On CBS’s The Morning Show, the veteran journalist Tony Dokoupil dared to question the show’s guest, Ta-Nehisi Coates, about a chapter on Israel and the Palestinians in his just-published book The Message. Then all hell broke loose, as left-wing anti-Israel staffers at CBS demanded that Dokoupil be made to answer for his performance, and the heads of CBS and CBS News called Dokoupil on the carpet. He was made to apologize for doing his job. Not everyone at CBS, however, believed that Dokoupil deserved such treatment.
More on the brouhaha can be found here: “CBS News says heated Ta-Nehisi Coates interview did not meet editorial standards after criticism,” by Brian Stelter and Hadas Gold, CNN, October 7, 2024:
CBS News executives said Monday that a heated morning show interview with acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, during which his new book was compared to “extremist” writings, did not meet the network’s editorial standards.
CBS executives told staffers during a daily editorial meeting that the contentious “CBS Mornings” interview last week with Coates, led by co-anchor Tony Dokoupil, had been addressed with Dokoupil.
The assessment pacified some employees who had objected to Dokoupil’s tone during the segment with Coates. But it offended other employees who thought Dokoupil’s interview was appropriately tough.
“We have an obligation as journalists to challenge controversial guests, and that’s what Tony did,” one concerned correspondent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told CNN.
Coates, a National Book Award winner, released “The Message” last week, in which he portrays Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a moral crime, one that many Americans can’t or won’t face directly.
“For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere,” Coates wrote.
Coates appears to believe that the two million Arabs living in Israel — whom he calls “Palestinians” — are not treated as equal to the country’s Jewish citizens. This is completely false. Israeli Arabs enjoy the same civil, religious, and political rights as Israeli Jews. Arabs sit on the Supreme Court, serve in the Knesset, go abroad as diplomats for the state of Israel. The recent chairman of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, is Samer Haj-Yehia, an Arab. Arabs and Jews work in the same offices and factories. Arabs and Jews play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras. Arabs and Jews are treated in the same hospitals by the same doctors and nurses. Jews and Arabs go into businesses together — everything from restaurants to tech start-ups. The only difference in the treatment of Jews and Arabs in Israel is that Jews must, but Arabs may, serve in the military. But none of this is apparently known to Ta-Nehisi Coates. For him, the “Palestinians” are brown and the Jews are white (he clearly has not seen what Jews from Arab countries look like, or the Falasha from Ethiopia); the former, therefore, must be victims and the latter their victimizers. This is racist nonsense.
During the September 30 interview, Dokoupil took issue with Coates’ framing in the book.
“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.
Dokoupil said he wondered why a “talented, smart” author would “leave out so much” from the book. “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?”
“Talented”? “Smart”? Those are not the adjectives I would apply to the comical Ta-Nehisi Coates, a rival of Cornel West and Ibram X. Kendi in the World’s Greatest Authority competition. His books, like theirs, are jejune attacks on the only racism they recognize — white racism. That is their subject — their only real subject.
Coates did not seem perturbed by the questioning as “CBS Mornings” co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson mostly looked on in silence.
“There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates said, adding that his book is not supposed to be a complete history or analysis of the conflict. Coates said he wanted to center a different perspective.
“I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice,” he said.
Do the “Palestinians” not have a voice? Don’t they “have a voice” on hundreds of American campuses where students come out to declare their solidarity with the Palestinians? Don’t they “have a voice” in cities all over America and Europe, where hundreds of thousands of pro-Hamas anti-Israel demonstrators show up week after week to denounce Israel for “genocide” and to call for its elimination with the chant “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free”? Don’t they “have a voice” at the UN, where more resolutions are passed — on their behalf — against Israel than are passed against all the other 192 member states put together? Don’t they “have a voice” at the UN Security Council, where Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is a permanent item on the agenda? Don’t they have a voice at the UN in the person of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied [sic] Palestinian territories ? Don’t they have a “voice” in Congress, where members of The Squad — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and another dozen anti-Israel “progressives,” along with, in the Senate, the inimitable Bernie Sanders — keep promoting the “cause of Palestine”?
rick says
Anyone who becomes enraged at comments by Dokoupil and come to the defense of Adolf Coates has one foot in a Neo-Nazi Party and the other in Coates’ organization which could be called – probably with his approval “Black Lives Matter while White Ones Don’t Especially Jew Lives”. Welcome to that club CBS.
It is a tragedy that so many rich and powerful people are on the side of Jew haters and black racists and it seems that a large part, if not most of the electronic media support the very worse in our nation, defend horrible policies like Open Borders, DEI, LGBTQ to the detriment of our Armed Forces and uphold criminality with No Cash Bail, absurd rules to make serious felonies turn into misdemeanors and espouse anti-police agendas like defund them. CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC follow in these footsteps. The real problem in the US are those people who are working to turn us into a welfare socialist state where power resides not with the people but with the government.
Nick says
Yes, Rick, ditto is happening in the UK. The world is being turned upside down by far left global ideologists. Scary times we live in!
James Lincoln says
After this – and the “60 minutes” debacle with cackle – CBS has lost ALL credibility.
ALL.
gravenimage says
CBS Rebukes Journalist for Committing the Crime of Journalism Against Ta-Nehisi Coates
………………………………………..
Just appalling.
St Croix says
Coates said he wanted to center a different perspective.
“I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice,” he said.
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Well if he is that concerned with the voiceless, he should be concerned about the treatment of Dokoupil by his employers. They have publicly made the effort to disgrace him and call him on the carpet for DOING HIS JOB. They have “taken away his voice” as when he used that voice, in a reasonable professional and appropriate manner–for a journalist especially–they essentially have forbidden him from speaking. In his role as a journalist! They might as well duct-tape his mouth shut.
Reminds me of a certain Twilight Zone episode. A plain Jane young girl who didn’t want to look like, talk or think like everyone else, in a society where all must conform to the same norms via surgery etc. Though not “required” no one is allowed to refuse. Let’s just say they stole her voice. Maybe like Dokoupil from now on. They’ve “taken care of the problem” now and “rebuked” him for doing his job!
“Reading Lolita in Tehran” has much to say to the theft of voice. The author, Azar Nafisi, points out that Dolores/Lolita, does not have a voice. The tyrant tells his side of it, but that’s it. Only the voice of the tyrant matters. As an Iranian ex-pat at this time, she is free to have a voice, in the USA (for now anyway). The women of Iran know well what it’s like to have your voice taken away. So do the women of Afghanistan who grew up with Americans in charge and now suffer under the wretched Taliban.
CBS. Ayatollah. Talliban. The pervy criminal Humbert of Nabokov’s book. Voice thieves all. Too bad Coates doesn’t do a little more reflection on the theme. Whose voice is he stealing? Silencing? As he pretends to “speak for” those who “have no voice.”
somehistory says
some of the ‘staff’ at the network got all in a dither over a question about his book being suitable for the backpack of an extremist. Maybe they thought he was one of those “far-right White extremists.”
They had to know why the host said those things and they got all teary-eyed because they knew he fit the comment.
As it happened, the lady who heads the company which owns CBS said that Mr. Dokoupil was doing his job, that of a real journalist, and that he did nothing wrong and she supports him.
tgusa says
He committed the gravest of sins, a random act of journalism. Feed him to the Lions!
“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Booker T Washington
1856 –1915
I have a message for them I got from a song.
How long has this been going on?
Well if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don’t admit that it’s part of a scheme
But I can’t help but have my suspicions
Cause I ain’t quite as dumb as I seem
St Croix says
Good song! It has outlived many others. Much more memorable than 99% of what’s popular today. I was a kid, but the bell bottom era lived on for a while! @tgusa,you’re right on. That song fits the zeitgeist.
“Can I trust what so and so is saying? What exactly ARE they saying? Seems like the evidence is aligned against it…but maybe I’m paranoid? Yet, something doesn’t add up. And look over here, what about that?”
That’s the period we all go through before the ugly truth is undeniable.
After a while the patterns become fairly obvious, because they keep repeating.
Lies, schemes, players, back room deals, alliances, spies, betrayals, masks. And…smile for the camera! At some point though, The SHTF.
And how long HAS it been going on? That’s a good one. Longer than I thought. Present day iteration is the same pattern, being repeated since humans formed societies.
Oh boy. I think we’re in for it. We see it happened in the 20th century, We see it happening today, in our own mostly globalist gov’ts and the visible and invisible jihad. Africa is going to hell. UK and Europe are not far behind. Israel is fighting hell on the doorstep, all they while they are being told by most other countries to go to hell!
As the song goes, “Ain’t any use in pretending, It could happen to us any day”
tgusa says
That’s right St Croix, It could happen to us any day.
“And you said you was never intending, To break up our scene this way”
࿗Infidel࿘ says
At this point, Paramount Global should just shut down CBS and fire everyone who works there: it’s beyond pathetic