Bari Weiss, planted as CBS News editor-in-chief after the Ellison family acquired Paramount to serve Trump, has killed a fully vetted “60 Minutes” story about Venezuelan deportees tortured in El Salvador.
Her stated reason: the Trump administration didn’t explicitly tell her to allow it. She refuses to allow journalism unless authorized by Trump.
She even provided Stephen Miller’s phone number to the production team, because without White House approval, speech no longer is allowed.
This is not editorial judgment. This is coordination.
Dictator Plant
The sequence matters.
Trump sued CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with his political opponent, a lawsuit legal experts called frivolous targeted censorship.
But the lawsuit wasn’t meant to win, since it would not have. It only existed as a performance during Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount.
The outgoing Paramount leadership settled the lawsuit, bending to the whim of autocracy, and the incoming leadership agreed to unspecified “FCC concessions” designed to pacify Trump-aligned appointments.
Larry Ellison’s son then purchased Weiss’s startup, a cynically named The Free Press, with $150 million to reward her political alignment and make her editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Her qualifications were obviously suspect. She had no broadcast experience. None. Her qualification was loyalty to the regime, understanding the assignment.
When Trump sat for a “60 Minutes” interview last month, Weiss traveled to Mar-a-Lago to oversee the propaganda. During the conversation, Trump dropped “know-nothing” dog-whistles like “I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person”, just the sort of thing you say about someone you’ve definitely discussed with mutual friends.
Now she’s operating in true “know nothing” fashion by killing stories for Trump, despite every institutional checkpoint CBS maintains giving a green light.
The Mechanism
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s internal memo, leaked within hours, identified what just happened:
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.
The CECOT story had been screened five times.
It cleared legal review.
It passed Standards and Practices.
Every verification process CBS uses to ensure accuracy had signed off.
Weiss punched her Trump censor button, claiming she didn’t have White House authorization to allow a journalist to speak.
White House silence became the secret-squirrel veto. She made it so.
The Cover
Trump’s public statements about CBS create useful confusion.
On social media and at rallies, he complains that “60 Minutes” treats him badly, that the new ownership is somehow worse than the old.
If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!
This is intentional misdirection.
The public channel establishes only the appearance of arm’s-length relations. The private channel of Weiss coordinating interviews at Mar-a-Lago, Weiss providing Miller’s number, Weiss killing stories the administration finds inconvenient, all maintains state-run operational control.
The complaints are the cover.
The coordination is the product.
What It Costs
Venezuelan deportees agreed to describe torture on camera probably because they believed American journalism still functions.
They calculated that a brand like CBS would not suppress testimony about torture to serve the American dictator who has ordered human rights violations and war crimes.
They calculated wrong.
These men are now exposed. They gave interviews that their torturers’ allies can review. The story won’t air. They took existential risks on a premise that the Weiss house just falsified to serve the White House.
Alfonsi called it out correctly:
…a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
Weiss responded that she looks forward to airing the piece “when it’s ready”, double-speak for censorship.
It was ready by every meaningful measure.
It became unready when the White House’s plant at CBS decided she would make terms meaningless (e.g. defined only by the dictator, replacing law and order with tyranny).
The Pattern
I recently wrote how Condé Nast fired a New Yorker fact-checker based on assertions it refuses to substantiate. The company claims footage exists. The company won’t release it. Resolution happens in private arbitration.
Now CBS kills a story based on false concerns artificially manufactured to undermine speech. The administration refuses to give its perspective as a censorship trigger. Resolution happens in silence, with editorial meetings no one attends.
Same mechanism. Same censorship. Same outcome.
The privatization of accountability isn’t an isolated incident at a magazine company. It’s the operating system now. Institutions that sell verification exempt themselves from verification’s requirements. The product and the practice have fully decoupled.
At “60 Minutes,” a correspondent warns that her program is being “dismantled.” Employees are threatening to quit.
They’re not wrong, as the risk from working for a government plant is well-documented in other dictatorships.
The kill switch is installed.
It works.
The person operating it carries Stephen Miller’s direct number in her pocket like a switchblade to cut throats.
By the Way
The same week CBS killed a story about Trump administration deportees, the Justice Department removed files from its Epstein document release—including photos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
When caught, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said speculation that a photo was removed because Trump was in it was “laughable.” The DOJ claimed it was protecting victims.
Then the DOJ admitted no victims were depicted in the photo and re-uploaded it.
Blanche appears twice in the Epstein files: he conducted the Maxwell interview, and he’s defending the selective removal of documents from that release. When Democrats threatened contempt proceedings, he responded:
Bring it on.
Same week. Same mechanism. Same confidence that censorship and accountability theater produces no consequences.
The kill switch isn’t just installed at CBS. It’s the whole tin-pot dictator operating system now.