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60 Minutes on Sunday aired a story about Trump administration deportations that was abruptly pulled from the news magazine’s lineup a month ago, a move that triggered an internal battle about political pressure that spilled out into the open.
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi made no reference to her dispute with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in the story about deportees who had been sent to El Salvador’s notoriously harsh CECOT prison.
When the segment was struck from the Dec. 21 episode on Weiss’s orders, Alfonsi told her 60 Minutes colleagues it “was not an editorial decision, it was a political one.”
Weiss had argued the story did not sufficiently reflect the administration’s viewpoint or advance reporting that had been done by other news organizations earlier.
The story shown Sunday included no on-camera interviews with Trump administration officials. But it did include statements from the White House and Department of Homeland Security that were not part of what Alfonsi had used before her story was pulled.
Some of the statements, which were carried in full on the 60 Minutes website, were dated prior to Dec. 21.
“Since November, 60 Minutes has made several attempts to interview key Trump administration officials on camera about our story,” Alfonsi said. “They declined our requests.”
Alfonsi did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press on Sunday. She said in her email that the administration’s refusal to consent to on-camera interviews was a tactical manoeuvre designed to kill the story.
CBS says it was always going to air piece
In a statement, CBS News said its “leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 Minutes CECOT piece as soon as it was ready. Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling.”
Alfonsi’s report was the second of three on Sunday’s show, with the lead story being Cecilia Vega’s report from Minneapolis about ICE enforcement efforts and the protests to its tactics.
The initial decision to sideline Alfonsi’s CECOT story became a flashpoint for critics who said the appointment of Weiss, founder of the Free Press website who had no previous experience in television news, represented an attempt by the network’s new corporate leadership to curry favour with Trump.
While pulled from the broadcast in December, Alfonsi’s original story mistakenly became available online. CBS News had fed a version of the newsmagazine to Global Television, a network that airs 60 Minutes in Canada, which posted it on its website before the last-minute switch removing the piece.
That enabled sharp-eyed viewers to see what Weiss had rejected, offering the opportunity to compare it to what 60 Minutes eventually put on the air.
The body of the story was unchanged. It included a brief clip of President Donald Trump saying the prison operators “don’t play games,” and one from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that “heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country” were sent there.
Alfonsi’s introduction was updated to lead with the Jan. 3 U.S. raid that led to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, currently held in U.S. custody. She changed the end of the story to include the administration comment, including its explanation for not providing detailed records on the migrants sent to El Salvador.
The administration also provided photos of tattoos worn by the two migrants Alfonsi interviewed, including one swastika that the interviewee said he had gotten as a teenager not knowing what it meant.
CBS-administration relationship has evolved
Since Weiss’s appointment, Trump administration officials have been more visible on CBS News, in interviews that she sometimes helped arrange. The president himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes on Nov. 2.
The New York Times reported Saturday that after Trump was interviewed last week by new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, Leavitt told the network that “we’ll sue your ass off” if the exchange wasn’t aired in full.
All of the 13-minute interview was shown Tuesday, an unusual step for one of the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts, a half-hour summary of the day’s big stories. CBS told the Times that it had decided to run the interview unedited at the time it was booked.
Trump has objected in the past to how his interviews have been edited — including releasing an unedited transcript of an interview conducted by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes in 2020.
