{"id":365012,"date":"2025-12-23T05:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T05:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365012\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T05:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T05:34:09","slug":"60-minutes-story-shelved-by-bari-weiss-streamed-in-canada-and-instantly-spread-across-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365012\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201860 Minutes\u2019 story shelved by Bari Weiss streamed in Canada \u2014 and instantly spread across the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss decided to shelve<\/a> a planned \u201c60 Minutes\u201d story titled \u201cInside CECOT,\u201d creating an uproar inside CBS<\/a>, but the report has reached a worldwide audience anyway.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Monday, some Canadian viewers noticed that the pre-planned \u201c60 Minutes\u201d episode was published on a streaming platform owned by Global TV, the network that has the rights to \u201c60 Minutes\u201d in Canada.\n <\/p>\n

\n The preplanned episode led with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi\u2019s story \u2014 the one that Weiss stopped from airing in the US because she said it was \u201cnot ready.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Several Canadian viewers shared clips and summaries of the story on social media, and within hours, the videos went viral on platforms like Reddit and Bluesky.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWatch fast,\u201d one of the Canadian viewers wrote on Bluesky, predicting that CBS would try to have the videos taken offline.\n <\/p>\n

\n Progressive Substack writers and commentators blasted out the clips and urged people to share them. \u201cThis could wind up being the most-watched newsmagazine segment in television history,\u201d the high-profile Trump antagonist George Conway commented on X.\n <\/p>\n

\n A CBS News spokesperson had no immediate comment on the astonishing turn of events.\n <\/p>\n

\n Alfonsi\u2019s report was weeks in the making. Weiss screened it for the first time last Thursday night. The story was finalized on Friday, according to CBS sources, and was announced in a press release that same day.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Saturday morning, Weiss began to change her mind about the story and raised concerns about its content, including the lack of responses from the relevant Trump administration officials.\n <\/p>\n

\n But networks like CBS sometimes deliver taped programming to affiliates like Global TV ahead of time. That appears to be what happened in this case: The Friday version of the \u201c60 Minutes\u201d episode is what streamed to Canadian viewers.\n <\/p>\n

\n The inadvertent Canadian stream is \u201cthe best thing that could have happened,\u201d a CBS source told CNN on Monday evening, arguing that the Alfonsi piece is \u201cexcellent\u201d and should have been televised as intended.\n <\/p>\n

\n People close to Weiss have argued that the piece was imbalanced, however, because it did not include interviews with Trump officials.\n <\/p>\n

\n Weiss told staffers on Monday, \u201cWe need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera.\u201d However, in an earlier memo to colleagues, Alfonsi asserted that her team tried, and their \u201crefusal to be interviewed\u201d was \u201ca tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n At the end of the segment that streamed on Global TV\u2019s platform, Alfonsi said Homeland Security \u201cdeclined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The segment included sound bites from President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. But it was clearly meant to be a story about Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador, not about the officials who implemented Trump\u2019s mass deportation policy.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cTonight, you\u2019ll hear from some of those men,\u201d Alfonsi said in her intro. \u201cThey describe torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador\u2019s harshest prisons, where they say they endured four months of hell.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe torture was never-ending. Interminable,\u201d said Luis Munoz Pinto, one of the former detainees interviewed by Alfonsi. \u201cThere was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn\u2019t take it and were urinating or vomiting on themselves.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Alfonsi also interviewed a representative of Human Rights Watch, which published an 81-page report in November about abuses at the prison.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a memo to colleagues on Sunday saying that Weiss had \u201cspiked\u201d the story, Alfonsi asserted that it was done for \u201cpolitical,\u201d not editorial reasons.\n <\/p>\n

\n Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN that Alfonsi\u2019s allegation was troubling, \u201cespecially in light of pressures on press freedom in the US.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe look forward to the segment airing,\u201d Bolopion said. \u201cThe evidence is clear regardless of what airs on 60 Minutes: the Trump administration disappeared these Venezuelan men to a mega prison in El Salvador where they were systematically tortured.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss decided to shelve a planned \u201c60 Minutes\u201d story titled \u201cInside CECOT,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-365012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}