Rising This Week: An Unmuzzled New Year
Clumsy attempts at government and corporate censorship crumble as a vigilant U.S. public noisily guards our freedom into the new year.
Wishing you health, happiness, freedom and justice in 2026.
The decision by CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss to spike the powerful “60 Minutes” segment on the torture of migrants titled “Inside CECOT” felt personal.
It’s not only because of my respect and admiration for friends and colleagues inside CBS News or that Weiss sought to retroactively justify her act of censorship by impugning the fairness, hard work, and professionalism of the network’s talented roster.
“60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi captured the gut punch of the network’s action in a leaked memo:
“These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”
Any journalist who has earned the trust of sources who spoke on the record at great personal risk understands the depth of that betrayal.
Roughly five years ago, I joined a team of international investigative reporters looking into the origins of a multibillion-dollar money laundering scheme implicating the Turkish government. A key witness to that conspiracy who helped courier suitcases full of cash across international borders eventually decided to speak to us on the record, knowing the risks of his damning comments in a country run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The government is in on it,” he told us, handing us our headline.
It’s difficult to fathom the betrayal had the news organizations participating in that investigation decided to tease our story, expose the source in a trailer, and ultimately not run it as planned. The men who spoke to “60 Minutes” took great risk to implicate multiple governments who violated their rights and freedoms by subjecting them to torture.
Weiss, an opinion journalist, seemed to show no concern for the responsibilities her reporters felt to their sources.
Insisting that she didn’t spike the story, Weiss claims that she merely delayed its broadcast because the segment wasn’t ready. “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom,” she wrote in a statement. That’s true as a general statement. Every journalist has experienced the temporary frustration of an editor holding a story that ultimately benefits from additional reporting, but it’s not a credible explanation for delaying the release of “Inside CECOT.”
If the decision were driven by high-minded editorial ideals, one would expect an editor to make such a drastic decision in consultation with her reporters and with a plan to meaningfully improve the story. Neither applies here. An effective editor is engaged, inquisitive, communicative, and draws from a wealth of experience to suit the talents of the reporter and the needs of the story. By all accounts, Weiss pulled the story at the last minute without any communication with her staff. Correspondent Scott Pelley said that she skipped five advance screenings, and Alfonsi said Weiss never extended the “courtesy” of a phone call her to discuss the decision.
Weiss’s memo with her “specific guidance” about how to supposedly advance the story is filled with absurdities as well as factual and legal errors.
She prompts the reporters to learn whether the Trump administration or its defenders “regret” their use of the Alien Enemies Act in light of accounts of torture at El Salvador’s CECOT prison. “That’s a question that I would like to see asked and answered,” Weiss wrote. This is a recipe for a wild goose chase: to survey a uniquely remorseless administration for contrition. How long should producers search for an elusive expression of regret — and why is that an important question, let alone one worth a last-minute hold on a story about torture?
In another paragraph, Weiss exposes her ignorance about the legal and factual background of the story that she censored. She ultimately instructs “60 Minutes” to report Trump administration-friendly errors:
“The admin argued in court that the detainees are due ‘judicial review’ — and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here.”
As a factual matter, there isn’t a genuine debate on this topic.
The Supreme Court settled the debate 9-0 in a unanimous ruling in April finding that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of the men whisked away to CECOT. The government’s argument was predicated on denying judicial review to the men by sending them to El Salvador without notice or a hearing and then arguing that they had no recourse once they were in a foreign prison. The errors in Weiss’s instructions should put to bed any pretensions that her decision was motivated by editorial considerations. (Read a full legal debunking on Just Security.)
In her memo, Alfonsi noted: “When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship.”
At the time, Weiss may not have known that the network packaged the segment for distribution to the Canadian company Global TV, where international viewers managed to record, salvage and disseminate it. Since CBS News sent cease and desist notices to every YouTube channel where it cropped up, the true numbers are hard to tally, but it seems clear that the bootlegged version reached a wide audience.
Weiss vowed to air “Inside CECOT” when it is “ready.”
The public will be able to see for itself whether it has been meaningfully improved or loaded with administration-friendly lies and misinformation.
The intrusion into the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” marks a dramatic example of the degradation of U.S. media institutions in the Trump 2.0 era.
Alfonsi compared it to the low point of “60 Minutes,” the spiking of an interview with whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand under threats of litigation by Big Tobacco. That scandal was shocking and unprecedented enough to inspire Michael Mann’s excellent film “The Insider,” starring Al Pacino as producer Lowell Bergman and Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace. Actor Russell Crowe played Wigand, the whistleblower.
The film’s enduring power speaks to the revulsion against censorship in the land of the First Amendment.
In 2025, the public and the judiciary repeatedly fought back against the forces of government and corporate muzzling. ABC reinstated Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show after nationwide protests, calling campaigns and boycotts of the network and media conglomerates Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting. The episode marked a repudiation of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission attack dog Brendan Carr, who openly threatened networks for broadcasting speech his boss didn’t like.
Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) compared Carr’s antics to the mafia’s.
Several courts put the kibosh on attempts to deport student activists based on their speech, rebuking a policy by Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a violation of the First Amendment.
The people of the United States do not like government officials and corporate conglomerates telling them what information and opinions they cannot hear. Those actions fueled historic protests and a renaissance in independent media. Rapidly consolidating media conglomerates cannot control the flow of information. Many journalists with established careers have made the jump into autonomous and entrepreneurial waters. Today’s news media is more diffuse, diverse and ungovernable.
The free press remains, in Trump’s words, “insubordinate.”
As the new year approaches, the ball will drop in Times Square to rambunctious crowds. Some will mark the occasion quietly indoors. Others will attend wild celebrations.
Whatever the volume of our festivities, let’s stay noisy in defense of a free society into the new year.
Below the paywall:
The last major First Amendment battle of the year heads to federal court.
Also: Another under-reported story this holiday news cycle.
