
Journalist\Editor Bio: WTNH, WSVN, WHDH, KYW, WCBS, WOIO, KOIN, WPXI, WTEN, WTIC (e-mail: [email protected])
NYC | Connecticut, USA
Joined March 2009
- Tweets54.8K
- Following769
- Followers3.6K
- Likes6.2K
Due to a broken diesel engine in New Haven; passengers on @Amtrak 136 to #Springfield with intermediate stops in New Haven at #StateStreet, #Wallingford, #Meriden, #Berlin, #Hartford, #Windsor, #WindsorLocks and #Springfield have no idea when they’re reaching their destination.
Snowing inside the #LIRR! #snowmegeddon
PAGE ONE | EL NACIONAL
Special front page edition from #Caracas # Venezuela's @ElNacionalWeb newspaper on the capture of President Nicholas Maduro and his wife by U.S. forces. Headline above photo of Maduro reads: "MANY QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT THE SCOPE OF THE INTERVENTION Trump after Maduro's capture:
"We will govern Venezuela to ensure an orderly transition."
SUNDAY PAGE ONE: First look at UK Sunday front pages on the arrest of #Venezuela president #NicholasMaduro and his wife from the @ObserverUK and @TheSun
DEVELOPING: @CNN's @BrianStelter on the controversy embroiling @CBSNews and Sharyn Alfonsi's scheduled and unaired @60Minutes story along with the fierce reaction to the story not airing under @BariWeiss 's regime. From Stelter's newsletter this morning:
Inside the '60 Minutes' crisis
Earlier this month, after President Trump blasted "60 Minutes" for interviewing Marjorie Taylor Greene, correspondents noticed a change behind the scenes. "Bari Weiss got personally involved," specifically with stories about politics, a source at the program said.
It was her prerogative as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, but it prompted some concern among employees, and it turns out they were right to be concerned.
Over the weekend, as you've surely heard, Weiss sparked a crisis inside "60 Minutes" by shelving Sharyn Alfonsi's report about Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Alfonsi said in an internal memo that "the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship." Indeed, this is a severe blow to CBS's credibility, and it's being treated as a top story across many major news sites.
Weiss, who reports directly to Paramount CEO David Ellison, pushed back by saying that "holding stories that aren't ready" is something that "happens every day in every newsroom." That's both technically true and terrifically insulting to the CBS veterans who said the story was ready. The piece was even being promoted by PR.
So let's walk through the timeline here, because I have picked up several bits of reporting that are relevant...
Timing is everything, part one
Alfonsi's story, "INSIDE CECOT," was many weeks in the making. Two of my best sources inside CBS News says Weiss first screened the segment on Thursday night. The LAT's Stephen Battaglio has the same reporting: "Weiss viewed the segment late Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter."
Weiss had some notes, but the story moved forward. In total, the story "was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," Alfonsi wrote in her memo. "It is factually correct."
At "60," segments are usually screened several times before air, but five screenings is an unusually high number, I'm told.
Come Friday, the staff thought the story was good to go. Alfonsi taped her intro. Executive producer Tanya Simon gave CBS News PR the OK to publicize the segment. That's one of the great things about "60 Minutes": The stories are announced in advance, usually on Fridays, for promotional purposes.
And that's why the next part is so baffling. On Saturday morning, Weiss messaged Simon with additional concerns about the story, two CBS sources told me. One of the main issues was the lack of a response from the Trump admin to the reporting. She also "took issue with the phrasing of 'migrant detainees,'" one of the sources said.
Again, it's her prerogative. But everyone at CBS News knows how "60 Minutes" works: How the pieces are screened, when the PR listings are sent out, what the processes are like. Alfonsi, I'm told, had already flown home to Texas by the time Weiss blew everything up.
Alfonsi told colleagues that she "learned on Saturday" that Weiss "spiked our story." Alfonsi and producer Oriana Zill de Granados "asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity."
My sense is that the change wasn't finalized until Sunday. A planned segment by Jon Wertheim was slotted into Alfonsi's place. Then CBS PR shared the revised plan and said, "Our report 'Inside CECOT' will air in a future broadcast."
Newsroom staffers who hadn't already heard about the turmoil were astonished — even more so after Alfonsi's memo made the rounds. Her account sounded like the shattering moment that staffers have feared all year...
Timing is everything, part two
Weiss pushed back on Alfonsi's memo late Sunday night by saying, "My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. 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. I look forward to airing this important piece when it's ready."
It's unclear when that will be. But it means Weiss is at odds with her own producers and editors in a very visceral way. "People are threatening to quit over this," one of the CBS sources told me.
On this morning's 9 a.m. editorial call, Weiss seemed frustrated about the leaking. "The only newsroom I'm interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect, and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues. Anything else is absolutely unacceptable," she said, according to CBS.
"I held a 60 Minutes story because it was not ready," she continued. "While the story presented powerful testimony of torture at CECOT, it did not advance the ball — the Times and other outlets have previously done similar work. The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment at this prison. To run a story on this subject two months later, we need to do more. And this is '60 Minutes.' We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera."
In other words, Weiss confirmed her insistence on adding Stephen Miller or another Trump admin voice to the story. But Alfonsi's team did ask for comment, and "their refusal to be interviewed" was "a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story," she wrote in the memo. "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."
Weiss said on this morning's call, "Our viewers come first. Not the listing schedule or anything else. That's my north star and I hope it's yours, too."
But this begs the question: Why were the listings sent out, then? Why did the story get promoted on social media? To state the obvious, some CBS staffers wonder if Weiss was pressured by the Trump admin and/or by the Paramount C-suite to hold the story once it was publicized...
Timing is everything, part three
Trump didn't just start to gripe about "60 Minutes" earlier this month. He started to vent specifically about the Ellisons. He did it again on Friday night at his rally in NC. "I love the new owners of CBS," Trump said. "Something happens to them, though. '60 Minutes' has treated me worse under the new ownership than… they just keep treating me, they just keep hitting me, it's crazy."
Trump isn't complaining in a vacuum. He is complaining as Paramount publicly argues that it has the inside track for government approval of its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent.
The "60 Minutes" crew came under tremendous pressure last season as the old Paramount owners were trying to get a deal done. They perceive that it's happening again now with the new owners.
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, said of the Alfonsi story's shelving, "It's hard to ignore that this happened just as Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Bros. was slipping away, with Kushner pulling out of the financing and Trump bad-mouthing CBS. Time to please the king again."
NYT alum Max Fisher remarked on X, "Pulling it at the last second is not an accident. Forces a change to broadcast schedule that turns it into news, and therefore a public demonstration of fealty to Trump."
'There's NO stopping reporting'
Weiss defenders insist this episode is being blown out of proportion. But I'm gonna be honest: I'm not hearing much from them. I'm hearing far more from alarmed CBS staffers, some of whom are drawing comparisons to the time Mike Wallace's interview with a tobacco industry whistleblower was shelved by corporate. (If you want to rewatch the movie about that real-life drama today, "The Insider" is streaming on Hulu.)
As Bill Carter observed overnight, "this decision is sure to have ripple effects."
"If CBS News will only run a piece if WH comments, giving them veto power over journalism, any staff member with integrity will likely quit, because it isn't a news division anymore. It's TASS," Carter wrote.
On the other hand, as a CBS staffer texted me this morning, reporters have "direct access" to their audiences now. "There's NO stopping reporting," they said.
Wow! @CBSNews’ 24/7 streaming service is taking @BBCWorld coverage of this breaking mass shooting incident on the @BrownUniversity campus in Providence, RI
Good Thursday morning where it is snowing - and sticking - in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire. #snow #NewHampshire #WhiteMountains #NewEngland
PAGE ONE | New York City
A look at Wednesday's @NYDailyNews and @NYPost front pages on the election of #ZohranMamdani as the city's 110th mayor.
PAGE ONE | Detroit Free Press
- Four dead; 10 injured in Church of Latter-day Saints church shooting/fire.
- Suspect is dead; identified as 40 year old Thomas Jacob Sanford of Burton, MI
- Suspect used automatic weapon to attack parishioners prior to starting building-wide fire.
- Suspect had IED's in pick-up truck, used to drive into the church.
BREAKING/CHURCH SHOOTING Police in Grand Blanc, #Michigan - northwest of #Detroit - say there has been a shooting at the Church of Latter Day Saints in the community; Grand Blanc, MI Police say the shooter is "down" and there is no threat to the public. The church is on fire. No specifics on casualties.
BREAKING/CHURCH SHOOTING Police in Grand Blanc, #Michigan - northwest of #Detroit - say there has been a shooting at the Church of Latter Day Saints in the community; Grand Blanc, MI Police say the shooter is "down" and there is no threat to the public. The church is on fire. No specifics on casualties.
BREAKING: A @BYU student who went to see now-deceased @charliekirk11 on the @UVU campus in #Orem, #Utah called today's assassination "unbelievable and completely uncalled for..."
4pm: Officials expected to hold first news conference on the shooting death of Charlie Kirk.
9pm: Vigil scheduled on UVU campus.
LIVE continuous coverage from Salt Lake City's @KSL here: ksl.com/watchit
#CharlieKirk
BILLIONAIRE'S WARNING: Connecticut hedge fund founder Ray Dalio, is warning that due to an increasing federal budget deficit, created over multiple administrations, the United States economy is on the path for a debt-induced "heart attack" in the next three years. Dalio, who founded Westport-based Bridgewater Associates, cautioned the growing gap in income equality is driving "more extreme" politics in the country and said, “I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” leading to 1930's-style autocratic politics. Dalio, who spoke to the @FT, said efforts to gain political control of the Federal Reserve, through the removal of governor Lisa Cook and a push for Chairman Jerome Powell to resign will, "undermine the confidence in the Fed defending the value of money and make holding dollar-denominated debt assets less attractive, which would weaken the monetary order as we know it.”
FOR SALE: A home once owned by boxer Mike Tyson and rapper 50 Cent is now back on the market in #Farmington for just about $10 million. The home, which overlooks the #Farmington Valley, has 19 bedrooms, spread across 51,000 square feet of living space on a 17 acre lot is listed for nearly 3 times what the current owners paid. The home comes with an indoor pool, movie theater, cigar lounge, nightclub, recording studio, gaming rooms and yes, a hair salon. The two-story owner's bedroom comes with a spiral staircase and mirrored ceiling over the bed - just because.
BREAKING | #Bridgeport fire
- 1 Atlantic Street
- Industrial fire
- Report of structure collapse
- No info on casualties
- Photo courtesy Matt Kuhar



















