Snapshot: Rejecting the Regime's 'Kill Switch'

CBS News' Bari Weiss blocked a rigorous '60 Minutes' story about the brutal CECOT prison. This is not tolerable.

(Screenshot from the buried '60 Minutes’ story that was scheduled to air on Sunday)

CBS News—the fabled network that was the home of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and a stable of serious and talented journalists at 60 Minutes and beyond for decades—has been poisoned by the installation of Trump enabler Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief. That came crashing home this week after she blocked the broadcast of a 60 Minutes story by the skilled veteran journalist Sharyn Alfonsi.

You may have already heard that this was a story about the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador and the 252 Venezuelan migrants that were deported there by the Trump regime. This is a place that it’s own warden describes as “hell,” where lights are on 24 hours a day, inmates sleep without mattresses or pillows, and bloody beatings are daily realities.

As Alfonsi’s story includes, Trump propagandist Karoline Leavitt justified sending these men to the torturous CECOT like this: “These are heinous monsters—rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators—who have no right to be in this country and they must be held accountable.” Except that the report noted that nearly half of the men sent by the Trump regime had no criminal history and only eight (3.1 percent) had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.

Alfonsi’s report is a classic, rigorous 60 Minutes piece, complete with interviews from several Venezuelans (without criminal records) who were tortured at CECOT, well-researched background data on the deported men, extensive footage from inside the prison, comments from its warden, statements from the Trump regime at the time the migrants were sent there and a notation that relevant U.S. government officials refused to comment on the story.

The nearly 14-minute story was screened internally five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices, Alfonsi noted. It was promoted by CBS on Friday, scheduled for Sunday—and then pulled from the program by recently installed Bari Weiss just hours before it was to air.

Weiss said in a statement on Sunday that a story can be held if “they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices.” In this case, that means people like Stephen Miller had not been filmed refuting the story’s contents. “We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera," she insisted.

But carefully consider Alfonsi’s sharp and succinct summary of the appalling decision not to run her CECOT story. "Government silence is a statement, not a VETO," Alfonsi wrote in an email. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

I cannot overstate how important this is, with serious reverberations for the credibility of 60 Minutes and CBS News, journalism in general and the ability of Americans to know what this regime is doing. Give the Trump regime a “kill switch” and they can make all of its illegalities and problems disappear.

We are seeing that play out now with the Epstein files. We can be sure that the Justice Department has been employing its power to redact contents of the files not just to protect victims. They have been aggressively blacking out information as a kill switch to protect Trump.

I have watched the CECOT story—and you can, too—because Weiss’ plan to deep-six the piece failed to control for a copy that had already been sent to Global TV in Canada, which is licensed to air 60 Minutes. While Global TV broadcast the revised version of the full program on Sunday, the version with the CECOT story was already posted on its streaming app.

Here is the story that Bari Weiss and the Trump regime does not want you to watch. I hope you will watch it. I share it here as a necessary matter of public interest.

Its harrowing, infuriating and a sickening reminder of what this regime is doing in our name. It’s also a reminder of the serious and substantial work that journalists like Sharyn Alfonsi are seeking to do, despite the pressures to kowtow to Trump and his hostile, criminal agenda. Its the responsibility of all of us to refuse to turn away and do what we can to reject the Trump kill switch.

---

I want to wish everyone a nourishing holiday. These are times that surely remind me how important it is to take every opportunity to be with loved ones. I hope you will take the time to rest up and recharge. We have quite a year ahead of us, one in which we can prove that there is more of us than there are of them—and that we are not about to let a corrupt and criminal regime end our democratic project.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to America, America for $50 a year or just $5 a month. This helps sustain our growing work, keeps nearly all the content free for everyone and gives you full access to our dynamic community conversations. It also represents your commitment to independent journalism.