News Beat
‘Morning Joe’ shreds Bari Weiss for spiking ‘60 Minutes’ segment: She’s ‘cosplaying’ as a journalist
After CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss set off a full-blown crisis and sparked a “revolt” at her network by yanking a 60 Minutes segment on the notorious CECOT prison at the last minute, the hosts and pundits at Morning Joe tore into her for “cosplaying” as a journalist and “poisoning the well” at CBS.
“Not good at all,” co-anchor Joe Scarborough exclaimed while his colleagues called Weiss’ decision “uncommon” and “unusual.”
Just hours before 60 Minutes was scheduled to air a story on El Salvador’s infamous mega-prison complex, which the Trump administration had sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants as part of its mass deportation campaign, the network announced that the segment had been pulled.
That decision, which had been made by Weiss over the weekend, prompted CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi – the lead reporter on the story – to send a blistering email to her colleagues defending the segment while criticizing the move to postpone the broadcast. Alfonsi also claimed Weiss would not explain her rationale at the time.
“We [producer Oriana Zill de Granados and herself] asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity,” Alfonsi wrote, adding that the “story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys” and the network’s Standards and Practices unit.
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“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,” she noted.
Weiss, the “anti-woke” founder of The Free Press who was installed as CBS News’ leader by Paramount chair David Ellison in October, defended her decision in a Sunday night statement and during an editorial call Monday morning.
After insisting on Sunday evening that “holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom,” Weiss on Monday appeared to bristle over the public leak of Alfonsi’s scathing email. At the same time, she doubled down on her reason for spiking the story, which was due to the White House not participating when reached for comment.
“We need to be able 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 declared on Monday. “And that is my North Star, and I hope it’s the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”
With Weiss coming under fire from both CBS News staffers and media observers, the flagship morning show of MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) took aim at the controversial CBS News editor, calling into question her journalistic credentials.
Weiss, who was an opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times before launching The Free Press a few years ago, had no broadcast journalism experience before Ellison tapped her as editor-in-chief (and purchased The Free Press for $150 million) this past fall.
The Morning Joe panel noted that this cancellation happened just as Donald Trump has once again started attacking 60 Minutes, all while Ellison is looking to curry favor with the president amid his hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump, who had previously gushed over Ellison and Weiss as “great people,” has since grumbled that the new Paramount leadership is “no better” than the old owners.
“So here you have David Ellison wanting Donald Trump to get in the way, and he said so after the Netflix deal was announced, he said, ‘Oh, the White House will never approve this.’ Or something along those lines,” Scarborough said. “And then Donald Trump attacked 60 Minutes twice. This story is promoted on Friday. And then it is spiked on Saturday because the White House decides they’re not going to give a comment.”
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Co-host Jonathan Lemire, meanwhile, said that it was “uncommon” to pull the plug that late in the process, especially when it was obvious “the piece was done and ready” and the only issue – according to Weiss – was that the White House didn’t have their voice in the story.
“You know, it’s often the administration doesn’t have comment,” Lemire stated. “This is something that was edited and promoted. The fact that video footage aired, that is so unusual that they would then pull this down.”
While Scarborough and spouse/co-anchor Mika Brzezinski defended 60 Minutes’ “rigorous” editorial process, pointing out that the segment had been screened multiple times before it was set to air, Morning Joe regular Pablo Torre was unsparing in his criticism of Weiss.
“Billionaires are compromising the most important journalistic institutions we have left in this country,” Torre declared. “The game is obvious, and in this case, Bari Weiss, who was, by the way, not a reporter, not a journalist, is cosplaying as one and is poisoning the well of one of the last bastions of investigative reporting that gets funded.”
After Brzezinski interjected to applaud Alfonsi as a “very good reporter,” Torre noted that it appeared the CBS News journalist had sent her email to colleagues to keep a record of Weiss’ own misdeeds.
“And Sharyn Alfonsi is writing it down, saying, just for posterity, this is what’s going on,” he concluded.
