CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled a finished 60 Minutes segment titled "Inside CECOT" just three hours before broadcast. The segment, reported by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, featured interviews with Venezuelan men describing torture, sexual abuse, and beatings at El Salvador's CECOT prison after being deported there by the President Trump administration. Alfonsi said the segment had been screened five times and cleared by CBS lawyers and Standards and Practices. She accused Weiss of spiking it for "political" reasons, writing in an internal memo: "The public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship." The segment accidentally aired in Canada and went viral. It finally aired nearly a month later on January 19, 2026.
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Weiss claimed the segment needed more administration voices, but Alfonsi argued the government's refusal to comment cannot become a veto over critical journalism. This came as CBS's parent company Paramount Global was pursuing a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery requiring federal regulatory approval. Weiss was installed as editor-in-chief after the Paramount-Skydance merger, part of a series of changes critics say were made to appease the administration.