CBS postpones '60 Minutes' report on El Salvador's CECOT megaprison

NEW YORK — CBS News pulled a planned “60 Minutes” report on El Salvador’s CECOT prison just hours before its scheduled Sunday broadcast, saying the segment would air at a later date.

“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated,” the program said in a post on X and other social media platforms. “Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” the show added, about three hours before it was set to air.

A CBS News spokesperson said in an email that the segment “needed additional reporting.”

CBS also removed a link to the “Inside CECOT” segment page on Sunday. The page, which had previously featured a trailer, now displays a message saying, “The page cannot be found.” However, a description earlier posted on Paramount Plus said the report was scheduled to air at 7:30 p.m. ET, with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewing recently released deportees about what the description called “brutal and torturous” conditions inside the prison.

The decision comes as the network undergoes leadership changes under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who was appointed in October after CBS parent company Paramount Skydance acquired The Free Press, the online publication she founded.

Weiss, a former opinion writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, was viewed as a controversial choice, as she had not previously managed a television newsroom or produced broadcast news content. On December 10, she named Tony Dokoupil as the new anchor of the flagship CBS Evening News, replacing the dual-anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.

CECOT is a mega-prison in El Salvador where the United States has sent hundreds of migrants, most of them Venezuelans, without trial. The facility has been widely condemned by human rights groups for its harsh conditions. 

-Reporting by Siddharth Cavale; editing by Diane Craft/Reuters