Liberal Bari Weiss is in charge of CBS News, and her status as a non-left wing radical deeply offends the rest of that disgraced network’s staff. So someone leaked a memo that Weiss wrote about her decision to kill, temporarily, a 60 Minutes segment about El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
Needless to say, the segment was a hit piece on the Trump administration. It attacked the administration for deporting Venezuelan illegals to CECOT. Weiss found the segment to be superficial and one-sided. She sent it back for more work–more investigation, more journalism.
This is the text of the memo that a CBS staffer leaked:
Hi all,
I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.
* Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.
* At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.
* The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.
* Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?
* We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.
My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.
I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.
Yours,
Bari
So basically, being mildly anti-Trump isn’t enough. Only a full-throated hysteric can work at CBS News without being undercut as a–as we conservatives would say–squish.
The funniest thing about this incident is the self-righteous posturing of lefties who mourn the sullying of the pristine reputation of 60 Minutes:
"60 Minutes" just suffered a severe blow to its credibility. One of its own correspondents fears the program is being "dismantled," and some employees are threatening to quit: https://t.co/wz1Oo0Xr9l
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 22, 2025
Ha ha! 60 Minutes has had zero credibility, since when? Certainly not since 2004, the year of Rathergate. We actually exposed a different 60 Minutes fabrication a year or so before that, but it didn’t get as much publicity. 60 Minutes has been a Democratic Party tool for as long as I can remember; its reputation can only improve under Bari Weiss’s leadership.
What if CBS’s “journalists” quit in protest?
Oh, the blow to 60 Minutes's credibility was yesterday? Wake up, Tater.
If i were @bariweiss, I'd be saying "Hey, there's the door. Maybe Jezebel is hiring." https://t.co/7kHNRNtZ62
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 22, 2025
Via InstaPundit. If failing “journalists” in a failing industry want to pound the pavement in search of a new job, good luck to them. The left-wing money is still flowing freely, but I don’t think it is what it once was.
