael Grynbaum claimed that Weiss suggested the CECOT piece needed an interview with Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy.
Miller has been outspoken about increasing ICE raids and deportations.
Grynbaum posted on X on Sunday that Weiss gave Miller’s contact details to 60 Minutes staff.
Alfonsi’s memo stated that 60 Minutes had indeed approached the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment to include in their story.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” she wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. 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.”
Her memo stated that the 60 Minutes team “have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”
She signed off, “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.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, Alfonsi, Paramount and CBS for comment. “
Nothing can change until “Mario’s brother” continues to do what they do when confronted w oligarchs
Weiss won’t have a job very long when CBS ratings continue to sink
Bummer. I’m going to miss 60 Minutes.
But I’ll get over it. Haven’t tuned in to anything on Fox in 8 or 9 years and I don’t miss that.
The C in CBS, now stands for Capitulation.
Release the files and the now the documentary!
I swear all the many times the U.S. has talked so much crap about North Korea and China and their state control of media, and yet here we are.
Land of the free everyone.
Time to ditch all state media and social media. Unplugged will be the new woke.
lol if they think MAGA is ever gonna watch 60 minutes, it’d always been a thinking show, not their usual endorphin rush from Fox News. 60 minutes is absolutely dead now, might as well close it up.
MAGA tool and propagandist Bari Weiss. It’s amazing how she’s consistantly failed upward.
Well, at least the actual reporters aren’t corrupted and know they’re being silenced. It’s no surprise that the CEOs and rich assholes are the ones doing Trump’s bidding. At least real journalists still exist, they just need to find an outlet.
We all knew once 60min paid the political ransom.. the freedom of the press was taking its last breath. Now it is dead. We can trust nothing any more. The guardian may be all thats left.
Wonder how Bari Weiss is going to bury the Epstein story?
Republicans are destroying everything in America.
He is going to make Ms. Weiss pay for her favor. Because that’s what he does. She’ll be the idiot this time.
We need to absolutely wreck all of these propagandist pieces of shit once Trump is out. We need to reel in Billionaires, tax and litigate them all into the poor house.
>“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,”… “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. 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.”
Not a journo/reporter, but if you offer the opportunity to comment for an opposing view and it’s not taken up, and in the absence of any serious deficiency with the reporting, shouldn’t the Editor give the green light to run the story?
Ah yes, the founder of *The Free Press* buries a story about the currents administration of illegal deportations to a concentration camp. I love it here.
She’s right. This will be the end of the show’s reputation.
Good for her for making the reasoning behind it public, but I imagine she will now be blacklisted at CBS.
RIP CBS. You were once iconic.
This is what fascism looks like.
Your democracy is slipping away.
Any journalist with a shred of integrity should leave the network immediately
So we are Nazi Germany with modern technology.
Leak this one. We all know a little about cecot but not in depth.
Anyone have any good tips on supporting news outlets that take journalism seriously? As in, have high standards of evidence and journalistic practice, but aren’t being shackled by corporate oligarchs. And where can I put my media dollars to help promote it?
Manufactured Consent manifesting in plain view.
I’m glad this is getting broadly recognized.
The second that a Democratic candidate runs on the platform of reforming the free market and reining in the billionaire class and who actually utters words akin to, “and we will put these men of disgusting, vast, wealth beyond reason back into their proper place; a place where making society better than they found it is their only ambition. Or they will have their capital taken from them and given to someone better equipped to help us build the future our children *deseve*.”
… is the second they will win the next election.
Look, nobody’s suggesting 60 minutes is some perfect bastion of truth, but the optics of this are bananas, a segment critical of Trump administration deportation policy and migrant prison conditions was promoted and then yanked hours before airtime, with CBS saying ‘need more reporting.’ The correspondent says it had already cleared all reviews and that the new boss pulled it for political reasons.
Whether you think Trump is the devil or the next Messiah, the real story folks on the left and right are flipping out about is corporate media potentially letting politics dictate what does or doesn’t get reported. That’s a much bigger deal than any one clip.
Weiss did exactly what she was installed to do. I feel bad for the journalists who work at CBS News but the writing was on the wall when Trump got her the job.
Any respectable journalist still at CBS News should go to another outlet. It will only get much worse from here.
Bari Weiss is the end of objective reporting for CBS. Weiss is described as a “right-leaning pundit,” but it’s worse than that. She has her right-wing thumb on the scale.
Can you imagine someone from Obama administration calling Fox news to cancel a critical news segment?
Since we can’t rely on the Democrats to address this, why is anyone still watching and consuming CBS content? We know that boycotts are effective (see the Jimmy Kimmel situation). Has anyone called for a boycott of CBS until Bari Weiss is gone?
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