The Media Research Center has long had it in for “60 Minutes” for failing to be right-wing shills, and that continued by cheering that a correspondent on the show was dismissed in a May 27 post by Curtis Houck:
The New York Times made official Wednesday what Puck’s Dylan Byers first reported back on April 24: CECOT-obsessed Sharyn Alfonsi is out at CBS’s 60 Minutes.
And, in an interview with the virulently anti-Bari Weiss paper (which used to employ her before they ran her out of town), Alfosni donned a holier-than-thou attitude that embodies the stomach-churning arrogance of liberal, elite journalists in fearing the “chilling message” the presence of a hands-on editor-in-chief sends.
Michael Grynbaum huffed: “CBS News declined to renew its contract with the ‘60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, six months after her segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly by the news division’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss.”
Fact-check: Mostly false. As we covered at the time, they didn’t touch her emoting hit job. Rather, they had her add requests for comment from the Trump administration at the very end of her piece.
But doesn’t the fact that CBS didn’t touch any of Alfonsi’s reporting demonstrate that it wasn’t, in fact, a hit job? Houck didn’t want to answer that question — instead, he continuec to whine about Alfonsi:
Most of the piece was relitigating the drama surrounding Weiss’s CBS News tenure, including the hubbub with Alfonsi as Weiss supposedly committed the crime of wondering why her story about a Salvadoran prison the Trump administration used to hold illegal immigrants was horribly one-sided.
He made sure to warn Weiss not to do anything to upset the apple cart of 60 Minutes, a news magazine far too many in this sadly godless industry treat like an infallible deity.
Again, Weiss did not change any of Alfonsi’s reporting, which raises the question of why Weiss delayed the piece in the first place — which sure looks a lot like a sop to the Trump administration. Houck continued to whine:
Alfonsi certainly won’t be missed as she was a reliable liberal pundit pretending to be a journalist. While she closed 2025 with the CECOT story, she began the year with a February 2025 piece celebrating European-style censorship and, just before Christmas 2024, she blamed cartel violence in Mexico on the Second Amendment in the U.S.
Houck didn’t dispute any of those fact as reported by Alfonsi either. The article on hi pose accused her of exhibiting a “God Complex Arrogance,” but he makes no effort to actually prove it.
Tim Graham touted more changes to the show in a post the next day:
After weeks of speculation, CBS News under Bari Weiss has made some big changes to the team at 60 Minutes — firing the executive producer Tanya Simon, as well as correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of the show, was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.
They announced a new executive producer — Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist who has made documentaries for HBO and Netflix. The New York Times typically dissed their former co-workers for being inexperienced: “Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist with no prior experience in television,” has hired “Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news.” But he’s been making documentaries, which is pretty much what 60 Minutesaims to do.
Liberal media outlets fret about the “traditions” at CBS, which means the “long-standing leftist bias.” No one should ever attempt to move anything two ticks to the center.
Graham offered no evidence that merely moving things “two ticks to the center’ is Weiss’ actual goal. He continued to huff:
Will anything dramatically change in its tilt? When Bari Weiss revamped the CBS Evening Newswith Tony Dokoupil, it hasn’t turned into “CBS Newsmax,” as the leftists always project. It often seems that the rebels inside CBS News are always trying to keep just as much ideological energy as they can, and implying Weiss is going to wreck everything is their way to keep her in check.
Again, Graham offers no proof that Weiss is not trying to “wreck everything,” as the enthusiastic defense he and the rest of the MRC provides her tells us how close she is to the MRCs goal of a right-wing network.
Grahm roused further in his May 29 column:
Sharyn Alfonsi represents the overweening pomposity of the hard-left partisans that have ruled CBS News. She responded to Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss with “resistance” lingo when her contract was not renewed.
“This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Alfonsi lectured in a statement. “CBS management is…choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.”
Several of these bitter proclamations are unintentionally hilarious. She describes her own crusading jeremiads against Trump and the Republicans as “factually accurate,” and anybody tapping a brake and suggesting she include a word from Team Trump is “sanitizing” her righteous facts.
But Graham cited no fact that Alfonsi got wrong. He kept up his ranting:
Reporters like Alfonsi insist that they’re the hard-hitters, and never the soft-ballers. They’re the courageous independents who hold people accountable, and never the shoe-polishing partisans who allow their political allies to uncork ridiculous spins without challenge.
They are lying to themselves, and to us.
You mean how Graham is lying to us when claims to be fair and objective?