60 Minutes episode on brutal El Salvador prison, pulled from air by CBS, appears online; The Guardian, December 23, 2025

Jenna Amatulli , The Guardian; 60 Minutes episode on brutal El Salvador prison, pulled from air by CBS, appears online

"Alfonsi notes the poor conditions in the prison, showing images of half-dressed men with shaved heads all lined up in rows in front of bunks stacked four high. The bunks have no pillows or pads or blankets. The lights are kept on 24 hours a day and detainees have no access to clean water.

Alfonsi pointed to a 2023 report from the state department that “cited torture and life-threatening prison conditions” in Cecot, she said: “But this year, during a meeting with President Bukele at the White House, President Trump expressed admiration for El Salvador’s prison system,” before airing footage of Trump saying: “They make great facilities. Very strong facilities. They don’t play games.”

The segment also talks to Juan Pappier, deputy director at Human Rights Watch, who helped write an 81-page report that detailed Cecot’s pattern of “systematic torture” and found that nearly half the men in the prison did not actually have a criminal history. Pappier said the study was based on information obtained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s own records. Alfonsi confirmed that 60 Minutes independently corroborated Human Rights Watch’s claims.

William Losada Sánchez, a Venezuelan national and former Cecot inmate, also describes to Alfonsi what it was like to get sent to “the island” – a punishment room where prisoners would be sent if they could not comply with being forced to sit on their knees for 24 hours a day.

“The island is a little room where there’s no light, no ventilation, nothing. It’s a cell for punishment where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us,” he said.

The segment briefly touches on Kristi Noem’s visit to Cecot. Pinto claims the Department of Homeland Security secretary did not speak to a single detainee during her visit...

Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator, shared the episode online, saying: “Take a few minutes to watch what they didn’t want you to see. This story should be told.”"

‘60 Minutes’ Report Was Pulled Off the Air. Now It’s on the Internet.; The New York Times, December 23, 2025

Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times ; '60 Minutes’ Report Was Pulled Off the Air. Now It’s on the Internet.

"CBS News caused a controversy after it pulled a report from Sunday’s episode of the long-running news program that featured the stories of Venezuelan men who were deported by the Trump administration to a brutal prison in El Salvador. But the 13-minute segment, as originally edited by “60 Minutes” staff members, soon surfaced online in full.

The last-minute change had already set off a political firestorm. Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, said she postponed the segment because its reporting was flawed and incomplete. Her critics — including the “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, Sharyn Alfonsi — saw it as an attempt by CBS to placate the administration. CBS is owned by David Ellison, a technology heir who is trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that needs federal regulatory approval.

Now the viewing public can draw its own conclusions. After a Canadian television network briefly posted the video on its streaming app on Monday, copies were quickly downloaded and widely shared on social media."

Bari Weiss yanking a 60 Minutes story is censorship by oligarchy; The Guardian, December 23, 2025

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian; Bari Weiss yanking a 60 Minutes story is censorship by oligarchy

"One tries to give people the benefit of the doubt. But now, when it comes to Bari Weiss as the editor in chief of CBS News, there is no longer any doubt.

A broadcast-news neophyte, Weiss has no business in that exalted role. She proved that beyond any remaining doubt last weekend, pulling a powerful and important piece of journalism just days before it was due to air, charging that it wasn’t ready. Whatever her claims about the story’s supposed flaws, this looks like a clear case of censorship-by-editor to protect the interests of powerful, rich and influential people.

The 60 Minutes piece – about the brutal conditions at an El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has sent Venezuelan migrants without due process – had already been thoroughly edited, fact-checked and sent through the network’s standards desk and its legal department. The story was promoted and scheduled, and trailers for it were getting millions of views.

I’m less bothered by the screw-ups in this situation – for example, the segment is already all over the internet as, essentially, a Canadian bootleg – than I am by her apparent willingness to use her position to protect the powerful and take care of business for the oligarchy. Which appears to be precisely what she was hired to do.

Journalism is supposed to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”, but Weiss seems to have it backwards.

I can’t know what’s in her mind, of course, but I know her actions – her gaslighting about how it would be such a disservice to the public to publish this supposedly incomplete piece, and her ridiculous offer to provide a storied reporting staff with a couple of phone numbers of highly placed Trump officials."

MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Goes Silent on Axed ‘60 Minutes’ Segment; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

Josh Fiallo , The Daily Beast; MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Goes Silent on Axed ‘60 Minutes’ Segment

"Discussion of the growing 60 Minutes controversy was conspicuously absent from a CBS editorial meeting on Tuesday morning.

The network’s MAGA-curious new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who personally spiked a segment critical of the Trump administration that was set to air Sunday night, was on the call but did not address the now-viral report that a Canadian affiliate mistakenly aired...

Although it did not receive its primetime Sunday evening slot, the 14-minute segment still reached a global audience after the Canadian broadcaster Global TV mistakenly published the episode on its streaming app. 

The clip has repeatedly been hit with copyright strikes on YouTube and other social media platforms, but it keeps popping back up on X, BlueSky, and Substack."

Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada; Axios, December 22, 2025

Sara Fischer , Axios; Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada

[Kip Currier: CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss "knows her assignment": run editorial interference for oligarch Paramount Skydance tech baron bosses Larry and David Ellison (who own CBS) and the Trump 2.0 administration.

In one of the first major tests of Weiss's censorial assignment, she has both succeeded and failed: (1) blocking the airing of a damning 60 Minutes segment set to hear on December 21, 2025 on the human rights and due process violations of the Trump 2.0 administration in deporting detainees to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison gulag, and (2) unsuccessfully stopping the blocked video from leaking to Canada and the San Francisco-based Internet Archive.]

[Excerpt]

"The "60 Minutes" segment pulled from air by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss did not include new comments from Trump administration officials, according to a copy of the segment viewed by Axios.

Why it matters: The segment, anchored by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, caused uproar internally over whether it was pulled for political reasons. 

• The package was distributed via an app owned by Global Television which airs "60 Minutes" in Canada.

Zoom in: The segment included interviews with two people who were imprisoned at CECOT, an executive from the nonprofit Human Rights Watch and the director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center Investigations Lab.

• One college student, who was detained by U.S. customs before getting deported to CECOT, describes being tortured upon arrival. 
• 
  
• Another man told Alfonsi that he and others were taken to "a little room where there's no light, no ventilation, nothing."
• 
  
• "It's a cell for punishment where you can't see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour, and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us while we were in there."
• 
  
• "60 Minutes" also said it reviewed available ICE data to confirm Human Rights Watch's findings that suggested only eight deported men had been sentenced for violent or potentially violent crimes.
• 
  

The other side: The segment ends with Alfonsi saying the Department of Homeland Security "declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request."

• The segment included previous comments made by President Trump, who said El Salvador's prison system has "very strong facilities, and they don't play games.""

CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

William Vaillancourt  , The Daily Beast; CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’

"The 60 Minutes story that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss abruptly pulled from the air on Sunday has been leaked—and the network is responding with copyright takedowns.

Canadian broadcaster Global TV aired the segment, which deals with Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. whom the Trump administration deported to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. Videos of the segment—in some instances, people recording their television screens—began circulating on Monday. But many didn’t last.

Paramount Skydance, CBS News’ parent company, began issuing a flurry of copyright notices on X, YouTube, and other platforms.

But the video was ultimately saved in the Internet Archive, among other places. 

In it, a Venezuelan college student who sought asylum in the U.S.—and says he has no criminal record—describes what happened to him at CECOT.

“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” Luis Munoz Pinto said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”"

CBS Boss’s ‘60 Minutes’ Intervention Backfires as Episode Leaks; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

William Vaillancourt , The Daily Beast ; CBS Boss’s ‘60 Minutes’ Intervention Backfires as Episode Leaks

"The 60 Minutes segment that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled from airing on Sunday has leaked.

The segment covers the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration sent some Venezuelan migrants. Canada’s Global TV aired the segment, according to CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, and it was later published elsewhere."

‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’; The New York Times, December 22, 2025

Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times ; ‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’

"CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”

But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”"