Hours before broadcast Dec. 21, a group of campus students and staff from the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center\u2019s Investigations Lab were informed that CBS News was pulling a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment they were interviewed in that was slated to air that evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The nearly 14-minute segment detailed the group\u2019s research as part of its investigation into the detention conditions and treatment of U.S. migrants sent to CECOT, or the Center for Terorrism Confinement. CECOT is the largest prison in the Americas and based in Tecoluca, El Salvador.<\/p>\n
While the group was not given a reason for the decision by CBS News,it found out through news reports that the pulling of the segment stemmed from CBS News\u2019 new editor in chief, Bari Weiss and her feeling that the segment \u201cneeded additional reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiss sent out a since-publicized internal memo to CBS News staff stating that the segment would air at a later date and requesting various changes, such as including more voices from President Donald Trump\u2019s administration. A since-posted email sent from Sharyn Alfonsi, the \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent who reported the segment, to her colleagues, said her team did reach out to the Trump administration and did not receive a response.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to campus junior Talia Harter, a co-team lead of the HRC\u2019s CECOT research project, the group was very \u201csurprised\u201d and \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the decision to pull the segment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I heard from the CBS team that we were working with \u2026 it was ready,\u201d said Harter. \u201cThe reporting has been that it was reviewed quite a few times, and the argument that it wasn\u2019t ready doesn\u2019t seem like that should have occurred two days before it was released.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harter said the group spent a couple hours talking to CBS News reporters, producers and crew members as they filmed the interview in early December. She detailed that they seemed \u201creally engaged in this investigation\u201d and had \u201cdone a lot of background research.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Harter, the students discussed their research, which was conducted in order to help corroborate the findings of a Human Rights Watch, or HRW, report released Nov. 12 that found CECOT\u2019s conditions and treatment of detainees as a violation of international human rights laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The students used satellite imagery, geolocation, YouTube videos of influencer-commissioned tours of CECOT and other forms of open-source research to identify facility locations, weaponry usage, torture tactics and prison conditions, such as the 24\/7 lighting used to prevent detainees from sleeping and lack of privacy in using the bathroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, Weiss questioned the students\u2019 analysis in her memo, asking, \u201cThe analysis from the Berkeley students is strange \u2026 what does the analysis add?\u201d<\/p>\n
According to campus senior and co-team lead Maneh Davityan, the group was \u201creally shocked\u201d by that comment, noting that they spent \u201ca lot of time\u201d researching and verifying their findings while maintaining objectivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur research adds to a lot of what the HRW piece was talking about,\u201d Davityan said. \u201cIt also verifies a lot of their information and adds to the story in a lot of different ways. It\u2019s unfortunate that (Weiss) didn\u2019t really see the value in that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Davityan also said the move signals a shrinking of press freedom \u2014 a concern that aligns with a broader public sentiment that Weiss is attempting to cater to the Trump administration in order to help its parent company, Paramount Skydance, with acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CBS News and \u201c60 Minutes\u201d did not respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the segment has since been temporarily posted by a Canadian network and subsequently spread on social media platforms, the students still hope for it to be officially aired through CBS News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alexa Koenig, the director of the Human Rights Center\u2019s Investigations Lab, noted that there is a \u201ctension\u201d between the Trump administration\u2019s claims about CECOT\u2019s detainees and the HRW\u2019s findings, which the group\u2019s research corroborated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really important moment in American democracy, and I think that we need more access to information about what\u2019s actually happening, as opposed to less,\u201d Koenig said. \u201cI\u2019m really proud of the work that the Berkeley students did \u2026 it really brings together such a diversity of perspectives across (UC Berkeley). I really hope they have a chance to have their work seen by a larger audience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hours before broadcast Dec. 21, a group of campus students and staff from the UC Berkeley Human Rights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[61128,61136,27463,51320,5296,4596,61129,61130,24105,61137,61132,61127,61125,61126,61134,143,145,144,61135,56748,61133,61131,1519,149,26368,2278],"class_list":["post-114148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-60-minutes","tag-alexa-koenig","tag-american","tag-bari-weiss","tag-canadian","tag-cbs-news","tag-cecot","tag-centro-de-confinamiento-del-terrorismo","tag-december","tag-director-of-hrcs-investigations-lab","tag-el-salvador","tag-hrw","tag-human-rights-center","tag-human-rights-watch","tag-maneh-davityan","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-paramount-skydance","tag-sharyn-alfonsi","tag-talia-harter","tag-tecoluca","tag-trump","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-warner-bros-discovery","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}