Executives said the interview, conducted by the morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil, had fallen short of network editorial standards…
CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Top CBS executives, on a newsroom-wide call, described the interview as falling short of the network’s editorial standards. The executives said their critique had been prompted by internal staff concerns, although at least one veteran CBS journalist said later on the call that she was puzzled over what exactly Mr. Dokoupil had done wrong.
The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”
…The interview created a social media uproar. Fans of Mr. Coates accused Mr. Dokoupil of bias, with one writer for Vox calling his questions “hostile, combative and rude.” Others took a more sanguine view, including a Washington Post reporter who wrote that the conversation had been “impassioned but calm” and had brought rigor to the typically breezy realm of morning TV.
Late last week, a group of CBS News employees approached executives with their concerns about Mr. Dokoupil’s handling of the interview, according to two people with knowledge of the events, who requested anonymity to share internal discussions.
Mr. Dokoupil met for an hour with members of the CBS News standards and practices team and the in-house Race and Culture Unit, which advises on “context, tone and intention” of news programming. The conversation focused on Mr. Dokoupil’s tone of voice, phrasing and body language during his interview with Mr. Coates, one of the people said.
If I were Dokoupil’s boss, I would not have been happy with his performance. He was unnecessarily combative and inflammatory in his interview of TNC. I’d tell him: Keep your moral pronouncements to yourself when conducting interviews so you can get the most from the interview.
There’s a useful protocol for conducting effective interviews and Dokoupil violated protocol on several occasions.
Still, Dokoupil’s conduct was par for the course in the MSM, so it’s hard to believe he would have gotten into trouble if the guest wasn’t a POC.
