Bari Weiss Continues to Tank the Credibility of '60 Minutes'

The Bari Weiss takeover of CBS News is not going well. She is hemorrhaging talent. She cannot seem to attract credible new hires. The newsroom does not respect her and frequently leaks those sentiments to other outlets. Her new initiatives are flopping, and CBS News’s credibility is eroding at an alarming pace.

The situation took another turn for the worse when Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment that had already been vetted and promoted. The piece focused on an El Salvador detention center where the administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants last March. Weiss killed the story, citing the lack of on-the-record comments from anyone in the administration.

The correspondent who reported the segment, Sharyn Alfonsi, condemned the decision in an email that was subsequently leaked. “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

Weiss, who reportedly did not take Alfonsi’s call and is, somewhat ironically, the publisher of The Free Press, defended the decision while simultaneously lashing out at the correspondent, which is a great way to build goodwill with talent.

“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.”

The segment, which would have documented “the brutal and torturous conditions” at the El Salvador facility, was almost certainly spiked for political reasons. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is in the midst of a fraught takeover bid involving Warner Bros. Discovery that is not going smoothly. One perceived advantage over Netflix was a less complicated regulatory path, thanks to Paramount SkyDance’s relationship with the President. That relationship has reportedly soured in recent weeks, in part because of a 60 Minutes interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been openly critical of the President.

Despite Weiss’s claims, and despite the fact that she has seemingly never felt compelled to seek comment from Palestinians for the many pro-Israeli pieces published by The Free Press, this segment was pulled to placate an administration that is increasingly out of step with the American public. It is also yet another reason that Ellison and Weiss should be kept as far away from Warner Bros. Discovery and CNN as possible.