Bari Weiss Halts "60 Minutes" Hit Piece on Trump Over Sending Criminal Illegals to El Salvador, Saying Further Reporting and Context is Required; The Left Freaks Out

It's the same kind of entitlement that the hard-left progressives and communists infesting the federal bureaucracy have: It doesn't matter who the president is, it doesn't matter what his policies are, it doesn't matter if America voted for those policies -- they're the ones in charge. They own the place. Leftists are appointed by Nature to rule over all other men.

And the staffers, employees, and underlings at CBS "news" don't care that their leftwing agitprop business model has failed so badly that their corporations are being sold out from under them at a deep discount. Bari Weiss's position as Editor in Chief doesn't matter -- they are entitled to run the show.

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss defended her decision to pull a controversial "60 Minutes" segment on an El Salvador prison, telling staff Monday the piece "wasn't ready" and needed more reporting -- pushing back on accusations that the last-minute move was politically motivated.

Weiss addressed the backlash during a network-wide editorial call, saying she held the segment because "we simply need to do more," according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

"I held a '60 Minutes' story and I held that story because it wasn't ready," Weiss told CBS News staffers on Monday. When reached by The Post, CBS News confirmed the accuracy of the Journal's reporting.

Weiss said the story "has already been reported on by places like the [New York] Times, the public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more."

She said the only newsroom she wants to run is one where editors can have "contentious disagreements" while assuming "the best intent" of colleagues -- an implicit criticism of "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

"The only newsroom that I'm interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect and crucially where we assume the best intent of our colleagues," Weiss said on the editorial call on Monday.

Alfonsi blasted the decision in a Sunday email to top correspondents, writing that she learned just a day earlier that Weiss had "spiked our story" and arguing the move was political, not editorial.

That's a laugh. Every story 60 Minutes runs -- or chooses not to run -- is political. They did no stories on Biden's mental decline, for example, nor any negative stories on Obama, Biden, or Hillary Clinton.

But they choose to run hit-piece after hit-piece on Trump.

These are choices, and they're animated by political animus. But they insist that they have access to an Objective Holy Standard of Newsworthiness that you wouldn't understand -- and neither would professional journalist Bari Weiss.

Your facts are opinions, their opinions are facts.

Just like your speech is violence, and their violence is speech.

...

"Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," Alfonsi wrote, according to the Times.

As someone at Hot Air pointed out, the RatherGate forgeries passed your attorneys, too.

All it takes to avoid a defamation suit when making allegations about a public figure is no provable malice.

Note that CBS "news" staffers take the position that a story doesn't have to be true and accurate to run. It merely has to not be provably defamatory.

By the way, 60 Minutes has already done this story. And they'll do it a dozen times more unless they're told they are supposed to be "journalists," not DNC staffers.

...

Weiss rejected Alfonsi's characterization during the morning call on Monday, saying the prison conditions had already been reported by the Times and others and that airing a similar story months later required additional reporting, including making "every effort" to get key principals on the record and on camera.

"To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else," Weiss said on Monday.

"That is my North Star and I hope it's the North Star of every person in this newsroom."

It's not. They're political actors with a political agenda.

Note that that last report claims that CECOT is back in the news because "interest in CECOT is spiking." This is a typical media lie. Interest -- meaning public interest, general interest -- isn't "spiking." The passive verb is deliberately chosen to obscure the actual actor -- the left-wing Democrat media is pushing the story again. "Interest" is not organically "spiking." Left-wing propagandists are pushing the story again, with nothing new to add to the story, to inflame the public as part of a political op.

Hello! How are you?! I missed you over the past three days.

The computer is connecting to wifi now. But I disconnected from the internet for most of the weekend. I'm seeing pictures of Bill Clinton in a pool. What's the context? Is Bill Clinton just getting into shape and encouraging Americans to swim?

I see him getting massages too. Is he raising awareness about rotator cuff health and maintenance?

posted by Ace at 12:27 PM

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