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The ‘60 Minutes’ Report on CECOT That Bari Weiss Censored Is Now Internet Contraband from Daring Fireball RSS feed.
The ‘60 Minutes’ Report on CECOT That Bari Weiss Censored Is Now Internet Contraband
Elizabeth Lopatto, writing at The Verge:
60 Minutes had already begun promoting the now-censored segment online. Because it was pulled so late, it seems that CBS missed at least one platform for distribution: Canada’s Global TV. Some people used a VPN to watch it; at least one person recorded it, distributing it through an iCloud account.
The segment, which has been reviewed by The Verge, is a little shy of 14 minutes long. It features video of men, chained and bent double, being “paraded in front of cameras, pushed onto buses, and delivered to CECOT,” according to the segment’s narration. One former detainee, who CBS met in Colombia, said he was told he was “the living dead” at CECOT. After trying to seek asylum in the US, he says he was detained by customs and held for 6 months before being deported. He described horrific conditions at the prison, saying he was beaten until he bled and that he was thrown into a wall so hard he broke one of his teeth. He also described sexual assault by the guards. Another interviewed former detainee described what can only be called torture: being forced to kneel for 24 hours, and being put in a dark room, where they were beaten if they moved from the stress position. [...]
Anyway, best of luck to Weiss in playing DMCA whack-a-mole with the video of the story. The segment lives as online samizdat now. Thanks to Weiss’ censorship, it may very well wind up being the most-talked-about CBS News story this year.
There are a bunch of copies on social media, but most are video of the TV broadcast in Canada shot from an iPhone. The Internet Archive, however, has a clean copy that’s a direct screen recording. Watch for yourself.
In addition to being the most-talked-about CBS News story of the year, it’ll almost certainly be the most-watched. But CBS will get none of the views or ad revenue. There’s no better way to make people want to watch something than to tell them they shouldn’t watch it. The Streisand effect is very real.