Connect the dots. David Ellison’s Skydance bought Paramount, which owned the Columbia Broadcasting System, which produced, inter alia, the news magazine “60 Minutes,”* and now wants to add Warner Bros. Discovery to his stable, which had agreed to be acquired by Netflix, in a hostile bid. To accomplish this, Ellison sought to use his relationship with Trump to box out Netflix and gain the inside track to approval of a takeover.

Not long ago, Trump touted his friendship with Ellison and his expectation that CBS, in general, and 60 Minutes, in particular, would treat him with greater acquiescence than it had in the past. All that changed, however, when 60 Minutes aired a segment on Marjorie Taylor (or Traitor, as Trump prefers) Greene, who did not have nice things to say about her former idol. Trump was not pleased.

Then Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press and newly installed head of news at CBS, pulled the plug.

In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.

CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. 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.”

Is it possible that the story needed more “context,” as claimed by Weiss, or failed to include the voices of the disappeared who thought CECOT was a swell prison and not brutal at all?

Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. 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.”

It’s possible, although it’s exceedingly hard to imagine that there was anything good to say about the prison that was inappropriately omitted. What apparently was left out was the position of Stephen Miller, likely to explain why “illegals” deserve to be tortured and who cares what happens to them anyway.

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.

Sharon Alfonsi, the correspondent, sought a reaction from the administration, but received a refusal to participate.

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.

And if they chose not to be involved, what more could Alfonsi do? If the Trump administration chose not to comment on why torture was a good thing, so be it. Alfonsi proceeded with what she had.

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.”

Notably, CBS used the segment to promote the upcoming episode, such that it was already out there for people to know that there would be a story about the brutal CECOT prison. It is thus also possible that someone in the White House, perhaps even someone who watches television obsessively to ascertain whether anyone is saying anything mean about him, saw the promo and threw a hissy fit, contacting the Ellison scion to demand that he fix this grievous mistake or kiss his chance of getting Warner Bros. Discovery, which happens to also own Cable News Network, good-bye.

It is not generally left to the head of news to micromanage the content of any particular show on a network. That’s the job of the reporters, producers and executive producers, including Bill Owens’ replacement when he resigned rather than work under Bari Weiss. As long as the show passes legal, it’s in the hands of the show’s staff rather than the people in the C-Suite. That Weiss knew about it, no less stuck her fingers into it, might well have been one of the fears, but certainly wasn’t the normal practice. Yet, here we are.

What was expected, however, was that Trump would not remain silent when it came to expressing his displeasure.

“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

The final dot is that 60 Minutes aired, but without the segment. What this means for the future of CNN remains a question mark, since there will be plenty of opportunity for Trump to shriek “fake news” or otherwise become enraged by the news between now and when he tells FCC Commissioner Brenden Carr that he has Trump’s permission to approve the Warner Bros. Discovery buy out.

*Full disclosure: I was interviewed by Mike Wallace for a 60 Minutes segment in 2001 on Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder.