We are offering a limited year-end sale now that offers you savings of 75% at $1 a week. Don't miss out. Sign up now.Greetings!It took just two months for Bari Weiss to step on her first journalism landmine and it was a doozy. On Sunday night, the CBS editor-in-chief abruptly pulled a “60 Minutes” segment on the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, just hours before the program was set to air. To some, the decision seemed to illustrate what many had feared for CBS under both Weiss' leadership and the ownership of CEO David Ellison: a news organization inhibited from taking a critical look at the Trump administration. The "60 Minutes" journalist whose piece was pulled accused Weiss of handing the administration a "kill switch" for reporting they find inconvenient. “If this decision is not reversed, if CBS News will only run a piece if the White House comments, giving them veto power over journalism, any staff member with integrity will likely quit, bc it isn’t a news division anymore,” veteran media reporter Bill Carter wrote on X, comparing CBS News to the Russian state-controlled outlet TASS. Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez slammed Weiss, saying her decision "strikes at the heart of press freedom." The timing, after all, is suspicious. The move came after Trump had last week bashed the Ellisons for perceived mistreatment by way of “60 Minutes,” calling into question their relationship with him. “For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that ’60 Minutes’ has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover’ than they have ever treated me before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” At the same time, Paramount is still in the fight for Warner Bros. Discovery, and experts and analysts had cited the relationship between Trump and the Ellisons as one key advantage. You wouldn't blame someone for making the leap that this is all connected, especially after Paramount came back on Monday with a revised bid for WBD that included a personal guarantee from David's father, Larry Ellison, as well as more financial flexibility and a higher break-up fee to match Netflix's offer. But this controversy raises questions about just what kind of steward of news Paramount and the Ellisons really are, especially as they seek to acquire CNN as well. As our Michael Calderone writes, "Weiss may be a TV news novice, but she isn’t politically naive. Her mishandling of a “60 Minutes” investigation is, at best, clumsy, and at worst, cover for the Trump administration." Our reporting today uncovers more context around the decision (more on that below). But ultimately, it's a bad look at a time when Paramount is in a sensitive spot with its tender offer and goal to also buy CNN. Roger Cheng 
While the decision to pull the "60 Minutes" segment came at the last minute, our reporting found that Weiss concerns about it a few days earlier... 
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