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CBS News has come under scrutiny after revelations it had reprimanded CBS Morning News co-anchor Tony Dokoupil following an interview segment with author Ta-Nehisi Coates regarding his anti-Israel polemic The Message.
Days after the interview, Dokoupil was taken to task during a weekly staff call at CBS and admonished for not being up to the network's "editorial standards". However, CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford jumped to Dokoupil's defense. The audio of this call was leaked and publicly released on Bari Weiss' The Free Press.
Dokoupil was not formally disciplined but apologized to staff including executives from the network's race and culture unit.
It is worth noting that the network's top shareholder Shari Redstone publicly defended Dokoupil's interview and took CBS brass to task for their heavy handedness.
I have some questions of my own.
1. How exactly did Dokoupil violate the network's standards?
2. Why was Dokoupil publicly criticized for his bias while other CBS employees openly question Israel's right to exist?
3. Why was Dokoupil compelled to apologize to people at the network who don't think Israel should exist?
4. Coates compares Israel to the Jim Crow South. Are CBS' journalists prohibited from questioning such a view in the same way they are not allowed to mention Jerusalem is in Israel?
5. Is Coates himself (or other authors who share his viewpoint) simply above criticism or questioning by CBS journalists?
Whatever the answers to those questions, it would appear that CBS has an institutional bias against Israel as strong as exists across the pond with the BBC. This does not bode well for CBS or mainstream American journalism at large.
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