CHINA – 2021/04/02: In this photo illustration the American English language commercial broadcast television and radio network CBS logo is seen on an Android mobile device with United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US), flag in the background. (Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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CBS News pulled a “60 Minutes” report on El Salvador’s CECOT prison just hours before its scheduled Sunday broadcast, saying it would air at a future time.
“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated,” the program posted on social media. “Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” the program posted on X and other social media platforms three hours before it was slated to air.
A CBS News spokesperson said in an email that the segment “needed additional reporting.”
The New York Times, citing a copy of a note written by Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent who reported the segment, said CBS pulled the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by the Times.
“It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
She added: “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss.”
CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report outside normal business hours.
CECOT is a mega-prison in El Salvador where the U.S. has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants without trial. It has been condemned by human rights groups for its harsh conditions.
Link removed
CBS removed a link to the “Inside CECOT” segment page on Sunday. The page, which previously featured a trailer, now displays “The page cannot be found” message.
However, a description on its Paramount Plus website earlier said the segment was scheduled to air at 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaking to recently released deportees about the “brutal and torturous” conditions they had endured in the prison.
The decision comes as the network goes through changes under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who was picked to lead CBS News in October after CBS parent company Paramount Skydance acquired the online publication she founded, The Free Press.
Weiss, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal opinion writer, was considered by some analysts as a controversial choice as she had never managed a television newsroom or produced broadcast news content before.
On December 10 she named Tony Dokoupil as the new anchor of its flagship “CBS Evening News” segment, replacing the dual anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.