We’ve spent the better part of the morning of the MLK holiday reading all the “postgame” analysis of the decision over the weekend by CBS News, or more specifically, of its Editor-In-Chief, Bari Weiss, to air the delayed “60 Minutes” segment titled “Inside CECOT” from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and producer Oriana Zill de Granados.

The segment, detailing the horrific conditions inside the El Salvador prison where the United States deported over 270 Venezuelans to in March and April of 2025, was initially announced for broadcast back on December 21st of last year, but was pulled by Weiss at the last minute after it had been scheduled and even promoted. The decision came so late in the process that it was accidentally released by the Global network in Canada, which carries the CBS program there. Apparently, the full broadcast had been sent to Global, which, in turn, released it on its online app in error. It was picked up by various social media accounts, where it can still be found.

The segment that finally aired last night appears to be substantially the same as the one that Global posted, according to a Monday report in The New York Times. The only changes were evident in Alfonsi’s on-camera introduction and postscript to her segment, in which she seemingly included more detailed responses from the Trump administration, which paid over four million dollars to the country of El Salvador to take in Venezuelan deportees to the notorious CECOT prison.

What was evident to us is that despite Ms. Weiss’s famed contact list of who’s who in Washington’s power circles, there were no additional interviews added to the “60 Minutes” story that would have justified the abrupt December decision, which at the time Weiss said was necessary and stated, “I held the story because it wasn’t ready."

The story in the Times by Michael M. Grynbaum adds that Weiss still didn’t feel the story was ready, and that there were “tense negotiations” between the Editor-In-Chief and correspondent Alfonsi over additional changes that Weiss wanted in the main story. Alfonsi reportedly stood her ground and refused to make any further changes to the edited segment, which had been vetted and cleared back before the original December airdate.

For its part, the network released a statement Sunday about the CECOT story that said, “Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’s independence and the power of our storytelling."

On the same edition of “60 Minutes,” there was a segment from Cecilia Vega on the ongoing situation in Minneapolis. During it, the Chief of the Minneapolis Police Department flatly said that “it pisses him off,” after he was shown video of ICE agents forcibly removing and dragging a disabled and autistic woman from her car when she was trying to get to a doctor’s appointment on a blocked off street. The nationwide head of arrests and deportations for ICE, Marcos Charles, defended the incident (as well as everything ICE agents are doing), saying the woman was given repeated warnings before being arrested.

We’ll note that both of these stories from Vega and Alfonsi aired on a Sunday night that “60 Minutes” was airing opposite an earlier-than-usual Sunday night NFL divisional game featuring the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears. That probably diminished the total audience watching the news magazine by a significant amount.

This all occurred on the same Sunday that saw CBS News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan grill Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the tactics federal agents under her command were using in Minneapolis. While Noem denied that the agents were using the very tactics that a Federal judge ordered them not to continue using in Minneapolis, Brennan played video that proved her denial was utterly false. Noem then pivoted to dismissing the video by repeating her claim that “violent protestors” were impeding law enforcement operations and that innocent people wouldn’t be “caught up in the situation” if "protesters had been acting peacefully and law enforcement was able to do their job without being threatened."

All of this leads us to ask: Is Bari Weiss really in charge at CBS News? And if she is, what is she trying to accomplish?

If she and her newly installed anchor acolyte, Tony Dokoupil, are trying to move the network’s news division into being something far more palatable to the audience that finds the non-stop editorializing-posing-as-journalism on Fox News to be their preferred way to be informed, then frankly, she is doing a piss poor job of it.

Seems a bit telling to us that when the President of the United States demands, through his precocious mouthpiece of a press secretary, that CBS News better air the entire interview he did with anchorman Dokoupil last week or “we’ll sue your ass off” in her reciting of her boss’s words, and then you do exactly that? But you defend the move with this weak-ass statement to the New York Times: "The moment we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety."

To quote the timeless wisdom of TV’s Marcia Brady: “Sure, Jan."

If the leader of CBS News can’t get changes made to a story before it airs that she feels are necessary, or even order it kept off the air for a second time until those changes are made, then we have to wonder aloud who has the last word on editorial decisions.

If the New York Times report is accurate, we don’t understand why an argument by a reporter (Alfonsi) that making changes would "set a poor precedent for the program’s editorial independence” would be accepted as an answer.

Did Bari Weiss fold in this standoff with the notoriously self-righteous and isolated team at “60 Minutes”? Did she not review or offer any notes on the lead story from Minneapolis by Cecilia Vega? Is she even aware of what Margaret Brennan was doing the same Sunday down in Washington during “Face the Nation” in pushing back on Secretary Noem’s vomiting of excuses?

If the Editor-In-Chief of CBS News, who only reports to the Chairman of Paramount-Skydance, in the form of one David Ellison, can’t tell the people who work at CBS News what to do and when to do it, then just what the hell is going on over there?

When she started in her new position leading CBS News, it was widely reported that Bari Weiss was traveling in public with a group of bodyguards and that some of them stood outside of her newsroom office whenever she was in. Apparently, they are no longer as visible inside the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.

Maybe she has already been completely co-opted by the “too woke” culture there.

In this all-too-critical moment for truth, justice, and the American way, we can only hope for that improbable outcome.

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