Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi ranted about “corporate meddling and editorial fear” at an event Thursday night after boss Bari Weiss shelved her report on El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
Alfonsi — who reportedly exploded at Weiss’ deputy in a tense exchange after her episode was halted — also joked that her only hope lately has been “that I still have a job.”
Her contract with the network, however, is up at the end of the month, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Post.
CBS did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Alfonsi’s segment on the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a hellish El Salvadoran prison was originally supposed to air on Dec. 21 — but Weiss paused the release of the episode in the US, arguing it needed an on-air response from a Trump official.
The longtime “60 Minutes” journo argued Weiss had “spiked” the episode over political concerns, while the new CBS News chief claimed it was halted due to inadequate sourcing.
The CECOT segment was ultimately aired during the Jan. 18 show, and it did not include an on-air interview with a White House official.
“I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents,” Alfonsi said Thursday after accepting the Ridenhour Prize for Courage at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
“It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear. It’s hard to watch,” Alfonsi added.
While accepting the award, Alfonsi also said she didn’t realize the theme of the night was “hope” — joking that her hope recently “has been that I still have a job. And every morning I wake up to another headline that says I’ve been fired.”
Though Alfonsi did not mention her bosses at CBS News by name, the audience booed when an earlier speaker mentioned Weiss.
Alfonsi also confirmed that a SWAT team was falsely sent to her house a few days after the episode was paused, saying, “I guess they were trying to scare me into silence.”
“Some executives are asking not, ‘Is the story true?’ but, ‘Is it good for business?’” Alfonsi said.
She confirmed that she was asked to nab an interview with a Trump official before the episode aired, but said she refused — “not because I’m a pain in the ass, which I am, but because the story was factually correct, and I argued that any change to it might reflect poorly on CBS and ’60 Minutes.’”
Alfonsi argued that she was concerned at the time that viewers would compare the original episode — which had already aired in Canada as initially scheduled — with the new American version and cry foul.
“Because our audience is smart, they would view any change to the story as capitulation or censorship,” Alfonsi said Thursday night.
“My stance did not make my new bosses very happy,” Alfonsi added. “I believe I was doing my job, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.”
The journo said she was so terrified that her producers had “offered to hold [her] hair when [she] was so nervous she was puking about what [she] had done.”
Shortly after her CECOT report was shelved, Alfonsi reportedly blew up at a deputy for Weiss, yelling at the supervisor, “You don’t get to produce me!”
She also accused the deputy, Adam Rubenstein, of being a “mouthpiece” for the Trump administration during a Jan. 12 editorial meeting, according to Puck News.
