Why are the American corporate media held in such low regard, with less than a third of Americans expressing a “great deal” or a ”fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly” according to a new Gallup Poll?
CBS News executives recently produced a veritable tutorial on how to ensure that their profession continues to be held in low repute when they effectively threw to the wolves “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil. Dokoupil, you see, had had the temerity to commit a flagrant act of journalism: asking tough questions of an early-morning guest – writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, a harsh critic of Israel.
Coates has published a new book, The Message, which he describes as an effort to debunk complexities used to obscure Israel’s occupation. In an interview with New York Magazine, Coates dismissed as “horsesh**t” the notion that the Mideast conflict is “complicated,” saying that that is how defenders of segregation and slavery had described those odious practices in the United States.
So, when Coates appeared on his show September 30, Dokoupil (whose two children live in Israel with his ex-wife) asked him about some of the glaring omissions. “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” was one question Dokoupil asked. “Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” was another.
Also: “Why not detail anything of the first and second intifada” such as “the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?”
And finally, Dokoupil told Coates that if one were to take away all the awards and acclaim his book has received, some of the book’s content “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”
And what followed wasn’t name-calling or a physical brawl, but a respectful, spirited exchange between an interviewer and interviewee with polar opposite views. But that didn’t meet the standards of junior CBS newsroom staff who were indignant over the fact that Dokoupil challenged Coates in any way.
The CBS Response
The juniors’ complaints up the chain apparently morphed into a revolt behind the scenes. Everything came into the open at a staff editorial meeting on October 7 – the first anniversary of the Hamas pogrom that killed close to 1,200 Israelis and started the current war.
Tapes of that meeting were linked to The Free Press, which has posted them on their site. Two CBS News executives, Adrienne Roark and Wendy McMahon, held a conference call with employees to address internal concern over Dokoupil’s conduct of the Coates interview. Instead of defending Dokoupil for doing his job, Roark and McMahon threw him to the wolves. The conference call in essence turned into an exercise in groveling and self-flagellation. Roark told her colleagues that a strong rebuke had been delivered to Dokoupil. She added that people must be “held accountable” but that CBS News would do so “objectively” – in effect hinting that the reporter had failed to do so in her view.
One veteran CBS journalist made it clear that in her view, Dokoupil had done his job well and the attacks on him were nonsense.
“I thought our commitment was to the truth,” said Jan Greenburg, the network’s chief legal correspondent. “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 we as journalists are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account…. That’s what Tony did.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey summed up the situation.
“What have the people who are attacking Mr. Dokoupil honestly done besides trying to bleed CBS News to death from the inside?” he wrote. “Those in positions of power in the American media should know better than to kowtow to the cancel culture mob. If they won’t stand up, they should stop calling themselves journalists.”
