When is an interview too tough? CBS News grappling with question after Dokoupil interview

NEW YORK (AP) — Television morning show interviews often don’t stray beyond dinner recipes or celebrity hijinks. Yet a week after it took place, CBS News host Tony Dokoupil’s pointed interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel remains the subject of heated conversations at the network and beyond.

CBS management took the unusual step of scolding Dokoupil before his colleagues for not living up to network standards, in a private meeting Monday that quickly became public, and “CBS Mornings” staff continued to discuss it on Tuesday.

The seven-minute interview on Sept. 30 was about Coates’ new book of essays, and Dokoupil zeroed in right away on a section about Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank in an exchange the Washington Post last week called “unusually tense and substantive.”

For all of Coates’ honors as a writer, Dokoupil said that the essay “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” He wondered why Coates’ writing did not include references to Israel being surrounded by enemies that want to eliminate the country.

“Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” he asked.

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Coates said there was no shortage of places where Israel’s viewpoint is represented, and that he wanted to speak for those who don’t have a voice.

“I wrote a 260-page book,” Coates said. “It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Dokoupil later asked Coates about what offended him about the existence of a Jewish state, and he said that Palestinians “exist in your narrative merely as victims of Israel,” as if they had not been offered peace in any juncture.

Coates said that he was offended when anyone — including the Palestinians who talked to him for his book — are treated as second-class citizens in the country where they live, comparing it to the Jim Crow-era United States where his ancestors grew up.

In the staff call on Monday, CBS News chief Wendy McMahon and her deputy, Adrienne Roark, said several journalists in the company had reached out to them about the interview.

“There are times we have not met our editorial standards,” Roark said, citing Dokoupil’s interviews and other comments made by CBS personnel that she did not identify.

CBS News is built on a “foundation of neutrality,” she said. “Our job is to serve our audience without bias or perceived bias.”

She said that the problems had been addressed, but neither she nor CBS explained what this meant.

McMahon told staff members on the call that she expected its contents would remain confidential. But a tape of it was posted within hours on The Free Press news site.

Dokoupil did not immediately return messages seeking comment. A spokesman for Coates did not return a message.

Dokoupil is one of three “CBS Mornings” hosts, along with Gayle King and Nate Burleson. All three participated in the interview with Coates, but with the exception of an opening question by Burleson and a brief one at the end by King, it was dominated by Dokoupil.

Dokoupil is married to NBC News journalist Katy Tur. He has two children from a previous marriage who both live with their mother in Israel. In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Dokoupil said on the show that, “as a father, I think people can understand if somebody, anybody, is firing rockets in the direction of your children without regard to whether they are struck or not, you’re going to feel a thing or two.”

The rebuke by CBS management Monday came on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack.

Management received immediate pushback on the call from Jan Crawford, CBS News’ chief legal correspondent, who said that it’s a journalist’s obligation to ask tough questions when somebody comes on the air to present a one-sided view.

“I don’t see how we can say that failed to meet our editorial standards,” Crawford said. She said she worried that it would make her think twice when conducting interviews.

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.