Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on "CBS Mornings" with Tony Dokoupil last week to promote his new book, "The Message," which the author admits is a one-sided view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Coates had complained in an interview with New York Magazine that the idea the Israel-Palestinian conflict was "complicated" was actually a bunch of "horses**t." He said that argument was reminiscent of arguments made by slave traders. “It’s complicated,” he said, “when you want to take something from somebody.”
Dokoupil asked him about the interview which reflected what he wrote in "The Message."
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?”
“Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?”
“Why not detail anything of the first and second intifada... the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?”
Those are good questions that any competent journalist would ask. However, they were too much for CBS brass.
Network leadership held a staff meeting on Oct. 7 and lambasted Dokoupil for not being impartial. Dokoupil converted to Judaism about a decade ago, and his ex-wife and kids live in Israel.
CBS News' CEO Wendy McMahon told staff that the anchor's interview "did not meet editorial standards for impartiality."
McMahon introduced Adrienne Roark, the president of content development for the news division, who raked Dokoupil over the coals. “We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door," she said.
“We are here to report news without fear or favor,” Roark added. “There are times we fail our audiences and each other. We’re in one of those times right now, and it’s been growing. And we’re at a tipping point. Many of you have reached out to express concerns about recent reporting. Specifically about the CBS Mornings Coates interview last week as well as comments made coming out of some of our correspondents’ reporting."
"This is about preserving the legacy of neutrality and objectivity that is CBS News,” she said. “We want every show to be a place for courageous and robust conversations and discussions.”
Talk about "horses**t." CBS has shown time and time again that its "legacy of neutrality and objectivity" left the building long ago. They now trot out the memory of that "legacy" whenever one of their reporters oversteps and commits the unpardonable sin of performing journalism.
Dokoupil was not without his defenders. Jan Crawford, CBS chief legal correspondent since 2009, came to Dokoupil’s defense.
“It sounds like we are calling out one of our anchors in a somewhat public setting on this call for failing to meet editorial standards for, I’m not even sure what,” she said. “I thought our commitment was to truth. And when someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account, a more balanced account. And, to me, that is what Tony did.”
The Free Press wrote an editorial on the blow-up over Dokoupil's interview with an antisemite plugging his one-sided book and defended the host calling out Coates.
As our own Coleman Hughes wrote in his review of Coates’s book, it “doesn’t even mention the word Hamas—or Fatah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah, or Iran—once. In his telling, the threats don’t exist, only the barriers that Israel erects to contain them.”
We suppose that has the advantage of eschewing complexity. But this simplistic telling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict omits so much complicating history that it’s no different than a lie. It would be like writing a book about the Civil War that blames the war on the Union without ever mentioning slavery.
The sad fact is that legacy media outlets like CBS have taken up the cause of the Palestinians. If reporters don't toe the line and defend the attacks on the Jewish states as legitimate, their position at the network is endangered and their livelihoods threatened.
