The Kill Switch

In 1995, 60 Minutes made a decision that nearly destroyed the program. Producers killed an interview with Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco industry whistleblower who had evidence that cigarette companies knew their products were addictive and carcinogenic. CBS’s lawyers were worried about a potential lawsuit, so the interview got shelved. The story eventually came out anyway, the lawyers’ fears proved overblown, and 60 Minutes spent years trying to rebuild its credibility. The whole debacle became the basis for The Insider, a 1999 film starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino that portrayed CBS executives as cowards who caved to corporate pressure at the expense of the public interest. Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former research director for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and the subject of the Touchstone Pictures film, "The Insider," endorsed the "Stop Big Tobacco--No on Prop. 28" campaign during a news conference at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles January 19, 2000. (Photo by John T. Barr) Bari Weiss attends Book Club Event With Peggy Noonan on November 19, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press) Accused gang members look out from their cell at the CECOT (Counter Terrorism Confinement Center) on December 15, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. The government says some 20,000 gang members are being held at the mega-prison, which has a capacity of 40,000. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) View of various members of the CBS '60 Minutes' news team in the office of producer Don Hewitt (right), New York, New York, 1986. Pictured are, from left, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley (seated), Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, and Hewitt. (Photo by Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images) It was, by any measure, a low point in the history of American broadcast journalism. Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former research director for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and the subject of the Touchstone Pictures film, "The Insider," endorsed the "Stop Big Tobacco--No on Prop. 28" campaign during a news conference at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles January 19, 2000. (Photo by John T. Barr) On Sunday, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi sent an internal memo to colleagues warning that CBS was repeating that history. The network had just killed her story about Venezuelan migrants who were deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, where they were allegedly tortured, beaten, and subjected to sexual violence. The segment had been promoted on social media for days. It had been screened five times. It had been cleared by CBS’s lawyers and its Standards and Practices division. It was, by all accounts, ready to air. Then Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, pulled it. “CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast,” Alfonsi wrote in her memo. “It took years to recover from that ‘low point.’ By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.” That distinction matters. In 1995, CBS killed a story because executives...

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