Tim Graham devoted his Dec. 24 column to keeping up the corporate cheering that CBS News chief Bari Weiss pulled the plug on a “60 Minutes” segment about the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador:
CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi raged against the network’s Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss when she delayed her story on how the Trump administration deported illegal immigrants from Venezuela to a “notorious” prison in El Salvador. Weiss wanted more reporting and more rebuttal from the Trump administration in it.
“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,” Alfonsi complained in a memo leaked to the media. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
The targets of a story shouldn’t have a veto, but it’s not unreasonable to let them rebut “notorious” allegations. The hilarious piece of this argument is that 60 Minutes deserves the term “investigative powerhouse.”
Actually, Graham is very much demanding that the targets of the CECOT story be granted a veto, which they exercised through Weiss. He also offered no evidence that CECOT hasn’t earned its “notorious” reputation. After a lot of whataboutism, Graham concluded:
This is why they are offended by the oversight of Bari Weiss. She represents those repulsive people who expect some fraction of balance or fairness from CBS. They don’t want any “corporate interference” in the machinations of their propaganda factory.
“Propaganda factory”? Graham should take a hard look at its own partisan operations, which much better fits that term than anything on CBS.
Later that day, Graham had a fit of Stelter Derangement Syndrome:
When someone in the elitist media is accused of a pro-Trump bias, PBS News Hour won’t consider having on any conservative media critics (like NewsBusters) to discuss it. Instead, they routinely turn to CNN’s Brian Stelter to echo their thoughts on how the media should maintain a fierce anti-Trump bias.
On Monday night, PBS host William Brangham asked this unintentionally funny question: “In your view, as a media analyst and critic, does it feel like a lopsided piece of journalism or does it feel like it lives up to 60 Minutes’ normal standards?”
Lopsided liberalism is their normal standard! Stelter implied it, that being fiercely anti-Trump is normal:
[…]Bari Weiss has been an opinion editor at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, but Brangham implied to PBS viewers that she’s not a journalist! Where are the fact checkers?
Graham offered no evidence that Weiss’ opinion-mongering makes her a “journalist.” He went on to grumble:
Notice how they complain about “political pressure tainting the journalism,” as if the least political journalism is the most aggressively biased journalism. They don’t mind political pressure from the left, that doesn’t “taint” anything. But conservative pressure? It’s….a cancer?
Is Graham denying that right-wing activists like himself don’t pressure the media to be more right-wing? That’s laughable.
Graham devoted his Dec. 26 podcast to whining about all of this:
The leftists inside CBS News clearly despise new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who threatens to add troublesome balance to their “news.” The war erupted when Weiss delayed the latest 60 Minutes hit piece on Team Trump deporting Venezuelans into a “notorious” Salvadoran prison. Delaying it is a “crisis,” the Trump-haters screamed, a “death knell for democracy.”
Reporter Sharyn Alfonsi assembled what we could guess was a typical hit piece on the “notorious” CECOT prison in El Salvador that temporarily held illegal migrant cause celebre Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. When it was delayed at the last minute, The Wall Street Journal reported a combative note from Alfonsi to fellow 60 Minutes staffers that quickly leaked to the media, where she said her segment was being held for political reasons, not editorial ones. Alfonsi said Weiss had “spiked” the story and not given her a chance to discuss it further.
It is certainly a serious subject when the Trump administration not merely deported illegal immigrants, but deported them directly into a prison. That can certainly be questioned. We can question why it was that Weiss couldn’t delay this story until the promos had already been sent out. Team Alfonsi not only leaked to the papers, but I think we can guess they got their story posted in Canada through Global TV, which has the rights to air 60 Minutes in Canada. so that all their super-fans could see it.
Don’t look for Graham or anyone else at the MRC to question Trump’s actions — that’s not their job, which is to be an uncritical cheerleader. And again, Graham failed to offer any evidence that CECOT has not earned its “notorious” status. He went on to grouse that the segment wasn’t right-wing enough:
We’ve seen it, and the best we can about it is this: It’s like all the other hatchet jobs that 60 Minutes has launched against Team Trump in 2025. If it had aired, it might not have caused as much of a ripple outside its natural audience. Make no mistake: to use Brian Stelter’s lingo, it “centered” the story on illegal immigrants and their allegations of torture and sexual assault. It was intended to suggest Trump sent innocent men into “Hell,” the term of art CBS used, even though these people aren’t generally religious.
Graham then played more whataboutism, grousing that “60 Minutes” wouldn’t stick to subjects that please right-wing activists like himself:
If you think 60 Minutes ever wanted to ponder the Hell endured by Laken Riley, by Rachel Morin, by Jocelyn Nungaray, and other people murdered by illegal aliens, think again. They never want to center the negatives about illegal immigration. The illegal immigrant in general, or in specific like Kilmar, have been centered all year long. They are automatically, let’s joke autocratically awarded Sympathetic Victim Status. The Border Patrol and ICE are perpetually the villains of these stories.
Alfonso and her crew didn’t want to put a Trump aide like Stephen Miller into this story. Why? Because they don’t want an energetic rebuttal, where someone might cast aspersions on illegal aliens or worse yet, on CBS for making Fake News. Alfonsi could not abide Weiss wanting a Trump official to comment: “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…. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote.
This statement’s hilarious, considering Pelley put aside “investigative powerhouse” to “stenographer” in two puffball interviews with President Biden, not to mention Alfonsi’s own puddle of goo over student activists like David Hogg at Parkland High School. If Alfonsi wants to trash Weiss for curtailing her speech, she could review her 60 Minutes piece hailing the Germans for cracking down on free speech on the internet.
Needless to say, Graham censored any response Alfonsi might have to his attacks on her.
A few weeks later, “60 Minutes” aired the segment in question with only minor alterations, none of which materially changed the allegations made in the piece. Even the MRC’s Houck admitted that the piece “was nearly identical to the one Weiss held up last month.”