CBS News bosses have knocked reporter Tony Dokoupil for asking left-leaning author and social justice activist Ta-Nehisi Coates tough questions about the latter’s criticisms of Israel in a recent interview.
Last week, Coates appeared on CBS Mornings to promote his new book, The Message, which criticizes Israel for its handlings of the Palestinian conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. The author even said that Israel practices a form of “apartheid” in the territories it captured following the Six-Day War of 1967. While the interview remained cordial, Dokoupil, a convert to Judaism whose ex-wife lives in Israel with their two children, posed some tough questions to Coates.
“I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards, the acclaim, took the cover off the book, publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” Dokoupil said to Coates.
The reporter then wondered “talented, smart” would not at least include some of Israel’s perspective.
“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?” asked Dokoupil.
“Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?” Dokoupil asked.
Coates said that he did not feel the need to include the Israeli narrative, believing it has been given a fair hearing in the U.S. press.
“I wrote a 260-page book,” Coates said. “It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”
Dokoupil then said Coates “delegitimizes the pillars of Israel” in an effort to “topple the whole building of it.”
“What is it that particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state, that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?” Dokoupil said.
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state,” Coates responded. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
On Monday, CBS News boss Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark, the president of content development for the news division, said that the interview questions did not meet editorial standards,
“We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark said. “We are here to report news without fear or favor.”
CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford was quote by Puck News as saying, “I don’t even understand how Tony’s interview failed to meet our editorial standards… I thought our commitment was to truth.”
“When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of very complex situation — which Coates himself acknowledges that he has — it’s my understanding that as a journalist we are obligated to challenge that worldview, so that our viewers can have access to the truth and can have a more balanced account,” added Crawford.
