Bari Weiss just put the hammer down on 60 Minutes. Great work!

For years CBS and the networks put out skewed, pardon my language "bullsheet" hit pieces. Weiss is no longer going to stand for that. Stuff that leans either right or left gets either edited to portray both sides or gets axed.

Walter Cronkite would be proud.

Anyone at CBS who's not ok with that should get the f-ck out and find a job somewhere else. BAM!

Read the memo Bari Weiss sent to CBS staffers after yanking ‘60 Minutes’ spot on notorious El Salvador prison

By Ariel Zilber

Published Dec. 22, 2025, 3:54 p.m. ET

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss laid out an aggressive internal critique of a pulled “60 Minutes” segment on deportees sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, telling staff the piece failed to present the Trump administration’s legal and factual case and would have “done our viewers a disservice” if it aired as is.

In a detailed memo obtained by Axios, Weiss said the segment — which focused on Venezuelan migrants deported to the maximum-security prison — lacked critical context, insufficiently pressed senior administration officials for comment and glossed over disputed legal questions surrounding the deportations.

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss said in an internal memo obtained by Axios that a pulled “60 Minutes” segment on deportees sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison lacked sufficient context and administration response.

Weiss wrote that the segment did not adequately present the Trump administration’s legal rationale for the deportations or its argument that detainees were entitled to judicial review.

Bari Weiss defends yanking ‘60 Minutes’ segment on controversial El Salvador prison: ‘It wasn’t ready’

Here’s the full text of the memo:

Hi all,

I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.

Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.

At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.

The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.

Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?

We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.

My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.

I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.

Yours,

Bari

CBS News Editor Bari Weiss Defends Decision to Pull ‘60 Minutes’ Segment

Weiss tells staff that story wasn’t ready for publication, saying ‘we simply need to do more’

By Isabella Simonetti and Joe Flint, WSJ

Updated Dec. 22, 2025

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss said on an editorial call Monday that she pulled a “60 Minutes” segment because it “wasn’t ready” and needed more reporting.

View more

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss addressed her controversial decision to pull a “60 Minutes” segment over the weekend, saying Monday that the story wasn’t ready for publication and “we simply need to do more.”

“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,” Weiss said on the network’s morning editorial call Monday, according to a recording viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“And anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you,” she said.

Weiss took over as editor of CBS News this fall after Paramount bought her news and opinion site the Free Press for $150 million. At the time of her appointment, Weiss said she and Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison were aligned on their desire for “news that reflects reality” and journalism that “doesn’t seek to demonize, but seeks to understand.”

Weiss has set out to overhaul the storied news network, elevating a new “CBS Evening News” anchor and taking an active role in booking guests. She hosted a town hall with Erika Kirk, the widow of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and recently announced a slate of other debate and townhall-style programming.

The decision to pull the “60 Minutes” segment on an El Salvador maximum-security prison where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants drew sharp criticism from one of the network’s most high-profile correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi. The segment was promoted last week and slated to run Sunday.

Alfonsi said in a Sunday email to fellow correspondents including Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper that she learned Saturday that Weiss “spiked our story.” Alfonsi said the last-minute change was, in her view, a political decision, rather than an editorial call, according to the email, which was viewed by the Journal.

CBS has said it would air the segment in a future broadcast.

“I held that story because it wasn’t ready,” Weiss said Monday. She said the story “has already been reported on by places like the Times, the public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more.”

Weiss said it was important to make “every effort” to get “the principals” on the record and on camera.

“To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else,” Weiss said. “That is my North Star and I hope it’s the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”

“60 Minutes” has been a particular lightning rod for CBS News, as a frequent target of President Trump. Over the summer—before federal regulators approved the merger between Paramount Global and Ellison’s Skydance Media—Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit in which Trump accused the network of deceitfully editing then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview. The settlement comprises payments made to the president’s future presidential library and legal fees.

Trump again criticized “60 Minutes” in a Truth Social post earlier this month, after the show aired an interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.). “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP,” he wrote of Paramount. “Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”

Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com and Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com