(AP) – The Sunday edition of 60 Minutes aired its report on deportations ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration, a segment that had been abruptly pulled from the schedule about a month earlier, sparking an internal fight over political pressure that eventually came to light.
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi did not reference her dispute with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in the piece about detainees sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. When the segment was removed from the December 21 broadcast at Weiss’s order, Alfonsi told her colleagues at “60 Minutes” that “it wasn’t an editorial decision, but a political one.”
Weiss had argued that the story did not adequately reflect the government’s point of view nor offer anything new beyond what other outlets had previously reported.
The Sunday story did not feature on-camera interviews with Trump administration officials. However, it did include statements from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that were not part of what Alfonsi had previously used before the story was pulled. Some of the statements, which were published in full on the “60 Minutes” website, dated before December 21.
“Since November, ’60 Minutes’ has made several attempts to interview on camera key Trump administration officials about our story,” Alfonsi said. “They rejected our requests.”
Alfonsi did not respond to a message left by The Associated Press on Sunday. She wrote in an email that the government’s refusal to permit on-camera interviews was a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.
In a statement, CBS News said its “leadership has always been committed to airing the ’60 Minutes’ piece about CECOT as soon as it was ready. Tonight, viewers will see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling.”
Alfonsi’s report was the second of three on Sunday, with Cecilia Vega’s Minneapolis-based segment on ICE’s enforcement efforts and protests against its tactics serving as the lead
The initial decision to drop Alfonsi’s CECOT story became a point of contention for some critics, who argued that Weiss’s appointment — founder of the Free Press website and with no prior television-news experience — signaled a bid by the network’s new corporate leadership to curry favor with Trump.
Although it was pulled in December, the original Alfonsi piece remained online by mistake. CBS News had sent a version of the weekly to Global Television, the Canadian broadcaster that airs 60 Minutes, which posted it on its site before the last-minute change to pull the article.
That allowed keen viewers to see what Weiss had rejected, giving them a chance to compare that version with what 60 Minutes ultimately aired.
The body of the story did not change. It included a brief clip of President Donald Trump saying the prison operators “do not mince words,” and another of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that “monstrous criminals, rapists, murderers, sexual predators, and other criminals who have no right to be in this country” were sent there.
Alfonsi’s introduction was updated to begin with the January 3 American operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now in U.S. custody. She revised the ending to include the government’s comments, including an explanation for why detailed records about the migrants sent to El Salvador had not been provided.
The government also supplied photos of tattoos worn by the two migrants Alfonsi interviewed, including a swastika that one interviewee said he had tattooed as a teenager without understanding its meaning.
Since Weiss’s appointment, Trump administration officials have become more visible on CBS News, in interviews that she sometimes helped arrange. The president himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” on November 2.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that, after Trump was interviewed last week by CBS Evening News’s new anchor, Tony Dokoupian, Leavitt told the network that “we will sue you until you’re broke” if the interview was not aired in full.
The full 13-minute interview was aired on Tuesday, an unusual move for one of the networks’ late-afternoon newscasts, which typically present a half-hour digest of the day’s top stories. CBS told The Times it had decided to air the interview unedited at the moment it was scheduled.
In the past, Trump has objected to how his interviews have been edited, including the publication of an unedited transcript of a Lesley Stahl interview with “60 Minutes” in 2020.
