The 60 Minutes report on CECOT censored by Bari Weiss is now contraband on the Internet
Yesterday, Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, censored part of his news magazine. 60 minutes on men who had been deported to a prison in El Salvador. Today it appears online.
60 minutes had already started promoting the now-censored segment online. Because it was pulled so late, it appears CBS missed out on at least one distribution platform: Canadian channel Global TV. Some people used a VPN to watch it; at least one person recorded it and distributed it via an iCloud account.
The segment, which was reviewed by The edgelasts just under 14 minutes. It features a video of men, chained and doubled, “paraded in front of cameras, pushed onto buses and delivered to CECOT,” according to the segment’s narrative. A former detainee, interviewed by CBS in Colombia, said he was told he was “the living dead” at CECOT. After trying to seek asylum in the United States, he claims he was stopped by customs and detained for 6 months before being deported. He described horrific conditions in the prison, saying he was beaten until he bled and was thrown against a wall so violently that he broke a tooth. He also described sexual assaults perpetrated by guards. Another former detainee interviewed described what can only be called torture: being forced to kneel for 24 hours and placed in a dark room, where he was beaten if he left the stress position.
“In my opinion, removing it now, after all rigorous internal checks have been carried out, is not an editorial decision, it is a political decision.”
These men were among those deported to El Salvador, a country they are not from. The Trump administration sent at least 288 people, mostly Venezuelans and Salvadorans, to CECOT after El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele offered to house prisoners for a fee. Many of those deported were awaiting asylum applications, according to The New York Times. This is perhaps the most horrific and breathtaking human rights abuse perpetrated by the Trump administration, and a critical area where continued reporting is needed.
The Trump administration has other deals in the works, such as the one with CECOT, worth “millions of dollars,” according to the segment. The United States could begin deporting people to countries it has no ties to, such as South Sudan and Uganda, which also have “well-documented histories of torturing prisoners.”
The story, in addition to the latest news on agreements with other countries, appears to have been widely reported, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and El Salvador have had the opportunity to comment.
“Our story has been reviewed five times and approved by both CBS lawyers and Standards and Practices,” Sharyn Alfonsi, the reporter whose segment this was about, wrote in an email to colleagues yesterday, according to The New York Times. “This is factually correct. In my opinion, removing it now, after all rigorous internal checks have been carried out, is not an editorial decision, it is a political decision.”
Because the order to kill the story came so late, CBS failed to replace the original program wherever it was planned to air.
The story had all the usual approvals, including Weiss, who suddenly changed her mind. She demanded additional reporting, “including an on-camera interview with a member of the Trump administration,” according to The Washington Post. The story was killed Saturday night and the promotional material was removed Sunday. Weiss sent an editor’s note saying, among other things, that the segment did not adequately explain the administration’s reasons for sending people to El Salvador.
The notes don’t seem unreasonable – except in their timing, which is late and bizarre, practically calculated to cause an uproar. And it seems that because the order to kill the story came very late, not all distributors replaced the program.
Weiss was named head of CBS News by David Ellison in a fairly obvious attempt to appease the Trump administration and allow his company, Skydance, to acquire CBS parent company Paramount. President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about CBS – and 60 minutes’ work in particular. Just before the Skydance takeover, Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over editing of a Kamala Harris interview.
Ellison’s Skydance is now trying to buy Warner Bros. as part of a hostile bid.
Weiss said Monday during a conference call that she “held back on this story because she wasn’t ready,” according to The Washington Post. The team had given the White House an opportunity to comment, but the Trump administration declined, according to the Job. “If the standard for broadcasting a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively takes control of 60 Minutes. We are moving from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote in his email.
Anyway, good luck to Weiss playing DMCA whack-a-mole with the story video. The segment now lives as an online samizdat. Thanks to Weiss’ censorship, this may well be the most talked about CBS News story this year.
