From Daily Mail: A veteran 60 Minutes correspondent has hit out at her new boss Bari Weiss for pulling her segment on the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to a notorious El Salvador prison just two hours before it was set to air.
Sharyn Alfonsi, a reporter for the news magazine since 2015, accused the new CBS News editor-in-chief of censoring her work and bowing to the Trump administration over her decision to suddenly scrap her segment.
It was set to feature interviews with a group of Venezuelan men who thought they were being sent back to their home country, only to end up at the notorious CECOT prison, which they described as ‘brutal and torturous.’
The news program instead aired a segment from Nottingham, England, where Jon Wertheim interviewed a family of celebrated classical musicians.
Alfonso sent out an email to Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Anderson Cooper, and other correspondents saying she had asked Weiss “for a call … to discuss her decision,” but claims Weiss “did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.”
Alfonso insists that her team followed all journalistic standards, and said that Weiss was censoring her work and destroying 60 Minutes’ reputation.
“I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight,” she wrote.
Weiss defended the decision to hold the story, saying it wasn’t political at all.
“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom,” she said in comments to The New York Times.
“I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” she added.
Alfonsi countered, saying the segment was pulled because the Trump administration did not respond with a comment on the segment. If refusing to comment is a “valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast,” she claimed. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
Read more at Daily Mail
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