Tony Dokoupil In Trouble At CBS For Questioning Pro-Palestinian Author Ta-Nehisi Coates During Interview

"CBS Mornings" anchor Tony Dokoupil interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates last week to discuss the author's pro-Palestinian framing of Hamas’ war with Israel.

Coates, who writes mostly about race, appeared on the program to promote his new book "The Message," in which he compares the treatment of Palestinians by Israel to the Jim Crow South.

Dokoupil called the comparison "extreme" and followed up with hard questions about the author's stance. 

For example, he asked Coates why he didn’t include more pro-Israel voices or note in his work that "little kids [were] blown to bits" in Palestinian terrorist attacks. 

"I wrote a 260-page book," Coates responded. "It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis."  Dokoupil followed up by asking, "Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?"

Seems like a fair question to ask, given the most standard pro-Palestinian argument against the state of Israel, no? 

CBS News says no.

According to Bari Weiss' Free Press and Puck News, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and President of Content Adrienne Roar felt that Dokoupil failed to meet editorial standards for impartiality. 

McMahon and Roar claim Dokoupil let his pro-Israel bias get in the way of his duties as a journalist.

"We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door," Roark stated, per Puck. "We are here to report news without fear or favor."

However, during an internal meeting, legal correspondent Jan Crawford defended Dokoupil against his bosses.

"I don’t even understand how Tony’s interview failed to meet our editorial standards… I thought our commitment was to truth," Crawford said. "We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door."

"When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of [a] very complex situation — which Coates himself acknowledges that he has — it’s my understanding that as a journalist we are obligated to challenge that worldview, so that our viewers can have access to the truth and can have a more balanced account."

Another CBS source told The New York Post: "This is more a failure of CBS News not reading books and evaluating if they should be promoting them.

CBS hopes to ease tensions over its response to the interview during an all-staff meeting on Tuesday. The network tasked self-described "mental health expert, DEI strategist and trauma trainer" Dr. Donald Grant with moderating the town hall.

Who exactly is this Dr. Grant? Here's a better look:

This ought to be good.

We also can't help but notice that the same CBS News that cites "standards for impartiality" when an anchor questions the anti-Israel rhetoric had nothing to say last week when anchors Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan showed clear partiality in favor of Tim Walz over JD Vance during the CBS-moderated debate.

Odd.

Further, where are the damning statements toward the many CBS anchors who allowed their anti-Trump, pro-Harris biases to impede the network's coverage of the election over the past two months?

Put simply, CBS booked a radical pro-Palestinian mouthpiece on its morning program. The network tasked Dokoupil to conduct the interview. He handled the interview like a journalist.

Now, he's in trouble for it.

CBS News doesn't actually demand impartiality as a standard. Dokoupil just took the wrong side.