Embattled CBS News head Bari Weiss desperately tried to quell the backlash over a canceled 60 Minutes segment with a Christmas Eve email telling journalists they need to win back Americans’ trust.
Weiss, who was appointed to head an increasingly new-look for the network in October, has been facing criticism for her last-minute decision to shelf the piece on President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts.
She declared that the segment, ‘Inside CECOT,’ which featured interviews with two Venezuelan men who were deported to the notorious El Salvador prison, ‘needed additional reporting.’
But many were left outraged by the decision, accusing Weiss of censorship and bowing to the Trump administration.
Sources at the network even told CNN, ‘People are threatening to quit over this.’
Still, Weiss defended her decision in a Christmas Eve email with the subject line ‘Building Trust.’
‘Right now, the majority of Americans say they do not trust the press. It isn’t because they’re crazy,’ Weiss began the message, which was leaked online by Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker.
‘To win back their trust, we have to work hard,’ she continued. ‘Sometimes that means doing more legwork. Sometimes it means training our attention on topics that have been overlooked or misconstrued.
‘And sometimes, it means holding a piece about an important subject to make sure it is comprehensive and fair.’
Embattled CBS News head Bari Weiss desperately tried to reel in her journalists with a Christmas Eve email saying they have to work to win back Americans’ trust
Weiss has been facing backlash for shelving a 60 Minutes segment (pictured) on President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts at the last minute
Weiss defended her decision in a Christmas Eve email with the subject line ‘Building Trust’
‘In our upside-down moment, this may seem radical,’ Weiss acknowledged. ‘Such editorial decisions can cause a firestorm, particularly on a slow news week.
‘And the standards for fairness we are holding ourselves to, particularly on contentious subjects, will surely feel controversial to those used to doing things one way. But to fulfill our mission, it’s necessary.
‘No amount of outrage – whether from activist organizations or the White House will derail us,’ the CBS News editor-in-chief declared.
‘We are not to score points with one side of the political spectrum or to win followers on social media,’ she said, in an apparent reference to veteran journalist Sharyn Alfonsi’s argument that ’60 Minutes’ had been advertising her ‘Inside CECOT’ segment on social media all week.
Instead, Weiss said, CBS News journalists ‘are out to inform the American public and to get the story right.
‘Restoring the integrity of the news is a difficult task,’ she concluded. ‘We can’t think of a more important one.’
The message then ended by wishing staffers a Merry Christmas and thanking employees, ‘especially to everyone who is working over this holiday.’
In addition to Weiss, it was signed by CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and editors Charles Forelle and Adam Rubenstein.
But Weiss’s message seemed to have backfired, with many online hitting out at her for the tone-deaf holiday message.
Weiss’s message seemed to have backfired, with many online hitting out at her for the not-so-festive holiday message
‘Bari Weiss, who made her career sowing distrust in mainstream media, is now pretending other people did that and she’s here to right the ship,’ historian Kevin M Kruse wrote on BlueSky as the Christmas Eve email went viral.
Actor Bill Corbett also hit out at Weiss for her ‘self-victimization.’
‘Bari Weiss is a particular type of character that can get too far in the good ol’ USA: the moderately clever sociopath who thinks they can bulls*** their way through anything with wordy excuses.
‘When reality crashes in on such a mediocre person, they have nowhere to go but self-victimization,’ he claimed.
Strategist Steve Schmidt went even further, comparing Weiss to the captain of the ill-fated Titanic.
‘Bari Weiss is a cynical, corrupt and deeply unserious character who is partisan, frivolous and incompetent,’ he wrote.
‘There hasn’t been a ship’s captain with more water over their head since [Edward] John Smith on the morning of April 15, 1912.’
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, called for ’60 Minutes’ producers to be fired for the controversial segment
Others also seized on Weiss’ track record at the helm of CBS, with television writer Mike Drucker saying her ‘two accomplishments so far are hosting an interview that she desperately wanted people to watch (but they didn’t) and trying to spike a news story that she desperately wanted nobody to watch (but they did)’ after the unedited version of Sunday’s episode premiered in Canada.
‘If Bari Weiss wanted to restore integrity to CBS News, she would resign,’ added Michael A Cohen, a columnist at MS Now.
Meanwhile, lawyer Bradley P Moss asked if Weiss’ email was ‘what Stephen Miller told her to say,’ after he called for ’60 Minutes’ producers to be fired.
The White House deputy chief of staff for policy called the ‘Inside CECOT’ segment a ‘hatchet job’ that was trying to garner sympathy for illegal immigrant gang members.
‘Every one of those producers at “60 Minutes”[who] engaged in this revolt, fire them. Clean house,’ he told Jesse Watters Primetime guest house Charlie Hurt Tuesday night of the producers who spoke out against Weiss’ decision to can the segment.
‘They’re trying to tell sob stories about Tren de Aragua gang members who drill holes in people’s hands, who rape and murder little girls,’ he claimed.
‘This is the gang that kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered Jocelyn Nungaray. Remember her? That precious 12-year-old girl from Texas who was taken from her mom and went through horrors none of us can even imagine.
‘And you have these 60 Minutes producers who are living in comfort and security in their West End condos trying to make us feel sympathetic for these monsters?
‘Have you seen the tattoos, the face tattoos, the body tattoos on these killers?’ he asked.
In the segment, Alfonsi interviewed a college student who was detained by US Customs before being deported to CECOT
He described how he was tortured upon arrival, and said that the first thing a guard told the deportees ‘was that we would never see day or night again’
In the segment – which went viral online after it mistakenly aired on Global TV in Canada – Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed a college student who was detained by US Customs before being deported to CECOT.
He described how he was tortured upon arrival, and said that the first thing a guard told the deportees ‘was that we would never see day or night again.’
‘He said “Welcome to Hell, I’ll make sure you never leave,”‘ the deported migrant recalled, later claiming: ‘When you get there, you know you’re in Hell. You don’t need anyone else telling you.’
Another said he and others were taken to a ‘little room where there’s no light, no ventilation, nothing.’
‘It’s a cell for punishment where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour, and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us while we were in there,’ he claimed.
The announcement that the segment was going to be shelved came just two hours before the episode was set to air
It later premiered in Canada, and soon went viral online
Alfonsi went on to claim in the segment released Monday evening that she reviewed available ICE data to confirm Human Rights Watch’s findings that suggest only eight deported men had been sentenced for violent or partially violent crimes.
She then questioned the Trump administration’s basis for deporting many of the Venezuelan men to CECOT, where she claimed they were left without food or medicine.
‘The sicker and more injured we were, the better it was for them,’ one of the migrants said of the guards.
The segment ends with Alfonsi saying the Department of Homeland Security ‘declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador.
‘The government there did not respond to our request,’ she said, before noting that the Trump administration has since made deals with other countries to send migrants to prisons there.
But the segment included comments Trump made as he sat down with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele earlier this year, praising the prison system, saying it has ‘very strong facilities’ and El Salvadorans ‘don’t play games.’
Alfonsi argued that she and her team followed all journalistic standards, requesting comment from the White House, State Department and the Department of Homeland Security
Following Weiss’ decision to not air the segment just two hours before the show was set to begin, Alfonsi argued that she and her team followed all journalistic standards, requesting comment from the White House, State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
She told her colleagues in a fiery email that the segment was ‘screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It 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 argued, as she declared that Weiss was destroying 60 Minutes’ reputation.
‘I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight,’ she warned, ominously.
But Weiss has denied that politics had anything to do with her decision, later telling her employees that she spiked the segment simply because it ‘did not advance the ball,’ according to The New York Times.
She pointed out how the the Times and other publications have ‘previously done similar work’ while maintaining that fresh, through-provoking content was her ‘north star.’
‘To run a story on this subject two months later, we need to do more,’ Weiss told staff.
‘And this is 60 Minutes. We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera.
‘Our viewers come first. Not the listing schedule or anything else,’ she argued. ‘That’s my north star, and I hope it’s yours too.’
Daily Mail has reached out to CBS News for comment.
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