Key Points
- Paramount is seeking to remove online copies of a pulled “60 Minutes” segment after it leaked via a Canadian broadcaster’s on-demand platforms.
- The segment was pre-empted by CBS over editorial concerns, but was briefly accessible on Global’s catch-up services and widely reposted online.
- Attorneys for Paramount have issued copyright takedowns as clips spread across major and international video-sharing sites.
Paramount Global has engaged its legal team to prevent copies of a pre-empted “60 Minutes” news segment from proliferating on the Internet, two days after the segment was controversially pulled from a planned episode of the highly-rated news magazine program.
The segment, which concerns a controversial El Salvadorian prison called CECOT that has booked hundreds of suspected undocumented immigrants at the behest of the Trump administration, was scheduled to air on CBS this past Sunday night, but it was dropped from the program after the network’s editor-in-chief Bari Weiss voiced last-minute reservations about the thoroughness of the story.
The segment has since appeared on numerous video sharing websites after Canadian television viewers realized the originally-scheduled episode was available on a catch-up streaming service operated by Global, a television network with broadcast and digital rights to 60 Minutes in that country.
Episodes of 60 Minutes are typically delivered to international broadcast partners between Friday evening and Saturday morning, allowing them ample time to ensure the show is ready for on-demand and streaming platforms shortly after the episode airs on broadcast and cable television.
Global, like other broadcast partners, was provided the original episode scheduled to air on CBS this past weekend, but was sent a “kill” notice by CBS late Saturday evening with instructions to replace that version with a modified one that did not include the CECOT story.
Global complied with the request on its broadcast TV network, with Canadian viewers offered the same version that aired on CBS. But the original episode was already in Global’s system for on-demand playback on cable and satellite and via the Global catch-up app online, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Between Sunday evening and early Monday morning, Canadians realized they could watch the segment via Global’s on-demand channel, websites and apps, and some recorded and uploaded clips of the pulled segment to the Internet.
Paramount has successfully scrubbed the clip from websites like YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Bluesky after sending copyright notices to the legal teams of those platforms. The copyright notices are legal demands that require platforms to remove material unless the original uploader challenges the validity of the request.
Some platforms, like the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, are complying with Paramount’s request as they come in. But users of the platform continue to download existing copies of the CECOT segment and re-upload them under various accounts, creating a “whack-a-mole” scenario where copies of the clip are spreading fast and almost uncontrollably on that site.
Other global video sharing websites, like Dailymotion and Rutube, are complying with copyright notices issued by Paramount’s attorneys, though they’re under no legal obligation to do so. Dailymotion is based in France, while Rutube is located in Russia.
Global has not formally acknowledged the mistake, but its news organization reported on the original decision by CBS to pull the segment from 60 Minutes. The report, uploaded to YouTube on Monday, included video that was attributed to an earlier promotion for the segment, though some clips in the report were not found in promotional spots reviewed by The Desk and appeared to come from the original episode that was supposed to be pulled.
A CBS spokesperson acknowledged copies of the segment were floating around online, and that its lawyers were working to remove them.
“While Global TV has removed the episode from their app, this segment has since been posted on social and digital media,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday. “Paramount’s content protection team is in the process of routine take down orders for the unaired and unauthorized segment.”
Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent who led the reporting on CECOT for 60 Minutes, said the story went through the normal editorial processes before it was scheduled to air. That process includes receiving approvals from the Standards and Practices team at CBS News, and from the network’s attorneys.
Alfonsi claims the segment was screened at least five times before CBS approved it for air, only to be pulled at the last minute by Weiss.
In a statement on Monday, Weiss said the decision to pre-empt the story was based on concerns that the segment was not balanced and thorough. According to sources, Weiss expressed a desire to secure on-camera interviews with members of the Trump administration before allowing the story to air.
Weiss says the segment will air on 60 Minutes at a later date, but didn’t offer any insight into when that might occur. The accidental leak of the story by Global and its subsequent proliferation on the Internet might accelerate that timeline.
