Getty Images for The Free Press Staffers have taken to calling it “Black Thursday.”
On May 28, a half-dozen senior producers and correspondents at “60 Minutes,” the longest-running and highest-rated news program in the country, were unceremoniously shown the door. Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, were among them. The firings were carried out by Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, who’d clashed with Alfonsi in December over her “60 Minutes” report “Inside CECOT,” which told the stories of Venezuelan migrants who’d suffered horrific abuse at an El Salvadoran prison after being deported there by the Trump administration. Weiss pulled the piece hours before it was set to air, demanding it include the perspective of Stephen Miller or another high-ranking Trump official. In an email to her colleagues, Alfonsi said she’d already made multiple requests to officials for comment, and that Weiss’ move was “not an editorial decision, it was a political one.” She added, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
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