60 Minutes’ Sharyn Alfonsi Speaks for the First Time on ‘Corporate Meddling’ in Network News

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Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi told a crowd at Washington, D.C.’s National Press Club about the culture of “corporate meddling and editorial fear” that’s arisen since David Ellison and Bari Weiss took over CBS News.

Ellison took control of the network after his company, Skydance Media, acquired Paramount Global last August. One of his first moves was to purchase The Free Press digital outlet from Weiss and install her as editor-in-chief at CBS News. Weiss had previously worked as an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal, and an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at The New York Times before founding The Free Press.

At the Thursday event, Alfonsi received the Ridenhour prize for courage, and spoke about her 60 Minutes piece on El Salvador’s notorious CECOT Prison that Alfonsi fought for when Weiss pulled at the last minute.

“Thank you for this award. I didn’t know that the theme was hope. My hope recently has been that I still have a job,” she said. “And every morning I wake up to another headline that says I’ve been fired.”

Alfonsi alleged at the time that Weiss had “spiked” the story for political purposes because it made the Trump administration look bad, but Weiss argued that the segment wasn’t complete because it didn’t include the Trump administration’s perspective.

The segment eventually aired about a month later, largely in its original form.

“I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents,” Alfonsi told the audience. “It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear. It’s hard to watch.”

Decision-making in the news division has gone from, “‘Is the story true?’ to, ‘is it good for business?’” Alfonsi said.

Alfonsi shared that standing up to her bosses over the CECOT episode was so upsetting that her producers “offered to hold [her] hair when [she] was so nervous she was puking about what [she] had done.”

Alfonsi said she believed her future at the network was in jeopardy, and she was unsure if she’ll return for the show’s 59th season.

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