A group of UC Berkeley students and staff were the brains behind part of the "60 Minutes" investigation that was abruptly pulled hours before broadcast this past weekend.
Students and staff from the university's Human Rights Center investigations lab helped verify some of the details about the megaprison in El Salvador, known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT for short, that was featured in the segment slated to air Sunday, said Betsy Popken, the center's executive director.
Popken wrote in an email sent Monday that her team was "shocked" to learn about the segment being pulled. She said that the workers of the investigations lab used "geolocation, image analysis, and other verification methods" to corroborate CBS's findings about prison conditions, which included 24/7 lighting to prevent detainees from sleeping and use of particular weapons and torture tactics. She said the work was done in partnership with Human Rights Watch, an international nonprofit organization. The center at Berkeley trains undergraduate, journalism and law students in sophisticated verification techniques that could theoretically stand up in a court of law. Many projects are often done in collaboration with media outlets and outside organizations.
The nearly 14-minute segment featured the stories of Venezuelan men who were deported by the Trump administration to CECOT in El Salvador, the infamous maximum-security facility, despite having no connection to the country.
CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss picked apart the segment and defended her decision to pull it from airing in a memo sent to CBS staffers that was first reported by Axios. In the memo, she argued that the data presented an "incongruent" picture and that the segment "needed additional reporting." She claimed that in order to air the segment, CBS's team needed to do more to "advance" the story that had already been "much-covered," particularly by adding more voices from the Trump administration.
Weiss also deliberately questioned the analysis from those Berkeley students.
The "analysis from the Berkeley students is strange ... what does the analysis add?" Weiss wrote.
Political podcaster Allison Gill posted to her Substack what is purportedly the full segment axed by Weiss. It was available for viewing after it was temporarily posted by a Canadian network, according to the CBC. In the clip posted by Gill, the Berkeley students are interviewed about their research techniques and describe how they used satellite imagery and interviews to corroborate some of the details presented by "60 Minutes" in the report.
The move to pull the segment has reportedly brought distrust at the media company, with multiple outlets quoting anonymous sources inside CBS with dueling opinions. Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, reports directly to David Ellison, owner of CBS's parent company Paramount Skydance. Ellison successfully merged Paramount with Skydance earlier this year after Paramount agreed to pay Trump a multimillion-dollar settlement over a lawsuit regarding a 2024 "60 Minutes" segment.
Paramount Skydance is now seeking to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (parent company of CNN) via a multibillion-dollar hostile bid, after Warner Bros. had already announced a deal with Netflix on Dec. 5. President Donald Trump has said that he personally will approve any Warner Bros. acquisition, leading to speculation Weiss is steering Paramount's flagship news station in a more Trump-friendly direction to boost Ellison's standing with the White House.
Democratic lawmakers weighed in on the segment's delay, with Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz writing on social media, "What is happening to CBS is a terrible embarrassment and if executives think they can build shareholder value by avoiding journalism that might offend the Mad King they are about to learn a tough lesson." Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey called the ordeal "government censorship."
Sharyn Alfonsi, the lead correspondent on the segment, also questioned whether the decision was a political one in an email to her team. She said the segment went through five rounds of screening, calling it "factually correct."
"In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one," she wrote.
UC Berkeley's Popken shared a similar sentiment in a statement about the decision.
"Our team helped verify detention conditions, identify key locations, and support survivor and family accounts," she said. "This work was conducted carefully, ethically, and in partnership with trusted human rights organizations."