The crisis at 60 Minutes is not new. The most-watched news program in the United States has been under fire from Donald Trump since the network told the truth about why Trump didn’t show up for an interview during the 2024 election.
Trump filed a false libel lawsuit against 60 Minutes and CBS News. Paramount settled the lawsuit because it wanted approval for the merger with Skydance, which is run by Trump allies the Ellisons. After acquiring CBS, the Ellisons installed Trump ally Bari Weiss as president of CBS News.
It was only a matter of time before Weiss heeded Trump’s request and got involved with 60 Minutes, and when the program finally included a segment about Trump deporting immigrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, the censorship became a reality.
Last weekend, Weiss sparked a crisis on “60 Minutes” by shelving Sharyn Alfonsi’s report on Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to a notorious high-security prison in El Salvador.
Alfonsi said in an internal memo that “the public will rightly identify this as corporate censorship.” Weiss, who reports directly to Paramount CEO David Ellison, pushed back, saying the story was “not ready.”
Weiss also said in a statement, “I look forward to airing this important piece when it is ready.”
What Weiss meant by “not ready” was that the story did not include an interview from a senior Trump administration official.
Read more below.
