Yesterday, CBS News pulled a report detailing the abuses at El Salvador’s CECOT prison just before its flagship news program 60 Minutes was scheduled to air it.
CECOT — the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or ‘Center for the Confinement of Terrorism’ in English — is a sprawling prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, which was built by the Salvadoran authoritarian government to hold prisoners caught up in the country’s war on drug cartels. Human rights organizations have condemned the prison for the torture of prisoners.
The Trump regime has been using I.C.E., its secret police force, to kidnap hundreds of Venezuelan migrants off the streets of the United States, and without trial, send them to CECOT.
One such kidnapped migrant was Kilmar Abrego Garcia. A Trump regime lawye…
Yesterday, CBS News pulled a report detailing the abuses at El Salvador’s CECOT prison just before its flagship news program 60 Minutes was scheduled to air it.
CECOT — the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or ‘Center for the Confinement of Terrorism’ in English — is a sprawling prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, which was built by the Salvadoran authoritarian government to hold prisoners caught up in the country’s war on drug cartels. Human rights organizations have condemned the prison for the torture of prisoners.
The Trump regime has been using I.C.E., its secret police force, to kidnap hundreds of Venezuelan migrants off the streets of the United States, and without trial, send them to CECOT.
One such kidnapped migrant was Kilmar Abrego Garcia. A Trump regime lawyer admitted that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake, and he is now back in the U.S., but he has been the subject of legal battles ever since, with the regime fabricating lies about him in order to expel him again.
In a court filing, Abrego Garcia said that while held at CECOT, he experienced “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.” He said he lost 31 pounds.
The 60 Minutes segment that was to air last night was to going to tell the stories of other Venezuelan men deported to CECOT by the Trump regime, and detail the torture they experienced there.
“The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and ‘needed additional reporting,’” reports Michael Grynbaum in the New York Times:
But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is 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.”
Bari Weiss, the recently appointed editor in chief of CBS News, stopped the broadcast of the 60 Minutes report. Continues Grynbaum:
One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.
…
In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote.
“We have been promoting this story on social media for days,” Ms. Alfonsi added. “Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”
Weiss was hired as editor in chief by David Ellison. Ellison is the CEO of Skydance Pictures, the company that produced the Mission Impossible franchise and some of the Star Trek films. Earlier this year, Ellison bought Paramount Global, CBS’s parent company, and formed Paramount Skydance.
Donald Trump has often criticized 60 Minutes, and that criticism is understood to be a regulatory barrier to Ellison’s plan to have Paramount Global buy Netflix. So preventing the broadcast of 60 Minutes’ CECOT report benefits Ellison financially and Trump politically.
The loser? Truth, and independent reporting.
Lügenpresse
There is nothing new about the authoritarian attacks on press freedom.
The term “Lügenpresse” — “lying press” — was used throughout the 19th century in Germany, but was most adeptly employed by Adolf Hitler and his minister Hermann Göring, who said newspaper reports of attacks on Jewish people and institutions were fake news.
Now, Trump regularly falsely refers to unflattering reporting as fake news and lies, and there is a concentrated effort to defang reporting by either killing independent news sources outright, or having favour-seeking oligarchs buy them and gut them.
On the killing independent media front, look no further than the de-funding of PBS. As for favour-seeking oligarchs buying once independent news organizations, before the 60 Minute debacle there was Jeff Bezos’s takeover of the once-vaunted Washington Post.
Bezos, the founder and chairman of Amazon who changes places with Mark Zuckerberg as the second-most obscenely wealthy person on Earth, bought the Post in 2013 as a sort of vanity project. For many years, Bezos maintained a hands-off approach to the paper, respecting its editorial independence.
But then Bezos realized that his vast fortune alone wasn’t enough to stymie the government’s power to break Amazon’s various monopolies, and judging the political wind, he prohibited the Post from running an endorsement of Kamala Harris. Then, Bezos showed up on the actual inauguration stage, seated behind Trump, and Amazon donated $1 million towards the celebration.
Ever since, Bezos has used the Post as an instrument of acquiescence to Trump, killing the independence of the paper’s opinion pages and using it for straight-up propaganda for the regime, most notably with the cringeworthy editorial supporting Trump taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House, headlined “In defense of the White House ballroom.”
In addition to the destruction of buying out of independent news sources, Trump also employs a tactic of intimidation, baselessly suing news organizations that report critically on him. Several such organizations have simply caved, making a deal with Trump. Others fight on. But the effect is to make extortion a consideration in the newsroom.
In Canada and Nova Scotia
Credit: Iris/ Halifax Examiner/ Jennifer Henderson/ Unsplash
So far, the news situation in Canada isn’t as dire as that in the United States, but we’re not far behind.
The largest newspaper chain in Canada is Postmedia, which owns most of the daily newspapers in the country. Postmedia is owned primarily by a U.S. hedge fund, and its publications generally have a right-wing editorial voice.
There has, however, been some resistance to attacks on Postmedia journalists. For example, the company has defended its excellent defence reporter David Pugliese, who has exposed wrongdoing in the military. Pugliese was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign that aligned with the Conservatives’ disinclination to criticize the military. To its credit, Postmedia has stood by Pugliese.
But what would it take to tip the scales entirely into aligning with authoritarian governments?
Consider also Pierre Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC, just as Trump has defunded PBS. Both see an independent public broadcaster as a threat.
And what about Nova Scotia?
In February, Premier Tim Houston ended a centuries-long tradition of the premier and his ministers scrumming with reporters in the hallway outside the legislative chamber, with the apparent intended effect of preventing reporters from being present when the opposition grilled the government, as the reporters would have to trek across the street to press events with the ministers. The issue was eventually resolved with a compromise.
But then in late summer, the government went five weeks without post-cabinet meeting appearances with reporters. That usually weekly event is the one unscripted opportunity for reporters to have direct access to the premier and his ministers to ask about any issue at all. Canceling those meeting is a rejection of the media’s role in our democracy.
More worrying still is the government’s refusal to engage with reporters at all. Here at the Halifax Examiner, we experience this nearly every day — a reporter will ask for information or comment from a government department, and we are often ignored completely. Increasingly, we’re not even getting acknowledgement that the question was asked. And when we do get responses, they often don’t answer the question.
It’s more than apparent that the Nova Scotia government has complete disdain for independent reporting.
We will not be cowed. Unlike the Washington Post or CBS, we are not owned by an oligarch seeking state favours. Our goal is to be adversarial and hold power to account, and we will continue to do so, with whatever resources at our disposal.
Right now, as the war on independent reporting is being racheted up, it is more important than ever to support those independent news sources. I support financially a few in the U.S., including 404 Media and Propublica (although I’m watching with caution that latter’s AI policies), and here in Canada support The Tyee and the National Observer, among others.
Of course I very much think readers should support the Halifax Examiner by subscribing or with a donation. We also have gift subscriptions.
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NOTICED
Saltwire
A 2022 Google Street View image of the building on Bluewater Road in Bedford then hosting SaltWire’s printing press. Credit: Google Street View
In September, I reported that Mickey MacDonald had purchased the building that once held the Chronicle Herald’s printing press.
Since then, a court document records that the sale price was $6.45 million, with $5.95 million going to Saltwire’s main creditor, Fiera, and $500,000 going to Eckler Admin Corp. Ltd., which is the administrator of The Herald Retirement Plan.
That $6.45 million would cover the Halifax Examiner’s entire operating budget for 12 years.
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THE LATEST FROM THE HALIFAX EXAMINER:
Company gets approval to produce sustainable aviation fuel in Guysborough County
Site of the proposed fuel processing facility in the Goldboro Renewable Energy Park purchased from Pieridae Energy as seen on July 23, 2025. Credit: Jennifer Henderson
Jennifer Henderson reports:
A proposed multi-billion dollar project for Goldboro in Guysborough County has cleared its first environmental hurdle.
Nova Scotia’s minister of Environment and Climate Change has approved an environmental assessment that was submitted by Nova Sustainable Fuels just seven weeks ago. The decision, with conditions, will permit the company to begin work on a proposed renewable energy park. The 266-acre site was purchased from Pieridae Energy after it abandoned plans to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant.
According to a press release from Nova Sustainable Fuels, “The proposed renewable energy park aims to produce two critical low-carbon fuels for decarbonizing the transportation sector: sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable methanol.”
As reported by the Examiner following an open house held in the community in July, the company’s business plan envisions the production of 165,000 tonnes a year of aviation fuel that will have 85% fewer carbon emissions than conventional jet fuel.
…
Nova Sustainable Fuels started life with an Irish company called Simply Blue. It was purchased by Octopus Energy Generation, which is providing the financing for this project. The investment company is based in London, England and manages a portfolio that includes 5 GW of wind and solar farms in 21 countries, worth more than $10 billion CDN.
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Nova Sustainable Fuels is talking some huge numbers when it comes to how much woody biomass and water will be required to get to the point where aviation fuel can be produced at an electrolysis facility to be built at the Goldboro Renewable Energy Park.
The company’s plan to produce sustainable fuel begins with buying and gasifying 750,000 tonnes of woody biomass a year. That’s an enormous amount, about six times what Port Hawkesbury Paper buys and roughly half the annual amount of wood fibre used by the former Northern Pulp mill in Pictou County.
…
Nova Sustainable Fuels’ preliminary estimate for the volume of fresh water the electrolysis process would need from local lakes and rivers is also massive: approximately 575 cubic metres each hour.
Click or tap here to read “Company gets approval to produce sustainable aviation fuel in Guysborough County.”
The airline industry is an enormous source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the big hope is that these emissions can be reduced by replacing aviation fuel with biofuels. As we see, however, the production of biofuels has its own enormous environmental impact.
Nova Scotia is very dependent on air travel. Arguably, the province is most known outside Canada for two things: for all the planes that landed at the Halifax airport during the 911 attacks, and for Anne Murray’s “Snowbird.” (I’m serious. When I took a job in Arkansas for a year, the people I talked to didn’t know much about Nova Scotia. They didn’t know about our perfect time zone, our superior wind, or the world’s best convention centre, but they knew that Anne Murray was from here.) Take away air travel, and we’re even more unknown than we are now.
And I don’t see many Nova Scotians swearing off air travel to reduce our carbon emissions. The airport is buzzing today with Christmas travellers.
So perhaps the argument can be made that this province has some duty to help in the biofuel transition.
But as presented, this particular plan seems convoluted and onerous, as I suspect all biofuel schemes will be. I doubt it would even work, both in terms of actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and in financial viability. But that aside, where’s all this fibre going to come from? Where’s all the water going to come from? I don’t see that it’s possible to produce those needed inputs, and even if it is, I seriously doubt the populace will agree to it.
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In the harbour
Halifax 05:30: Atlantic Sky, ro-ro container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England 05:30: ZIM Virginia, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Valencia, Spain 06:00: Morning Pride, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Southampton, England 12:30: Atlantic Sky sails for sea 15:00: Tropic Lissette, cargo ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Philipsburg, St. Croix 16:00: Morning Pride moves to Pier 9 17:00: Bakkafoss, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from Portland 17:00: Nord Logos, cargo ship, arrives at anchorage from Baltimore 17:30: ZIM Virginia sails for New York 21:00: AlgoLuna, oil tanker, arrives at Berth TBD from Montréal 22:30: Morning Pride sails for sea 22:30: Bakkafoss sails for Reykjavik 23:00: AlgoCanada, oil tanker, arrives at Berth TBD from Montréal
Cape Breton 11:00: Indigo Sun, oil tanker, sails from EverWind for sea 12:00: Nautilus, oil tanker, arrives at EverWind from Sikka, India 13:00: Algoma Vision, bulker, sails from Aulds Cove quarry 13:00: CSL Tarantau, bulker, moves from anchorage to Aulds Cove quarry 18:00: Rt Hon Paul E Martin, bulker, arrives at Coal Pier (Sydney) from Baltimore
Footnotes
