When CBS silenced Andy Rooney. Twice.

The weekend ended with a big hullabaloo about Bari Weiss, head of the failing news division at CBS. Weiss pulled a story on 60 Minutes because it was incomplete. She wanted more balance and better reporting on the piece. Cries of censorship were immediate and frankly, unconvincing.

In a Matt Drudge-approved story, the Wall Street Journal reported:

CBS News pulled a planned 60 Minutes segment on an El Salvador maximum-security prison where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, a last-minute decision that drew a rebuke from one of its high-profile correspondents.

Sharyn Alfonsi said in a Sunday email to fellow correspondents including Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper that she learned Saturday that new CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss “spiked our story.” Alfonsi said the last-minute change was, in her view, a political decision, rather than an editorial call, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be,” Weiss said in a statement. “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Over the course of this weekend, Weiss made the decision not to run the piece as planned, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The 60 Minutes report on Inside CECOT will air in a future broadcast. We determined it needed additional reporting,” a spokesperson for CBS News said in a statement.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct,” Alfonsi wrote in the email. If the standard for airing a story became the government agreeing to be interviewed, she wrote, the network would cede editorial control. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote.

The New York Times fleshed out the story, reporting, “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.

“Ms. Weiss also questioned the use of the term migrants to describe the Venezuelan men who were deported, noting that they were in the United States illegally, two of the people said.”

Ever notice they don’t call them illegal aliens? I wonder why that is. The swallows of Capistrano don’t stay there for years on end. They hang around for 7 months then fly back to winter in Argentina some 6,000 miles away.

I asked Grok what the swallows do in Argentina. Grok said, “Forage for flying insects over grasslands, marshes, and open areas.” They clean up the swamp! We should call them Trumpettes. They do more public good for Argentina than illegal aliens do.

CBS did not censor Sharyn Alfonsi. Weiss asked her to tell the other side of the story. We will see if she does.

Alfonsi is not the first person in the CBS newsroom to face this situation. Andy Rooney, the venerable voice of reason, had his Essay on War spiked in 1970.

Mike Netter tweeted:

In 1970, Andy Rooney did something almost unheard of in television: he walked away from CBS over a piece of writing.

The network had refused to broadcast his documentary An Essay on War, a personal reflection on his experiences as a World War II correspondent. CBS executives found it too pointed, too critical, too uncomfortable for primetime. They wanted it softened or shelved.

Rooney refused both options.

Instead, he quit. He purchased the film from CBS with his own money, found a new home for it on PBS’s The Great American Dream Machine, and read the words himself on camera. It was his first appearance on television as a presenter rather than a behind-the-scenes writer.

The essay won him a Writers Guild Award.

This wasn’t censorship. This was a boss not liking your work. After 21 years at CBS, he walked. He went from PBS to ABC but returned to CBS to work on its prestigious 60 Minutes show where he became America’s grandpa complaining about little things and providing wisdom on the things that matter.

You didn’t have to always agree with the man to enjoy his work.

Millions enjoyed his commentaries and in 1989, he got his own Christmas special, A Year with Andy Rooney. After 40 years of working for CBS (well, 32 after deducting his time at PBS and ABC), he was an overnight sensation.

In the show, he said, “There was some recognition in 1989 of the fact that many of the ills which kill us are self-induced: too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes. They’re all known to lead quite often to premature death.”

Uh-oh. He was blaming homosexuals for the spread of AIDS. That got him in trouble. The LGBT crowd went after him and The Advocate claimed without evidence that he said, “I’ve believed all along that most people are born with equal intelligence, but blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs and get pregnant.”

Rooney vehemently denied that last statement but it did not matter 35 years ago. CBS suspended him for three months. Halfway through the suspension, CBS executives caved to public pressure and he returned.

Netter also said in his tweet:

As a correspondent for Stars and Stripes during World War II, Rooney was one of six journalists to fly with American bomber crews over Germany in February 1943. He watched young men his own age leave for missions and never return. He walked into barracks where beds were still made, photographs of wives still propped on nightstands, and knew without asking what had happened.

He was among the first correspondents to enter the Nazi concentration camps after liberation. He earned a Bronze Star and an Air Medal for his reporting under fire.

Rooney walked when CBS spiked his essay on war. It was an opinion piece that he wouldn’t change.

I suggest that if Alfonsi meant her story as an opinion piece, she should walk, too.

But if she meant it as a news story, she should go back and get the other side of the story to present the facts to the people and let them decide. She’s 53. She should know this by now.