CBS reporter publicly shreds Bari Weiss takeover as spreading ‘corporate meddling and editorial fear’
The 60 Minutes correspondent who clashed with the head of CBS News over her report on migrants deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison issued a dire public warning this week about “corporate meddling” in journalism.
Sharyn Alfonsi made a series of thinly veiled remarks critical of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss during a speech Thursday at the National Press Club in Washington after receiving a Ridenhour Courage Prize for “life-long defense of the public interest and passionate commitment to social justice.”
“I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents,” she said, according to The Guardian.
“It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear. It’s hard to watch.”
Alfonsi also said that “corporate calculations” were affecting journalism, saying, “Some executives are asking not, ‘Is the story true?’ but, ‘Is it good for business?’”
Alfonsi didn’t mention any executives by name, but the audience booed when another speaker mentioned Weiss earlier in the event, according to The Guardian.
Spokespeople for CBS News and 60 Minutes didn’t immediately return requests for comment from The Independent.
Alfonsi’s speech followed the December leak of a memo in which she complained that Weiss had “spiked” her story without explanation.
In a subsequent leaked memo, Weiss — accused by critics of being “Trump-friendly” — said the segment didn’t “present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT” and said that “we need to push much harder” to get officials “on the record.”
The story aired several weeks later without featuring interviews with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff or Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” both of whom Weiss mentioned in her memo.
Weiss was hired by David Ellison, son of billionaire and Republican mega-donor Larry Ellison, after his Skydance Media company bought CBS parent company Paramount Global for $8 billion in August.
During negotiations over that deal, Paramount paid President Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over his claim that 60 Minutes unfairly edited an interview with his 2024 opponent Kamala Harris.
“I see good things happening in the news,” Trump told 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell in October. “I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership—CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”
During her Thursday speech, Alfonsi acknowledged that she refused to change her report after she was unable to arrange an interview with an administration official.
