Is CBS News censoring 60 Minutes?

Is CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss censoring critical coverage of the Trump administration to please the network’s billionaire backers and the president himself? Is CBS News censoring 60 Minutes? Bari Weiss blocked a critical story about the Trump administration - as CBS’s billionaire backers seek Trump’s help. Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau. It’s the crisis many have anticipated since Weiss - a center-right provocateur known for her outspoken criticism of “wokeness” and support for Israel - was appointed atop CBS News in October . And now it’s here. On Sunday, 60 Minutes was set to air a report on conditions in El Salvador’s CECOT prison, where the Trump administration has sent migrants. But Saturday night, Weiss intervened to spike the story, declaring it was not “ready” for publication. A flurry of leaks then ensued, including an internal email from Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent on the story. Alfonsi asserted it had been fully reviewed and approved by the network’s standards and legal team, and that Weiss’s move was therefore “political,” “a betrayal,” and “corporate censorship.” Weiss’s own internal explanation then leaked : She insisted both that there was not enough new in the report and insisted it should include Trump officials giving an on-camera interview. “I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” she told the New York Times in a statement. Other criticisms she’d made internally about the piece were later leaked to Axios, and they boiled down to: not enough was done to explain the administration’s point of view. Behind Weiss’s move, her critics suspect, is an effort to please Larry and David Ellison, the father-and-son billionaires who helped purchase CBS’s parent company, Paramount, earlier this year. The Ellisons subsequently bought Weiss’s publication, the Free Press, making her very rich , and installed her atop a pillar of the mainstream media despite her lack of any experience in TV news. The Ellisons are hoping the Trump administration will intervene to help them pull off another media mega-deal . The problem is that President Donald Trump has been very vocal about his unhappiness with 60 Minutes ’s recent coverage of his administration - he’s insisted it’s gotten worse since the Ellisons took it over. The implied quid pro quo seems obvious: shape coverage of Trump more to his liking, or say goodbye to your media mega-deal. Yet there’s also a throughline that connects Weiss’s behavior here with her longstanding editorial line toward Trump - epitomized in the approach of the Free Press. That publication frequently runs criticisms of the Trump administration. But, typically, it tries to make sure it is done in a delicate and careful way, with sensitivity toward how its right-wing audience would receive it and care not to trigger them. That is, when it...

Preview: ~500 words