The 60 Minutes story on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador that was pulled at the last minute by CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss is being viewed anyway.
“Inside CECOT” appeared on a Canadian streaming platform owned by Global TV. Viewers quickly shared clips and summaries of it on social media, and several have gone viral, CNN and other outlets report. CBS is now getting the clips taken down.
Related: All about the infamous CECOT prison — on which CBS's Bari Weiss pulled a story
The story was approved Friday, but Weiss changed her mind about it Saturday and removed it from the Sunday broadcast, saying it was not ready. Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the story, and others have said the decision was a political one designed to placate the Trump administration, which deported 252 Venezuelan immigrants to the prison last spring. Weiss had said that for one thing, it needed responses from administration officials, although they had previously declined to participate.
It appears that the Friday version of 60 Minutes, with “Inside CECOT,” was sent to Global TV, as networks sometimes deliver programs to affiliates in advance, CNN notes. CBS sent the revised version to Global TV Saturday, and it aired Sunday night, but the earlier version was still available on Global TV’s app for a few hours. That was “the best thing that could have happened,” a CBS source told CNN.
Men who were incarcerated at CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center) described horrific conditions in the 60 Minutes piece. They were sent there because of alleged connections to a Venezuelan gang, although most had no such ties, and without due process. They were released in a prisoner swap in July.
“The torture was never-ending. Interminable,” detainee Luis Munoz Pinto told Alfonsi, according to CNN. “There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating or vomiting on themselves.”
The CECOT director told the men “Welcome to hell” when they arrived and said they would never be released, Munoz Pinto added, according to NBC News.
Related: Andry Hernández Romero on surviving CECOT: 'They told us we would die there'
Gay makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, who had sought asylum in the U.S. due to homophobic persecution in Venezuela, was among those deported to CECOT. It’s not clear if he was featured in Alfonsi’s story or any of the clips shared. Earlier, he had said the detainees were frequently beaten with nightsticks and shot with rubber projectiles.
“Inside CECOT” included a clip of Donald Trump praising Salvadoran prisons as “great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don’t play games,” NBC reports. That was from his April White House meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. The story also showed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s visit to CECOT in March, in which she called the detainees “terrorists.”
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There has been much criticism of Weiss’s decision to pull the story, which she has said will run later. Weiss is a conservative lesbian who was once a New York Times commentator and then ran a news and opinion website, The Free Press. Her appointment at CBS has been controversial due to her lack of relevant experience.
“CBS journalists, among the best in this country, appropriately made an outreach effort to get the government to weigh in on a deeply reported story out of El Salvador,” said a statement from Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, an organization that advocates for freedom of expression. “Pulling it back at the last minute because the government chose not to respond is an insult not only to the integrity of the journalists but to core principles of independent news gathering. Journalism can’t function if those under scrutiny are allowed to avoid accountability simply by refusing to engage. We only hope the story runs without tampering as soon as possible, if not this coming Sunday.”
“We look forward to the segment airing,” Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN. “The evidence is clear regardless of what airs on 60 Minutes: The Trump administration disappeared these Venezuelan men to a megaprison in El Salvador where they were systematically tortured.”
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