CBS News cancelled a “60 Minutes” report on the CECOT prison in El Salvador several hours before it was due to air on Sunday and stated that it would re-air later.
The program X (formerly known as Twitter) and other social media platforms three hours before it was slated to air that “The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.”
A spokesperson of CBS News said in an email that the segment “needed additional reporting.” The New York Times reported that a copy of a note written by Sharyn Alfonsi, a reporter who covered the part, had claimed that the part was pulled by CBS due to “political” reasons.
Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by the Times, that “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices.”
She further reported that “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.” She added, “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss.”
Therefore, CBS News failed to provide an immediate response to a request to comment on the report during non-business hours.
CECOT is a mega-prison in El Salvador where the U.S. has deposited hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants without trial. Human rights groups have condemned it because of its inhumane conditions.
However, CBS erased a link to the “Inside CECOT” segment page on Sunday. The page, which previously featured a trailer, now displays the “The page cannot be found” message.
But in a description posted on its Paramount Plus site earlier, the segment was set to run at 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing recently deported individuals about the “brutal and torturous” conditions they had endured in the prison.
The move follows the network experiencing a transition under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who was hired to run CBS News in October following the acquisition of the online publication she co-founded, The Free Press, by the CBS parent company Paramount Skydance.
Weiss, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal opinion writer, was accepted by some analysts as a controversial choice, as she had never managed a television newsroom or produced broadcast news content before.
She appointed Tony Dokoupil as the new anchor of its flagship on December 10, “CBS Evening News” segment, replacing the dual anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.
