The segment, reported by the correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, was first screened for CBS journalists on Dec. 12; Ms. Weiss did not attend that screening or four others over the next week, a person with direct knowledge of the screenings said. She watched a video of the segment on Thursday night and offered suggestions, which producers integrated into the script. By Friday afternoon, “60 Minutes” had given CBS management the green light to announce and promote the segment to viewers.
Then, around midnight at the end of Friday, less than 48 hours before the segment was set to air, Ms. Weiss weighed in again, this time with more substantial requests. She asked producers to add a last-minute interview with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff — a relatively straightforward task for a print journalist who needs to only make a phone call, but a logistically difficult one in TV news, where a camera and lighting crew is often required.
“If we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice,” Ms. Weiss wrote in her internal note, which “60 Minutes” producers viewed as a more critical assessment than the one she had offered earlier in the week.
“60 Minutes,” the country’s most popular news program, has a long history of autonomy, and this week is hardly the first time its staff has bristled at interference from CBS News leadership. The show takes pride in a deliberative process where segments are edited and re-edited for weeks — a different rhythm from the fast-paced web journalism that Ms. Weiss oversaw at The Free Press.
Frustration with Ms. Weiss spilled out at the show’s Monday staff meeting, the four people familiar with the conversation said.
Mr. Pelley said that if Ms. Weiss planned to be more involved with editing “60 Minutes” stories, she should attend the early screenings and communicate directly with correspondents. “She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously,” he said.
Tanya Simon, the “60 Minutes” executive producer, told her staff that she and Ms. Weiss “had a good working relationship” and that she did not want “to ascribe motive and place blame” for the weekend’s events. She told the staff that she stood “100 percent behind Sharyn and her story,” and she referred to the segment as “thoroughly reported.”
On the 9 a.m. call, Ms. Weiss said she wanted a newsroom “where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect.”
Hours later, Ms. Alfonsi — who accused the network on Sunday night of pulling her segment for “political” reasons — raised those comments during the meeting with her “60 Minutes” colleagues. She said Ms. Weiss had not contacted her directly with her concerns.
“Disagreement requires discussion,” Ms. Alfonsi said.