Keep Circulating the Tapes: 60 Minutes report on CECOT

CBS is actively suppressing its own 60 Minutes report on CECOT. Canadian outlets have aired the material. You can view it on archive.org for now or via this magnet link.

CECOT is El Salvador's mega-prison where the Trump administration sent Venezuelan deportees to be tortured without any due process. CECOT's leadership openly admits the harm they are doing on camera; for them, it is a selling point of the facility.

CBS was acquired by Skydance Media in order to kill stories like this. David Ellison (Skydance's founder) installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief for this purpose. In an internal memo, Bari claims airing the report would do "our viewers a disservice" and that 60 Minutes should "do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT". Her request to get "the principal on the record" gives the Trump administration the power to delay the story indefinitely.

I expect archive.org will receive a takedown notice. It will not matter that the Canadian airing of the broadcast was legal and wholly a timing mistake attributable to Weiss's incompetence.

Help yourself: get off social and traditional media. Use de-centralized tools like RSS, Mastodon or BitTorrent that are immune to suppression. If CECOT doesn't strike a chord with you personally, be ready for the story that does.