CBS airs El Salvador prison report pulled from 60 Minutes in December
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The segment on CECOT included accusations of torture inflicted on Venezuelan deportees sent to the prison.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW YORK – CBS broadcast on Jan 18 its 60 Minutes report on a Salvadoran mega-prison condemned by human rights groups for its harsh conditions, weeks after the network pulled the segment just hours before runtime.
The report on the facility housing migrants deported from the United States was postponed from an initial air date of Dec 21, with CBS saying it required additional reporting and would be broadcast later.
“CBS News leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 Minutes CECOT piece as soon as it was ready,” the network said in a statement on Jan 18, though the show had mistakenly been streamed
The broadcast on Jan 18 added comments from the US Department of Homeland Security, details of the criminal records of those deported and additional reporting on one with tattoos, the network said.
The US has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants without trial to the facility, known as CECOT.
“Last year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists,” CBS said in a programme description on the show.
In a segment of the show, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with two Venezuelan men who were later released, and who described conditions in the facility as “brutal and torturous”.
The segment on CECOT included accusations of torture inflicted on Venezuelan deportees sent to the prison and raised questions about how the US characterised them.
When the report was pulled in December, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss flagged concerns with 60 Minutes producers about the segment and asked for a substantial amount of new material to be added, a CBS employee told Reuters.
Ms Weiss was picked to lead CBS News in October after its parent Paramount Skydance acquired the online publication she founded, the Free Press.
A former opinion writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, she was seen by some analysts as a contentious choice, since she had never before managed a television newsroom or produced broadcast news content. REUTERS
