60 Minutes’ Social Media Posts Get Ratioed into Oblivion Over Bari Weiss Pulling Segment

The decision by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to spike a 60 Minutes segment mere hours before it was scheduled to air has sparked outrage over what critics called politically motivated censorship, including burying the show’s social media accounts in furious reactions.

The report by 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, which was supposed to air on the show’s episode this past Sunday evening, covered the stories of migrants deported by the Trump administration to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, abbreviated CECOT, a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador with a documented history of human rights abuses.

The CECOT segment did air on Canadian networks and has been spreading rapidly online, despite CBS’ efforts to get platforms to take down the clip.

In an internal memo to her colleagues, Alfonsi excoriated Weiss for pulling the segment, arguing that the story had been “screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices” and “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,” Alfonsi added, blasting Weiss for giving the Trump administration “a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” and betraying the men who “risked their lives to speak with us.”

Weiss defended the decision to pull the segment by saying she did so “because it was not ready” and needed “additional reporting.”

60 Minutes’ social media followers found Weiss’ defense unconvincing, to say the least.

The last few posts on the show’s social media accounts are flooded with critical, mocking, and even furious replies denouncing the spiking of the CECOT segment.

60 Minutes’ tweet on Sunday announcing that the “Inside CECOT” report would “air in a future broadcast” drew commenters who shared the trailer that the show had deleted, attacked CBS News and Weiss as “regime stenographers” who were “destroying any credibility CBS had left,” and other criticism.

 

This overwhelming mood of criticism and outrage happened even for posts totally unrelated to the CECOT story. A tweet about a story on a 60 Minutes crew joining a group trekking to the Mount Everest base camp was flooded with replies upset about the CECOT segment not airing.

“Thanks for reading the room,” one person sarcastically replied. “This is exactly what the people want to see today!”

“Nobody gives a f*ck about this story,” was another commenter’s blunt response.

Scrolling through the replies for several minutes, Mediaite could not find any tweets that were actually about Mount Everest; they were all apparently in reaction to the spiked CECOT segment.

Another tweet with a heartwarming report about seven British siblings who play classical music got a handful of responses about the actual story but again, the vast majority were unleashing fury about the CECOT segment.

“Are you sure Stephen Miller signed off on this story?” asked one commenter.

Another Sunday evening tweet about the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as “a time to take stock and see if the U.S. is living up to the revolutionary ideals the country was founded upon” drew especially sharp comments.

Without any apparent dissenters, the commenters clearly believed Weiss and CBS News were not living up to the standards of America’s founding discussed in “The Last Minute” segment.

It’s a similar story on Instagram and Facebook, where the posts about unrelated reports are buried in comments about the CECOT segment. Posts about the musical British family drew a lot of replies like shown in the screenshot below, praising the talented siblings but also asking for the CECOT report to be aired.

“This is an amazingly talented family that I’m happy to learn about. BUT WHERE IS THE CECOT STORY?” wrote one commenter. “This is lovely. Where is the deportation story?” asked another. And so on, with frequent deployment of caps lock to inquire “WHERE IS THE CECOT STORY?”

Across 60 Minutes’ various social media accounts, virtually every comment is criticism of the unaired CECOT segment, going back several days.

Unsurprisingly, Weiss herself was not spared. Not an overly prolific tweeter, a post she wrote Sunday evening about a tribute to Rob Reiner drew a stream of replies lambasting her over the CECOT story.

—