John,
Breaking news: CBS News abruptly pulled a fully reported 60 Minutes segment just hours before it was scheduled to air.
Just hours before it was scheduled to air, CBS abruptly pulled a fully reported 60 Minutes segment that had already cleared legal review and been promoted by the network.
According to reporting, the story examined Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to CECOT, a prison in El Salvador that former detainees have described as brutal and abusive.
The segment never aired.
In internal messages later reported by the press, a veteran 60 Minutes correspondent warned colleagues that the decision appeared to be political, not editorial.
Before we explain more, we want to pause here.
Here’s what we know so far.
According to The New York Times, the segment was pulled after CBS’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, requested last-minute changes and additional voices, including the possibility of a new interview with Stephen Miller.
Requests for balance happen all the time. What raised alarms inside CBS was the timing: the story had already been fully reported, vetted, scheduled — and then removed entirely.
Context matters.
CBS’s parent company recently paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over 60 Minutes. That settlement cleared a major hurdle for a pending corporate merger that still requires regulatory approval from Trump-aligned officials.
It’s proof once again that Trump doesn’t need to censor the press outright — intimidation does the work for him.
That’s the moment we’re living in.
And it’s why COURIER exists.
We don’t answer to corporate boards or bow to threats from Trump’s regulators. We don’t have mergers to protect. We’re accountable only to our readers — and to the facts.
Thanks for reading,
The COURIER Team