{"id":418345,"date":"2026-01-19T00:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T00:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/418345\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T00:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T00:38:07","slug":"cbs-news-ready-to-unveil-delayed-60-minutes-report-inside-cecot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/418345\/","title":{"rendered":"CBS News Ready to Unveil Delayed ’60 Minutes’ Report ‘Inside CECOT’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCBS News<\/a> is getting ready to put a delayed and much-scrutinized \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment<\/a> out into public view, but it remains unclear that doing so will tamp down the controversy that has erupted around it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe previously-impeded segment is called \u201cInside CECOT\u201d and is a piece by \u201c60 Minutes<\/a>\u201d correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi<\/a> built around on-screen accounts of Venezuelan men deported by the U.S. to a harsh prison in El Salvador. It had been shelved even though CBS News had already promoted it as part of the lineup of the newsmagazine\u2019s December 21 telecast. As disclosed by an email sent to colleagues at the time by Alfonsi, the decision was made by\u00a0top CBS News executive Bari Weiss, who had at the time insisted that Trump officials appear in the report to comment on camera<\/a>, even though Alfonsi\u2019s team had made good-faith efforts to secure response ahead of filing the report for legal review. \u201cThe public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship,\u201d Alfonsi said in her memo.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCBS News leadership has always been committed to airing the \u201960 Minutes\u2019 CECOT piece as soon as it was ready,\u201d the news division said in a statement Sunday. \u201cTonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News\u2019 independence\u00a0and the power of our storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the report airs, it will not contain any direct interviews or exchanges on screen with Trump officials, according to three people familiar with the matter. Alfonsi had been dispatched to Washington, D.C. last week to try and secure an on-screen interview, two of these people said, but an interview that Weiss had hoped for did not take place. The story will, however, contain statements from several different parts of the U.S. government, something Weiss felt was lacking in the original piece and an element she wants in much of CBS\u2019 political reportage, according to an executive familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the piece will have three minutes of new reporting, this executive said, as well some minor changes from what had been expected to run in December. A statistic about the number of people who are deported from the U.S. because they are criminal has been added, and the story will note that one of the interviewees has two tattoos that are known marks of gangs or Nazis \u2014 elements the administration uses to identify migrants for potential deportation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlfonsi is not expected to address any of the controversies around the piece in her introduction to the segment Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\n\tCareful viewers will be able to compare the new version with the original that was ready to air in December. After Weiss ordered the story held, a copy of it that had already been distributed to a Canadian media partner leaked and were made available via YouTube and other social outlets.<\/p>\n

\n\tAiring of the segment may not mend any frayed relationships between management and staff. Alfonsi\u2019s current contract with CBS News is slated to lapse sometime this summer, according to a person familiar with the matter. If her deal is not renewed, some journalists could interpret it as the result of retaliation for her willingness to speak up. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlfonsi, who worked at ABC News before joining \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d has earned a reputation as a dependable reporter who typically avoids the controversies that can engulf TV-news personnel. At \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d Alfonsi told Variety in 2020<\/a>, \u201cyou are dropped by a helicopter on top of a mountain and you have to kind of find your way down. There are some paths and moguls and jumps. You are sort of kicking your way out. I\u2019ve been pushed out of the helicopter. I\u2019m on the mountain. I feel like I\u2019m just taking speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWeiss has defended her decision to hold the piece. But she acknowledges her timing was inopportune, according to a person familiar with her thinking, and she recognizes that she inserted herself into \u201c60 Minutes’\u201d editing and vetting process at a late stage. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRight now, the majority of Americans say they do not trust the press. It isn\u2019t because they\u2019re crazy,\u201d Weiss said in a memo issued around Christmas. \u201cTo win back their\u00a0trust,\u00a0we have to work hard. Sometimes that means doing more legwork. Sometimes it means telling unexpected stories. Sometimes it means training our attention on topics that have been overlooked or misconstrued. And sometimes it means holding a piece about an important subject to make sure it is comprehensive and fair.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWeiss has attracted more attention to CBS News since her arrival last year than perhaps any other personality except Katie Couric, who jumped from NBC to anchor of \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d in 2006. Weiss, a conservative opinion provocateur who founded the right-leaning site The Free Press, joined Paramount Skydance last year after<\/a> the company purchased her outlet for $150 million. Since that time, she has overhauled \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d and sought to launch a new series of town halls and debates. But her lack of experience with managing a large TV asset<\/a> has been on regular display, giving staffers and critics plenty of reason for skepticism.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c60 Minutes,\u201d which features profiles and features along with investigative pieces, has seen its credibility undermined over the past two years as corporate managers failed to defend it from what was largely considered to be a nuisance suit from President Trump over the editing of a 2024 interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Paramount, eager to clear a path to a sale of the company from the Redstone family, former controlling shareholders, to the Ellisons, who now operate Paramount Skydance, agreed to pay a $16 million settlement to Trump.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a result, two senior CBS News executives \u2014 Bill Owens, the executive producer of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d<\/a> and Wendy McMahon, the former CEO of CBS News, local stations and syndication \u2014 suggested in remarks that they could no longer push back against corporate mandates they felt would weaken the newsroom. Three people familiar with the show say there have been calls for \u201c60 Minutes\u201d to cut back on the number of hard-news or investigative segments it runs, and pay more attention to features and celebrity profiles, which corporate managers believe will generate more attention online. On Sunday, however, the telecast will contain two segments tied to politics: one is the CECOT report, and the other is a look at what has happened in Minneapolis as ICE authorities crack down on the populace.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe newsmagazine has long worked apart from the rest of CBS News, and in recent years there have been some efforts to bring the show to heel. Whether the correspondents who work there will continue to bristle at similar maneuvers remains to be seen, but there is a hope internally that the show can get back to producing its journalism instead of being forced to defend it under circumstances Mike Wallace and Morley Safer might have considered surreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CBS News is getting ready to put a delayed and much-scrutinized \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment out into public view,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[18026,135126,49,48,30878,75,155953,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-418345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-60-minutes","9":"tag-bari-weiss","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-cbs-news","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-sharyn-alfonsi","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}