Bari Weiss is Not on the Level
When Fairness Becomes Permission for Lawlessness
On Saturday, Bari Weiss—CBS News’s editor-in-chief—killed a 60 Minutes story about men deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison. The segment, reported by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, had been promoted publicly on Friday. It had been screened five times. Legal counsel cleared it. Standards and Practices cleared it. The story was factually correct.
Weiss spiked it anyway.
Her stated reason: the Trump administration declined to participate. No on-camera response from the White House, Department of Homeland Security, or State Department. Therefore, insufficient “critical voices.” Therefore, the story required “additional reporting.”
Alfonsi, in an internal memo that leaked almost immediately, called this what it is: “not an editorial decision” but “a political one.” She wrote that the administration’s refusal to be interviewed is “a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.” That by accepting government silence as reason to spike reporting, CBS has “effectively handed them a kill switch for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
She’s right. And what happened the next morning—on the same network, the same day the story should have aired—proves the kill switch is already operating.
Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan interviewed Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna about the Epstein files release. Both men—working across party lines—had forced passage of legislation requiring the Justice Department to disclose FBI files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. President Trump signed it into law.
Friday, the Justice Department released documents. But not the documents Congress’s law required. Missing: the 60-count indictment showing broader criminal conspiracy. Missing: the prosecution memo detailing why other perpetrators weren’t charged. Missing: names of the men credibly accused—at least 20, according to survivors’ lawyers—of sex crimes involving minors.
Present instead: redactions that black out internal FBI communications and work product—precisely the material Congress’s law was written to force into public view. The administration is using legal theories that wouldn’t survive first contact with any court, as Massie noted. Survivors’ names released while their abusers remained protected. One survivor told Khanna: they released her name but still won’t release the FBI file about the people who abused her, despite her explicit request.
Massie and Khanna came on Face the Nation to make a simple point: Attorney General Pam Bondi is breaking the law. The administration is in direct violation of congressional statute. Survivors deserve answers about who raped them, who covered it up, why these men are being protected.
Watch what Brennan does. Not once but repeatedly, she frames administration non-compliance as reasonable, understandable, perhaps even justified:
“Would you acknowledge they are complying with the spirit if not the intent of your law?”
“Being in the document doesn’t necessarily prove criminal behavior, right?”
“They were trying to protect victims.”
“Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said impeachment or contempt is premature.”
“Doesn’t that sort of show you’re at the limit of pressure?”
“The politics have overtaken the substance.”
Every move designed to get these two men—Republican and Democrat, aligned in demanding basic legal compliance—to back down. To accept partial answers. To acknowledge the administration is trying its best. To stop pushing.
Massie and Khanna refused. They kept bringing it back to the law, the survivors, the missing documents, the protected criminals.
And Brennan kept redirecting: maybe they’re doing their best, technical complexities, victim privacy concerns, political optics, isn’t this premature?
At one point, Brennan frames the question herself: “I guess the question the American people have even to me is: is the system so corrupt...”
As if it’s speculation. As if it’s an open question whether a system where Congress passes a law, the president signs it, the attorney general refuses to comply, and television hosts defend the refusal... might be corrupt.
Khanna: “This is the corrupt system, the Epstein class, that people are sick of.”
Two events. Same network. Same day.
Journalists try to report on deportations to a mega-prison. Editors kill the story because the administration won’t participate.
Lawmakers demand accountability for protecting elite sex criminals. Hosts question whether the demand is premature.
This is CBS News functioning as administration defense mechanism. Not in one rogue decision by one editor, but systematically, across platforms, at multiple levels.
The apparatus has been optimized to protect power.
Bari Weiss built her brand as heterodox truth-teller. Free speech warrior. Defender against progressive censorship. She resigned from the New York Times claiming she was being silenced for her views. She founded The Free Press promising to challenge institutional capture and groupthink.
Her entire public persona: refuses to bend to political pressure, values truth over comfort, will report what needs reporting regardless of who it offends.
And here she is, as editor-in-chief of CBS News, killing an investigative report about deportations to a notorious mega-prison because the Trump administration declined to comment.
The heterodoxy was branding. The “free speech” was positioning. The anti-institutional posture was just preparation for institutional capture from a different direction.
She opposed progressive editorial interference. Now she operates conservative editorial interference and calls it standards.
Weiss was installed at CBS after Paramount’s takeover put the network under control of David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is a major Republican donor and Trump ally. The ownership structure changed. The editorial priorities changed. And now the journalism changes—killed when it might displease the administration, softened when it might create friction with power.
This is what regulatory capture looks like in media. Not crude propaganda. Not obvious lies. Just editorial standards that happen to align perfectly with what the powerful want suppressed. Just interview questions that happen to frame accountability demands as unreasonable. Just “additional reporting” requirements that happen to spike stories inconvenient to the administration.
I was in New York City recently. Had conversations with people who have a relationship with Bari Weiss. People who know her insist she honestly believes the far left in this country is far more dangerous than anything Trump is doing. That their ideological excess simply deserves more attention in the public conversation. More attention than a lawless administration sending potentially innocent people to foreign gulags. More attention than an attorney general violating congressional statute to protect elite sex criminals.
If this is a true accounting of her honest feelings, then allow me to diagnose her as a delusional person who should be nowhere close to a great institution like CBS News.
Because what “ideological excess” by the far left is comparable to what she killed on Saturday? What progressive overreach matches the gravity of deportations to a mega-prison that human rights groups describe as torture? What campus controversy or social justice rhetoric deserves more editorial attention than men who risked their lives to speak about conditions in CECOT?
If she genuinely believes covering these stories would be less important than monitoring progressive excess, she’s not making editorial judgments—she’s operating from ideological capture so complete she cannot see what’s in front of her.
And if the people defending her think this makes her position understandable rather than disqualifying, they’ve revealed the same derangement. The same inability to distinguish between political disagreements and the dissolution of basic accountability mechanisms.
What Alfonsi’s memo reveals:
The story wasn’t killed because it was wrong. Legal cleared it. Standards cleared it. Factually correct.
Wasn’t killed because sources were unreliable. These were men who had been deported to CECOT—their presence there documented, their deportation policy, their experiences verifiable.
Wasn’t killed because CBS couldn’t get administration response. They tried. Repeatedly. The White House, DHS, and State Department all declined to comment.
It was killed because the administration declined to comment. Government silence treated not as statement—which it is—but as veto. Which it shouldn’t be.
Weiss claimed she needed “critical voices.” But the administration’s refusal to explain or justify deporting people to a mega-prison notorious for human rights abuses is the story. Their silence is the brutality that needs reporting.
By demanding government participation as condition for airing the story, Weiss is establishing a standard that means: CBS will only report what power agrees to let CBS report.
Alfonsi calls this “stenography for the state.” She’s right.
Alfonsi also wrote something else: “These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”
The men in CECOT who spoke to CBS made themselves vulnerable. They’re trapped in a prison human rights groups describe as one of the most brutal on earth. They trusted that American journalism would honor their testimony.
And CBS—under leadership installed by a Republican mega-donor’s son, with Bari Weiss operating the kill switch—abandoned them. The administration that deported them to CECOT wouldn’t defend doing it on camera. So CBS abandoned the men who spoke.
The men in CECOT cannot speak for themselves. They need journalism to make their experience visible, to report the reality of what’s being done in America’s name.
CBS kills the story.
Epstein’s survivors cannot get justice themselves. They need government to release the files showing who abused them, who covered it up, who got away with it.
The administration refuses, violating the law Congress passed.
And CBS runs interference—questioning whether demands for compliance are premature, whether the administration is really doing something wrong, whether lawmakers pushing for accountability have let “politics” overtake “substance.”
In both cases: those without power trying to make visible what happened to them. Those with power refusing to allow it. And CBS siding with power.
Not through crude censorship. Through editorial standards that require government cooperation. Through interview framing that treats accountability demands as partisan overreach. Through the steady, systematic optimization of journalism to avoid friction with the administration.
Margaret Brennan isn’t a propagandist. I don’t think she’s consciously trying to protect the administration. I think she’s doing what she understands as good journalism—being fair, not rushing to judgment, pressing her guests on whether their claims hold up.
But “fairness” that treats administration lawbreaking as maybe-reasonable and bipartisan accountability demands as maybe-premature isn’t neutrality. It’s running interference for power while performing the aesthetics of objectivity.
When Brennan asks Massie and Khanna whether they’ll “acknowledge” the administration is complying with the “spirit” of the law they’re openly violating, she’s not being tough on both sides. She’s softening what should be clear: the attorney general is breaking the law Congress passed.
When she introduces Tim Kaine’s skepticism about contempt proceedings, she’s not adding context. She’s laundering establishment Democratic resistance to accountability through the voice of a “reasonable” senator, creating permission for viewers to dismiss Massie and Khanna as overly aggressive.
When she asks whether “politics have overtaken substance,” she’s not asking a neutral question. She’s framing their demand for legal compliance as political theater rather than substantive accountability.
This is how capture operates. Not through dictating coverage but through shaping framing. Not through killing every uncomfortable story but through making accountability look unreasonable. Not through propaganda but through editorial standards that happen to protect power.
And across CBS News—from 60 Minutes to Face the Nation—the pattern is consistent. Stories that would anger the administration get killed. Lawmakers demanding accountability get questioned. Government refusal to cooperate gets treated as legitimate constraint rather than tactical evasion.
Alfonsi invoked the Jeffrey Wigand case in her memo.
In 1995, CBS famously spiked 60 Minutes‘ interview with tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand—fear of a lawsuit from Brown & Williamson. The decision nearly destroyed the broadcast’s credibility. Took years to recover.
Alfonsi: “By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.”
The Wigand spike was cowardice with concrete lawsuit risk. Corporate lawyers warning of real financial exposure. Wrong decision, but comprehensible calculation.
This is worse. No lawsuit risk. No legal exposure. Just political risk. Just: the administration might be angry. Just: Trump might attack the network on Truth Social. Just: better not create friction with power.
Surrender, not caution. And Bari Weiss—who built her entire brand on refusing to surrender to political pressure—is personally operating it.
The woman who resigned from the Times claiming she wouldn’t be silenced is now the mechanism by which CBS silences its own journalists.
The woman who founded The Free Press promising fearless reporting is now killing reports because they lack government blessing.
The woman who positioned herself as truth-teller against institutional cowardice is now the institution, operating with perfect cowardice.
This is where Weiss’s ideological obsession becomes institutional corruption. She genuinely believes—if her friends are to be believed—that progressive excess represents a greater threat to America than deportations to torture prisons or protection of elite sex criminals. That belief doesn’t excuse what she’s doing. It explains why she’s doing it while thinking she’s serving some higher purpose.
She’s not opposing institutional capture. She’s executing it. Just from the right instead of the left. Just protecting Trump’s administration instead of progressive causes. Just killing stories about government brutality instead of stories about campus controversies.
The apparatus is the same. The victims are the same—people without power, people trying to make visible what happened to them, people who trusted institutions would serve them. Only the ideological justification has changed.
And that makes it worse, not better. Because at least crude corruption is honest about what it’s doing. Weiss wraps hers in the language of heterodoxy and free speech while operating a kill switch for stories that would hold the administration accountable.
The kill switch she installed on Saturday isn’t an aberration. It’s the system working as designed. Government doesn’t need to explain deportations to torture prisons. Just refuse to comment, and Weiss kills the story. Attorney general doesn’t need to comply with congressional statute. Just claim victim protection, and Brennan frames demands for accountability as maybe-premature.
The heterodox truth-teller has become the mechanism of capture she claimed to oppose.
Some CBS staffers, multiple sources told CNN, are privately discussing whether they can continue working under current leadership.
I understand the question. When your editor-in-chief kills factually correct stories because the administration won’t participate, when your network runs interference for lawbreaking officials, when the institution stops functioning as accountability mechanism and becomes power’s defense apparatus—why stay?
But I also understand Alfonsi’s answer, implicit in her memo: because the sources who trusted you deserve better than abandonment. Because journalism exists for those who cannot speak for themselves. Because someone has to refuse to operate the kill switch.
This is the choice in front of every journalist at CBS right now.
You can leave. Find another outlet. Declare the institution broken. This is the easier path, the one that protects your career and avoids the cost of fighting from inside a captured institution.
Or you can stay. Fight. Refuse to accept the kill switch as normal. Risk your position by naming what’s happening. This is what Alfonsi did—wrote the memo, called it corporate censorship, violated the unspoken rule that you don’t publicly challenge your boss’s editorial decisions.
Staying is harder. Staying costs more. Staying might end your career at CBS.
But staying is also the only thing that might save the institution. The only resistance to capture that matters. The only way sources who risk their lives to speak might have their stories told.
Weiss is not on the level.
The brand is heterodoxy. The practice is surrender to power—just power she’s ideologically comfortable serving.
The brand is free speech. The practice is killing speech—just speech that threatens an administration she’s decided deserves protection.
The brand is fearless truth-telling. The practice is fear of administration anger, dressed as editorial standards.
She didn’t oppose institutional cowardice. She opposed being on the receiving end of it. Now that she controls the institution, cowardice is fine—just call it “requiring critical voices” and pretend government refusal to participate is valid editorial concern rather than tactical maneuver.
The men in CECOT deserved to have their story told. Alfonsi did the work. Got them to speak despite enormous risk. Legal cleared it. Standards cleared it. Ready to air.
Weiss killed it because Trump’s administration wouldn’t defend deporting people to a mega-prison on camera.
Not editorial judgment. Political calculation. Exactly the kind of interference Weiss claimed to oppose when it was happening to her at the Times. Now she’s the one doing it, and the heterodox truth-teller has become the mechanism of institutional capture she claimed to resist.
Epstein’s survivors deserved answers. Congress passed a law. Trump signed it. Bondi is violating it. Massie and Khanna—Republican and Democrat—are demanding basic legal compliance.
And CBS runs interference, treating their accountability push as maybe-premature, maybe-political, maybe-unreasonable.
Not neutrality. Protection of power. The discourse apparatus functioning to prevent reporting of what should be obvious: the administration is breaking the law, protecting elite criminals, abandoning both survivors seeking justice and deportees trapped in mega-prisons.
I care about this because I know what it costs when the discourse apparatus stops reporting reality. When journalism surrenders its function. When “editorial standards” become kill switches that power operates at will.
The men in CECOT disappear from public awareness not because someone lies about what’s happening there but because no one reports it. Brutality made invisible through editorial caution that requires government blessing.
Epstein’s co-conspirators stay protected not because someone defends them but because the files never get released and journalists frame demands for release as maybe-unreasonable. Elite criminality preserved through standards that treat lawbreaking as complicated rather than clear.
This is coordination collapse through discourse failure. The apparatus that should be reporting shared reality—this is what’s happening, these are the facts, this is what power is doing—instead optimizes to avoid friction with power.
And we’re told this is responsible journalism. High editorial standards. Being fair to all sides.
It’s the dissolution of journalism’s core function: holding power accountable to those who cannot exit from power’s decisions.
Sharyn Alfonsi ended her memo: “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
Some of us care too much to watch institutions be dismantled without fighting. To watch journalism become stenography. To watch editorial standards become kill switches. To watch the apparatus that should serve the voiceless become protection for the powerful.
Bari Weiss made her choice. She operates the kill switch while telling herself she’s protecting America from progressive excess. She kills stories about deportations to torture prisons while convincing herself the real threat is campus activists. She runs interference for an administration violating the law while maintaining the posture of heterodox truth-teller.
If she’s delusional enough to believe this serves journalism, she’s unfit for the position. If she knows what she’s doing and does it anyway, she’s worse than unfit—she’s corrupt.
Either way, she’s not on the level.
But Sharyn Alfonsi made a different choice. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna made a different choice. The choice to stay in the room, do the work, refuse to accept that power gets to veto accountability.
Not because they’re certain to win. Because they know what we lose if they don’t fight.
We lose the men in CECOT whose stories die in editorial review. We lose the survivors whose abusers stay protected. We lose the possibility of journalism that serves those who cannot speak for themselves rather than those who already have power’s ear.
We lose civilization itself—the possibility of collective truth-telling, accountability that binds even the powerful, institutions that serve the voiceless rather than amplify the already-amplified.
Some of us refuse to lose this without fighting.
Some of us refuse to operate the kill switch.
Some of us remember what journalism is for.
Not because Bari Weiss will suddenly remember her own stated principles.
But because the sources who trusted Sharyn Alfonsi deserve better than abandonment.
Because the survivors demanding answers from Massie and Khanna deserve better than interference.
Because those of us who depend on institutions to hold power accountable need someone to stay in the room and refuse to accept that government silence should veto reporting or that administration lawbreaking should be treated as maybe-reasonable.
Alfonsi stayed. Massie and Khanna stayed. The men in CECOT spoke despite knowing they might be abandoned.
That’s the side I choose.
Not the heterodox posture that becomes institutional capture.
Not the free speech brand that becomes editorial kill switch.
Not the ideological obsession that makes deportations to torture prisons seem less important than progressive excess.
The staying. The fighting. The refusal to accept that government silence should veto reporting or that administration lawbreaking should be treated as maybe-reasonable.
The work of maintaining institutions that serve those who cannot speak for themselves.
Even when those institutions are being captured by people who think they’re serving a higher purpose.
Even when the capture operates through editorial standards rather than crude censorship.
Even when the fight costs more than surrender.
Because I know what we lose if we don’t fight.
And Bari Weiss—despite all her branding, all her positioning, all her claims about truth-telling—has shown us exactly what we lose.
We lose journalism that serves the voiceless.
We gain journalism that serves power.
And we’re told to call this editorial standards.
Some of us refuse.
I worked in community journalism for 30 years. A source was always given the chance to comment. If they declined, that did NOT kill the story!
We added that the source “declined to comment” and that was essentially saying, “Look, we asked the guy to explain WTF he was thinking and he didn’t want to talk about it, so draw your own conclusions.”
Thank you for writing this. It is SO much more important to point out this story being killed as an affront to journalism than the gossip-y Olivia Nuzzi/ Ryan Lizza crap the Free Press fans were so recently obsessed with.
Weiss represents the worst kind of sell-out, the kind with blinders on who perch themselves on moral high ground. She most certainly has become what she proclaimed she was fighting against. Makes you wonder if she ever was for “free press.” Certainly not after getting her pay day. Welcome to state TV, Al Jazeera for the U.S.