Last weekend, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss abruptly pulled a scheduled “60 Minutes” story focusing on torture and “hellish” conditions endured by Venezuelan immigrants deported from the U.S. to CECOT, El Salvador’s notoriously brutal maximum-security prison, and some believe it was done to appease President Donald Trump. Though it had been vetted by lawyers and senior producers, and promoted by the network, Weiss told the journalists who had worked on the story for weeks that it was “not ready” and lacked an appropriate response from the Trump administration. Immigration advocates hold a prayer vigil and rally before Kilmar Abrego Garcia enters a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office on August 25, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland.Earlier this year, Garcia was wrongfully deported to the notorious anti-terrorism prison CECOT in El Salvador. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) A furious Sharyn Alfonsi, the lead reporter on “Inside CECOT,” sent a memo to “60 Minutes” producers in which she called the decision to “spike” the story just hours before it was set to air on Sunday night “political interference” and said “the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship,” CNN reported. The story “is factually correct,” she insisted. As it turned out, the “60 Minutes” segment was derailed in the U.S. but still inadvertently aired on Canadian television on Sunday night. It was then streamed online by CBS’ Canadian partner Global TV on Monday. ‘Diabolical’: Gavin Newsom Rips Into Trump and His Allies with a Brutal Holiday Greeting, But He Saved His Most Savage Message for Mike Johnson Several alert Canadian viewers quickly shared clips of the story on social media, and within hours the videos went viral on platforms including Reddit, Threads, Substack and Bluesky, much to the chagrin of execs at CBS and its parent company Paramount, who are now frantically trying to have the videos taken offline, citing copyright infringement, CNN reported. The story includes accounts from Venezuelan men who were among 280 migrants sent without court hearings or other due process to CECOT in March by the Trump administration. Some said they endured four months of physical and sexual abuse before they were transferred to Venezuela in July as part of a prisoner exchange with the U.S. Here's the deleted trailer for the now-"delayed" segment. It's almost impressive how much damage Bari Weiss has done to CBS News in such a short period of time. Someone quickly schedule a prime-time Town Hall with Alan Dershowitz to rectify the harm:pic.twitter.com/382gRG5Lgp https://t.co/3gHRKNES2y— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 21, 2025 “The torture was never-ending. Interminable,” said Luis Munoz Pinto, one of the former detainees interviewed by Alfonsi, who said he was beaten, confined in a pitch-dark cell, and made to drink dirty water. “There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating or vomiting on themselves.”Trump officials had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and claimed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S to justify the deportations, alleging that many of the 252 Venezuelan men it had deported to the CECOT “Terrorism Confinement Center” were known gang members and violent criminals. The “60 Minutes” segment that streamed in Canada included reporting that belied that claim, citing ICE records that show that nearly half of the Venezuelans sent to the Salvadoran prison had no criminal history, and that only eight of the men detained had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.A federal judge on Monday gave the Trump administration until Jan. 5 to either “facilitate” their return to the U.S., or “to otherwise provide them with hearings that satisfy the requirements of due process, ” NPR reported. Weiss told CBS staffers on Monday that “the public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment at this prison. To run a story two months later, we need to do more” to advance the story. “We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera,” she said, mentioning in particular Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policy. At the end of the segment that streamed on Global TV’s platform, Alfonsi said 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.” In her internal memo, Alfonsi said her team did ask various White House and State Department officials, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for comment, but was stonewalled. Their refusal to be interviewed, Alfonsi wrote, was “a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”Weiss was already facing extra scrutiny after being installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News in October, despite having virtually no network news experience, by Paramount’s new owner and CEO, David Ellison, a tech billionaire who is now trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that needs federal regulatory approval. The White House did eventually respond to CBS on Thursday, The New York Times reported, sending an email that read, in part: “60 Minutes should spend their time and energy amplifying the stories of Angel Parents, whose innocent American children have tragically been murdered by vicious illegal aliens that President Trump are removing from the country.” Some CBS staffers are now asking whether Weiss was pressured by Paramount or by the Trump administration to hold the story once it was publicized, CNN reported. Trump had just vented about CBS and “60 Minutes” on Friday night at a rally in North Carolina, saying, “60 Minutes has treated me worse under the new ownership … they just keep hitting me, it’s crazy.” “It’s almost impressive how much damage Bari Weiss has done to CBS News in such a short period of time,” wrote journalist and famous civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald on X. New York-based musician Marco Foster, a self-described staunch Democrat, replied, “CBS is officially a mouthpiece for the Trump administration thanks to Bari Weiss.” The public uproar over the perceived heavy editorial hand of Weiss has only amped up the story’s virality. “This could wind up being the most-watched newsmagazine segment in television history,” longtime Trump critic George Conway crowed on X. It also drew strong reactions from viewers on Threads. “I was throwing up in my mouth watching this. This is exactly what they did during the Holocaust, they tortured the ‘prisoners’ and made them feel like crap. The Nazi’s had concentration camps,” one user wrote. “I couldn’t watch it. I pulled up at work on my lunch break. It made me so sick and angry,” another viewer added. ‘Made Me So Sick and Angry’: TV Network Quietly Pulls Video Clip Exposing Trump Adminstration, But What Happened Next Made It Impossible to Hide ...read more read less