What Cowardice Looks Like
I have watched 60 Minutes since I was a kid. I am now 60 years old. On December 21, 2025, Bari Weiss gave me a reason to stop.
Two hours before airtime, Weiss, the newly appointed editor in chief of CBS News, pulled a fully vetted, legally approved investigation by veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. The story exposed the systematic torture of Venezuelan deportees at El Salvador’s CECOT prison. It had been screened five times, cleared by CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices, and promoted to the public. It was factually accurate and ready to broadcast.
Weiss killed it anyway. Her justification? The Trump administration refused to provide an on camera interview.
This was not an editorial decision. It was an act of cowardice, and it cost CBS News a viewer it had kept for nearly six decades.
I grew up with 60 Minutes. Sunday nights meant Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley. It meant journalism that didn’t flinch. When Katharine Graham faced down Richard Nixon over the Pentagon Papers, when Ben Bradlee backed his reporters through Watergate, when Daniel Ellsberg risked 115 years in prison to tell Americans the truth about Vietnam, they understood something Bari Weiss apparently does not. The purpose of journalism is to inform the public even when, especially when, those in power don’t want the public informed.
Sharyn Alfonsi understood this. When Weiss killed her story, Alfonsi could have stayed silent. Instead, she sent an internal memo that became public. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Alfonsi saw what Weiss’s decision meant. “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.”
She concluded, “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
I care too much about the truth to watch what 60 Minutes has become. So I’m done. I will no longer watch and I am deleting CBS from my media choices.
Let me tell you what Bari Weiss decided Americans didn’t need to know. In March 2025, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, used for the first time since World War II, to deport 252 Venezuelan nationals to CECOT. Trump officials claimed they were dangerous criminals and terrorists. Many had no criminal records. Dozens were asylum seekers.
An 81 page report by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, based on interviews with 40 former detainees, documented what happened to them. Guards beat detainees daily for minor infractions. Both male and female guards committed acts of sexual abuse. Detainees slept on metal bunks without mattresses, nine to a cell. They had no access to sunlight. Artificial lights burned 24 hours a day. They received the same meatless meal daily. They were allowed to shower once, at 4 a.m. They had no contact with the outside world. Medical care was minimal or nonexistent. Diseases spread unchecked.
The CECOT director told arriving detainees, “Welcome to my prison. You are here as convicts. The only way out of here is in a black bag.”
Human Rights Watch concluded the torture was “systematic violations” that “appear to have been part of a practice designed to subjugate, humiliate, and discipline detainees.” The United States paid El Salvador $4.76 million to hold these people. On December 22, 2025, the day after Weiss pulled Alfonsi’s story, federal judge James Boasberg ruled that the 137 Venezuelan men deported under the Alien Enemies Act had been denied their due process rights.
This was the story Bari Weiss killed two hours before airtime. These were the facts she decided we didn’t need to know.
Weiss was afraid. Afraid of Trump. Afraid of losing access. Afraid of regulatory pressure on Paramount. Afraid of jeopardizing owner David Ellison’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which required Trump’s blessing. Trump had already extracted a $16 million settlement from CBS. The financial and political pressures were real.
But that’s when courage matters most. That’s when journalism matters most. And that’s precisely when Weiss failed.
She’s not alone in this failure. In December 2024, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million despite having a strong legal case. Jeff Bezos blocked The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris the same day Trump met with Blue Origin executives. Patrick Soon Shiong blocked the LA Times endorsement and told his staff to “take a break” from writing about Trump. America’s major media institutions are surrendering to authoritarian pressure, one cowardly decision at a time.
This is how it works. The government doesn’t need to shut down news organizations if news organizations shut themselves down. Trump doesn’t need to jail journalists if media executives preemptively censor stories that might displease him. The threat of retaliation becomes sufficient to secure compliance.
Every time an organization like CBS kills a story to avoid Trump’s displeasure, it demonstrates to other outlets that resistance is futile and compliance is rewarded. “Each settlement increases the pressure on other media organizations to settle their own disputes with Trump or find other ways of ingratiating themselves with him,” wrote Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute.
This is how authoritarian control emerges in democracies, not through dramatic takeovers, but through gradual capitulation. Institutional cowardice becomes normalized. Self censorship becomes routine. And once that happens, the press has ceased to function as an independent check on power.
I’ve spent 60 years watching journalism at its best and worst. I’ve seen courage and I’ve seen cowardice. What Bari Weiss did on December 21, 2025, was cowardice, pure and simple. She had a story that was vetted, cleared, accurate, and important. She had a duty to air it. She had a reporter who risked her career to defend it. And she killed it because she was afraid.
Weiss destroyed more than one story. She destroyed trust. Sharyn Alfonsi’s memo predicted exactly what would happen. “The public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘Gold Standard’ for a single week of political quiet.”
She was right. I’m identifying it as corporate censorship. And I’m walking away.
Alfonsi spent months reporting this story. She interviewed traumatized survivors. She navigated legal and ethical complexities. She produced work that met every standard CBS set. Her editor killed it for political reasons. What journalist at CBS will take similar risks now?
When journalism fails to hold power accountable, democracy becomes hollow. Elections still occur. Institutions still exist. But the mechanism through which citizens learn what their government is doing ceases to function. A democracy without a free press is democracy in name only.
I grew up believing in American institutions. I believed in the press as a check on power. I believed that organizations like CBS News would tell me the truth even when it was inconvenient, even when it was costly, even when those in power didn’t want me to know.
Bari Weiss has shown me that belief was misplaced. She chose institutional preservation over institutional purpose. She chose accommodation over resistance. She gave Donald Trump a kill switch for any journalism he finds inconvenient.
The Venezuelan men who were tortured at CECOT eventually came home. A federal judge ruled they were denied due process. Human Rights Watch documented that their treatment constituted torture under international law. Americans learned these facts eventually, but later than we should have, from sources with less reach than 60 Minutes. The delay itself was a victory for Trump, proof that threatening the press works.
This is what cowardice looks like. Sometimes it’s just a decision made two hours before airtime, a story killed that should have aired, a duty abandoned when courage was required.
I watched 60 Minutes for nearly 60 years because I trusted it to tell me the truth. That trust is gone. Bari Weiss killed it along with Sharyn Alfonsi’s story.
So I’m done with CBS. I’m deleting it from my media choices. And I’m not alone. Millions of Americans who believed in what 60 Minutes represented are watching this institution destroy itself through cowardice.
Sharyn Alfonsi wrote, “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
Bari Weiss demonstrated that she does not care enough.
And I care too much about the truth to watch what 60 Minutes has become.
That is what cowardice looks like. And that is why I’m walking away.