David Ellison has gotten precisely what he wanted after installing Bari Weiss as the head of CBS News: a pro-Trump, pro-Israel, anti-woke cheerleader with the thinnest veneer of liberal respectability. There’s only one wrinkle: everyone hates her.
It’s safe to say Weiss hasn’t had a great week. Her first big story for CBS was an interview with Erika Kirk, hardly a scoop, as it’s been difficult to escape Kirk across all forms of media since Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Viewing figures were terrible, and the interview embarrassing.
But now she may have sent the already skeptical CBS newsroom into open mutiny. 60 Minutes was ready to go on a long-in-development segment on the El Salvadoran torture prison CECOT, the destination to which the Trump administration is controversially sending people.
60 Minutes was all set to deliver what sounded like a genuinely newsworthy segment, including interviews with a group of Venezuelan men with firsthand experience of what it’s actually like inside CECOT. This is information the Trump administration would very much prefer you not know and, conveniently for them, you won’t!
What she was hired for
Yup, Weiss personally squashed the segment and replaced it with some fluff about classical musicians. CBS reporters are in uproar, with journalist Sharyn Alfonsi (who authored the segment) sending a furious email to her colleagues:
Here is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her ‘60 Minutes’ colleagues in full: pic.twitter.com/ilGoSROQEs
— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) December 22, 2025
Alfonsi confirms that Weiss killed the story without any consultation, that it had been rigorously fact-checked, that the Trump administration had been given an ample right-of-reply, and that this is abandoning sources who “risked their lives” to deliver the news. She continues:
“If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed”, then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes braodcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
She also vowed she won’t give up:
“… the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
Alfonsi can fight all she wants, but the depressing reality is that CBS News is part of Paramount Skydance, whose CEO is MAGA stalwart David Ellison and who headhunted Weiss specifically to do this stuff. The long-term plan is the Trumpification of most of America’s media landscape, with Ellison’s next target being CNN as part of his bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
If you control the news, you control the narrative. And right now, that narrative is being written by unaccountable MAGA billionaires.
Published: Dec 22, 2025 05:46 am