Critics Lash Out at Bari Weiss After 60 Minutes Yanks Segment on Trump Deportations Last Minute: ‘SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!’

New CBS News boss Bari Weiss was bashed by a number of media critics on Sunday night, immediately after 60 Minutes abruptly postponed a report on a “brutal” El Salvador prison that President Donald Trump deported suspected gangsters and illegal immigrants to.

60 Minutes announced the segment was dropped at 4:31 p.m. ET — about two and a half hours before it was set to air. The segment was titled “Inside CECOT,” referring to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo; the maximum-security prison was opened by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in 2023 as part of his push to arrest more gang members.

President Trump said he was “very impressed” with the prison earlier this year and that he would “love” to send American crooks there.

60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed some of the now-released deportees and they described the “brutal and torturous conditions they endured,” according to a press release teasing the segment. A CBS spokesperson told Puck reporter Dylan Byers the segment was pulled because its editors determined the segment “needed additional reporting.”

But a lot of X users were not buying that.

The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald shared the teaser for the report — a trailer that was yanked from the official CBS website — on X. He also ripped Weiss for the move.

“It’s almost impressive how much damage Bari Weiss has done to CBS News in such a short period of time,” he said.

Political analyst Tom Sherwood was confused by the last minute move and said the “public needs to know why” it happened.

The New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush shared Byers’ X post and wondered “Has this ever happened before?”

There was also a lot of criticism if you searched Weiss or 60 Minutes on X:

CBS parent company Paramount Skydance summed up the report on Friday:

Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons.

Journalist Adam Cochran called 60 Minutes “a crown jewel of journalistic integrity and quality,” before launching into Weiss.

“The fact that it’s now under the thumb of Bari Weiss who is pulling pieces for political reasons, is a heinous betrayal of the 4th Estate. I hope the incredible team there can find ways to push back and continue to make their work heard!”  Cochran wrote.

YouTuber @KyleKulinski wrote, “Bari Weiss just CENSORED AND BANNED a 60 Minutes episode exposing how Trump sent immigrants to be TORTURED AND RAPED in a concentration camp.”

Journalist Peter Twinklage posted, “a source inside CBS News tells me a move like this is ‘effectively unprecedented’ in the history of 60 Minutes. 60 stories often take several weeks, if not MONTHS, to produce. the idea of killing a finished piece (that you’ve already been promoting) hours before air is insane.”

Other critiques follow: