“60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract was not renewed at CBS News, six months after her “Inside CECOT” story caused tension with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Alfonsi told The New York Times on Wednesday. “I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”
“I’m not resigning,” she added after her contract expired on Saturday (for the time being, Alfonsi remains employed at CBS News after joining “60 Minutes” in 2015). “If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”
TheWrap has reached out to CBS News and Paramount for further comment.
In December, Weiss decided to temporarily hold Alfonsi’s segment that focused on the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a megaprison in El Salvador — just hours before it was set to air.
“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,” Alfonsi said at the time. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
Weiss, however, insisted her decision was due to a lack of on-the-record admin responses to advance the story. She later admitted she should not have pulled the story, but maintained her position that it needed more work.
