60 Minutes will reportedly run the segment controversially yanked by Bari Weiss just before its planned airtime. But it will face tough timeslot competition.
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After much controversy,
60 Minutes — reportedly — will finally run the segment
yanked by Bari Weissright before its originally scheduled airdate. However, it will do so on a broadcast that is all but certain to get dismal ratings — as it faces stiff competition from an NFL playoff game.
According to
CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter, the postponed segment — which focuses on the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s high-security CECOT prison — will run on Sunday night’s edition of
60 Minutes, four weeks after its originally scheduled broadcast on Dec. 21. Weiss originally postponed the segment because she believed, “at present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT.” Correspondent
Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported on the story, was furious — slamming the move as a “political decision” and arguing that Weiss’s reasoning was flawed.
“Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story,” Alfonsi wrote, in an internal memo of her own. “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.”
But Stelter reports that while Alfonsi “was certainly reluctant to make changes to the original report,” she flew from Texas to DC on Thursday to interview a Trump administration official. But the interview “did not materialize,” according to Stelter. Still, the segment will air Sunday night.
