A bestselling author has defended CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil after coming under fire for a tense on-air exchange about the conflict in the Middle East.
The hostile segment occurred last Monday on the network’s CBS Morning show, when host 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 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, prompting Dokoupil to question him about his apparent antipathy toward Israel.
CBS News reportedly condemned Dokoupil for not meeting their “standards” after the interview, however, Coates jumped to his defense and said he was not offended by the segment.
“I really don’t have a problem with a difficult interview,” Coates said in an appearance Tuesday with Democracy now. “I knew when I wrote (the book) I would be confronted.”
A morning show segment between Tony Dokoupil (right) and author Ta-Nehisi Coates (left) sparked outrage over the host’s aggressive questioning last week.
In an interview days after his segment with Dokoupil went viral, Coates defended the host and said he was not offended by the combative interview.
Coates continued in his follow-up interview that his only concern surrounding the CBS segment, and the subsequent controversy, was a double standard about “who was excluded from the conversation.”
‘Was (Dokoupil) rude? Was it aggressive? “I can’t really go into that, it’s not something I think about too much,” he said.
“However, the question I would ask is how often… in any major news organization, do you see someone who is a defender of the Israeli state project be confronted in that way?”
When Dokoupil interviewed Coates last week, his combative angle began with his first question, when he told Coates that if he published his book without the best-selling author’s name, the text “wouldn’t be out of place in an extremist’s backpack.” “. .’
Dokoupil, who is Jewish, continued with a series of combative questions about Coates’ stance on the Middle East crisis.
‘Why leave out the fact that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?’ asked. Why not detail anything about the First and Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little children blown to pieces?
“And is it because you simply do not believe that Israel, under any conditions, has the right to exist?”
Dokoupil, pictured with his wife, MSNBC anchor Katy Tur, was condemned by CBS News executives for failing to meet “editorial standards” for his approach to the interview with Coates.
The segment sparked a backlash from some online and led a group of CBS News employees to express concern about Dokoupil’s approach to executives, which in turn led the network to officially reprimand the interview for failing to comply. with their standards.
Top CBS executives reportedly held a newsroom-wide call to address 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 writing and news gathering, told the group that the interview did not “meet our editorial standards” but said “the issue has been addressed and will continue to be addressed in the future.” Dokoupil is still on the air.
But Dokoupil, seen as a rising star at the network, has faced a week of outrage over the segment with Coates, with much criticism. taking to social networks to criticize his aggressive interrogation of the author.
Coates and Dokoupil had several tense exchanges about the conflict in the Middle East, and at one point the author responded: ‘Either apartheid is right or wrong.’ It’s really, really simple’
Coates, a best-selling author, was in the segment to promote his new book ‘The Message.’
Coates responded in the interview by telling Dokoupil that “there is no shortage of that perspective in American media” and that he attempted to offer a different point of view by focusing his book on a 12-day trip he took to Jerusalem.
In one particularly tense exchange, Dokoupil asked Coates: “What is it about the existence of a Jewish state that is a safe place for Jews that offends you so much?”
“There is nothing that offends me in a Jewish state,” Coates responded. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are located.”
‘Either apartheid is right or wrong. “It’s very, very 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 laughter when Dokoupil told Coates that he was “still invited to the High Holidays.”
The combative interview prompted CBS President of Writing and News Gathering Adrienne Roark (pictured) to hold a newsroom-wide meeting on “editorial standards,” notably marked on the one-year anniversary of the attacks. October 7 terrorists.
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 did so particularly on October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks a year ago.
Comments from the meeting were quickly shared by The free presswhich reported that Roark told employees that despite the reprimand for the Dokoupil interview, “we will continue to hold people accountable.” That’s part of our job.”
“But we will do it objectively, and that clearly means checking our biases and opinions at the door, and that applies to each of us,” he 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 goes on air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges, my understanding is that as journalists we are obliged to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the reality. truth or a fuller account,” Crawford said.
“To me, that’s what Tony did.”