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"Newsroom culture clash" at CBS News

Stephen Miller wants the 60 Minutes producer fired. Of course he does.



That video is all Sharyn needs to satisfy Bari Weiss. That's the administration's response to the piece. Fire everyone.

Give the context: We reached out for comment, they didn't get back to us, but they said this on Fox News about our reporting.

He appeared on Fox News two days before Christmas to demand everyone get fired. Nice Christmas wishes. Put him on TV every day.
 
The white house claims it sent a statement that CBS didn't use in their story:


WH spokesperson Abigail Jackson said “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.”

OK fine. So now they'll use it and the Stephen Miller video, and everyone will be happy with the result.

If they don't, then we know there's more to the story, and we'll wait for comments from Alfonsi and the rest.
 
Stephen Miller wants the 60 Minutes producer fired. Of course he does.



That video is all Sharyn needs to satisfy Bari Weiss. That's the administration's response to the piece. Fire everyone.

Give the context: We reached out for comment, they didn't get back to us, but they said this on Fox News about our reporting.

He appeared on Fox News two days before Christmas to demand everyone get fired. Nice Christmas wishes. Put him on TV every day.
Miller, screaming: "Fire them or I have a spot in CECOT for you!" Yeah, I remember after Charlie Kirk's death, Miller screaming that every Democratic official and voter needed to be arrested for murder.
 

Here is more details on the Ellisons and their role in making that final decision with Bari Weiss to pull 60 Minutes segment in question.

If the Ellisons prevail, their business empire could range from CNN to Warner Bros. to TikTok. That could have enormous consequences for the news and entertainment industries, perhaps making the Ellisons as influential as the Murdochs, whose media dynasty operates Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and other major outlets.

Mr. Trump has privately said Larry Ellison assured him that he would turn CBS News, which the Ellisons took over when they bought Paramount, into a more conservative outlet, two people with knowledge of the president’s comments said.On Sunday night, a “60 Minutes” correspondent accused David Ellison’s handpicked editor in chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, of making a “political” decision to hold a story about Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration. Ms. Weiss told colleagues on a call on Monday that she had held the segment because it “wasn’t ready.”

Here is the Memo Sharyn Alfonsi made to the staff that was with her for the CECOT story. Hope all of the crew members assigned to cover CECOT with Sharyn Alfonsi the best of luck this Christmas and to 2026 even if it means they have to leave CBS News to get away from the political interference coming from Bari Weiss and the Ellisons.
 
CBS News isn't hiding from this story or killing the reporting of the Bari Weiss decision. When your company becomes part of the story, you report it:


This is what they should be doing. Putting it all out there for the public to see.
 
Bari Weiss sent another memo to the organization on Wednesday. It's interesting that it hasn't gotten much attention. That's probably because it didn't say anything new. The link below includes the entire memo.


Pull quote:

No amount of outrage—whether from activist organizations or the White House—will derail us. We are not out to score points with one side of the political spectrum or to win followers on social media. We are out to inform the American public and to get the story right.

Restoring the integrity of the news is a difficult task. We can't think of a more important one.

I would not call this an attempt to address the controversy, but an attempt to dismiss it.

The attempt to minimize the criticism by attributing it to "activist organizations" is disingenuous. Saying that she's there to "restore the integrity of the news" reads like she's insulting her staff. Happy Holidays!
 
Bari Weiss sent another memo to the organization on Wednesday. It's interesting that it hasn't gotten much attention. That's probably because it didn't say anything new. The link below includes the entire memo.

[...]

The attempt to minimize the criticism by attributing it to "activist organizations" is disingenuous. Saying that she's there to "restore the integrity of the news" reads like she's insulting her staff. Happy Holidays!
She apparently knows enough to release that kind of embarrassment on Christmas Eve, where it will get buried under a blizzard of weather stories.
 
Bari Weiss sent another memo to the organization on Wednesday. It's interesting that it hasn't gotten much attention. That's probably because it didn't say anything new. The link below includes the entire memo.


Pull quote:



I would not call this an attempt to address the controversy, but an attempt to dismiss it.

The attempt to minimize the criticism by attributing it to "activist organizations" is disingenuous. Saying that she's there to "restore the integrity of the news" reads like she's insulting her staff. Happy Holidays!
It's gotta be David Ellisons statement but Bari Weiss modified the same statement specific to CBS News in the memo in the link. It's like when Linda Yancarro ran X as their CEO and whenever she says anything at X we had to assume Elon Musk made those statements.
 
By the way, for those following along---60 Minutes did not do fresh opens and closes this past Sunday. It instead aired a program-length segment on whiskey under the banner "60 Minutes Presents". Bill Whittaker did the opens and closes and the CECOT piece was not mentioned.


Because of course it wasn't.
 
By the way, for those following along---60 Minutes did not do fresh opens and closes this past Sunday. It instead aired a program-length segment on whiskey under the banner "60 Minutes Presents". Bill Whittaker did the opens and closes and the CECOT piece was not mentioned.


Because of course it wasn't.
I’ve mentioned before on this thread. I think this has more so to do with Ellison getting ripped on truth social. I feel David asked Bari to hold off on the piece. After this, I don’t see CBS ever airing the story
 
By the way, for those following along---60 Minutes did not do fresh opens and closes this past Sunday. It instead aired a program-length segment on whiskey under the banner "60 Minutes Presents". Bill Whittaker did the opens and closes and the CECOT piece was not mentioned.

Because of course it wasn't.
I had tried to record it off my "Hauppage!" PC tuner but the recording function failed. (I rarely use it, so it could have been user error.) In any event, I'm not surprised. I will be surprised if the CECOT piece ever is aired or even mentioned. We're used to thinking journalistic organizations act in good faith in evaluating stories. Under an oligarchic regime, those assumptions are no longer valid.
 



The AP and Reuters got the full story on CECOT going back to April 2025 way before Bari Weiss became the chief editor of CBS News and the Ellisons became CEO of Paramount Skydance. If 60 Minutes does not want to run the segment in question then at least we have the AP and Reuters to do the story.
 
Respectfully, many outlets cover important issues and topics that other outlets cover.
It’s not “either/or.” Moreover, video has a particularly powerful impact, well-suited to this type of story. 60 Minutes can garner more attention than the wire-service stories can, plus the added distribution across CBS Sports platforms. It is not a knock on either the AP or Reuters to say what they have done, and it is good work, mitigates the actions at CBS.
 
Respectfully, many outlets cover important issues and topics that other outlets cover.
It’s not “either/or.” Moreover, video has a particularly powerful impact, well-suited to this type of story. 60 Minutes can garner more attention than the wire-service stories can, plus the added distribution across CBS Sports platforms. It is not a knock on either the AP or Reuters to say what they have done, and it is good work, mitigates the actions at CBS.

And I would add (and Michael Hagerty pointed this out earlier) that a whole lot more people watch "60 Minutes," than read stories from Reuters and other reputable news sources. The current U.S. president knows this and is counting on this behavior to keep the story from getting to a majority of the U.S. audience.

One thing that might work (though I bet Bari Weiss, the U.S. president, and David and Larry Ellison would fight it like hell) would be if the story's reporter shopped the story to PBS and got say, "Frontline" to air it. It most likely won't happen, of course, for the reasons cited above but it would be a wonderful spit in the eye to Mr. Ellison, Mr. Trump, and Mr. Miller if it actually did...
 
And I would add (and Michael Hagerty pointed this out earlier) that a whole lot more people watch "60 Minutes," than read stories from Reuters and other reputable news sources. The current U.S. president knows this and is counting on this behavior to keep the story from getting to a majority of the U.S. audience.

One thing that might work (though I bet Bari Weiss, the U.S. president, and David and Larry Ellison would fight it like hell) would be if the story's reporter shopped the story to PBS and got say, "Frontline" to air it. It most likely won't happen, of course, for the reasons cited above but it would be a wonderful spit in the eye to Mr. Ellison, Mr. Trump, and Mr. Miller if it actually did...
Even if PBS Newshour and PBS Frontline got the pulled story that was originally heading to 60 Minutes we would end up with Chairman Carr going after WGBH-TV and WETA-TV’s license over something very important like CECOT and human rights issues surrounding the story. It would require a non US media outlet like BBC, CBC to run that segment uncensored and that the Ellisons, Bari Weiss, The FCC and the White House can’t interfere with another country’s news outlet.

Here’s PBS Newshour running a segment on the pulled story back in April 2025 saying the same stuff the wire services covered.


 


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