Last week, CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil got himself dragged up and down the internet after going toe-to-toe with acclaimed author, educator, journalist, and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates during a panel discussion about Coates’ book The Message, which draws parallels between Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and the Jim Crow South in America.
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Apparently, Dokoupil took issue with Coates’ book because he highlighted the history of colonization and anti-Palestinian oppression instead of highlighting Israel’s “right to exist,” which is, by far, the most popular pro-Israel talking point, and has already been repeated ad nauseam by mainstream media outlets and politicians across the Western world, which is why Coates didn’t feel the need to include it in his book.
Now, Dokoupil’s aggressive line of questioning is being admonished by CBS News executives, who said the interview did not meet the editorial standards of the network. (We’ll circle back to that part in a sec.)
“I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the 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. “So then I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates – who I’ve known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy – leave out so much? 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? Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
So, Dokoupil essentially opened the interview by telling Coates that if he wasn’t as popular, accomplished, and acclaimed as he is, nobody would like his little Jihad book, then he proceeded to chide him for not painting Israel as the victim in the conflict and Palestine and other surrounding Muslim countries as the terrorist-filled aggressors.
Coates responded to the loaded question more politely than many of us would have.
“Well I would say the perspective that you just outlined, there is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates responded. “That’s the first thing I would say. I am most concerned always with those who don’t have a voice, with those who don’t have the ability to talk.
“I have asked repeatedly in my interviews whether there is a single network, mainstream organization in America with a Palestinian-American bureau chief or correspondent who actually has a voice to articulate their part of the world. I’ve been a reporter for 20 years,” he continued. “The reporters of those who believe most sympathetically about Israel and it’s right to exist don’t have a problem getting their voice out. But what I saw in Palestine, what I saw in the West Bank, what I saw in Haifa in Israel, what I saw in the South Hebron Hills, those were the stories that I have not heard and those were the stories that I was most occupied with.”
Coates’ perfectly reasonable answer didn’t appear to satisfy Dokoupil, who essentially repeated over and over again that Israel had a “right to exist” as if it were his one and only prepared talking point while Coates continued to try to educate him on how apartheid and power dynamics actually work.
It was an exhausting display of Black intellectualism vs. dedicated caucasity. The interview garnered a lot of negative publicity across social media, prompting CBS News executives Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark to address the issue during a daily editorial meeting with staffers on Monday.
“We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark told staff members, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
It’s worth noting that while McMahon and Roark agreed that editorial standards were not met during the contentious interview, CBS chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford, did not agree.
“It sounds like we are calling out one of our anchors in a somewhat public setting on this call for failing to meet editorial standards for, I’m not even sure what,” Crawford reportedly protested. “I thought our commitment was to truth. And when someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account, a more balanced account. And, to me, that is what Tony did.”
I suppose that’s arguable.
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It’s also arguable that all Dokoupil did was reword the same question about Israel’s “right to exist repeatedly while ignoring all of the substance in Coates’ responses. After Coates pointed out that most media outlets already report on the conflict from a pro-Israel perspective, Dokoupil dismissively insisted,
“But if you were to read this book, you would be left wondering, ‘Why does any of Israel exist? What a horrific place committing horrific acts on a daily basis.’ So I think the question is central and key. If Israel has a right to exist, and if your answer is no, then I guess the question becomes why do the Palestinians have a right to exist? Why do 20 different Muslim countries have a right to exist?”
Although Coates never actually said the nation didn’t have a right to exist, Dokoupil just kept remixing his assertion that Coates did say it.
“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 in his book, according to CNN.
The only time Dokoupil really acknowledged that Coates’ book focused on apartheid-style anti-Palestinian discrimination was when Coates recalled that his Palestinian guide in Israel was not able to “ride on certain roads,” or “get water in the same way that Israeli citizens” were able to.
“Why is that? Why is there no agency in this book for the Palestinians?” Dokoupil asked in response. “They exist in your narrative merely as victims of the Israelis, as though they were not offered peace at any juncture, as though they don’t have a stake in this as well.”
A lot of people took that as Dokoupil blaming Palestinian citizens for their own state-sanctioned discrimination.
I’ll just leave you with Coates’ response.
“Either apartheid is right or it’s wrong. It’s really, really simple. Either what I saw was right or it’s wrong,” he said. “I am against a state that discriminates against people on the base of ethnicity. I’m against that. There is nothing the Palestinians could do that would make that okay for me.”
And there it is.