WATCH: CBS News Anchor Awkwardly Addresses ’60 Minutes’ Controversy During ‘CBS Evening News’

The entire media world has been talking about CBS News’s decision to abruptly pull a 60 Minutes segment — just hours before airtime — on an El Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration has been deporting Venezuelan migrants. And on Monday night, CBS News talked about it too.

Midway through Monday’s CBS Evening News broadcast, anchor Jericka Duncan carefully addressed the elephant in the room — delivering a 90-second report on the 60 Minutes controversy.

“Now to a story about CBS News,” Duncan said, as she launched into her report. “A few hours before last night’s edition of 60 Minutes, viewers learned that a segment that had been promoted would not air. It’s about a notorious prison in El Salvador, and the Trump administration’s decision to send Venezuelans and others there who it says entered the U.S. illegally.”

Duncan then got into the most awkward part of the story — the internal memo sent by 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi to her colleagues, in which Alfonsi claimed the decision by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to yank the story was a “political one.”

“The correspondent, 60 Minutes veteran Sharyn Alfonsi, sent an email to CBS News colleagues saying the story is factually correct, and accusing CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss of pulling it for political reasons,” Duncan said. “Alfonsi says that despite requests for interviews, no one in the Trump administration would participate in the story. In an email, she wrote that, ‘If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a kill switch.’

Duncan — who is keeping the seat warm until Tony Dokoupil takes over as anchor of the CBS Evening News on Jan. 5 — then presented the response from Weiss and the network.

“In a statement, Weiss says in part, ‘Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason, that they lacked sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices, happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,'” Duncan said. “And CBS News released a statement saying, ‘The 60 Minutes report Inside CECOT will air in a future broadcast. We determined it needed additional reporting.'”

Watch above, via CBS.