Bari Weiss spiked a major migrant story — and told on herself

In a single weekend, CBS News’ new editorial director Bari Weiss has managed to damage the most successful and profitable news broadcast in American history. Hours before it was scheduled to air, CBS News abruptly pulled a “60 Minutes” segment on the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison, where hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration have been held. The decision was announced in a terse statement, with no substantive explanation to viewers. But what is now clear is that the last-minute act of censorship carried out in the name of so-called context suggests Weiss is CBS’s answer to former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, practicing a “catch and kill” philosophy to protect a petulant tyrant.

Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who reported the segment, told colleagues in an email that Weiss had “spiked our story.” She explained that the report was screened five times, cleared by CBS attorneys and vetted by the network’s Standards and Practices department. Weiss reportedly spiked the rigorous investigation into the Trump administration’s human rights abuses in the name of “balance” — even though it had already been promoted for days on social media. 

The report detailed the harrowing reality faced by dozens of Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to a “megaprison” in El Salvador where, according to Human Rights Watch and the University of California, Berkeley’s Investigations Lab, they endured systematic torture and sexual assault. Interviews had been conducted with migrants who have since been released and described brutal conditions. (A federal judge ruled that migrants sent there must be given an opportunity to challenge their removal.)

In a statement issued after the news broke, Weiss suggested the story was “missing critical voices,” insisting on an interview with a White House official, even though the administration already declined. Weiss reportedly gave “60 Minutes” producers White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s phone number. According to a recording obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Weiss, in a Monday morning editorial call, told CBS News staffers that the story wasn’t ready for airing and appeared to address the swirling controversy.

“The only newsroom that I’m interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect and crucially where we assume the best intent of our colleagues, she said. “And anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you.”

If the new standard for airing investigative journalism is that the government under scrutiny must agree to be interviewed, Alfonsi warned, then that amounts to CBS surrendering editorial control and, in her words, “[going] from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.” 

Miller’s wife Katie, a podcaster, sneered on social media that journalists like Alfonsi, who “want to become the story,” lose their integrity when they push back. This lack of self-awareness is astonishing because Katie Miller’s description perfectly fits Weiss, who has launched a new CBS town hall series and stepped into the role of on-air talent.

In killing the segment, the new editorial director also reportedly — and revealingly — took issue with the term “migrants” to describe the imprisoned men. Weiss’ brand of enlightened centrism has always been a thin veneer for right-wing reactionary politics. Her objection, it appears, isn’t to the torture, but to the accurate, neutral language that international human rights organizations and U.S. courts routinely use to describe the victims of the Trump administration, which prefers dehumanizing pejoratives like “illegal alien.” This type of anticipatory obedience to the state by media executives is an important marker in the nation’s continuing slide into fascism. And it’s happening at dizzying speed. 

A week before Weiss’ interference, while accepting University of Southern California Annenberg’s Walter Cronkite Award at the National Press Club, longtime “60 Minutes” anchor Scott Pelley reassured the audience that despite the sale of CBS’s parent company Paramount and the arrival of new ownership, the program had experienced “no corporate interference of any kind.” Barely ten days later, Pelley’s words now ring with a tragic, hollow naivety.

None of this should come as a surprise: it’s who Bari Weiss is and has always been. Despite her reputation in some quarters  as a free-speech absolutist — a stroke of branding genius on her part — she is in fact an anti-speech activist. From the days of her early career, when she attempted to get professors disciplined or fired for criticizing Israel, to her more recent work running interference for Elon Musk and her stewardship of The Free Press — a publication that wraps right-wing ideology in the language of heterodoxy — Weiss consistently attacks speech that threatens entrenched power.  The Free Press caters to a conservative audience while pretending otherwise with a “fair-minded” schtick to trick gullible centrists into ignoring the fact that it is carrying water for authoritarianism. When Paramount Skydance paid $150 million to acquire Weiss’ operation, CEO David Ellison said he wanted journalism that “reflects reality” and “doesn’t seek to demonize, but seeks to understand.”

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Weiss’ decision at “60 Minutes” comes as Ellison pursues a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery — the parent of CNN. In demanding “new owners” for CNN, President Donald Trump has already signaled that he intends to meddle in the government approval process of this merger. Paramount is scared. The corporation is trying to please Trump to ensure its corporate survival after Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner suddenly pulled out of financing the deal. 

We saw this interference play out months ago when CBS’s previous leadership agreed to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit over former Vice President Kamala Harris’ October 2024 interview just before the Skydance acquisition was finalized. It was a $16 million bribe paid to a bully. But as the recent week has shown, kowtowing to Trump gets you nothing. He is still on Truth Social attacking CBS and Ellison, calling them “no better than the old ownership” because they dared to air a profile of outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

The lesson is clear, yet Weiss and Ellison refuse to learn it: Bending the knee does not buy protection; it only invites more demands and serves to undercut conservatives’ outrage about crony capitalism and government overreach.

When Weiss isn’t suppressing reporting on torture, she is busy transforming CBS into a platform for the fringes of the right. Along with hosting a town hall featuring Erika Kirk, Weiss has tapped noted associates of the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including the attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz and psychologist Steven Pinker, for collaborations. This also comes as Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, was spotted this weekend dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after refusing to defend his agency’s independence in congressional testimony. 

These are the moves of a propaganda regime — not because every media outlet is state-run, but because the largest platforms internalize the preferences of those in power and act accordingly. The president does not need a formal kill switch for the press if executives install one themselves.

The irony is that Weiss’ attempt to bury the story has triggered a massive Streisand Effect. By trying to hide the horrors of CECOT to stay in Trump’s good graces, the editorial director has ensured that her incompetence and complicity is now out in the open for all who are willing to take an objective look to see. Internal dissent spilled into public view. Lawmakers have demanded explanations. The conservative fantasy that they will sweep into liberal institutions and run them smoothly has been exposed as just that.

Still, if CBS News is going to operate as an arm of the Trump administration, it should be treated as such. Starve the beast until it remembers why independence matters. Democratic lawmakers should refuse interviews with the network. There should be a total boycott of what is now Bari Weiss’ network. 

The post Bari Weiss spiked a major migrant story — and told on herself appeared first on Salon.com.