60 Minutes report on leaks online, Bari Weiss suspended migrant prison segment
A Bari Weiss-sourced ’60 Minutes’ report on the “horrific treatment” of detainees deported from the US to a prison in El Salvador has been leaked online after appearing on a Canadian TV app. Canada’s Global News aired the “60 Minutes” episode without the segment on television, as did CBS, but the network’s Global TV app accidentally uploaded the wrong episode to its streaming app.
Footage of the nearly 14-minute segment circulated on social media, despite being pulled from the CBS News program about three hours before airtime on Sunday. In the segmentrated by VarietyCorrespondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed a man who was forcibly removed from the US by the Trump administration and sent to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison, despite having no criminal record.
“There was blood everywhere, screaming, people crying, people who couldn’t handle it and were urinating on themselves and vomiting,” said Luis Munoz Pinto, a student from Venezuela who sought asylum in the US. He said he was held by customs for six months waiting for a decision on his asylum case before being deported.
“Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled, to the point of pain. They smashed our faces against the wall. Then they broke one of my teeth,” Pinto added.
CBS News has not yet commented on the leak.
On Monday morning, the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, told staff that she had scrapped the report on Saturday “because it wasn’t ready yet,” although “60 Minutes” correspondents felt it was “not an editorial decision” but “a political decision.” According to The New York Times, Weiss proposed “numerous changes to the segment” and wanted it to include an interview with Stephen Miller or another senior Trump administration official. She said the piece focused on information already reported by the Times, and “we just need to do more.”
Alfonsi said she had already sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and the State Department. In a leaked email to her CBS colleagues on Sunday, Alfonsi wrote: “Our story was vetted and approved five times by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my opinion, pulling it now, after all strict internal controls have been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political decision.”
The last-minute decision to withdraw a “60 Minutes” segment critical of the Trump administration comes after repeated complaints from the president about “unfair treatment” by David Ellison’s network. On December 16, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “For those people who think I am close to the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I would hate to see my enemies!” A week earlier, Trump blasted “60 Minutes” for its interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom he called a “very ill-prepared traitor,” and said of parent company Paramount, “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD PROPERTY.”
Ellison’s Paramount Skydance has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, in an effort to convince shareholders to cancel WBD’s agreed deal with Netflix, that the Warner Bros. studios and HBO Max. Trump previously claimed he would be “involved” in approving the merger and acquisition deal, which would require signature by regulators including the US Department of Justice and the FTC.
Earlier this year, Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global in an $8 billion deal. A few months later, Ellison announced a deal reportedly worth $150 million to acquire Weiss’ independent media outlet The Free Press, appointing Weiss as chief of editorial staff for CBS News. These moves were seen as an attempt to improve CBS News’ standing with Trump and the MAGA movement. Since then, Weiss has co-moderated a town hall with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the right-wing advocacy group Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, and promised future events with guests like JD Vance and Sam Altman.
