By Isabella Simonetti and Joe Flint
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss addressed her controversial decision to pull a "60 Minutes" segment over the weekend, saying Monday that the story wasn't ready for publication and "we simply need to do more."
"The only newsroom that I'm interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect and crucially where we assume the best intent of our colleagues," Weiss said on the network's morning editorial call Monday, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
"And anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you," she said.
The decision to pull the segment on an El Salvador maximum-security prison where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants drew sharp criticism from one of the network's most high profile correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi. The segment was promoted last week and slated to run Sunday.
Alfonsi said in a Sunday email to fellow correspondents including Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper that she learned Saturday that Weiss "spiked our story." Alfonsi said the last-minute change was, in her view, a political decision, rather than an editorial call, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Journal.
CBS has said it would air the segment in a future broadcast.
"I held a '60 Minutes' story and I held that story because it wasn't ready," Weiss said. She said the story "has already been reported on by places like the Times, the public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more."
Weiss said it was important to make "every effort" to get "the principals" on the record and on camera.
"To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else, " Weiss said. "That is my North Star and I hope it's the North Star of every person in this newsroom."
Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com and Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 22, 2025 09:52 ET (14:52 GMT)
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