CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi raged against the network's Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss when she delayed her story on how the Trump administration deported illegal immigrants from Venezuela to a "notorious" prison in El Salvador. Weiss wanted more reporting and more rebuttal from the Trump administration in it.
"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," Alfonsi complained in a memo leaked to the media. "We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state."
The targets of a story shouldn't have a veto, but it's not unreasonable to let them rebut "notorious" allegations. The hilarious piece of this argument is that "60 Minutes" deserves the term "investigative powerhouse."
Back on Feb. 17, Alfonsi gushed over German officials fining and jailing people for "hate speech" on the internet. Alfonsi let them claim that punishing people for what they say online is "protecting democracy and discourse by introducing a touch of German order to the unruly world wide web." She asked one censor: "You're doing all this work. You're launching all these investigations. You're fining people, sometimes putting them in jail. Does it make a difference if it's a worldwide web and there's a lot of hate out there?"
This is being a "stenographer for the state," literally.
Scott Pelley's interviews with President Joe Biden did not demonstrate an "investigative powerhouse" at work. In 2022, Pelley warmly nudged Biden: "You have lived a long life of triumph and tragedy. In November, you'll be 80. And I wonder what it is that keeps you in the arena." Seconds later, Biden pulled out his rosary ring so Pelley could tout him as "Catholic and devout."
In October of 2023, he helped paint Biden as a constructive foreign-policy player. Pelley told viewers the president was "asking for billions of dollars for Israel and Ukraine, Congress is paralyzed. Hard-right Republicans are obstructing the election of a speaker of the House." He asked Biden: "Does the dysfunction that we've seen in Congress increase the danger in the world?" Why, yes, Biden replied, the Republicans are terrible.
Biden was painted as the family man who visited German death camps: "Mr. Biden told us images of Oct. 7 reminded him of the Holocaust -- which he has studied -- taking his family to the Dachau death camp in Germany. This is 2015. The man in the wheelchair is a Dachau survivor. Behind Mr. Biden is the president's granddaughter." It's stenography.
Two weeks earlier, Pelley gently asked Attorney General Merrick Garland about how nonpartisan he was. He even asked: "Two of your ancestors were murdered in the Holocaust. Is that why you devoted yourself to the law?"
At the end, Pelley added, "If democracy is an emotional subject for Merrick Garland, maybe it's because he has witnessed how suddenly it can be threatened, in Oklahoma City (in 1995) and Washington D.C. (Jan. 6)." Pelley asked Garland, "When the history of this extraordinary time is written, what is the best that Merrick Garland can hope for?"
For many years now, "60 Minutes" has painted itself as an "investigative powerhouse" when it's going after Republicans, but they often sound like their show could be called "Syrupy Minutes" when they're interviewing their ideological allies, from the Clintons to Obama and Biden.
This is why they are offended by the oversight of Weiss. She represents those repulsive people who expect some fraction of balance or fairness from CBS. They don't want any "corporate interference" in the machinations of their propaganda factory.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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