Sharyn Alfonsi’s hack job of a CECOT feature for 60 Minutes, pulled due to what could be charitably described as deficient reporting, has triggered a firestorm within the elitist media. But that’s not all. The report has now also triggered an “overhaul” of standards and procedures at CBS and 60 Minutes.
Per Axios:
CBS News’ new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for the broadcaster as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures, according to a source familiar with her plans.
Why it matters: The masthead is meant to drive a more streamlined hierarchy and set of processes across show and news gathering teams that are intended to prevent disparate editorial procedures and standards.
CBS News, and 60 Minutes in particular, was broken long before Weiss took over. Alfonsi is the poster child of that brokenness, what with such previous lowlights as the attempted smear of Gov. Ron DeSantis using selectively edited footage, and her cheering of German censorship.
A “broader overhaul of standards and procedures” is certainly welcome at CBS, but it should have come well before the CECOT fiasco.
Our own Curtis Houck saw and reviewed the pulled report, chronicled its deficiencies here, and summed it thusly:
Having wasted over 13 minutes of our time on a grim prison at least some Americans are unlikely to shed any tears over, Alfonsi offered the lie about DHS ignoring her and ended by revealing 252 Venezuelan men who spent time at CECOT were released and “sent back to Caracas in exchange for 10 Americans that had been imprisoned in Venezuela” while other illegal immigrants could be deported “to other so-called third countries” with “well-documented histories of torturing prisoners.”
The lie about the administration responding is a problem:
According to a source familiar with the “60 Minutes” team’s correspondence with the administration, journalists reached out to press officials at the White House, State Department and DHS, all of which provided comment to CBS News ahead of the piece’s anticipated run date.
None of those comments, which varied in length and substance, were included in the piece, which has been made public from a recording that was distributed via an app owned by Global TV, which airs “60 Minutes” in Canada.
The item further goes on to specify that DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin provided a 300-word statement for the record, which neither ran nor was cited in the 60 Minutes report. That’s a huge problem when attempting to create a narrative about no one being available to speak on the record, in defense of a report that got yanked for deficient reporting.
Had Alfonsi merely committed deficient reporting and kept a subsequent low profile, perhaps this would not be such a vocal issue. But she then decided to insulate herself from the ensuing blowback and do so in the most insurrectiony way: by sending and publishing an inflammatory email defending the piece, which then riled up the entire chattering class.
Now, as a result, there will be increased oversight of CBS News. Long ovedue, if you ask us.
