CBS vetted questions for woke activist Ta-Nehisi Coates through its Race and Culture unit, which was created in the summer of 2020 during the George Floyd riots.
"CBS Mornings" anchor Tony Dokoupil, however, went off script, asking Coates tough questions about his new book "The Message," which portrays Israel as the aggressor in the Israel-Gaza conflict and Palestinians as perpetual victims, The Daily Wire previously reported. Dokoupil was reprimanded for his questioning.
The Race and Culture unit reviewed the interview and determined that while "Dokoupil's questions and intentions were acceptable, his tone was not," Puck News reported. Further, the network's Standards and Practices division "determined that Dokoupil had not followed the preproduction process where questions are run through Race and Culture and Standards and Practice."
CBS News and Stations president and CEO Wendy McMahon told Dokoupil about the violations and said they would be addressed with staff. McMahon and her top deputy Adrienne Roark then spent three days figuring out how to do that before telling staff on October 7. At that staff meeting, CBS News' chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford criticized the determination.
"I don't even understand how Tony's interview failed to meet our editorial standards," Crawford said, Dylan Byers reported. "I thought our commitment was to truth. When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a 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..."
"... And that is what Tony did," Crawford continued, according to Byers. "He challenged Coates' one-sided worldview, Coates got to respond. It was civil... I don't see how we can say that it failed to meet our editorial standards.... Tony prevented a one-sided account from being broadcast on our network about a deeply complex situation that completely was devoid of history or fact. As journalists, that's what we have an obligation to do."
Media reporter Justin Baragona reported that Dokoupil admitted to going off script when it came to his questioning of Coates, but defended his tone and questions. At one point during the staff meeting, a staffer asked Dokoupil how he would interview a Palestinian guest, and Dokoupil said he would ask the guest about their politics and whether Israel has a right to exist. This apparently prompted "groans" in the room, Baragona reported.
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An unnamed insider told Baragona, "If Tony would just shut the f*** up, none of this would be happening."
Dokoupil has pressed Coates on the framing of his book, which compares the Israel-Gaza conflict to slavery in America.
"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 in the interview, according to CNN.
Dokoupil also pushed Coates to answer why he left out so many facts in the book that are beneficial to Israel.
"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?" Dokoupil asked.
Coates didn't get upset or hostile toward Dokoupil's questioning and responded by saying his book was not supposed to be an exact history of the conflict but about a different perspective, even though the perspective he put forth is the dominating one in academic and media circles.
Amid the reprimand of Dokoupil, it has been reported that CBS News told staff not to refer to Jerusalem "as being in Israel," even though it has been recognized as Israel's capital since 1995.
"Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel's capital. But its status is disputed," CBS News Senior Director of Standards Mark Memmott said in an email to staff. "The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its 'eternal and undivided' capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem -- occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war -- as the capital of a future state."
Israel exists now, while Memmott's phrasing suggests Jerusalem can't be referred to as the capital because of a potential future change, which may never happen.
Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro called the demand to staff "literally fake news."