CBS News condemned one of its star morning anchors following a tense on-air exchange over the conflict in the Middle East.
The hostile segment came last Monday on the network’s CBS Morning’s segment, when host Tony Dokoupil launched into an aggressive line of questioning with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Coates was promoting his new book The Message, which includes a section on the Israel-Palestine conflict, leading Dokoupil to question him on his apparent antipathy towards Israel.
This began with his very first question, where Dokoupil told Coates that if he published his book without his bestselling author name on it, the text ‘would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.’
The segment sparked backlash from some online, and led a group of CBS News employees to raise concerns over Dokoupil’s approach with executives, which in turn led the network to officially rebuke the interview for falling short of its standards.
A morning show segment between Tony Dokoupil (right) and author Ta-Nehisi Coates (left) sparked outrage over the anchor’s aggressive questioning last week
Dokoupil, pictured with his wife MSNBC anchor Katy Tur, was condemned by CBS News executives for falling short of ‘editorial standards’ for his approach to his interview with Coates
Top CBS executives reportedly held a newsroom-wide call to address the staff complaints about Dokoupil’s interview, according to the New York Times.
The outlet added that at least one veteran CBS journalist defended Dokoupil on the call and said they didn’t see what he had done wrong.
Adrienne Roark, the network’s president of editorial and newsgathering, told the group that the interview did not ‘meet our editorial standards’, but said it ‘has been addressed, and it will continue to be in the future.’ Dokoupil remains on the air.
But Dokoupil – seen as a rising star on the network – has faced a week of outrage over the segment with Coates, with many critics taking to social media to slam his aggressive questioning of the author.
After telling Coates that his writing resembled that of an ‘extremist’, Dokoupil, who is Jewish, the anchor continued with a series of combative questions regarding Coates’ stance on the Middle East crisis.
‘Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?’ he asked. ‘Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?
‘And is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?’
Coates and Dokoupil had several tense exchanges over the conflict in the Middle East, with the author at one point responding: ‘Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple’
Coates, a bestselling author, was on the segment to promote his new book ‘The Message’
Coates responded by telling Dokoupil that there is ‘no shortage of that perspective in American media’, and that he attempted to offer a different viewpoint by focusing his book on a 12-day trip he took to Jerusalem.
In one particularly tense back-and-forth, Dokoupil asked Coates: ‘What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?’
‘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.’
‘Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple,’ Coates added later in the segment.
After Dokoupil’s two co-hosts sat in stunned silence for almost the entirety of the six-minute interview, the segment ended with laughs as Dokoupil told Coates he was ‘still invite to the High Holidays.’
The combative interview led CBS’s president of editorial and newsgathering Adrienne Roark (pictured) to hold a newsroom-wide meeting on ‘editorial standards’, notably held on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks
Jan Crawford, the network’s chief legal correspondent, defended Dokoupil on the call and said she didn’t see why his questioning of Coates’ stance on Israel was a problem
When CBS executives rebuked Dokoupil’s approach, they notably did so on October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks one year ago.
Remarks from the meeting were quickly shared by The Free Press, which reported that Roark told employees that despite it’s admonishment of Dokoupil’s interview, ‘we will still hold people accountable. That’s part of our job.’
‘But we will do so objectively, and that means very plainly checking our biases and opinions at the door, and that applies to every single one of us,’ she said.
In response, Jan Crawford, the network’s chief legal correspondent, defended Dokoupil on the call and said she didn’t see why his questioning of Coates’ stance on Israel was a problem.
‘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,’ Crawford said.
‘To me, that is what Tony did.’