’60 Minutes’ Sharyn Alfonsi Talks CBS News ‘Dust-Up’ and ‘Corporate Meddling’

CBS News reporter Sharyn Alfonsi has aired her concerns about “the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear” at the network after her report on the El Salvador mega-prison CECOT was yanked last year.

The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke on the topic at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday (April 3) as she accepted the Ridenhour Prize for Courage. Alfonsi previously spoke out after CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled her CECOT story due to a lack of an on-camera response from the White House.

At the time, Alfonsi blasted Weiss’ decision in an internal memo, arguing that she had repeatedly sought comment from the White House and had received no response. “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 stated.

She spoke on the issue again on Thursday, saying, per The Guardian, “I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents. It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear. It’s hard to watch.”

The CECOT story eventually aired in January, though not before the original already aired by mistake during a Canadian broadcast. The January version changed little from the original, as the Trump administration still refused to provide comment.

During her speech, Alfonsi noted reports that her job might be at risk as Weiss and Paramount CEO David Ellison seemingly push CBS News toward a more Trump-friendly direction.

“Thank you for this award. I didn’t know that the theme was hope. My hope recently has been that I still have a job,” she stated. “And every morning I wake up to another headline that says I’ve been fired.”

“If I am fired, it will not be the first time,” she added, recalling how she was let go from a waitressing job early in her career.

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Alfonsi said network executives told her to “change” the CECOT story, and she refused. “Not because I’m a pain in the ass, which I am, but because the story was factually correct, and I argued that any change to it might reflect poorly on CBS and 60 Minutes,” she explained.

“My stance did not make my new bosses very happy,” Alfonsi added. “I believe I was doing my job, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Fear is a funny thing – it can paralyze you, or it can point you to exactly what needs to be protected.”

She said that the industry right now is “afraid of offending power,” “losing access,” or facing “another baseless lawsuit.”

“But what we should all be afraid of is silence,” she continued. “Because as I learned [at her waitress job], there is a fine line between being a team player and being an accomplice.”