CBS Rebukes Anchor Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates
CBS Rebukes Anchor Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates
CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state; I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are,” Mr. Coates replied. The men parried for several minutes in a tense but civil manner, with Mr. Coates at one point saying: “Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”
Good, because that was some bullshit. Don't fucking try to bait someone into making an antisemitic statement on TV. Especially someone much smarter than you.
He also implied that Coates' book seems like something that would be in the backpack of an extremist on his way to blow something up.
Yep. Just disgusting.
The world is blowing up. But it's blowing up because of human economic activity, which is 'good', so therefore that isn't seen as 'extremist'.
“the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
I found that tough to parse, but worth it.
“Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”
Well put.
Dokoupil just made himself look clueless. Like a sock puppet for Israel. Which he is.
Dokoupil just made himself look clueless.
Dokoupil made himself look worse than clueless. He made himself look like a racist.
Dokoupil made himself look worse than a clueless racist. He made himself look like a zionist.
I just watched the interview, and you can too at this link right here.
Dokoupil was a major asshole as an interviewer. Dokoupil was inserting language as though they were Mr. Coates arguments. Dokoupil was engaging in classic strawman attacks on national TV.
I've watched CBS news on and off for years and Dokoupil has been on many of those pieces. Prior to this I thought him competent. I now have zero respect for Dokoupil as a journalist. He allowed his personal feelings and biases to overrule his journalist integrity. He should be ashamed of himself.
Editing to add: If you want to see a good journalist interview the same guest talking about the same book do so here with Jon Stewart and Mr Coates.
It's not the job of a journalist to kiss the interviewee's ass and finish their sentences for them. That's not journalism, that's marketing and promotion.
The Jon Stewart interview is two people who don't understand Israel at all talking as though they're experts on Israel. Stewart didn't ask Coates a single difficult question or challenge his narrative in any way at all.
Dokoupil did his job and the fact that he's received so much backlash shows just how far journalism has deteriorated.
The Jon Stewart interview is two people who don’t understand Israel at all
I think most of the world now falls into the camp of "don't understand Israel at all" with the IDF killing everyone around them (including other IDF). I guessing Stewart is very knowledgeable about Israel. Coates was admitting he wasn't an expert on Israel, but is an expert on ethnic oppression, of which Israel has been undertaking for years.
Stewart didn’t ask Coates a single difficult question or challenge his narrative in any way at all.
Its been a week or two since I watched the Jon Stewart interview, but one of the final questions Stewart asked Coates was something to the effect of "So what is the answer? Where do we go from here with the two side so far apart?" Thank isn't a difficult question?
Dokoupil did his job and the fact that he’s received so much backlash shows just how far journalism has deteriorated.
The fact that strawmanning and attacks are the only thing you're recognizing as journalism shows how much journalism has deteriorated.
I recently heard Coates interviewed, and he had a very nuanced view of the entire difficult situation. The fact that the Dokoupil tried to dumb it down to a strawman argument is really telling.
Telling nothing good about Dokoupil.