‘Morning Joe’ Slams CBS News for Pulling ‘60 Minutes’ Megaprison Segment: ‘Not Good at All’ | Video

The “Morning Joe” crew slammed CBS News for pulling its “60 Minutes” segment on Donald Trump’s deportees sent to the El Salvador megaprison CECOT on Monday.

News broke Sunday that CBS was pulling the segment after days of promotion. It was a stunning move that came on the heels of Trump complaining that the newsmagazine has “treated him far worse” under new management. New editor-in-chief Bari Weiss eventually explained that she pulled the story because it “lacked sufficient context” despite being cleared to run and promoted for days.

Joe Scarborough explained that this precedent is “not good at all.”

“Mika [Brzezinski] has been through the process,” he said on MS NOW. “If you go through the process of screening these ’60 Minutes’ packages, it is brutal. I’ve heard stories of reporters rushing out crying 20, 30 years back. It’s brutal. And it went through five, like, scrubbings and screenings. And then they promote it, and then they spike it the night of. Not good at all.”

“60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi – who interviewed now-released deportees for the canned segment — sent a furious internal memo to colleagues saying that pulling the segment “is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

“If the standard for airing a story is that ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the ’60 Minutes’ broadcast,” she said. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”

Weiss explained her decision in a Monday morning meeting with CBS News staff. The editor-in-chief called the story “not ready” and said that it failed to “advance the ball,” TheWrap learned from a person who attended the meeting.

“I held a ’60 Minutes’ story because it was not ready,” Weiss said. “While the story presented powerful testimony of torture at CECOT, it did not advance the ball — the 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.”

The decision unsurprisingly caused quite a stir online as many view the move as a way to further get into Trump’s good graces while CBS parent company Paramount continues to pursue the purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery over Netflix.

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