CBS, Bari Weiss facing mounting backlash from liberal critics over yanking '60 Minutes' segment

"This looks so bad," MS NOW "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough said of the news on Monday, as co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed.

The segment "Inside CECOT" was going to feature correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing "some of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions," and was promoted by CBS heading into the weekend. The Trump administration has come under criticism for sending Venezuelan migrants and others to the prison, as the administration touts its work to control the border and remove illegal immigrants.

"It was ready to go to the point it was promo-ed. They were putting it on air. They teased it on air. And now this is the fear is that of the new regime at CBS News, this has come true," host Jonathan Lemire added during the MS NOW show.

"Billionaires are compromising the most important journalistic institutions we have left in this country. The game is obvious, and in this case, Bari Weiss, who was, by the way, not a reporter, not a journalist, is cosplaying as one and is poisoning the well of one of the last bastions of investigative reporting that gets funded," Pablo Torre, a guest on the show on Monday, added.

Brzezinski said she's been through screenings for "60 Minutes" segments, as she worked there previously, and said editors tear apart every frame. The "Morning Joe" host appeared shocked that they promoted the segment and ended up yanking it.

"Morning Joe" also spoke to Walter Isaacson, a former CEO at CNN, who said "the real question" with regard to the yanked segment was whether "the administration is putting its thumb on its scale for political reasons."  

"And, you know, we have a pretty strong tradition for 250 years in this country not to allow administrations or the government to tell people what to run. I don't know at all what's happened at CBS. I'm just saying, when it comes to the regulatory questions, these things keep popping into our minds, and we should hopefully get those type of things dispelled," he said. 

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, posted on X about the segment being pulled and said it merited an explanation right away.

"This CBS thing does merit an explanation right away. It's a pretty big deal to pull a story at the request of the White House. And if that's not what happened everyone should know that too," he wrote.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. 

"Bari Weiss is destroying CBS," Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch Network, wrote on X.

Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a staunch Trump critic, announced he was canceling his Paramount subscription.

"Bari Weiss - clearly a right winger, clearly in line with Donald Trump, has made it clear that 60 Minutes will do the administration's bidding. This is the opposite of the free press," he wrote on X.

Podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen compared the situation to "government-controlled TV."

Alfonsi said Weiss had "spiked" the story and not given her a chance to discuss it further.

"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."

She also said it effectively gave the government veto power over a segment if it wouldn't air because officials declined to comment or participate. She added viewers would see yanking the story as corporate censorship. 

Sara Fischer, a senior media reporter at Axios, said on CNN Monday that the media industry was "ablaze" over the segment being yanked.

"Zooming out, people think that this is evidence of how CBS' corporate parent is pulling the strings to cater favor with Trump ahead of trying to merge with or acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, which is the parent to CNN. I think for people at home, the reason that they should care about this is that '60 Minutes' has been the highest rated news program in the country for 50 consecutive seasons, and part of the reason being there's a lot of trust that there is editorial independence. And so any time that starts to get questioned, as it has in the past few months, people are very sensitive," she said. 

She added, "I held a '60 Minutes' story because it was not ready. While the story presented powerful testimony of torture at CECOT, it did not advance the ball - the [New York] Times and other outlets have previously done similar work. The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment at this prison. To run a story on this subject two months later, we need to do more. And this is '60 Minutes.' We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera. Our viewers come first. Not the listing schedule or anything else. That's my north star and I hope it's yours, too." 

Fox News' Joseph Wulfsohn and David Rutz contributed to this report.